The "Phantom Profile" Fred Wilson talks about is a great concept.
I particularly like Stack Overflow as an example here. You can visit Stack Overflow and ask a question, all without having to create a profile. You are given a name, given a profile, and given most of what a regular user gets.
As soon as you do decide to sign up "for real", your temporary profile is turned into a real profile. The biggest difference being that you're not cookie-based (you can log in to the profile from other machines).
Despite Jeff Atwood complaining loudly about how so many users have stayed cookie-based for so long, Stack Overflow has gone to great lengths to make sure their site is completely usable with a minimum of hassle, which makes it a much better site in my eyes.
I definitely get the impression that Jeff is more surprised than upset by users who have used cookie-based accounts for long periods. If I recall correctly, the record for longest "active unregistered account" is around 2 and 1/2 year (Stack Overflow is just shy of 3 years old, for comparison). That's a loooong time to go without clicking a Google/Facebook/Whatever button.
Of course, not having to register is completely by design and almost certainly never going to change, it's such an obvious win from a user experience point of view.
They have a strong ethic and they stick to it, and it very much comes through in setting the tone of their sites. It's so sad to see so many other companies compromise when you get such a great RoI on little investments. Most sites have shopping carts that expire after a couple of minutes. Amazon's shopping cart lasts effectively forever though. The result is a better user experience at a modest cost of engineering and database resources. It's the polite and correct thing to do, and for amazon it probably results in a just slightly higher rate of sales, not to mention better customer retention, etc.
Ultimately the best companies are those who are passionate about their users and willing to go to considerable efforts to do things which have no other goal but making users happy.
I run logged out on many of these services because I'm not interested in having all of my preferences and interested logged and having my experience customized for me. In fact I intentionally log out of many of them when I'm done with my logged in activity (google is the best example of this). I also have cookies clearing on most of these services on a timed basis. Work against my interests here (and put it in my face) and you're more likely to end up on the cookie clearing list or simply not get used any more (facebook features on third party websites is a great example of behavior that pushes me away from facebook). I wonder if I'm all alone here, or perhaps your unlogged in users would prefer to be a bit more forgotten than you're suggesting.
I'm fairly sure you're not alone, but that you're definitely in the minority. So the options are: make the experience significantly better for the majority of users and annoy the minority of users like yourself; or make the experience slightly less annoying for the minority of users (who could have just added the site to a cookie clearing list) and weaken the experience for the majority of users.
A good example can be seen with Youtube. On a fresh computer with IP address, I was given an old game video from a friend. Finished watching it and talked other stuff.
An hour later, when I went to youtube.com (main page) to look for a different old game video, I noticed the frontpage suggestions were the same as alongside when I watched the video. Quite a basic guess of what the user wants but seems effective to me.
Although I have an account with youtube, I rarely log in. What's the point?
From a business point of view, this makes some sense, but I find it creepy.
Apparently, so do some other people, because it is almost certainly becoming illegal throughout Europe as the recent rules on privacy/cookies take effect.
I find it highly unlikely that Stack Overflow's phantom profiles and similar features are an intended casualty of those laws. Unless politicians just hate the internet.
Is there a recommended design pattern to deal with the problem of coalescing or "stringing together" multiple "phantom profiles" inadvertently created for a user every time they browse when logged out (or from different machines before logging in)? I imagine the site's database schema would require one or two extra levels of indirection to map user IDs to user histories.
You can go to the site and start tracking favorite bands without providing any sign up info. Only after you have tracked a reasonably large number of bands and you're invested in your list does it ask you to sign up.
(I'm not affiliated with them, I was just impressed by the workflow)
Grooveshark (http://grooveshark.com) does this very well... I started using their service and added a handful of favorites (which worked well enough for me at the time) before ultimately deciding to register.
"I think that social services that are public by default and have huge logged out user bases, should "phantom register" their logged out users by storing activity against their cookies and building user profiles on their logged out users."
What about if the user isn't allowing data to be stored, is using a vpn or proxy, a dynamic IP, or something else that prevents you from "storing activity"/comparing/etc.. I've seen this done before to target advertising to phantom users on adult sites, it doesn't work. Most of those people who aren't logging don't won't to log in/participate and "comparing activity" isn't exactly a piece of cake and is depending on those users having cooperating connections. You might argue that these people are fringe users but even then I doubt the ability/feasibility to accurately retain and compare data usefully and not just using IP or something to compare visits.
"You might argue that these people are fringe users but even then I doubt the ability/feasibility to accurately retain and compare data usefully and not just using IP or something to compare visits."
I'm not sure I follow you.
If a user isn't one of the "fringe" group which doesn't allow cookies, then you can store a cookie identifying the user to you, create a profile for them as if they are a regular user, and track anything you want. You can treat them like regular users, or treat them in a special way, but either way you can store any information you want.
Ebay used to have some rich pre-registration features like "watching", but they seem to have been removed in the last year or so. They still track logged-out profiles and tease a login with items that "you might like" and recent search lists. These hang around for years, I expect somewhere in Ebay Towers there's a top ten list of the Ebay identity that has been spread most widely across devices/browser profiles.
i didn't make it up. i heard it back in the early days of the social web, in 2002 or 2003. i've seen it to be true (within a range of numbers) again and again
[+] [-] edanm|15 years ago|reply
I particularly like Stack Overflow as an example here. You can visit Stack Overflow and ask a question, all without having to create a profile. You are given a name, given a profile, and given most of what a regular user gets.
As soon as you do decide to sign up "for real", your temporary profile is turned into a real profile. The biggest difference being that you're not cookie-based (you can log in to the profile from other machines).
Despite Jeff Atwood complaining loudly about how so many users have stayed cookie-based for so long, Stack Overflow has gone to great lengths to make sure their site is completely usable with a minimum of hassle, which makes it a much better site in my eyes.
[+] [-] kmontrose|15 years ago|reply
Of course, not having to register is completely by design and almost certainly never going to change, it's such an obvious win from a user experience point of view.
Disclaimer: Stack Exchange employee.
[+] [-] fredwilson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|15 years ago|reply
Ultimately the best companies are those who are passionate about their users and willing to go to considerable efforts to do things which have no other goal but making users happy.
[+] [-] trotsky|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edanm|15 years ago|reply
And by most, I mean a huge majority, like 90%+.
I'm not aware of any studies though, does anyone have any study to link to?
[+] [-] rubergly|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joakal|15 years ago|reply
An hour later, when I went to youtube.com (main page) to look for a different old game video, I noticed the frontpage suggestions were the same as alongside when I watched the video. Quite a basic guess of what the user wants but seems effective to me.
Although I have an account with youtube, I rarely log in. What's the point?
[+] [-] fredwilson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Silhouette|15 years ago|reply
Apparently, so do some other people, because it is almost certainly becoming illegal throughout Europe as the recent rules on privacy/cookies take effect.
[+] [-] kevingadd|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpeterso|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spatten|15 years ago|reply
Songkick (http://songkick.com) nails this for first time users.
You can go to the site and start tracking favorite bands without providing any sign up info. Only after you have tracked a reasonably large number of bands and you're invested in your list does it ask you to sign up.
(I'm not affiliated with them, I was just impressed by the workflow)
[+] [-] Empedocles99|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamokane|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chopsueyar|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philthy|15 years ago|reply
What about if the user isn't allowing data to be stored, is using a vpn or proxy, a dynamic IP, or something else that prevents you from "storing activity"/comparing/etc.. I've seen this done before to target advertising to phantom users on adult sites, it doesn't work. Most of those people who aren't logging don't won't to log in/participate and "comparing activity" isn't exactly a piece of cake and is depending on those users having cooperating connections. You might argue that these people are fringe users but even then I doubt the ability/feasibility to accurately retain and compare data usefully and not just using IP or something to compare visits.
[+] [-] edanm|15 years ago|reply
I'm not sure I follow you.
If a user isn't one of the "fringe" group which doesn't allow cookies, then you can store a cookie identifying the user to you, create a profile for them as if they are a regular user, and track anything you want. You can treat them like regular users, or treat them in a special way, but either way you can store any information you want.
[+] [-] synx508|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dav-id|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredwilson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] click170|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eegilbert|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harrybr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredwilson|15 years ago|reply