After covering Tumblr’s landing page a few weeks ago we decided to swing by Posterous’ homepage to see what they have going on. Posterous is a blogging platform designed especially for mobile blogging, so we thought it appropriate to check out their mobile landing pages rather than the desktop version. Will they pass the newly-invented mobile version of our super-scientific landing page test?

Here’s why Posterous earned a spot on our list of Best Landing Pages:

• Zoom free.  When smartphones first came out the whole pinch-to-zoom thing was cool, but in real life, it’s not an ideal way to view a mobile site.

• Slideshow.  Posterous’ mobile site takes on slideshow format to reveal a bit of information on each page.

• The ever-present sign-up option.  The sign-up button follows users throughout every page, so they can make the decision at any point. And when you do commit, Posterous asks you for two simple pieces of information: email and password.

        

In what seemed like an unrelated move, in September, Facebook announced a brand new type of profile called Timeline, where your whole personal history is laid out by month-by-month, all the way back to your birth. At the time, Facebook described it to consumers as a chance to: “Share and highlight your most memorable posts, photos and life events on your timeline. This is where you can tell your story from beginning, to middle, to now.” By the end of this year all 800 million plus Facebook profiles will have been converted to this new interface.

What most users don’t know is that the new features being introduced are all centered around increasing the value of Facebook to advertisers, to the point where Facebook representatives have been selling the idea that Timeline is actually about re-conceptualizing users around their consumer preferences, or as they put it, “brands are now an essential part of people’s identities.”

The name itself is cleverly designed to conceal the fact that your profile no longer arranges information chronologically. Yes, things are laid out by year and by month. But, when it comes to what’s displayed to your social circle at any given time, other metrics, including direct payments to Facebook itself, will now influence the ranking and placement of stories. This payola will be a crucial part of the graph rank, the new metric for placement that the social network uses to determine what appears on your profile.

Once again: it doesn’t matter how great and fun an experience is, good UI design cannot fix a broken solution. Good design can effectively differentiate a good solution, and bad design can completely ruin a good solution. But good design simply cannot make up for a solution that doesn’t address a core user need really well. As a recent post on ZURBlog proclaimed, people don’t buy products – they buy the benefit.

I’m afraid that in the case of both Google Circles and Path 2.0, they might just be flawed solutions wrapped in a layer of beautiful UI design. It’s fun to play with for a while, but when it inevitably becomes tedious you eventually just forget to use it. Forever.

As more of my own peers join Path and Google+ still resembling the remnants of a ghost town, the benefits of both are starting to dwindle for me. What happened to attacking the problem of sharing for "normal people"?

Path was originally meant for sharing only with your 50 closest friends, but since Path 2.0 I can't help but add friends that send me a request that I don't really consider super close. And when I do, they're over sharing the most mundane of things (i.e. self-portraits, napping on a Tuesday afternoon, listening to Lady Gaga, etc.) without giving me too much control on what I see (aside from booting them). Path really is a personal journal, but do you really want your friends reading it?

There's no question the app is beautiful, but I don't know how much longer it will prove to be beneficial for my own sharing needs.

Admittedly, Path was more fun when I was just friends with my girlfriend.

Google+ has not solved any need for me as of late. It's great for the occasional sharing of a funny .gif or YouTube video with the same circle of friends, but social media pundits have seemed to overtake the network. Where are all the "normal people"? Of course, they could just be sharing privately, but what does Google+ do for me an email couldn't serve just as well?

This post is more so about my own sharing preferences and not a critique of the services. The private sharing idea is still new to a lot of people, but the benefits are so immense that it will be the decisive factor in a future where more "normal people" are cognizant of privacy, ease of use, and overall benefit.

The Posterous study, conducted by Harris Interactive Survey, polled over 2,000 social network users, aged 18 and over, showed that Facebook seems to have people sharing less, which is obviously not the effect they were going for.

Seven in ten of the survey respondents believe that Facebook is all for public sharing, and with its most recent changes, particularly the one which allows you to ‘subscribe’ to other users, that isn’t surprising.

While Facebook is attempting to compete with Google+’s circle system gives users a more obvious and simple method of sharing content only with the people you want to – according to Posterous – the private sharing market is wide open for the taking.

61% of those surveyed said that they would share more if they had more control over exactly what it is they were sharing. Facebook is the main culprit of confusion, with 68% of Facebook users saying they don’t understand the social network’s privacy settings. And with how often they’re changed, can you really blame them?

Here are just a few of our findings:

• 81% of students owned a smartphone
• 80% of students had previously seen a QR code
• 21% of students successfully scanned our QR code example.
• 75% of students said they are “Not Likely” to scan a QR code in the future.

QR codes do enjoy a high-level of awareness among college students yet only a fraction (21%) could properly scan and activate the code. Why the discrepancy? According to our findings, students simply struggled with the process. Some didn’t know a 3rd party app was needed, many mistakenly assumed it could be activated with their camera, and others just lost interest, saying the activity took too long. This could be why 75% of students said they were “Not Likely” to scan QR codes in the future.

I still have never scanned a QR code. Ever.

When I see a QR code in an advertisement, I ask myself two things:

1. How the hell do I scan this? Even if I really wanted to scan this QR code, I have absolutely no idea which app I would use. I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but this is one thing I won't bother finding out how to solve.
2. I usually see these codes durring my commute. Who in their sane minds would go through the trouble and walk up to an advertisement in a crowded, moving train?

Am I alone in this? Have you ever taken the time to scan a QR code?

nice post abt why QR codes not catching on -> "8 of 10 college students have no idea what to do w/ QR code" bit.ly/vXOCal via @cnn

— Liz Philips (@iizLiz) December9, 2011

3. Posterous: Wish you could master the social web, but tailor it to the needs of your organization? With the tagline “share smarter,” Posterous has reclaimed the world wide web with circumscribed, user-generated “spaces” that allow businesses and individuals to create and manage permission-based blogs and photo galleries with controlled access (and pleasing to look at formats). For member-based organizations looking to foster community in a walled web-garden, Posterous has your back. The site also makes good on its tagline by offering autopost services for any social-web destination you can think of — and then some.