Software Testing Blog

Today I read a story about a woman who, while following Google Maps’ directions, was run over and is now suing Google for damages. So, my question to you is: Who are you following — and why?

At uTest, we’re just scratching the surface of  what’s possible in our “social media” efforts, but we’re excited that this past weekend we passed 1,000 Twitter Followers and 500 Facebook Likes!

So this post is simply to ask YOU — our terrific community, friends and readers — a few questions about what makes a company worth following or more interesting to you in the realm of social media:

1. What type of content do you like most? Is it breaking news; thoughts from industry gurus; inside info from the company; jokes and funny stories; special promotions; or other?
2. What makes you want to follow or “like” a company — particularly a B2B brand?
3. Are there other B2B or SaaS companies who are doing cool stuff and making all the right moves?  Give ‘em some love and tell the world about them in the comments!

We would love to hear your thoughts, ideas and insights around this topic. And if you have a moment, please follow us (we promise we won’t run you over!).

For most software companies, user feedback generally comes in the form of emails, surveys, bug reports and the like. For Facebook, it recently came in the form of an entire South Park episode (warning: spoiler alert!).

Earlier this week, South Park lampooned the social media giant (along with Jim Cramer, chat roulette, Tron and Yahtzee) in an episode with major usability undertones. You can watch the entire episode here, but in case you’re at work, here’s brief synopsis from Wikipedia:

When Kyle, Cartman and Kenny make Stan a Facebook profile without his knowledge, he becomes frustrated with everyone asking him for friend requests. After he gets fed up with Facebook, Stan tries to delete his profile but is sucked into a virtual Facebook world. Meanwhile, Kyle starts trying to find ways to get more friends on Facebook after he drastically starts losing them due to his befriending of a third-grade friendless Facebook user, who everyone thinks is a loser.

Compared to other South Park “guests”, Facebook made it through the episode relatively unscathed, and for that they should be thankful. That said, it’s still South Park, a place where weaknesses must be exploited. So, here are a few feedback items I was able to relate to typical user feedback:

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Developers have long awaited the death of Internet Explorer 6; web heavyweight like Google, Facebook, Reddit, Justin.tv and Digg have all announced the expiration date for their support of IE6; Microsoft has been steering users away from IE6 for more than a year.  And last week, a funeral was held for the outdated browser which was two parts wake and one part wish.  Even Microsoft joined in the fun, sending a card to the festivities services.

So what will it take to kill the undead browser once and for all?  Well, it’s worth noting — and shocking — that IE6 still drives nearly 20 percent of all web access from beyond the grave.

How is this possible?  What outdated luddite segment of web users is still stuck in 2001?  Well, the prime culprit is large enterprises like Intel who bemoan the cost and complexity of upgrading thousands of employees and legacy apps that were built specifically for IE6.  So while the web citizenry has moved on and is ready to pull the plug, developers (and testers), IE6 will continue to be part of the web app testing matrix for much longer than any of us would like to believe.

Just to further illustrate the insanity of IE6’s continued survival, here are a few other things that were going on in 2001:

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These days, it’s hard not to know about Lady Gaga (and if you don’t know her, here’s her latest music video to get you started).  She’s become one of the hottest pop acts in the world, all by combining music, fashion, and a little bit of “Andy” (either Warhol or Kaufman – take your pick).  So what does this have to do with software?  Well get this: an astonishing 89% of the people who create an account on LadyGaga.com choose to do so using third party authentication from Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace.

Just think about that for a second.  That means that nearly 9 out of 10 people creating special purpose web accounts are doing so using their social networking platforms (skipping all those annoying new account questions like password, age, location, and favorite pet in the process).

This is huge, and it represents a big shift in the way people are going to interact with your website in the future.  If 89% of users are doing this on a mass market website like LadyGaga.com, then I guarantee they’re going to be doing it on other sites as well.  So what does this mean?

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Every day, software testers must put themselves in the shoes of their users.  Testers should always think about how their users – their customers, actually – are going to use their product.  Is the application workflow clear?  Does a particular bug interfere with the overall experience of the product?  Could the UI be more standards compliant or intuitive?

Good usability testing is both an art and a challenge.  ReadWriteWeb, a popular web startup blog, learned that fact the hard way this week after writing a post titled Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login.  The post was about the partnership between Facebook and AOL to integrate AIM and Facebook chat. Pretty standard Internet news stuff.

But take a look at that headline – it uses both the words “Facebook” and “Login”. For Google that was enough to make this ReadWriteWeb article the number two link for those search terms, and after that all hell broke loose.

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PHP is one of the web’s most widely used and successful programming languages.  It’s easy to learn, easy to use, and extremely powerful.  Tools like Drupal and Wordpress power millions of sites on Internet, and both were built using PHP.

But mighty Facebook stands above nearly everyone as the king of PHP.  With over 400 billion pageviews per month (yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’), Facebook serves up more webpages with PHP than just about anyone else.  Facebook’s engineers credit PHP with some of their success because PHP’s simplicity makes it easy to recruit new engineers, quickly train them, and get them started with the site’s code.

But PHP’s ease and simplicity comes with a very real downside for Facebook.  Like most scripted languages, PHP is substantially slower than compiled languages like C and C++.  Smaller sites running on fast servers may never notice PHP’s performance inadequacies, but Facebook faced the real possibility of spending millions of dollars for additional servers just to support PHP’s overhead.

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It’s no surprise to our community that social networks have the potential to pose big security threats this year. During the “Battle of the Social Networks,” uTesters found a combined 718 bugs in Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn; and an additional 300+ bugs were discovered in the top five Twitter desktop apps during the Q2 bug battle.

To add more fuel to the fire, today the company Sophos, which surveyed 500+ organizations, came out with a new report stating that in the past year:

• 57% of users report they have been spammed via social networking sites
• 36% of users claim they’ve been sent malware via social networking sites
• 72% of survey respondents think social networks are a danger for their companies (see Mashable article)

What’s the solution? Tina Fey, in her show “30 Rock,” recently spoofed social networks with her creation of “YouFace” (combo of Facebook & MySpace). Terms such as “finger-tagged,” “weirdsie,” and “pho-lo” (for photo and hello) had many ROFL. See video clip after the bump!

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Just a quick note to share some good news from inside the halls of uTest.  On Friday night, our marketing team attended the awards event of the SNCR at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, MA.  This event included blue-chip brands like HP, Intel and Stanford University, as well as innovators like HubSpot.

The SNCR holds this event to recognize companies that are exploring new and innovative avenues of communications and marketing.  We were fortunate enough to be among those companies and agencies who were honored for our use of new media to build and engage our community.

It’s great to be counted among those who are pushing the limits of social networking, blogs, forums and other forms of media, but we’re just getting started.  We’ve already established a vibrant presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, but we’re always on the lookout for new ideas.

So with that, I’m inviting you to drop us a comment or shoot us a note with your thoughts about how we could make our social media more useful, informative or entertaining.

Thanks to you, uTest blog traffic has more than doubled since the beginning of ‘09.  And since our relaunch in mid-May, we’ve use this space to share breaking industry news, testing events and meetups, uTest company info, and original content from around the QA industry through our guest bloggers and “Testing the Limits” interviews.  That’s why we need your help to get the Software Testing Blog into the running for Mashable’s Open WebAwards in the “Best Corporate Blog” category.

So if you like the uTest blog, this is your chance to cast your vote and  support uTest and our community. Here’s how it works:

1. Go to http://mashable.com/owa/votes. (You must be signed into your Facebook or Twitter account.)
2. Then simply Nominate: http://blog.utest.com for Category: “Best Corporate Blog”
3. Voting is once per day, so please don’t be shy!

Thanks in advance for your help, and keep your fingers crossed for another big win for uTest and our community! Send us a note with any questions.

Apologies for the alliteration, but things have been ultra-busy around the halls of uTest this week.  The reason our phones have been ringing off the hook is because we announced the results of our 1st Quarter Bug Battle on Tuesday.

In case you missed it, we’ve received some fantastic media coverage in the past few days.  Who knew the world would be so interested in the results of 1,000+ QA professionals from 64 countries simultaneously testing the world’s three most popular networking sites?  Ok, well we had a pretty good idea they’d care, but we’re glad it captured their attention.  Here are a few of the noteworthy articles:

- TechCrunch: uTest Bug Battle: Which Social Network Is The Buggiest?
- Dr. Dobbs: Bugs In Social Networking Software? You’re Kidding, Right?
- eWeek:  Facebook Triumphs LinkedIn, MySpace in uTest’s Bug Battle

Our community’s ability to mobilize quickly and provide real-world testing coverage is making a strong impression on a growing number of companies.  These firms are looking for ways to do more with less — and the uTest community is primed to help them meet their QA needs.  Keep up the good work!