something for matt laclear

You know, I’m amazed at how many new ways spring up every month on the Internet to take up time. Sometimes we all need a little diversion, and this is probably the second biggest benefit of the increasing user-interaction we’ve seen in the past couple of years.

I’m sure you’ve seen, and probably done hundreds of, the quizzes on every site and subject from grading your geekiness to estimating your life expectancy. Quibblo.com is a new site bringing the power of Facebook to a MySpace account or blog posting near you real soon.

First the bad news. Firstly the site is new and seems to be top-heavy with immature morons - a risk that all sites like this take on. Certainly its an easy market to tap, but Quibblo might want to consider how easy this sort of traffic will convert for their advertisers. Secondly, the site is far too in love with javascript taking control of where and how I want to open new pages for my tastes. A less-intrusive code could still achieve a speedy user interface.

Now the good news. Quibblo is fast, easy to use and has three user-friendly integration options, at least one of which will work with almost any blogging or social-networking platform. Font size is good and general design clean and pleasing. “The Random” option is a nice touch for when you just have a couple of minutes.

Here’s an example of a quiz that businesses as well as bloggers might find interesting

Kind blog reader - who are you?

Survey by Quibblo

Notice how you can submit an answer without leaving this site, and the live results. A nice touch is the noscript link to the quiz, so users with JavaScript disabled can still take the test. I haven’t tested the accessibility of the HTML, of if the JavaScript is keyboard-navigation or speech-browser compatible (its late, and I’m not superman!). Some explanation of the terminology in the embed a quizpage would be helpful.

I can see great potential for Quibblo, some things I’d like to see them develop are the ability to make a quiz private (only viewable via embedding) and private statistics - possibly in a pay-for-use premium version for businesses.

Overall, a good job by the Quibblo gang, and well worth spending a few minutes looking around.

Oh, in case you don’t know who Matt LaClear is, he’s a permission marketer who’s made a very nice chunk of change on myspace based around little popular quizzes like on Quibblo. He’d love this new site - get your prospects to create the lead generation data themselves!