Facebook VS Twitter

Hull school of art and designOpen university Web Design BA (hons) 31/03/2014

Introduction

Facebook and Twitter Have become ubiquitous over the past decade, with an ever-increasing user base varying from the young to the old. Throughout this essay I will be attempting to dissect the user experience (UX) of the aforementioned web sites to try and determine if the UX has a bearing on the attractiveness of the site and its influence on the user, and if the use of the sites has a negative impact on the way we see ourselves through our online avatars or impairing our ability to communicate in real time to real people.

Facebook

Facebook was born on the 4th February 2004 in a dorm room at Harvard University, (originally focusing on college students) under the name The Facebook (the was later dropped) and as of 2013 has a user base of 1.23 billion

By the end of 2013, Facebook was being used by 1.23 billion users

worldwide (kiss, 2014)

And has a net worth of $135bn

The site is now worth $135bn with revenues of $7.87bn in 2013, including $1.5bn in profit(kiss, 2014)

The user interface has a minimalist appearance (image 1) that fits in with Facebooks Mission Statement

Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. (Fitzgerald, 2014)

To better understand the mission statement and the site itself we need to understand the dynamic between the design of the interface and the users perspective. Using Marc Hassenzahls model of user experience (image 2), this model supposes that a user places some qualities to the service or product whilst using it.

From Hassenzahls model we can attribute the lack of colour to the global variances of the semiotic values placed on colour thus refraining from offending or providing incorrect visual cues to any one populace and ensuring that its usability is ubiquitous (identification band of the intended product character, Hassenzahls model).

The top header is everything you need to know about what site the user is on (less the mission statement)(Krug, 2006)

The search bar and search icon are prominently placed within the header as is the persistent navigation. The use of photos attached to post and again the use of icons down the left hand side leave little doubt as to what each does, this cleaver use of imagery and icons helps gain the trust of the user in that they dont have to think about what everything is and what it does in essence its indicative. (Krug, 2006)

Facebooks site keeps the persistent navigation on all its pages but fails to leave breadcrumbs (a way to navigate back to the start) leaving the user sometimes confused as to where they are within the site but still keeps its consistency.

Use consistency(avoid using unnecessarily unique interfaces and messages) (Joshua Brewer, 2011)

Facebook draws us in by being able to see what our friends are posting and subliminally asking us to comment on their status or posts allowing us to feel connected and part of their world (appeal, pleasure and satisfaction in the consequences section of the Hassenzahls model)

All the above mentioned attributes are intended and very well designed user experiences born out of testing (little by little) and then implemented, this can be done extremely quickly due to the amount of users the site has and the rapid feedback from them helped and helps the site evolve into the present incarnation we have today.

Facebooks design principles are clearly set out in their Facebook Design Principles (Facebook.com, 2014) manifesto (if you know where to find it) reading through this document it becomes apparent where and how the UX designers drew their inspiration from and what business model they were constrained by all in all its my opinion that they did a good job!

Twitter

Twitter was the brainchild of Jack Dorsey, in 2006, when he was working for Odeo. It was originally envisaged to be a SMS based communications platform, groups of friends could keep tabs on one another based on their status.

The idea was pitched at a brainstorming session at Odeo, co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone granted Jack Dorsey more time to work on the project. (Macarthur, 2014)

To try and gain domain name advantage twitter was referred to a twttr (a popular trend at the time) and its final name Twitter was a creation of Noah Glass. (Macarthur, 2014)

The number of characters, 140 was decided on because the system was structured around SMS and this was its maximum number allowed, as Twitter became an internet app the decision was made to keep the number of characters the same

The reason for such a specific limitation is Twitter was originally designed as a SMS mobile phone-based platform. 140 characters was the limit that mobile carriers imposed with SMS protocol standard. Twitter eventually grew into a web platform and the 140-character limit remained. Think of it as a creative constraint. (Macarthur, 2014)

The first tweet was sent on March 21st, 2006 at 9:50pm (Macarthur, 2014)

Twitter has an estimated user base of 645,750,000 users (Statisticbrain.com, 2014) and an estimated market value of $31.7 billion (Gottfried, 2014)

Twitters colour scheme (image 3) is a sky blue, which has the semiotic values of positive, calming, cool, heavenly, constant, faithful, true, dependent, restful and trusting (Rahman, 2013) with the sky (clouds) in the background giving the impression of blue sky thinking this ties in with the semiotics described above. Again the use of a classy header with the persistent navigation built in gains the users trust, the bread crumbs lets the user know where in the site they are and the consistency of the pages is kept through the navigation (header). Nothing is ambiguous everything is clear this again ties in to the trust aspect of the user and (if its built well it must be a good site)(krug, 2006).

The use of thumbnails images (or company logos) to show whom the person tweeting is, is another cleaver use of UX (the identification and appeal sections of Hassenzahls model) design and as with Facebook we are invited to join the conversation or retweet the conversation.

The home page keeps the user up to date with whats being talked about by the users they are following, or one can type a search term in search for anything with the parameters entered tweets by all the users giving us the ability to read what going in the world or we can just click on whats trending to get a feel of whats going on in the world.

All this give the user an immersive experience for whats happening and enables them to join the conversation on any thread at any time.

Comparison

After looking at both sites and defining what the UX is, what are the main differences between Facebook and Twitter?

It seem on the surface that there isnt much in it but on closer inspection Facebook seems to be more of an online diary with the discourses being like random thought or entries about what the user is doing or feeling at that particular moment in time. Twitter has the same feel and you do tend to get the same thoughts and feeling coming across but on a more micro examination depending on what your interests are we get a sort of staging post for companies trying to entice us into their world if not their corporate or business sites, like a taster you find in the supermarket, try me you might like me, and added to this you are able to search eveyr user on Twitter whereas on Facebook you can only or are limited to the friends in your account that have accepted you invitation. Both offer the ability to converse in real time over the private message service that is available on both sites, which is another feather in the caps of both, this gives us the illusion of privacy that some or most of us crave and I say illusion because the overlords that run the sites are still able to see what we are saying (much like Google and its recommendation engine). This aside its a trade off at the end of the day by this I mean we allow the use of our information and our conversations to facilitate the site to advertise to us specific products or companies that are loosely relevant to the conversations we are having.

Facebook allows us to see which of our friends are online so we can have such conversations.

How does the use of these new technologies (In the grand scheme of things its a new industry, the internet celebrated its 20th birthday this year) affect our relationships in the wider world?

Sherry Turkle argues that the digital messaging has become accepted as a social norm

if I had met a college junior who called her mother fifteen times a day, checking in about what shoes to buy and what dress to wear, extolling a new kind of decaffeinated tea, and complaining about the difficulty of a physics problem set, I would have thought her behaviour problematic. I would have encouraged her to explore difficulties with separation. I would have assumed that these had to be addressed for her to proceed to successful adulthood. But these days, a college student who texts home fifteen times a day is not unusual.(Turkle, 2011)

Could this be the start of the social change that has led us to a place where its more common to talk to friends, family and colleagues using digital media rather than forming strong relationships, has the technologies become so integrated with our life that it is easier to form weak ties rather than have complex relationships with our friends and peers in essence keeping them at arms length or is it the fact hat we dont know how to be alone anymore through the constant tether that is mobile/digital communication thats keeps us connected wherever we are and allows us that connection fix.

The use of face book and twitter allows us to edit ourselves and put forward an avatar of ourselves, this avatar is what we see ourselves as, an abridged version that has all the qualities we like about us and non (or very little) of our flaws

This kind of identity work can take place wherever you create an avatar. And it can take place on social-networking sites as well, where ones profile becomes an avatar of sorts, a statement not only about who you are but who you want to be.(Suval, 2014)

Also

This kind of identity work can take place wherever you create an avatar. And it can take place on social-networking sites as well, where ones profile becomes an avatar of sorts, a statement not only about who you are but who you want to be.(Turkle, 2011)

Conclusion

Throughout my journey of research on the topics addressed within this text I thought that I would come to the conclusion that the use of Facebook, Twitter or any social networking site would erode at the very fabric of our ability to communicate on a personal level without the ability to edit ourselves in the process, this may have been presumptuous, our ability to communicate has changed, the social norms have changed, we as a society live in extended groups be it family or friends and the new technologies provide us with a means to balance out the amount of strong and weak relationships we have with others and prevent emotional implosion. In the Medium is the message Mcluhan argues that what we think about things may not be what they are under closer inspection.

The message of the electric light is like the message of electric power in industry, total radical, pervasive, and decentralized. For electric light and power are separate from their uses, yet they eliminate time and space factors in human association exactly as do radio, telegraph, telephone, and TV, creating involvement in depth.( Mcluhan and Mcluhan et al., 1995)

and in our case digital communication.

Bibliography

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Images

Facebook

Hassenzahls model of user experience

Twitter

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