Default or Passive Inclusion

By Ben Bradford
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Over the past couple of weeks we have been required to use and review the multiple social and mobile computing tools that we signed up to in week 2. These tools consisted of, Last.fm, Flikr, Google Calendar, Pownce, Twitter, del.icio.us, and Facebook.
Over the few weeks that we used the applications I have noticed a repeated thread throughout the applications that link them together. Each application has an apparent openness to either a select network of people or the public at large, of how two or more people interact with each other. This apparent openness between the applications can be defined as passive or default inclusion. Where people are able to view interactions between individuals by default or with little effort.

Facebook
I have been a user of Facebook for a few months now and from my experiences with it I can conclude that Facebook is practically an online social networking personal ‘web page’ in which the users can customize their page to suit their personality. Customisations include adding programs, changing the layout, adding pictures, display names and more. Facebook also has the ability for the to add all their friends to their page. This enables the user to view their friend’s page and the friends view theirs.

Facebook allows the users to view other users actions and interactions with from their own profile. News Feed, located at the Facebook home page allows the users to see what their friends have been doing either to their profile or others. News Feed notifies the users of things that their friends have been doing, such as adding photos, writing messages on other peoples pages, invitations to applications within Facebook, and recent friend adds between users. Such information can be classified as default inclusion, where the user is notified of these types of these interactions and changes.

The Wall is a default application with every Facebook page. The Wall enables users to write messages on each other’s page. The Super Wall is an additional application that lets users upload movies and pictures to their friend’s page. All the information posted on The Wall’s are available for other friends to view, although News Feed does not notify the users of unknown people commenting on the users friend’s pages, users are still able to view this information. When writing on someone’s Wall, the user is aware that the public will be able to view what is written, this makes the user more cautious, so the user writes in a way that the user is comfortable with the public seeing. If the user has a more private message for the user, they are able to send a message to their friend that they receive like an email in Facebook.

A Status can also be set by a user to inform their friends how they are feeling or what they are doing. This Status is posted on the News Feed every time it is updated, keeping the users friends up-to-date with what the user is doing or feeling.

Facebook uses many ways for peers to communicate formally and informally by using The Wall and by sending messages. These however are only the standard ways that the user can interact with one another but set the best example being the default ways of communication within Facebook. As mentioned, The Wall is able to be viewed by the users friends which enables them to view posts from other people which creates an informal style of gossip, giving the user the ability to read what others have written to their friends. Although the majority, if not all, of the users know that The Wall is a ‘public’ writing area, it would be useful if the user had the ability to restrict selected people from viewing specific things on their page, other than the existing privacy setting which limits people from viewing a default list of things.

Last.fm
Last.fm is a social music application that lets you share your music taste with the public, get information on the bands and tracks you are listening to and listen to personalised radio streams. Last.fm makes a visual representation of the music the user is listening to in the form of a bar graph on the users profile page. These bar graphs show the top weekly artists, top artists overall and the top listened to tracks.
Last.fm uses an application to read the music that the user is playing in their music player and uploads the information to the users profile page. After the information is gathered, bar charts are formed based on the amount of music and tracks the user listens too. The more an artist is listened to, the lager the graph grows, and this forms the users top artists and most listened tracks.

Last.fm users are able to search through their email addresses to add friends that are members of Last.fm to their friends list. Once friends are added to the users friends list, the Dashboard shows tracks recommended to the user from other users, friends that are online, recommended artists and full length tracks. This Dashboard function, more specifically users online, shows users that are currently listening to music or users that have listened to music last. Similar to Facebook, default inclusion is used to notify the user users that are online or have been online listening to music.

Users are able to view one another’s profile pages and see the same information that is available on their own individual profiles. This allows users to see recently played tracks, top artists and most played songs. With this information available to every user, Last.fm calculates on the Taste-o-Meter the music compatibility between users based on the artists listened to and the amount of times listened to. The similarities between Facebook and Last.fm occor here again where the users can read what others have written on profiles in Facebook, Last.fm users are able to view what music other users listen to and their top artists etc.

Overall, Last.fm is a fantastic application that I have been using for about three months and have enjoyed every moment of it. Every time I am able to connect to the Internet, I am uploading my music listening to Last.fm. The ability of seeing my musical listening in a graphical form with very little effort creates a want to continue uploading my musical listening. One thing that I think Last.fm could benefit from would be the ability to upload the album details, not just the artist and track title. When a compilation album is listened to, such as ministry of sound, only the individual artist details are added creating an individual artist graph. If the user had the option to upload the album details, the album would have its own graph along with the artists.

Twitter
Twitter to me is a personal status uploading application that informs others about what you are doing or feeling. The users are also informed on other users status either via the twitter site, email, or even SMS. Twitter enables users to upload their current status that can include what they are doing, what they have done or what they are feeling. After this information is posted on the Twitter site, friends are able to view what you have uploaded to the twitter site.

The user has the ability to update their profile via SMS or using dashboard widgets for OS X called twiget. This eliminates the hassle of having to go to the site to upload a changed status every time the users decide to. By doing this it makes the uploads not as tedious and the users status is able to be uploaded regularly keeping the users status as up to date as they want. Twitter also has the ability to send SMS to the users who are following friend’s statuses, notifying users of other users status updates.

Twitter posed no great desire to be used constantly as the idea of updating what I was doing thought out the day seemed unnecessary and a waste of time. Although feel no great want to use the application does not rule out that it is a good idea. Twitter can be fun when I have some spare time to post between friends. Although the application itself poses not great use to me, it does however illustrate default inclusion by notifying the users of updated statuses from other users.

Conclusion
Throughout the three applications mentioned Facebook, Last.fm, and Twitter, a common theme aforementioned treads between them, the inclusion the users have between user-to-user profiles and interaction. All three of these applications make information, data, and interactions an open source. Users have access to this information via notification or by simple searching. Although this may seem to be intrusion of privacy to some, others, including myself, knowing what someone is doing or saying is a guilty pleasure.