usefulness through ubiquitous interaction - brendan lidster - 41006005

Introduction

This report reflects on my experiences with a number of social and mobile networking applications, including Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm. It attempts to identify the usefulness of such applications as a social and mobile platform by comparing the methods of interaction, and ultimately the effort required to take full advantage of the system.

Background

Four popular social networking systems will be analysed: Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm

Flickr is a photo sharing portal, designed to allow users to upload, organise and share their personal images. It allows users to track “activity” on their photos (ie: who has been viewing them, comments left etc.) as well as their friends photos, notifying you when associated users add photos or leave comments on your photos via rss and email. It offers a variety of auxiliary tools including a blogging service and the ability to have your photos printed by a third party service.

Facebook is a literal kind of social networking portal, attemping to emulate the popular myspace model. It allows users to have their own online profiles, which act in effect as personalised space. Facebook allows you to add links to your friends profiles, and encourages friends to communicate by leaving text based messages on a section of the users profile page called “the wall”. A variety of third part applications can be installed onto the profile page. These applications are mostly game oriented, furthering the fun aspect of the social networking tool, with some facilitating linking between other social networking systems, such as Last.fm

Twitter furthers the mobile aspect of social networking, allowing participants to post details on their whereabouts, or current activity. Users can update their current message via sms, instant messenger or the Twitter profile page. Friends can be tracked by adding them to your profile page, with an RSS feed available also. Twitter is a single function service, but is easily integrated into multifunction applications such as Facebook, furthering the mobile aspect of these applications.

Last.fm is a music history profiling application, with the ability to allow users to compare their personal music tastes with friends and ‘neighbours’ within the Last.fm community. The system works as both a web based service, with a downloadable API that plugs in to the users preferred music player. The locally installed application tracks and uploads (or “scrobbles”) details of the users listening activities to the Last.fm profile page, which then lists such details as the recently listened tracks, top tracks for the week, and the tracks most listened to overall. This profile page can be viewed by all users of Last.fm, and allows other users to compare such things as music compatibility, based on the types of bands you listen to, as well as the option to leave messages in the users “shoutbox”. Last.fm, like many of the other social networking systems, allows integration with multifunction tools like Facebook.

Focus

Which systems worked well. How and why? The focus of this discussion will be on the effectiveness of these social and mobile networking tools, and how often they were used due to this factor during my experimentation with social and mobile technology.

During my time working with the aforementioned applications, I found that the ones I used most, were the ones that I didn’t have to go out of my way to interact with. Specifically, all of these applications will be discussed in relation to their ability to mesh within everyday life, their ubiquity so to speak.

Two specific focus questions will be asked during the discussion of the systems: 1) What are the distinct methods of interaction between the 4 tools; and; 2) How do these methods compare in terms of creating a successfully used tool.

Reflection

Each of the applications required a different degree and method of interaction to reach the social network for which it represented. Differences also seemed to exist between the systems used to interact with (ie: some used typical web page based modes, whilst others relied on applications installed on the users local machine and some even utilised the mobile phone.).

A variance in the interaction method can of course be expected dependent on what purpose the social system performs, with differing degrees of success. Each of the applications seemed to carry with it a certain level of usefulness, often dependent on how time consuming and intentional the interaction needed to be to make full use of it.

Flickr, the photo sharing application, seemed to rely primarily on the web based method of interaction. In all phases of use, adding, organising, sharing, viewing, commenting, interacting in general, the user must visit the Flickr website via his or her web browser. A common task of adding photos to your collection requires the user to decide to upload, search for the file on the local computer and then initiate the uploading process. The user is then asked to tag the file, to provide a key basis for others to search for the material. This step-by-step, deliberate process is common to all functions within the Flikcr application model.

Whilst the Flickr interaction model is by no means unfamiliar to any user of the internet, and thereby requires a negligible learning curve to become an efficient form of social networking tool, it still undeniably requires conscious effort on part of the user to work. Furthermore, the sole existence of Flickr relies on the social networking aspect, as without this, the process of using it to merely organise your photo collection is highly inefficient. Even many of the ancillary functions, such as the ability to have your photos printed, are much more easily done via almost any method other than Flickr. The requirement for deliberate action with this application is a shortcoming in its usefulness as an everyday social and mobile networking tool.

By comparison, Facebook tends to move forward as a meaningful social networking tool, receiving more regular use from me than Flickr. Whilst Flickr and Facebook could be said to rely on an almost identical form of interaction, its what the later tool can do for the said amount of interaction that improves its level of utility. Facebook works within a web based environment, again, requiring the user to consciously visit the Facebook website to begin using the tool. Again, to utilise the system, the user must spend time searching and locate others to build a friends base, the primary function of Facebook, before any meaningful networking can occur.

The biggest difference between the usefulness of Flickr and Facebook, is the ability for the latter to bring together, to a single location, the primary functions of a variety of separate social networking tools. Tools such as Flickr, Last.fm and Twitter can be installed to the Facebook users page, thereby extending the range of social networking opportunities for a similar amount of interaction. This gives Facebook a certain level of appeal to the user, that might encourage more regular use than if the system could only perform the intended function of statically messaging a few current or potential friends: tasks much more efficiently served by tools such as email and instant messaging.

Moving toward a less interaction intensive system, Twitter requires a single action to complete the entire social mobile process. This system offers up to three different forms of interaction to complete the task: a mobile phone, IM client or via the Twitter website. The system requires a degree of time to set up on each of the different devices, but once completed, a simple text or IM message can alert anyone who’s following you to your whereabouts or current activity.

This form of interaction allows the user to quickly and efficiently notify a large group of people of what your up to, far more efficiently then nearly all alternative methods. The completely mobile methods of interaction means that this tool can travel with you to most places you wander within everyday life – quite different to Facebook and Flickr. Further still, it extends this level of mobility to those in the groups in which the user is attempting to interact, offering the ability to notify receiving users in a mobile context also. As a result it can be said that Twitter completes its task of social, and more specifically, mobile networking more effectively, due to the ease of use and integration within the physical environment. As a user I found that I used Twitter far more often that Facebook and Flickr due to these factors.

I used the final social networking application, Last.fm, the most during my experimentation with social mobile computing. This tool uses both local and Internet based systems to complete the social interaction process. The user is required to both set up their profile page on the Last.fm website, as well as download and install the local application. Once this process is complete, the interaction reverts to that of a fairly ubiquitous type, automatically tracking the users actions within their music player, and reporting them to their Last.fm profile page. Last.fm even integrates a degree of mobility into its system, allowing listening statistics accumulated on a mobile mp3 player to be reported to the site when next docked at the users computer. The user can then navigate to this single page on the Last.fm website to engage in a richer interaction experience, with relevant contacts and statistics automatically presented without the need for further navigation.

I feel that it was through this ubiquitous method of interaction that Last.fm became my most used application. Unlike almost all of the aforementioned applications, Last.fm does the ‘hard yards’ of personalisation for you, finding the relevant social peers based on tracking an everyday interaction. With the exception of when the user is actually looking to network, Last.fm does not require any manual uploading, tagging, frequent visits to websites or conscious action to maintain an active community – unlike Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. Similarly to Facebook model, it consolidates all of its social networking utility within a single web based location, negating the need to search and navigate between tools, improving the efficiency and experience for its user. Like Twitter, this model of interaction is by far the most efficient way to complete its associated task, improving the applications likelihood of reuse.

Conclusion

Through reflection on the four different social and mobile networking applications, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm, a correlation between effort required to maintain the social network, and the degree of success as a frequently used social tool, can be identified.

Applications such as Flickr and Facebook require a high degree of continual, ‘out of the way’ interaction to maintain a meaningful form of social network. This jeopardises the apparent usefulness to the user, especially when there are far more efficient networking systems in broader use.

By comparison, Last.fm and Twitter offer a truly ubiquitous, mobile form of interaction, which allows for effortless integration within the socialites existing lifestyle. More frequent use of the application then ensues, resulting in a broader social network for all participants involved.

Better integration, or “humanisation”, of social networking tools can therefore improve growth and depth of the social network, and encourage repeat use.