Non-Social Users on Social Networking Services

By s4102260


INTRODUCTION

The hype of Web 2.0 has lead to emerge various mobile and social computing tools providing efficient procedure for communication between users and other users. [1] Social networking services (SNS) are one of its kinds providing such services primarily on web basis.

I’ve always been a moderate user of SNS before commencing this course. Though I was never addicted to them because I don’t use them for the purpose of socialising with friends, while that’s one of their major offered benefits. I prefer to spend more time individually on hobbies and interests at home, thus socialisation is almost enough for me outside my house. Consequently, majority of SNS usage in my personal life are not for communicating with friends, instead it’s a tool for me to improve my experience in hobbies, interests or duties such as those related to work and academic purposes.

After confronting with the SNS necessary for this course, which includes services that I would have never signed-up for, I have further distinguished the reasoning behind my passion and disfavour of usage towards utilities of SNS. I will discuss them in this post from my perspective as non-socialisation driven users.


BACKGROUND

I have chosen four of the following SNS for further discussions: del.icio.us, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

del.icio.us
Provides variety of helpful bookmark related tools. It allow users to keep bookmarks of their favourite website, share them with others and discover websites that someone else found valuable. [1] The use of social network assembled abundant stock of users’ favourite links that are organised into categories by tags, so the users can find and/or easily share the most popular or the most recent links of the kind. It functions as another gateway to visit relevant websites of user’s interests, rather than via typical usage of search engines such as ‘google’.

YouTube
Allows users to upload and share their own video clips, and view video clips that are shared by others. The vast amount of video clips shared by the users through YouTube cover numerous topics, offering rich contents. Users can search for video clips by various options that include its built-in search tool, featured video list, categories of videos in assortment of choice, and subscribed channels and communities. It’s targeted more so for the broadband Internet users as it requires their Internet connection speed to view video clips without a fuss, though it still is reasonably accessible for dial-up users.

Facebook
It is a social site open to anyone from 13 years old and above, originally designed for college students. [2] The purpose of Facebook is to permit communications between its users and their friends or others around them. Unlike its competitor ‘MySpace’, Facebook does not support media such as music and videos, however it reinforces user experience through Facebook applications. A range of Facebook applications built by the Facebook team and third parties enhance and broaden the usage. They may supply games to play between friends, or provide practical business related utility that could be shared across workmates.

Twitter
Allow users to inform their current activities to the others in their network, and vice versa. It also offers option to view public timeline that display latest postings performed by users using Twitter service. Users are informed of their activities through their own Twitter user page on the website, mobile phones, or Instant messaging applications. Use of mobile phones allows users to communicate their situation virtually anytime, anywhere in the world.


FOCUS

Privacy and security plays major role in my SNS experience. As I explained earlier in the introduction, I prefer utilising SNS for my own benefits more than for socialising with friends. Types of SNS that please me necessitate less sociability that requires minimum information from me, as they would involve less effort and potential risks to achieve my objectives.

SNS varies in the level of sociability required to make use of its service. Some merely use the power of social ring to augment available contents (e.g. del.icio.us) and provide richer user experience, while other may entirely rely on the social interactions as their service (e.g. Twitter). The level of required sociability directly relates to the maintainability of privacy, and risk of threats. Higher level of required sociability will extend vulnerability of privacy protection, and increase chance of exposure to further significant threats. [3] [4] These issues associated with SNS are another major issue other than the personality that repels users like myself from making use of sociability dependant services.

At current state, I simply would not want to be involved in the SNS with high-level sociability because of my priority in my personal life, and the perceived benefits that I may acquire from them are not significant. At least the security of SNS environment needs improvements to be successful in their attempts to encourage non-social users like myself to actively socialise. Otherwise, to please users like myself, requirements of social level must be kept minimal.


REFLECTION

Within the four examples that I have prepared, I was pleased with del.icio.us and YouTube, while not favouring Facebook and disliking Twitter.

With the help of social network, del.icio.us and YouTube both assemble abundant supply of contents. The wide variety and range of contents that they offer effectively fulfilled my necessity at most occasions. However the richness of content that were provided weren’t my only rationale for favouring these services. Service that were offered by del.icio.us and YouTube could both be utilised anonymously if desired. It gave me option to either stay anonymous or to provide minimal information such as username and email address (that aren’t publicly revealed) for additional experience. Which meant that I could be partially involved as an observer of the contents, or if I wanted to share some contents, I won’t be troubled by the risks that may have emerged due to exposure of my personal details. I believe their simple and clear usage purpose enabled such facile user requirements, offering ideal services to the users like my kind.

Twitter also provided simple and clear usage purpose, however its idea was entirely dependant on the sociability thus it did not suit me. I didn’t want to reveal activities I’m currently undertaking to the world. I’d rather SMS or call someone on my mobile phone if I wanted to inform someone about what I’m doing, since I can maintain my privacy that way. I also didn’t want to know what others are doing or hear about them unless if it’s something important to me, interests me, or if someone had something that they need to tell me. Since I couldn’t filter unnecessary posts from others, I simply turned off the service. If someone promised to post something that’s important to me, instead of turning the Twitter service back on, I would rather ask that person to simply SMS, call me or email me.

As for Facebook, although its main objective was to permit communications between its users and their friends or others around them, Facebook applications that were offered altered usage for users like me. As explained earlier in the post Facebook’s main objective didn’t interest me so my use wasn’t based on such activity. Instead it was based on the entertainment enhanced with social network offered through Facebook applications. That initiated my motivation to sign-up on Facebook so I could try them out. Facebook applications operated between my own networks or across wider public. It presented positive social experiences enriching my at home experience with regard to my hobbies and interests. However, active users of the applications were essential so there were sufficient updates to the competition, comparison and such. Once they became inactive, the delivered user experience decreased. My perceived values towards such applications were lost and I no longer used them.

Furthermore, additions of new entertainment applications were a hassle at times, since some applications demanded invitation of my friends in order to play, forcing me to socialise. They were sometimes simulated by spam applications that lurked between friends causing more issues. I was required to invite my friends before they were available for trial, so I would spread them to my friends without knowing that they’re spams. I recognised that they were spam applications after the successful addition, when advertisements were displayed instead of providing promised experience. To avoid such issues, I now completely ignore all applications requiring friend invitations beforehand, even though some may be genuine. The inconvenience to add new applications that are my motives resulted in dissatisfaction towards Facebook.

By the time all of the applications that I favoured became unpopular within my network and adding new applications appeared to be a stress, Facebook has lost its significance to me.


CONCLUSION

I believe I’m not the only type of users who use SNS for personal benefits rather than to socialise and for socialising. The type of SNS that suits my use has minimal requests of private information, communication, option to participate only when I wish to, whilst offering further efficient and effective solution to fulfil my objective through usage of social network. To target user group like me, those aspects must be considered in the design of SNS to deliver successful user experience.


REFERENCE

[1] http://www.news.com/Year-in-review-Web-2.0-apps-get-slicker%2C-more-social/2009-1032_3-6222223.html?tag=topicIndex
[2] http://del.icio.us/about/
[3] http://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/Facebook.html
[4] http://www.wiredsafety.org/internet101/blogs.html
[5] http://www.news.com/The-security-risk-in-Web-2.0---page-2/2100-1002_3-6099228-2.html