Reflection On Twitter and Flickr

Muhammad Falah Wijaya

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INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, social-network websites become a part of life for many people. The intensity of access to this website has change the way people share and interact to each other. It does happen because social-network websites have transform keeping-in-touch or any sharing activities become more fun and entertaining.

Compared to the period when Friendster was the top hit website in the world, social-network websites are very vary today. Each of them has their own special features to help users share their experiences and they may choose one or more websites that most appropriate with their passion or interest. Writing and any multimedia files often used by people to share through social-network websites.

BACKGROUND

In this post, I will try to discuss what kind of outcomes might come up from the use of social-network websites by using two famous social-networks as samples.

Twitter – Social-network website provided with simple interface, minimal features, and status update to keep their users keep-in-touch with their friends.

Flickr – Social-network website that hosting users images or videos in serving users share their life experience.

REFLECTION

Twitter

As we can see in the introduction video of twitter, twitter was built to help people share their situation to their relatives and vice versa in real-time simply by asking a question "What are you doing?". Twitter provides minimal features and simple interface in their website to help their users use the site easily.

Activity of using twitter called twit, users need to be a follower of their friends in a way of figuring what their friends are up to. They also can be a following if there are other users who want to see their profile or follow their status updates. Users in twitter do not need confirmation for/from others to become either following or follower.

When open this website at first time, you may find that twitter is not as interesting and entertaining as Friendster or Facebook. I am a bit curious when I use twitter at the first time but then became disappointed when I found that Twitter is not fully featured as Friendster and Facebook. Although Twitter does not offer many features in their website, they are provided with many mobile applications services to help their users twit from their handset easily anywhere anytime. Interestingly, some of Twitter’s mobile applications are more featured than the Twitter's website itself, for example: blogging and photo sharing. One of them that named GPS Twit [1] even enables users to trace the location of their friends who is twitting through gps-system. There is also an interesting story about how Twitter application mobile service collaborates with Google-maps and Iphone to save a snowboarder when he got lost from his group in Swiss Alps [2]. Twitter’s potential for aiding travelers has been highlighted a number of times recently [3].

Finally, despite a fact that twitter is not featured a lot or may be even too simple or boring for some people, they mobile application service has cover that weakness. Their simplicity and mobility in operating has improved users awareness to their relatives.

Flickr

Flickr is another social-network website that uses visual media as their specialty. Several user-friendly features in this website will be helpful to organize images and videos in Flickr easily.

Flickr has some interesting features in their website. Feature called Your Sets that is very alike to album can be used to categorize our files in certain event. It is very helpful when we are looking for certain image or video since we do not need to scan the whole collection but just need to look in certain category since they are organized. Groups feature enables users to find anyone in Flickr who has same interest with them and then join the group to share any pictures and information related with their interests, for example: photography or culinary. Like Facebook, picture in Flickr can be tagged by using a feature called Add Note. What differ 'Add Note' in flickr with 'tag' in Facebook is it is used to give description for certain object in the picture, not to tag other users in our contact. Flickr also provide photo-editing feature and it is supported with some interesting effects. It can be used to edit our files before we upload our pictures and they are very easy-to-use. What interest me from Flickr is its ability to let users locate the position where their photos has been captured or where their videos has been recorded by using feature called Your Map. It may let anyone who sees our files know the place of our pictures or video has taken.

In my experiences, Flickr help me a lot in keeping contact with my family in Indonesia. They often ask about my condition in here in Australia. Putting my photos in flickr ease me sharing my life here to my family and cure their yearning. Features in Flickr and the way Flickr set their website somehow give me a good feeling when I use it. The unique ability of Flickr like online photo editing and locating the position of where the picture or video was taken is really enhance my experience in socializing through social-network website.

CONCLUSION

Every social-network website has their own purpose and specialty. We cannot judge social-network websites with many features are good and the others that only have minimal features are bad.

Twitter only have minimal features in their website because they want to offer simplicity for their users and keep their function as a media to keep their users get connected to each other with update of their status only. This is completely different with Facebook where they featured their website with many features like images, groups, games, music, and many other features since their purpose is not only building their website as sharing media but also as entertainment center for their users.

A good social-network website does not need to have many features and mix many entertainment tools in it, for example: Flickr has many fun features in their websites but they keep focus in their specialty, which is photo and video. Once again, every social-network website has their own purpose and specialty. As Apple's senior designer, Jonathan Ive, explains in his recent video on the release of the new MacBooks: "We've refined and refined every detail in the service of the user, just to get rid of complexity. If something doesn't need to be there, it's not there". If simple interface and minimal feature can keep them focus in their purpose, it is better for them to keep themselves the way they are now.

REFERENCE

[1] http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps#Mobileapps

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/04/twitter-death-entrepreneur-rob-william

[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/mar/04/twitter-travelling-solo-emergency-safety

[4] http://www.apple.com/macbook