First there was Friendster.com, then Myspace.com, then Facebook.com and now Twitter.com. Why is it that multiple social networking sites come and go – with each of them having its own dominating reign of a couple of years or so, and then quickly fading away into cyberspace history? If they all exist as social networking sites, how is the “old-school” Friendster.com so different from the “hip and happening” Twitter.com? Each of the died-out social networking sites lacks one thing: sustainability in design.
As Nathan Shedroff described, sustainable design is unattainable, but it would ideally be defined as something that is efficient today, efficient tomorrow and efficient for upcoming generations. According to this definition, Friendster.com and Myspace.com have definitely failed to maintain a sustainable design, otherwise users would still be heavily relying on them for social networking purposes. The deciding factor that explains why Facebook.com and Twitter.com are currently all the rage in the social networking world is the differences in design of the websites. One major design change from Myspace.com to Facebook.com was, for example, having unlimited photo-uploading space as well as the option of “tagging” your friends in photos. One major design change from Facebook.com to Twitter.com is the option of constantly posting alerts about oneself, which is especially useful for those who are always on-the-go and can quickly update their statuses and alert their friends from their mobile phones.
New and improved features such as those described above are clearly the reason for the evolution of social networking sites because eventually, Myspace.com added their own feature of also being able to “tag” friends in photos, and Facebook.com has regularly been changing its design layout to make its use more accommodating to its users. For example, the recently added “Live Newsfeed” option allows users to easily and constantly be updated with their friends’ statuses. So basically, when a newer social networking site is established, people are going to swerve towards the most efficient, convenient and high-featured website. All in all, many of these social networking sites have conjoined so that when an update is made on one site, the same update is automatically made on every other social networking site the individual has – thus, allowing users to effortlessly maintain all of their social networking sites at once.
Friday, November 20, 2009
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