There is No "Perfect" Social Network

It depresses me to no end that social networks cannot get some of the simplest things right. What makes it more frustrating is that they are the simplest fixes, so simple that some people think they can make their own and manage to mess something else up. Lets just run down some of the more popular social networks.

Facebook

The way they handle photos is ridiculous. They are called FACEbook and they can’t get his right. It used to be that photos were a major focus of Facebook, thus the name. But they have not iterated on it in ages. With more and more devices taping into Facebook’s API, you would hope that they would be presented with higher quality photos, but that’s just not the case. Facebook in Boxee or on the Xbox 360 present the crappy low resolution photos that are on the main site. There should be an option to display the original uploaded photo.

Facebook also needs to handle privacy more delicately. Defaulting everything to public is not the way to go. It should be opt-in, not opt-out. Everyday users don’t go through and edit their privacy settings. Even if they did, Facebook doesn’t make it easy. There should be a bulk edit for the times you get super paranoid. This has gotten better over the years, but still has a way to go.

I’m not gonna complain every time they redesign the home page. Most of the time, it is an improvement. That said, they do need to show people the changes and how to use the features that changed. It needs to be more than the box that pops up saying it changed. Tell people what changed and how to use it. Also, these redesigns should make the site faster, right? They don’t. The AJAX on the site still takes forever to load. When AJAX takes away from the user experience, it should be taken out or refined.

Twitter

Twitter has coined the term “@ reply”, but it isn’t the best way to hold a conversation. Having to load a new page to see the previous part of the conversation is ridiculous. Facebook handles this with comments, and it works great, when people use it. Twitter has always been this “@” system and will be tough to deviate from it, but I think it needs to happen. Having limited API calls takes away from what makes Twitter so great. Toilets, toasters, and cars have Twitter apps. Having apps in everything having a Twitter app is fantastic, but having to worry about running out of hourly API calls is so 00′s. Were living in 2010 and Twitter has proven its self to be stable. Its time to get rid of those limits and let the internet run its course. Perhaps a “Push” system would be better to help with inefficient polling. Pubsubhubbub looks to be a great future, but it seems like everyone is all talk and hasn’t implemented it yet.

Twitter is too simple, right? They try to make it more useful by adding features. However, these features are pointless. Lists? I haven’t seen numbers, but I would assume that a small percentage of users actually use lists. Project Retweet only fragmented the way people see retweets. Twitter’s charm is how simple it is. Its simple in how people communicate and how people consume content. Its also simple in privacy. An all out people see you or don’t is the best possible way use of privacy controls.

Buzz

What is Buzz? Where does Buzz fit in people’s social network graph? It seems like its just like FriendFeed, but inside of Gmail. But what makes it different is that Buzz has privacy issues, and is slower to update from outside sources. Will this be successful? Only time will tell. I don’t think people need another social network this similar to what they are already using. Its not going to attract people in the way Facebook attracted people. (I mean its not going to reconnect old high school friends, or keep people in school connected in the same way Facebook does).

Location Services

Foursquare, Gowalla, Buzz, Loopt, Brightkite, Yelp…

This is where I think the future of social media will go. The problem with these is that they are all competing with each other. They all do the same thing, but they don’t have a plan for taking market advantage. There are few people that report their location to all the services, and those people crazy. Having a spread of users isn’t going to help anyone. Foursquare seems to know their place with all of the mainstream agreements they have been making recently. If Facebook buys out one of these companies and ties it in with the userbase of Facebook, all the other companies can stop trying.

/rant

Update: Lifehacker has a good post on social networks here: http://lifehacker.com/5472223/which-social-network-is-right-for-you

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