This chapter on remuneration focused on how important it is
to keep the customers’ (or community members’) interests in mind when building
social media websites (51). The only way a site is going to work is if it is
user-friendly and provides the necessary materials that the audience is looking
for. In most cases, simplicity is the answer. In the comparison between
AltaVista and Google, it’s clear why more people turned to Google for their
search engine; instead of seeing all of the information on one page and browsing
through all of the information on AltaVista, Google has one search bar, so you
can start your search immediately without all of the unnecessary navigation.
Another
essential part to developing social media sites is making sure you’re allowing
the community to form “real connections in the world” (Zuckerberg in Howard
51). When you think of the most popular social sites like Facebook, Twitter, or
Pinterest, they all have that exact thing in common, and that’s why each site
has so many users. When Howard explains that most computer engineers just think
of the “freemium” model when starting a new site, it makes sense that they
wouldn’t take into consideration how they’re going to draw people in and keep
them there. That should be the most important part of any site. The whole point
of social networking is connecting people in ways they normally couldn’t. For
instance, Pinterest allows users to share ideas anywhere from wedding themes to
homemade recipes to DIY crafts. Users create their own boards then follow other
people who have boards that they are interested in. The great part is, you don’t
have to know the people you follow, but you can still get great ideas from
them. I think that’s what social media is all about, and it’s exactly what
keeps users on the sites.
In the
list of techniques, I thought the part about “Mentors Teach” was interesting
(62). I immediately thought of Facebook because it does a great job of
mentoring. Throughout the newsfeed, you can see what most people are doing,
talking about, what groups their joining, and so much more. This allows other
users, who aren’t so familiar with Facebook, to keep up with the community and
share in the “likes” on pages that they’re interested in. Without anyone teaching
users how to navigate social networking sites, no online community would be
successful.
I thought this chapter was interesting for the same reasons you did. It is weird to learn about why we like certain sites. We go back to Facebook everyday, but why? Well, now we know its called remuneration. It is interesting and is user-friendly, like you said, and putting these two things together keeps us coming back for more. I liked how you talked about the freemium concept and how that while it is important, that it is not sufficient enough alone to make a site popular. What does a social media do to capture the attention of users so that they want to spend their time on a site? This is where the benefit of remuneration comes into play again. Popular sites like twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest are so much more than just costing nothing-- they are easy to use and allow us to connect in ways we never though we would before.
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