Social Networking Sites

Facebook: Over the years, Facebook has drastically changed. Looking at it today, it is visually complicated, by our eyes are trained to it, and as the changes and complexity have been added gradually over time. We know today's Facebook as the Timeline, where posts appear as boxes, with large images and some lines of text. New posts are automatically added to the live stream of posts and the information you see is actually filtered to show you posts you are more likely to be interested in, based on your clicks and interactions. Facebook is coded to know you. Advertisements tailored to you, based on the pages you like, the links you click, and so on, show on the right side of the page, with a chat bar on the further right. The left side is the bar of internal links to other Facebook pages, apps, and so on. The Search bar has become one of the most prominent parts of Facebook, allowing you to find not only internal links to people's personal timelines (originally called their 'walls'), but links to events, external news sources, and so on. Facebook has everything in one place, to keep you on their site for as long as possible.


Twitter: This is happening in real time. The most recent tweets of anyone you follow are at the top. If you don't check Twitter for a few days, and then come back to it, you may have missed thousands of tweets, and you're likely not going to scroll back through all of them. Twitter's stream of posts is more straightforward than Facebook's. Tweets are lined up one after the other, simply divided by lines. Recently, Twitter started displaying attached photos or videos within that stream, without users having to click on a tweet in order to open it to see the attachment. Twitter also started displaying the number of favs and retweets on each tweet within the stream, without users having to click to view those. In order to filter tweets in the way that Facebook automatically does, Twitter allows you to create lists of people you follow to view separately from the homepage stream, and you can also search by hashtag to view tweets all regarding a certain keyword. Twitter is also a lot more public about popularity- prominently displaying how many people you follow and how many follow you.


Myspace: There's a reason that Myspace lost its popularity, and it's sort of suprising: customizability. Twitter and Facebook let you customize your profile, but only so much, and really, if we think about it, not much at all. You generally know what you're getting when you go to someone's Facebook or Twitter. Back in the day, a Myspace page might have started blasting a ridiculous song from your speakers as soon as the page opened. This customizability took too much time, caused issues, and generally alienated a large population. After a long time away from looking at Myspace, I've just glanced at it, and it seems to be taking on the same layout as Spotify. This makes sense, because Myspace has generally become a space for bands and musicians to network and host their music online.


Tumblr: The word "blogging" is starting to sound like an ancient act, but blogging has only grown in popularity over time. The reason we might hear "blog" and think "middle aged mom who writes about her kids online" is because we don't tend to call much of the blogging that is occurring at present "blogging" anymore. We call it "tumbling" or maybe more commonly "posting to... [Tumblr] [Facebook] [Pinterest]" or "tweeting." Tumblr is blogging. It's also reblogging, Asking, <3ing/liking. It makes it easier than normal, or older, blog platforms to follow other bloggers, because when the Tumblrs you follow make new posts, they fall into your Dashboard. When someone you follow reblogs another Tumblr, that reblog shows up in your Dashboard. You can also follow tags to see any new posts regarding a certain topic you might be interested in. You may never even have to visit a person's Tumblr, as you would have to visit someone's blog to read it, in order to be following everything they write, posts, reblog, etc.