Animesh Kumar {itsAnimesh}
I'm an IT professional from New Delhi, India. Currently for the most part I work as a Technical Consultant developing Open Source ICT solutions for social and societal inclusion. I'm also pursing PG in Management. Below are the latest updates from a some social networks I subscribe to.
Twitter – “Who to Follow” Feature…
Twitter is currently testing out a new feature with its members called “Who to follow“… So when you log in there is a box on the home page that suggests two users you should follow… Doesn’t this sound familiar??? That’s because this is exactly what Facebook does… The basic purpose of this is to is to gather feedback, so here’s some feedback :
ITs PATHETIC!!!
The fundamental two things are totally wrong i.e “Position and Implementation”
POSITIONING
Normally the location of certain information on a page gives us the insight into what are the priorities of a company… For example when Apple launches something new it makes sure its mentioned right in the center of its Home page to gain popularity… Similarly as we can see this new “Who to Follow” appears above rest of the options like @replies, Direct Messages, Favorites, Retweets, and Search… Which clearly implies that this is more important than the rest of those things… This really makes no sense at all, it should be located well the rss feed option… There should also be an option to toggle into a closed/minimized state…
IMPLEMENTATION
I know this is just the testing phase but somethings should be clearly worked out… Say if i blocked a person, it still suggests them (I recently blocked Preeti Zinta because of her continues self endorsements :-/)… It also suggests people I’d followed for a while and consciously decided to stop following… So suggesting these people is unhelpful at best, irritating at worst…
I really feel that Twitter design team should instead of trying to mimic Facebook start with a new slate to design this option on… It would be tough as they as messing around with an application which is used by billions now… But they should seriously make some needful changes in “Who to follow”…