Social Networking Sites

The four sites I chose for this assignment are: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. All four of these sites serve very different purposes and you can see it just by logging in and taking a peek around.

Facebook and Twitter are probably the most straightforward sites. You are greeted with the posts of people that you're friends with/who you follow and you are immediately given the option of posting something yourself. Facebook provides the most information about a person: meaning that you can have access to a person's pictures, friends list, location, other life details, and all of their content. It's very centric and does a good job of presenting all of this information to its users. When I think of Facebook, I feel that it's the jack of all trades.

Twitter is a little bit different in that it focuses more on getting information out there as fast as possible with it's 140 char limit. Someone can tweet a live event, limited only by the number of characters and how fast they can type. It's not as content oriented as Facebook is however.

LinkedIn is more of a "professional facebook" to me. You wouldn't post pictures of you going out to a bar with friends there, but maybe you would post some articles that interest you career wise. Users can still post, like, and comment on things, but LinkedIn is meant for those who wish to keep track of their connections and perhaps look for new ones or new jobs.  This is demonstrated by the first screen after logging in...which prompts you to send invitations to anyone you might know. Only after passing that screen do you get to the feed of people you're connected with.

Snapchat is much different than the previous three sites. First off, there is only an mobile app for snapchat - no desktop website you can access. Upon opening the app, you are greeted with an open camera that immediately allows you to start taking snaps. The recipients of the snap can reply via text or pictures. The twist here is that snaps (including text) are deleted after they've been viewed, and will not reside on any servers or user devices (so long as they aren't screenshotted). I am personally not a huge fan of Snapchat as there are privacy concerns (whether your snaps are really deleted or not is debatable) and it eats my phone battery like no other.