Orlikowski's technological frames theory would dictate that users who are introduced to Facebook would try to understand it in terms of existing technologies and augmenting it with any novel features of the new technology. I would explain Facebook as a tool for you and your friends to share your favorite things, share photos, send messages, and keep up with the latest news. Your Facebook profile is a virtual About Me page that others can view. On your profile page you have your contact information similar to a business card, but also information about your interests/hobbies which allow others to realized commonalities. The Photos feature is allows you to post pictures and share them with friends. The Wall is similar to writing on a whiteboard on someone’s door. Facebook acts like a virtual pocketbook in which you can keep track of all your friends’ information as well as their own shared items.
Facebook as a whole can be used in different ways (i.e. as a blog, as a rolodex, as an event organizer) because it is made up of many different components. By framing the individual features of Facebook into existing mental models, users can understand them in terms of familiar technologies and immediately apply them to certain tasks in their lifestyle. The benefit of Facebook is that it integrates many of these features to become more than a sum of its parts. New users would need to augment their existing frames with the fact each tool can be integrated with their whole social network. Features such as status updates or photo tagging may not have direct technological frames for some users and their use will need to be augmented with new models.
Grudin states that one of the challenges in groupware is that users must realize the direct benefit of the application before putting in the work. Giving users a series of simple tasks to complete could augment the verbal explanation of Facebook and allow users to realize the benefit of the application. For example: requesting to be friends with another person, inviting a friend to an event and then posting pictures and wall messages afterwards to follow up.
Critical mass is a huge issue for social networking sites that rely on network effects in order to provide value to users, if none of a user’s friends are using Facebook or are using another social network, the user has no incentive to use Facebook and would be drawn towards a competing network. To overcome these challenges, targeting a few of Facebook’s niche features to specific users would allow them to realize an immediate benefit and gradually expand to use the whole system. For example, my mom loves to share photos, so the Photos feature of Facebook would be instantly appealing to her. Involving a tight knit group of users would also increase the return on investment so that users will have friends in their social circle and in their age group.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
It's really good that you would relate many of the features of Facebook to things that the older people would be most used to (ie using frames). I would argue that not only does Facebook become more than the sum of it's parts because it integrates all of these features, but it also is so powerful because of the network effects - the more people you know who use it, the more useful it is... maybe that would be something to make obvious to older users
ReplyDeleteI like how you referred to Facebook as something like a virtual pocketbook. I feel like that type of explanation would really appeal to an older crowd (namely my mom who carries around a pocketbook that was something like 40 odd pounds). I also talked about the fact that people would only really be interested in using facebook if they had a group of friends or relatives that they could share it with in my blog post. I had the same idea that it would probably be more successful if you had people sign up in groups.
ReplyDelete