Facebook’s Growing Wisdom Through Information Architecture
Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies: IDS 411
The idea of Facebook began as a very simple social experiment created by Harvard undergraduates, initiated by now owner Mark Zuckerberg, in 2003. The data that was initially collected was of student pictures scraped from Harvard websites. It was this simple interface and its quick popularity that significantly inspired the concept of Facebook. The main feature was a rating system judging the attractiveness between two randomly chosen photos. They titled the site “Facemash” and it caught interest like wildfire. Over a short amount of time, the site began to receive negative feedback and was taken off the Internet. From the experience with Facemash and realization of the interest of viewing other people’s pictures, he began to develop Facebook. Simple reasoning lead to the early interfaces of Facebook in 2004. Zuckerberg writes in an open letter in 2006,
“When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we’ve seen is because of these basic principles” (1).
Early Intent
“The Facebook”, its original name, allowed members to sign up for free and create a personal profile for themselves. It began strictly for Harvard students so they could gauge interest and handle its growth. The specific data they asked for included personal information, such as birthdate, hometown, year in school, concentration and high school attended. Social data included chat screename, email, phone number, relationship status, sexual orientation, other interests and political views. And at the top of a user’s profile the date they became a member and the date of their last update was displayed.
Connecting with friends who were also signed up, was the most important aspect and much more tactful than comparing two people like in Facemash. Here, you could connect with people you know in an intended friendly environment. The markup of Facebook was originally very simple, with less options than it possesses today. It was less personalized and more of a social resume. Notifications and/or feedback came later displaying changes people made to their profiles. This allowed others to keep up-to-date with their friend’s lives with what they shared, discover interesting content from each other and connect if they had met in person earlier.
The site became consistently popular that they decided to gradually expand to other colleges and universities. Ivy league schools such as Columbia, Stanford, Yale, Cornell and Dartmouth were among the first establishments Facebook expanded their site to. Little by little, the majority of schools nation wide soon had access to the social network phenomenon.
Growing the Structure
Zuckerberg and his small Facebook team studied what people were sharing and changing within their profiles. When they moved their operations to Palo Alto, California in June 2004, they dedicated themselves to researching and observing the updates certain accounts would enter along with their friends and ultimately their friends, resulting in sectioning off regions of the country to each member of the team to observe. The actions of users ultimately helped evolve Facebook’s interface. What was important to discover from friend’s postings? What hierarchy worked for the best flow? Facebook still had control over what was posted, for instance, pre-written status updates, which were in the third person. “The wall” had developed over time as an information hub for what updates people would make to their profile. This hub was titled “mini-feed”, which was a toggled menu to view activity, and when toggled up, other menus, such as personal information would follow below. The mini-feed displayed user’s recent activity on their own profile, such as changing personal information (i.e., phone number, email or screename), uploading a new profile photo, their activity in other areas of Facebook (i.e., comments on a friend’s photo or new connections). Another unique feature for friends to use was the “poke” button. Friends can simply “poke” someone to grab their attention — granted, getting “poked” is just a notification, but it allows the thought of someone become apparent without saying a word. The “poke” is still available today.
Adding Value
Two valuable features were announced in 2009; the of writing one’s own content and the Facebook “like” button. Refining a community among friends, classmates or colleagues was Zuckerberg’s goal. Facebook developed a voice; it greeted you after login. It asked you “what are you doing?” and later revised to “what’s on your mind?”. Facebook later allowed statuses to be mixed with media such as photos, albums, video and shared links (either web or internal Facebook events). This open text box for your “current status”, allowed original updates to tear down the structural feel of this social network. Below the “status” box came the collection of user activity, later called the “News Feed” (seen on the homepage after login), first seen in 2006 but later refined. Once a status is entered, it is then collected into the News Feed among other friend’s postings. This constant updating became enticing for users to keep posting and be a part of the “what’s happening now” trend. Status updates that are posted in the News Feed are also linked to one’s profile, which was once “the wall” and is now called the “Timeline”. The same functionality from the News Feed is found here — friends can still post and add to each other’s Timelines and other postings and activity can be seen. The use of the keyword “Timeline” creates a more enjoyable and sentimental joy of actually using the site. Adding to your “timeline” is like a collection of your life and events and thoughts you may never imagined you would remember. It has become a digital scrapbook of memories that can easily be shared with friends and family.
Giving purpose and acknowledgement to activity, the “like” feature allows friends to show their likeness to certain updates; always keeping it positive. It is a simple one-time click of a thumbs up button that provides satisfaction and pride for people’s posts. The “like” button is iconic to Facebook and has inspired other sites and apps to use a similar feature. Pages and business with Facebook accounts also can be “liked” and a norm in society is now basing your level popularity off of how many “likes” you have received (i.e., for pages or postings) and the vernacular of “liking” something now carries more weight. The “like” (or acknowledgment) feature has been evolved into and even greater symbol of emotion. A menu of “like”, “love”, “laugh”, “surprised”, “sad” and “mad” are now options to choose from by hovering over the “like” icon on a post.
Current status entry has always been seen at the top of the page, proving how the user’s voice is important to Facebook and inspiring a need to post. The News Feed’s algorithm displays what it assumes you might be interested in seeing or displaying the most relevant post of the day. Users actually have the ability to rank the type of stories they want to see. A drop down menu at the top right of each post asks if you want to see less or more of that type of posting; it can be anything someone is able to post, such as photo albums, attended events or shared links. Facebook writes in a blog post how the News Feed’s improvements might affect a user’s page,
“The impact of these changes on a story’s distribution will vary depending on the composition of your audience and your posting activity. In general this update should not impact reach or referral traffic meaningfully for the majority of Pages; however, some Pages may see some increases in referral traffic, and some Pages may see some declines in referral traffic. Pages might see some declines in referral traffic if the rate at which their stories are clicked on does not match how much people report wanting to see those stories near the top of their News Feed. This update helps rebalance those two factors, so people are seeing relevant stories to them” (4).
The actions that users make on the site are even more powerful than the drop down menu. Facebook collects the information of how many clicks a certain story retains also the amount of time one stays on a page and if that person is a “close friend” or “relative”, which can be labeled through the site (5). And to stay completely organized, a user can also find easy accessible links next to the News Feed on the main page. These include, profile link, edit profile, events/calendar, messages, photos, groups, liked pages and apps.
User Flows
The popularity and accessibility of digital cameras and camera phones grew and grew. Zuckerberg allowed users to share not only photos, but now albums with their friends. He realized this was one of the top interests people wanted to see. Information such as pictures could really create a visually appealing community and allow people to get to know someone faster.
The photo album became available in October 2005 with unlimited storage, but the now frequently used “tagging” feature did not come until December 2005. Tagging friends in photos is a likeable feature for friends to stay connected and add to the content of each other’s profiles, which can be found under “photos of you”. The interface also allows users to reorder photos after being uploaded, accessibility to download from friends and upload to each other’s albums. Facebook’s knowledge of users constant updating also allowed photos to be changed to profile pictures or cover photos (the profile’s banner) straight from their Facebook album. Of course other features, such as uploading a single new photo are still available.
Single photos can be uploaded from the computer or mobile phone, but another popular single photo posting is through Instagram. Facebook made an acquisition to the ever-popular photo mobile app Instagram in April 2012. Users with an Instagram account can now post the same photo to Facebook when posting to the Instagram feed. Tagging friends also comes into play through Instagram and Facebook. If a friend has an account for both, they can be linked to a post if “tagged” (using the @ before their name/username allows the tagging to occur). Friends can be tagged by simply typing out their name in any type of media post; i.e., text, links, photos, events. Once someone is tagged by a friend they can be removed, but it will still be initially posted to the News Feed for others to see. Though the option to approve these posts before being posted to their own personal Timeline is available. Keywords can also be tagged by using the # character before the word. This allows for photos to be categorized among similar photos from other users. When the keyword is typed into search, such as #boats, anyone who has tagged their photo with #boats, will be found, if public.
Since Facebook’s main appeal is to stay connected with friends and family, they decided to provide digital “invitations” for events within the site and a messaging system, which can also be accessed through a separate mobile app called Messenger. Messages can be viewed and saved on Facebook’s website, but while using the mobile app, once a user taps “messages”, it automatically opens the Messenger app (if downloaded) to view and reply to messages. Just like email, multiple users can be in one message, but here it is called “conversations”. Users also have the option to add friends to conversations later after already being sent. Anyone can then “leave” or “mute” a conversation if they no longer want to be notified of the responses. Invitations to events are used frequently and have evolved over time as well. Like conversations, users have the option of changing the attendee list and they can add/invite friends to the event if allowed; events can be closed or private as well. Pictures can be associated with events by adding an event profile picture or cover photo and these pages have their own “timeline” as well for attendees to post to.
Aside from the exciting social aspects, Facebook also takes its user’s privacy and protection very seriously. 2010 was the year users really had access to their privacy settings; former settings were difficult to find. Currently, settings can be accessed at the top of every page. Options run from general credentials, security, privacy, Timeline and Tagging (such as pictures and check-ins), to blocking users, applications, messages, invitations, pages and a restricted list. Every post seen in the News Feed or a post made by a friend on your own Timeline, comes with a drop down menu. “Report Post” is an option, which is a huge effort in protecting user’s activity and intent on Facebook. The button may be small and simple, but there is an immense flow behind one click. Facebook shared a flow of what happens after a user clicks the “Report Post” button. It is a behind-the-scenes flow, but by sharing its functionality publicly, Facebook users have a stronger and secure sense of what lengths their trusted social network site takes to make sure their safety and rights are secured.
Taxonomy
For a while, Facebook was notorious for constantly changing its interface; reorganizing tabs, hierarchy, moving, adding and taking out features, and a clean up of the overall design. It was known how users were put off by this as they had to constantly acquaint themselves with a new flow, but it was just a method that should be looked at as a positive. The constant care and research the Facebook team took to continually find the best flow and purpose for their site showed how young they were, but also how dedicated they were to their user’s best interest. A major renovation with the site was easy access to privacy settings. Users now have various options of what content they want to be seen by certain people. Also, blocking users is an option as well. This is a constant feature at the top of the page next to other main interests, such as “friend requests”, “messages”, “notifications” and access to your own profile. The hierarchy chosen for these main features help create a comfortable user flow. Over a decade of gaining knowledge and experience has refined the users needs by truly listening to and observing the user first-hand.
From the beginning and continuing today, Zuckerberg always had the user in mind first. Its popularity became so immense within schools domestically and internationally, that the Facebook team decided to go public in May 2012 and expand the community globally to anyone with an email address or cell phone number. Once that continued to grow strong, Facebook also formed a special interface for businesses, from stores to music bands, to create profiles and connect with fans and consumers. Keeping the site’s use accessible to anyone free of charge is a goal Zuckerberg continues to stand by. Within the interface, Zuckerberg had to eventually lose the battle of keeping Facebook ad-free and allow supportive investors advertise along the columns of all pages when the site gained unmanageable useage in 2008. Though, the ads were soon mildly controlled and variously personalized to a specific user’s interest depending on clicks and other web searches.
Taxonomy of Facebook can be exemplified through supported advertising on the site. Businesses have a huge benefit when advertising on Facebook. The site is filled with prospective target users and allows for instant feedback. What business want to do is find, capture and target their audience. Using the Facebook Ads Manager allows a business to control how they advertise. Capabilities include, create and run ads, target ads to certain people, set a budget, see ads are performing, see billing summary, payment history and payment method information. Here, a targeting taxonomy chart shows a path of hierarchy for a certain target audience. Each extra sub category provides more detail in the customer a business might want to reach out to.
Thought for the Future
The drastic redesigning of Facebook has subsided for a few years. Their solid interface has pleased their users, but there’s always room for improvement. Today, advertising is a huge part of Facebook’s interface; it has now trickled into News Feeds instead of just on the side. Either the option of ad removal for a fee or a higher level filtering feature could be very favorable to users. An algorithm simliar to what can be found on Medium.com or Designspiration where users can choose from catagories of interest of what subject matters will be included in their feeds, may be a great way to inform Facebook of a user’s real interest and needs and filter out what they don’t want to see. If advertising is necessary, it will at least pertain to that user’s interest. As for organization, the Messenger app is a great way to keep track of messages without the distractions of the entire app. The calendar feature within Facebook could benefit from a separate app like Messenger or at least allow events to be linked/added to a personal mobile phone calendar such as it does through the Cloud via email when prompted to add to calendar. Another large aspect users share are contests and “reward” re-posting incentives. A majority of these postings from various users are illegitimate. Scanning for legitimacy would be a beneficial undertaking by Facebook for its user’s safety.
Works Cited
- http://www.zimbio.com/Why+Did+Mark+Zuckerberg+Create+Facebook/articles/irW6fWzojv2/Mark+Zuckerberg+Create+Facebook
- https://www.quora.com/How-has-Facebooks-UI-changed-over-time
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_like_button
- http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/news-feed-fyi-using-qualitative-feedback-to-show-relevant-stories/
- https://blog.bufferapp.com/facebook-news-feed-algorithm
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/06/facebooks-reporting-guide-step-right-direction