What is Happening With My Home Page
There are several ways social media platforms are killing the Homepage, in Essence, to keep you scrolling.
Digital World. With the Internet striking the real world, we have seen a surge of networking sites from the early 2000s. Whether professional or social, there are dozens of platforms we are a part of in everyday life. Most of these platforms have the tech and workforce to keep us glued to their apps and keep us interested.
A key marketing element, especially on mobile, is the home page, with Infinite scrolling as its secret ingredient. I started wondering what was happening within this infinite scrolling and how it was consuming our time.
You can always imagine yourself on the platform of your choice. Here are some features that need control to provide a better experience.
Topics/publications/people I do not follow:
Of course, users can always select topics they wish to see in their timeline. We all agree that social media platforms ask this question at the signup stage. What’s the point when you are polluting the timeline?
Yes. My friend sent me a link which I clicked. We all do this. There is no point in highlighting the topics in our timelines when the content is dislikable.
There should be options available to suppress specific posts ( likes/reactions etc.) from users in your circle.
Suggestions from nearby:
Local happenings have both Pros and Cons. An interesting incident happened to me in the recent past. A food place suggestion popped up while skimming through software development posts. The accidental click triggered food-related posts under “You might also like.” for the next few days. I was looking for Agile, and you suggested me food. Really?
Suggestions from the nearby place are valuable only if they are in the general sense — trending political news ( not tweets), traffic, Issues related to public works, public safety issues, etc. In a world where everything is related, it’s always good to let the user have a fair understanding of their homepage feed.
Ads:
The classic Ads Feed. How exactly the Ad framework works is anyone’s guess. As far as I’ve analyzed, the Ads comes and goes as it pleases. As users, there is a good chance that most of us never even click these. There are sometimes a flood of messages our timeline. I have never come across a social networking platform that keeps the integrity of our timeline.
When someone liked something:
It is not ideal for everyone to follow the same topics as you. How many of you try to follow Tech topics but end up looking at likes of celebrity pics by the people around you? These posts take an insane amount of time to get through.
There are options to include specific people to add to your network. There should be better control to sort and filter through the likes/dislikes/retweets of the folks in your circle.
Reaching the first posting of your liking would have accounted for about 10–15 minutes.
Refresh the Page
Whenever the users try to refresh the timeline, the ideal goal is for users to see newer posts, not new posts ( posts they have never seen ). I have seen home pages that show me endless posts from the past. Posts that might not even be relevant today. If there are tricks to avoid these timeless refreshes, please share them in the comments. Hitting the Star Icon to sort the posts based on timelines was shared by Elon Musk sometime back.
Conclusion
The Fun doesn’t stop here. You start seeing older articles/posts. Users generally lose interest and stop spending time on the platform if they deem it a time-waster or irrelevant. The timeline plays an essential role in their decision-making. With all the algorithms running their logic over large datasets to keep the users glued to the platforms, the goal to provide the users with relevant, current, and better content should always be paramount.
I hope someone out there finds the time and effort to fix the timeline/homepage across the social media apps they are a part of. I pick and choose apps based on what shows up on the Homepage. I hope everyone feels the same way!
