Idea: Share a post on Facebook that requires anyone who wants to view to share their name to the person who posted so that way there is clarity about who viewed your posts which may inspire sharing more & encourage interaction between the people who shared that they viewed 5.3.2016 (#139)

Purpose is to provide context about who is viewing posts. Already, a strength of Facebook is as a utility to share information about yourself that people can access whenever they want without showing the other person that you viewed that information. There’s an opportunity though to encourage more sharing for people who want to know who actually viewed particular posts.

Start on the share screen where you have already selected a photo to share, then tap “Views Off” to change to “Views On” meaning you require to see who tapped to view your post. Then tap to Post, which shows the post loading to the News Feed. Then note that there are posts that do not require sharing your name to view so those post are already expanded, and note some posts do required sharing name to view. Tap on Person Name 5 to view and share your name to Person Name 5 who posted. Then scroll and scroll to the top then tap Your Name then scroll down to see the names of friends who have viewed your post already since just posting. Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

Press release:

• Title: Introducing sharing & viewing by name
• Introduction version 1: When you live or work around friends, you may post to Facebook and see people soon after and there’s context to the conversation at any given time. Every day, people cross paths looking at content, but there oftentimes aren’t real world opportunities to see people to inspire interaction. Starting today, you can choose to share a post that requires that people who choose to view share their name. This helps provide the context to know who chose to view your post and in turn helps inspire interaction.
• Introduction version 2: Ever wished you knew who viewed what you posted? Ever wondered who happened upon something you posted before, but never messaged you about it? Starting today, sharing and viewing by name enables you to choose to share something that requires that anyone who chooses to view also share their name with you. That way you know who checked out your post, and the person who viewed knows that they are sharing. We hope this will enable you to share more with the comfort of knowing which friends viewed your posts, including that this may inspire more interaction even among people you don’t get to see as much in every day life.

Facebook, Snapchat & social today:

• A strength of Facebook is that there is no showing who viewed your profile or who viewed particularly posts. So there’s a focus on a utility. This enables people who are friends to easily choose to look up another friend to see what’s new particularly with acquaintances without having to be concerned about any awkwardness of knowing that viewing the profile will cause the other people to see that view.
• A strength of Snapchat is that you can see who viewed your post. So there’s a feeling when looking at views that you get an idea of who cared to look at your posts, particularly if you have posted multiple times in a day and a given person is shown to have viewed your posts.
• Views on Snapchat may inspire more sharing because there is clarity about who is viewing, and a desire to continue to create content that those people view.
• A strength of views on Snapchat is that knowing who viewed what provides a more clear idea of all of the people who care about your posts because everyone is shown.
• Knowing who viewed your posts on Snapchat is important because you can then think about at least the particular people who you especially care that had looked at a particular posts.
• A scenario of views on Snapchat could be that you see someone viewed a post you made and you know that person had a similar experience, and so that can give reason to contact that person to start a conversation.
• A challenge for Facebook is that people who you don’t see very often can be the vast majority of your friends on the site particular as time goes on / changing schools / changes workplaces / changing cities / etc. And only a particular set of people may tend to like your posts out of all of the people who view your posts, and so you may almost never get a like from someone you are friends with who does actually view your posts.
• A challenge for Snapchat is that there is the action required of tapping to view a particular person’s post which can take more time to do. However, autoplay helps with continuing to view.
• A strength of Snapchat is that the control of the posts you view also helps with navigating around the significant volume of posts.
• A challenge of Facebook is that viewing all of the available posts still tends to require continuing to scroll in the News Feed and with ranking that may not even show all the posts.
• Facebook requires to tap a link to expand when there are multiple posts from someone, which adds a step to viewing more posts and that requires finding the link to tap, whereas Snapchat requires just tapping in place on the photo/video to advance.
• On TheFacebook in 2004/2005, a main way to navigate the site was to visit “My Friends” and view friends by recently updated which included text indicating what was recently updated such as profile photo or favorite quote or more. Essentially, this is the same navigation that Snapchat uses for Stories, with a main difference being that Snapchat says who viewed. I think that TheFacebook on college campuses in 2004/2005 was similar in that you saw your friends around campus so frequently that you in effect knew who “viewed” what you posted because you got live feedback from them saying that they had seen what you posted.

Proposed idea:

1. Start on the sharing form that includes a photo already selected by you to share. Note the “Views Off” text on the bottom. Tap “Views Off” to change to “Views On” which means that you require that people choose to share that they had selected to view your post.
2. Then tap to share which shows that the post is “Posting…” then says “Done!” when fully posted. Note that your post was made into a thumbnail so people can still see some idea of what was posted, but to see the full post requires to agree to say you have viewed the post.
3. Note that there are other posts on the News Feed. So scroll down. Note that that Person Name 2 made the post available without requiring views.
4. Keep scrolling and see that Person Name 3 and Person Name 4 required name to view. Then note that Person Name 5 does not require name to view because uses full size.
5. Tap on Person Name 4 to view the post. Tap Close to go back to News Feed.
6. Scroll back up your your name and tap then scroll down to see the names of friends who have viewed your post already.

Comments:

• Opportunity for Facebook is to increase sharing and increase ability for people to connect by sharing who viewed posts.
• Opportunity is to use existing scrolling in the Facebook News Feed to encourage people to tap to view posts.
• Alternatively, show these posts in a list of recently updated friends profiles.
• A reason to do this is to encourage another way to share on Facebook so people can see who viewed posts.
• A reason to do this is to encourage more sharing in general because people may like to share knowing that the post only uses a small amount of the vertical space of scrolling on the News Feed and so doesn’t interrupt people viewing too much.
• A reason to do this is to encourage people to share more because they can know that multiple posts could be aggregated into each post.
• Note that if there are multiple posts by the same person who requires to share name to view could show a small number on the profile photo in the lower corner to indicate how many posts are available to view.
• A reason people may not use this on is that even if they want to know who viewed their post, they may not want to be perceived as forcing their friends to tap on something in order to show that they viewed it given the post default is to not require this. And so this may be a reason that an app dedicated to this is required to encourage this activity a lot.

Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

© 2016 D.J. Sherrets