Comments About Social Media and the Many “MEs”
This article on Mashable, Why Mainstream Social Networks Complicate Our Identities [OPINION], made me think about how I used to want to divorce the poetic, creative me, from my work self, from my family me, because the way I am with different groups conflicts with the way those people see me. In the article, the author said: How Google+ Makes Social Networking More Confusing The Google+ approach aims to simplify managing relationships, but ultimately fails because it works against people’s natural behavioral patterns. This is why Google+ faces an uphill challenge to adoption. Google+ allows users to define their own “circles” of contacts, like “High School Classmates,” “Family” or “Classic Car Fans.” The platform seeks to merge distinct interaction groups together into a unified experience. Users spend time creating the circles they want to share with, a tactic that helps push information into your contacts’ streams. But the system breaks down once you try to consume content from a variety of different sources in your own stream. Suddenly, college roommates are mixed in with professional contacts, or people you’ve never actually met. This requires additional cognitive effort of the user to filter content by relationship, rendering the experience frustrating and confusing. To which my response was: Some good insights. On G+ though, it seems like a fixable problem as far as consuming content. They’d just have to give the option of letting the user pick – and be able to change – a default circle to view. If you’re not