Reevaluation of Online Services: Part 1
12 Jan
(This is a continuation of this post on reevaluation of my online services.)
Here is the first batch of services that I’m looking at in terms of whether I’m still using them due only to loyalty or due to their continued worth a valuable online service.
Flickr
Ease of use – I’ve never had a problem using Flickr. Everything is pretty easy to find, features are very straightforward, the site is easy to navigate, and I never waste more than a minute or two trying to find a new feature I haven’t used before.
Stability and support – I’ve never gone to Flickr.com and seen that the site is unavailable. I’ve never needed support, never witnessed downtime, never had to wait to upload a photo. Zero problems.
Community – Flickr isn’t a site where I really concentrate on community, because it’s mostly about one central place to have all of my photos. I do enjoy a few comments here and there, but I’m really not active in the Flickr community and wouldn’t be very active on any other photo hosting site.
Features – If anything, Flickr offers more features that I could possibly need as a casual photographer, and the features that I want are all there. Zero issues, zero things on the wanted list in terms of features.
Integration – Brightkite is able to crosspost to Flickr, and my Flickr photos are integrated with my Facebook profile as well. I can blog my photos from the Flickr interface as well. GREAT integration with my computer, my favorite sites, my iPhone, everything.
Quality – Flickr keeps the originals and makes high quality re-sized versions of all of my photos. Zero quality degradation.
CONCLUSION – Why the heck would I switch to anything else?
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Ease of use – Facebook is pretty straightforward. I’ve been adapting to the new look and the new layout, but basically it’s not that complicated and if I get confused, I can figure it out pretty quickly. Not always the most intuitive site, but I can figure it out.
Stability and support – I can’t remember the last time I went to Facebook and was met with an error message or the site didn’t load. The features and options that I use work exactly as I would expect them to, and the only other strictly social networking site is MySpace, which is a giant ball of “where IS everything and has this feature EVER worked?”
Community – Facebook has gotten to a point where almost anyone I would want to interact with online in a Facebook type of manner is on Facebook. I check it daily to see what my friends, co-workers, and family are up to, and without the community, it simply wouldn’t be worth bothering with. Great community.
Features – Tons of features, tons of options, I love that I can filter what is seen or not seen by certain groups of Facebook friends, privacy is protected in a very easily adjustable and comforting way, and any features that I don’t like (apps that annoy me, etc.) are easily blocked from my line of view. Love the feature set of Facebook.
Integration – Facebook kicks ass in terms of integration. Personally, I think at this point that it does a better job of aggregating all of my online activity than FriendFeed does, and Facebook aggregates it in a way that’s easy to sort through and interests me a lot more. I really wish there was a way that I could cross-upload either my Brightkite or Flickr photos into my Facebook photos, though. That would be one complaint, that Facebook photos still have to be manually uploaded separately from Brightkite and Flickr, rather than grabbing those photos and putting them in an album on Facebook.
Quality – No complaints. Site layout is fine, my profile is fairly clean and straightforward, my photos look good when I upload them, my experience on Facebook has been a good one so far.
CONCLUSION – No one does social networking better than Facebook right now. By far my favorite place to catch up on all of my friends at once. Facebook stays.
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MySpace
Ease of use – The site is a joke riddled with ads. I can’t find most things, and by the time I find what I’m looking for, I just want to leave.
Stability and support – Almost every time I go to the site and try to do something, the feature I want to use is broken.
Community – Hate the community. I hate the spamming bands, the sluts, the 13 year old emo kids with lame profile pics, and everyone I do want to maintain contact with has moved to Facebook. There is no community factor keeping me on MySpace.
Features – I hate the rest of the site so much that I don’t even know what they offer. What I do know they offer is customizable profiles that twinkle and make me want to scream.
Integration – I don’t want my MySpace profile to integrate with anything else I do online.
Quality – Crap. The community is awful, the stability is awful, the look of the site is riddled with ads and navigationally absurd, and the experience is just simply BAD.
CONCLUSION – I am deleting my MySpace profile this week, and it will be completely painless.
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Stay tuned for more! :)
