This week I noticed the gaining popularity of a new app (which isn’t actually new and is from 2015) called Vero, which became a big thing and died all in the same week. Vero’s sudden popularity likely came from ads on facebook and instagram, as well as promotions from people saying, “it’s the new instagram.” It promised a chronological timeline with no ads and no “crazy algorithms”, as well as trying to replicate relationships in the real world like the difference between friendships and acquaintances.

Unfortunately, the app got so big overnight it just stopped working, and people trying to get on can’t do anything with it  It also will be based on a subscription fee to use it after the first million downloads. The privacy policy is also shady, stating that the content is allowed to be used by Vero however they want for as long as they want. The creator of the app also has a shady past where he didn’t pay workers, so now the app has just become a trainwreck where everyone is trying to delete it but can’t even figure out how to do that.

I didn’t download the app and I’m for sure not going to now because it just sounds like a mess, but there’s definitely a lot of stuff worth talking about when looking at what’s going on. For example, the ads being placed on instagram and facebook are already organizing a particular audience to be attracted to the app. By saying the app is “instagram but better,” it’s already causing people to interact with it in a similar manner (when the app could be used for a lot more in reality, like recommending books and stuff.) The rush to make an account was even because of the first million getting a free account thing put into place, so the desire for an account now is there.

I think all of the stuff I’ve seen is interesting, but one thing that stands out to me the most is the idea of assigning labels to the people you are interacting with on the app. The people I saw who downloaded the app were all using it as another platform to post their art, so I thought it was just like everything else where you have followers and that’s it. The fact that it organizes everything into friend, acquaintance, follower, etc… is so interesting and unique to a social media platform and I don’t know whether it would be a good function or not. The only other platform I can think of that has something similar is deviantart because you can organize people by friends or by watchers, but not to this extent.

Links: 1 | 2 | 3

For my observe this week, I chose to use my Netflix account as an example for how media influences your decisions. Netflix has an algorithm that takes what you’ve watched in the past and uses it to make a “Top Picks” for the user. Also, they make categories based on a specific show that you’ve watched and recommend related genres, in my example I used Gilmore Girls and Netflix put shows that are similar to the title and Genre in that category option. I think this was a smart implementation on Netflix’s part because it saves you time when looking for a show to watch next, because in my experience, the shows they put under top picks are actually movies/shows that I would be interested in watching.

Many of my observes so far have been based off of Facebook posts and features, which was not intentional; I guess I have just found that Facebook as a social media website produces the most unwanted content than any other social media site, at least for me personally. From sponsored advertisements, to reminders of events that have no correlation to me, it does it all. One thing that I noticed this week during my time using Facebook was the many options it gives you when you go to write a facebook post. Other than asking me “what’s on your mind, rachel?” (as if i’d genuinely answer that, or anyone would care), it gives 12 options directly under that of things you can add to your post.
These options are there to promote using facebook for a wide array of things – other than posting videos or photos, it gives you the option to share your feeling/activities, check in at places, start a poll, start a list, tag people or events, or even “support nonprofits”. While some of these features have been present for a while, this is the first time I’ve actually noticed the support nonprofit tab. Truthfully, I can’t think of a single person who logs onto facebook to support nonprofits. Additionally, posting a status about you supporting a non profit is almost like tooting your own horn. I feel like these features are unnecessary, but then again so is half of what facebook promotes and sponsors. I just find it interesting that facebook encourages you to think these ways, to engage with the community, but truthfully I doubt people use these features much, I know I don’t.

Again, this week I was scrolling through facebook and noticed another trend on my newsfeed. Every so often between posts from people I know and care about, there will be these “suggested posts”, as if they contain something that would interest me. But every single time these suggested posts are from sponsored companies trying to sell something. That in itself isn’t too strange, most websites nowadays have sponsored posts to give them some form of ad revenue. But what interested me was the fact that they tried to pass this off as a “suggested post”, like, they are looking out for something that might interest me. They’re saying “Hey, we think you’d like this post!” but it’s just an ad. I just thought that was another interesting aspect of the Facebook website and how it interacts with its users right now.

I’ve been trying to pay more attention to the phrasing and wording of things in addition to the design of things. As visual (or like extra-visual? as in fingerprint logins or facial recognition) elements continue to replace textual ones, I’m interested in the rarity of them and therefore (supposedly, if we believe in scarcity) their increased significance. So when my phone tells me that I “have a new memory,” I realize that there’s a lot going on. I can accept “memories” as another corporately co-opted intimate symbol (“friends” “connections” etc.), but I also think about the sci-fi future of how actual human memory will exist down the line. Lots of folks have already extrapolated this to utopic or dystopic (Total Recall comes to mind), but we’re also already there. When I try to recall a moment to share with someone, sometimes I start by scrolling back through my phone’s photos to try and get to that period of my life.

Possibly one of the most annoying features on Youtube, the autoplay button is something I tend to notice a lot, especially when on other computers.  It’s always automatically on and instead of prioritizing watching videos the first thing I prioritize when getting on to youtube is turning off the autoplay button.  I personally believe it is constantly on to rack up views for videos and get people to watch things they otherwise wouldn’t have.  The only use I can see it for is playlists involving music, otherwise I don’t want to sit through multiple somewhat different videos in a row.  I usually go on to Youtube to watch one thing at a time so this feature is just a nuisance to me.

Wow I did it kids.  1,000 friends!!! This got me thinking about how many of those 1,000 “friends” I actually know still or how many of them are actually duplicates of old accounts.  At the same time, this also made me want to keep adding friends to see what happens when I get to 2,000 or even 5,000.

Another interesting thing about this notification is that it also shows how long I’ve been friends with those 9 people who randomly popped up for this “celebration”.

Last week while looking up drawing reference, I instinctively clicked the button next to the visit button, which used to be view image or something along those lines. I instead was given a little orange square in the button notifying me I had saved the picture. I think the change happened relatively recently, but now instead of just opening an image to view it bigger through google images you have to save the image.

When exploring this new feature I decided to look at where saved images are placed, which doesn’t provide much explanation other than to try it out by saving your favorite images.

At first I was upset by the change but I actually think it will be useful for me because I was looking up reference for art, so now I can have that reference in a convenient space. I originally thought that this was changed so that google could keep better tabs on the things you are interested in, especially because it is directing you to save your favorite things. I looked into it more, however, and the change was supposedly added to make it harder for users to steal images. So, this new button constructs the user by being an inconvenience so you don’t steal.

For Star Course we make Facebook events and run online promotions for our upcoming concerts, which means I have to start spending more time on this nightmare website than I ever want to. The only thing that’ll make you hate Facebook more than scrolling through the feed is trying to use it as a marketing platform. Facebook thinks it is so smart by using algorithms to save users from spam but these actually make it harder to do the marketing that I want to do. For example Facebook doesn’t like that I’ve put STRFKR in the event title in all caps, even though it let me a create it like that in the first place?? Now I can’t edit the event details without also changing the title. After some tinkering I guess 5 or less consecutive capital letters are fine, but 6 letters crosses the line. I know that the band chose the name “STRFKR” to make marketing a pain in the ass and you know what, it actually works in ways that I don’t think they originally anticipated for it to work.

I also can’t pay to boost my own post because my cover photo has too many words, even though this hasn’t been a problem with previous posters that have the same amount of words. Whatever image processing algorithm they’re using must be able to read certain formats over others. I strongly dislike the wording of “Images with a high proportion of text don’t use their budget as efficiently and may not even run” because it implies that this is my own fault!! Why can’t you just tell me straight up what the image requirements are, and is the “high proportion of text” decided by the number of words or by a picture-to-text ratio? Why am I punished for using a poster for a concert as a cover photo for a concert event? Why is this so hard??

This week I was looking at facebook and noticed that, above one of the typical banner ads you see, they have a button you can press to “create your own ad”. I was curious, and clicked on it and was presented with this page:

Apparently Facebook will let you create your own ads to present to people through facebook itself. That means I don’t necessarily have to be a verified business in order to have an advertisement on facebook, I can just go through the proper channels on this page and have my ads appear on other people’s facebook pages. I was truly surprised by this, because I always thought that the ads that appear on websites are semi-legit, but according to this anyone can make an advertisement and have it be shown to hundreds of people on facebook!

Option 2: Unlike most of my generation, I still hang on to Facebook, mainly for the million Facebook groups I’m in and for the messaging capabilities. I’m not sure how they have gotten me hooked on their messaging app but that’s another project 0 for another time. Sometimes the app doesn’t work right and I get an error message like this, as if I’m starting over again or their is no internet at all. It’s times like these I question what I’m doing with my life and why I depend on Facebook for so much entertainment. The screen is so simple, just gray and a little retry button. No “stories”. Stories? What a weird word to use. What about statuses? Articles? Posts? Why stories? There’s also something weird about retry, like I know this Facebook void has millions of these “stories” to show, I don’t need you to “retry”, I need you to do your damn job.

This week for my observe I thought I would focus on a sponsored advertisement that popped up on my facebook newsfeed this week. The advertisement was promoted by “Sandy Hook Promise”, and featured a video of a boy who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary. The caption discussed how the shooter carried 300 rounds and killed 20 children within 4 minutes. The link it provided along with the video was a petition to make large-capacity gun magazines illegal. Firstly, this ad really threw me off because I had never seen something like this promoted on facebook before; however, I think that it’s shock value helps the cause and pushes people to stop and look at the advertisement, and maybe even sign the petition. Especially given the recent tragedy in Florida, this ad couldn’t be more fitting. I think it’s great that facebook is promoting posts like this, especially with all that’s’ going on post-shooting, like the school walkouts and protests and the capitol. Anything that can help prevent these events from happening helps, and for once facebook is showing sponsored ads that not only pertain to actual issues, but bring up social issues at conversations as well.

For this Observe, I focused on a certain feature of Tumblr. Sometimes when I open the mobile app, there’s a message at the top of the screen telling me that some person or organization is now taking questions. I always assumed that this notification meant that the Q&A was going on right then. However, at least in this scenario, that was not the case. When I clicked on the banner, it took me to the page in the second screenshot, and only there, did it tell you that the event was actually happening on February 26th. So why did I assume that it was happening as I was seeing the notification? In the past, I’ve seen similar banners that I think might have specified that questions were currently being answered (something like, “[person] is taking questions now“). If I did see banners like that, then my assumption makes sense, but there’s a chance that there was no such specification, and I was just making assumptions about the events’ timing in the same way that I am now. If that’s the case, why did I make that assumption? It could have been based around the idea that, originally, tumblr organized content based on the time it was posted/reblogged, so whatever I was saw first (at the top of the screen) on my dash was the most recent post. The fact that the banner was located above that first post may have made it seem even more current than what was on my dash.

There’s a decent chance I’m the only one who made all those assumptions. But if I’m not, did tumblr deliberately place the banner to be misleading about the event’s timing? Or is it just at the top because it’s been promoted?

The banner on my dash

The page I got when I clicked on the banner

Google removed the view image button over the weekend and I didn’t notice until I was searching for fine art by professional photographers for my drawing class. The removal of the button is related to a potential lawsuit that was being discussed by Getty images over the view image button. The button removed the viewer from the internet source and allowed the viewer to download the image with no labor or information. Many are complaining and a chrome extension puts the button back for mobile users.

Below is my excavation of a photo from google search down through Pinterest to its source at which I still could not find an artists name.

After i deleted snapchat, i was of course having conversations with people and they say “didn’t you see my snap?” and i had to explain that i deleted it and we agreed that the update sucked but nevertheless i had to re-download the app to see what my friend had sent so that i could understand the context for the conversation. I was hoping that I’d be able to be a passive consumer of snapchat — receiving messages but not granting any access to the app at all — and found that this wasn’t possible. Once I was logged in again, I couldn’t move past the “oops” message (insinuating i made a mistake when i didn’t) without changing my settings (i tried turning on and off), and then I was constantly receiving other pushes. Also, it seems Snapchat is losing rank already. I like the allcaps IGNORE though.

This week I learned that you can advertise for prescription medication on Facebook. I suppose this shouldn’t be entirely surprising since pharmaceutical companies advertise on television all the time, but this was the first time I noticed that these kinds of ads (including a video stream of risk information and side effects, as you can see above) were showing up on my social media feed. This made me think about the possible ethical ramifications of algorithmic-driven targeted advertising for medication. What about my internet activity makes me a viable consumer target for a certain medication? Are there certain behaviors that flag specific medical conditions and therefore a possible need for a drug? What happens when people can start making assumptions about my health conditions, accurate or otherwise? Will pushing a pharmaceutical agenda over social media put more people at risk for taking drugs that aren’t right for them or that they don’t need? Is there even a limit on what you can advertise on Facebook?

Option 1 (ish): Wish is a wonderful, addicting shopping app that sells millions of products at ridiculously low prices. However, you don’t always get what you order. The pictures tend to be ripped from other other sites. You get what you pay for most of the time. While exploring the app, I’ve notices small things that I may have fallen for without noticing. Most items are “on sale” and show some percentage off. This seems amazing, especially when you can see the original prices. Although regular stores and sites use this method, Wish does something else. They have this “Almost Gone!” banner on some items. I see this banner come and go. You can also see the amount of people who have bought the item, which makes me believe that this is more of a tactic than a fact that it’s almost out. I “fell” for it, wanting to buy the item now rather than later, but noticed when I waited, the banner went away. That could be the app not functioning correctly. If it is a marketing tactic, then I’m not sure if it is the seller or the app Wish doing it. Some could be sold out or it could just be sellers abusing the system. Either way, I think it’s a great tactic for sellers. Seeing the number of sold items makes me think it’s a tactic but it could also be there is a limited amount of the item. The top item here is a hat that has sold quite well while the bottom image is of a drill bit that hasn’t sold many.

The media that I obsessed over this week was narwhal. Narwhal is an application on my iPhone that is a platform for reddit. The reason that I use this instead of the normal reddit app is because of the simplicity and easy access to every function that reddit offers. I may be bias because I hold the phone with my right hand, but the app is very user friendly for right handed people who just want one hand on there phone. Using my thumb I can scroll, up vote, down vote, save, and search without really reaching with my thumb or needing extra effort. For an app like reddit where it is basically just a sea of information to get lost into, it’s very key yo make the user experience very seamless. Even one extra button to click or poorly placed function can negatively effect how much time you put into your redditing. I find myself scrolling through reddit way more on my phone than the desktop interface and I believe it’s simply because of the interface of narwhal. Narwhal sucks you in and then when you realize you’ve been reading for a half hour you snap out of it and realize what you’ve been doing

Up vote

Just pull a smidge farther for down vote

One thing that has been seriously annoying me is the “In case you missed it” feature on Twitter.

These are tweets that I usually see anyways while scrolling or this message pops again to make sure that I REALLY did not miss it.  I usually don’t like or retweet anything when these pop up so I am unsure why it keeps popping up and so frequently.

The media I was obsessed with this week was the Disney Tsum Tsum App. I visited home for the weekend and my mom is absolutely obsessed with this app. Whenever I visit home I always end up playing this app more because of her. The game is also really fun and cute in general. You connect 3 or more matching disney characters to one another to earn points. It’s very simple and doesn’t require a lot of thought which makes it relaxing (and also easy to get sucked into playing for a long time.) The app updates very regularly, with new characters and a new event every month which causes the player to come back for more. Events also make the player play more to finish everything and get a pin, and I haven’t missed a single event yet so I super focus on the game when it gets close to events ending. This month, there were 6 new characters added and the event was for Valentines day. At this point, I mostly play this game because of my mom since it just ends up taking up a lot of time, but I still really like it and this event made me want to play it more again. Every time you finish a card there’s a really cute animation of the characters like the one I posted above. I’ve had the app for a long time so seeing the new animations is one of the things that I like the most because I know what they used to be and I know how much more effort and time is being put into the game now which is super awesome.