Social media interactions and the use of third-party management applications on effectiveness and perception of information

Abstract

Social media has a significant impact in our daily social lives, which challenges the traditional face-to-face interaction and/or other conventional media. Most of the social media platforms provide unique and effective web sites that enable the users to connect and interact with one another yet they also update their sites with Web 2.0 improvements and innovative ways of interaction. Twitter and Facebook have launched their own applications that became really popular among users. However, there are also third-party applications, which enable the use of diverse social networking sites through one platform. These platforms are within the reach of everyone and can be accessed directly from desktop without any browser needed. This research focuses on the usability of these third-party management applications. In this context, it will explore whether the desktop versions (third-party software) of those platforms enhance the interaction capabilities and improve user experience. In this regard the focus will be on an application that enables the use of multiple social media sites simultaneously through a single graphical user interface, ‘Yoono’. The user interaction with multiple accounts and social media services at the same time presents the ability to show the information in one screen rather than having separate tabs like has been done in typical browser view. Also it might be possible to have an estimate about if the user prefers to have separate tabs or just one tab to show all of the information regarding the social media that he/she is using. In order to understand this, a qualitative usability test, based on multi-method approach, was carried out with a sample of 8 participants who were experienced mobile social network site (SNS) users. Tests were conducted on a desktop computer with Yoono. After a background questionnaire, the participants were observed during the task executions and additional data was collected through eye-tracking. After the session, participants were asked to fill out a post-test form while having a small debriefing interview to gain a detailed insight into their experience. Findings support the notion that the usability problems might shroud the new and innovative capabilities of Yoono and prevents it to become an application that users would chose to use instead of browser interaction and needs further development in order to be an alternative to browsing.