Hi everyone,
Today, although its a little behind schedule, we will be talking about the visual world of social media, in this case, Imgur. Imgur is just one of the many different social media sites. This time we will be looking at one of the most important parts of social media and design, how. Mostly it will be my rambling of how I have interacted with it and some remarks.
How is/are social media sites? Why does this make them so interesting and engaging? Since there are some many of them, we will just stick to Imgur for now, and perhaps look at some others later.
So, if you are new to the blog, I suggest reading some of the other posts so you have a little bit of the context of what the blog is talking about. The posts span over a couple of years and engage contemporary pedagogy and these reviews of social media.
Enough of the shameless plug for the rest of the blog, let’s talk about Imgur. Imgur is one of the those site that takes time and thinks about perhaps when their users are going to be using the site, probably at night, and makes the back screen darker.
This makes the overall brightness of the screen lower and less stressful on the eyes. I noticed this immediately, and after careful “studying” of the site (hours and hours of fun looking over what people submitted in a never ending stream of content), my eyes did not get fatigued or strained from high contrast.
This is all part of the how of design. This extends not only to the actual coded product that is received, but also the users engagement to the site and how they might want to continue coming back. I would say that Imgur has done this very well. The interactions between some of the staff who frequent the site and users is often positive, and one average the site’s community is supportive.
Stay on any site long enough and you are going to see changes. I have been lurking on the site for many years and have seen how Imgur has changed and evolved. That is critical to social media and content sharing sites. They evolve, they grow, they change. This constant renewal keeps the users engaged and experience fresh.
One of the new developments was something called Camp Imgur. Impromptu Meet-ups have occurred many times, but this was an opportunity for members (who could afford to) to come together and meet up in the real world, organized at a very large scale. This concept is incredibly interesting because you have now combined the digital world with the physical world. This shows the power that social media has in bringing people together.
I might be a little nervous about going, but if its Imgur, those who go probably will have a good time.
I would say that once again, Imgur, along with other social media sites, is an experience itself. To really see what it is, go see it, and have fun. Upvote, downvote, make OC, do whatever, just don’t break the right arrow key and you can see hours of content. Sometimes you see things you may not like. One right arrow and away it goes.
Have fun and curse me later when your day disappears.
Next time I will go over another unique platform, twitter. In chunks of 140 characters or less.