Yesterday I already wrote in my Blog post written about itthat as a new fun project, I have set about creating my own social network to build a better LinkedIn network. Whether it works, what challenges there are and whether anyone will end up using it, I'll be posting here on my blog in the new Category DevLog publish.
Yesterday I tried my hand at different prototypes for the feed, because the feed is what you see when you log in to any social network, so this experience needs to be inviting and not too cluttered, but at the same time you as a user should still be able to have freedom to customize what you see.
So what have I realized since yesterday?
The feed
One thing that bothers me the most about social networks is the algorithm.
The algorithm of social networks is designed to extend the length of stay of users by using a feedback loop to learn what the user likes and dislikes, because this way you get more and more posts, photos and videos that are relevant to you, which makes it difficult for some to set a limit and say I'm switching off now. Because the longer you stay on the network, the more money you earn through advertising revenue, right?
Before the Recommendation Feed was introduced to social networks, there was the Chronological Feed, i.e. the feed that displayed posts by default according to the time of publication, so it was also easier to work with from a marketer's point of view because you knew when posts were displayed to users and when they were online. This is no longer the case with the algorithm, it is not unusual for me to see posts that are a week old and have not been relevant for a long time.
For this project, I have therefore decided to use the chronological feed, and this is something new that I don't know anywhere else, a topic feed.
Topic feeds show posts on specific topics that you select beforehand.
With LinkedIn, you know that as your network grows, you sometimes receive posts that are not relevant to you. For my part, I'm in the IT industry, but I'm more interested in AI than network technology, and web technology more than Apple trends. Nevertheless, I also have people in my network who only write about German topics in politics, but also people who write about international things.
In order to separate this, you can switch to the topic feed, where you can later select which topics you are currently interested in and only posts from the network will be displayed. This way you can make your posts more accessible to the respective target group.
Here is a first impression:
The privacy setting
LinkedIn allows you to set who can see a post, which is nothing special, but I find the arrangement rather user-unfriendly and somewhat hidden. Therefore, you should be able to find this setting directly without having to change the interface when you want to write the post.
Add media content
Adding media, such as images or videos, is an important feature in social networks, which is why it should not be missing. As you can see in the images above, the "Add media content" button is displayed in the center, and when you select an image, there is visual feedback that this image will be attached to the post.
I want to make it possible to upload different media content, but the problem is disk space, even if it's just a fun project, it's something to think about sooner rather than too late. I will therefore probably have to set a limit of 5MB per image. Initially, videos will probably only be able to be integrated via external links, but later I would like to program a function that allows you to include links from different video platforms so that they can be displayed and played in the post, not like LinkedIn, where you always have to switch platforms for YouTube videos. Or at least that you get a reasonable thumbnail displayed.
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