Websites have to obey rules!

Numerous websites have tips & tricks concerning the ‘construction’ of websites. Commons tips usually involve programming tips and making appropriate use of colours and images. However, there are some serious rules, which a website needs to obey, in order to be successful. These rules, however, haven’t got anything to do with html or php or how awesome you are with Photoshop or any of that stuff. 

Everyone knows the rules which I’m implying (or for the sake of god should at least know them when they are 10+). Yes, I’m talking about Social Rules. When I visit a website, I don’t want to be yelled at like: WELCOME!!! Or you are 2930254th Visitor!!!! This will only result in frustrations and the loss of another visitor on your ‘beautiful’ website. Another rule is consistency; although this seems obvious, it hardly is. I have an example of a Dutch website (my apologies for the non-dutchies, it’s better shown in Dutch as in English) about this issue, check out: http://www.hansanders.nl/. The website keeps switching between “u” en “je”. That’s really professional Hans Anders… 

Another example is the use of different languages. Check the picture below (even if you’re not dutch):

The text on this banner is in Dutch and then they use a button which has English text on it, see what I mean about consistency?

These are just a couple of things which I noticed when reading about some tips & tricks about websites. However, it ain’t hard to apply some social rules. After all, visitors of your website are people just like you and me, so treat them as you want to be treated.

Kind regards,

Rik Terpelle

Fun in Social Media?

I was wondering the other day; do we use Social Media such as: Facebook or Twitter for creating and maintaining relationships or do we use it for fun? For example, at Twitter, do we tweet “Wow, that college today was really boring”, because we want to create or maintain a relationship with people who also found the college to be rather boring? Or, do we tweet simply because we can and we think that it’s a fun activity to do? I believe that we might use it for both of the reasons, although the fun factor is the leading one, because why would you engage in any kind of relationship which isn’t fun at all? We like to share funny, interesting, boring or beautiful things that we come across in life and we perceive joy when sharing it with our friends or even strangers, as long as it is entertaining. The joy from sharing also shows itself in messages such as: “you really have to see this” or “you don’t believe what just happened…”. 

Although we have this course called “Social Aspects of New Media” which zooms in on communication & relationships via computer mediated communication (CMC), I am quite convinced that we use these aspects only because it’s fun and perhaps worth noting: because we can. Isn’t it just fun to check out profiles of people which we don’t know, and perhaps laugh at their silly pictures or statements? I don’t think that there is any relationship involved with this attitude, yet it happens. 

Ok, ok I understand that we also want to keep in touch with our friends but then again, isn’t the real reason why we do that to have fun? When I’m bored I log into Facebook, because I want to be entertained and not to start any relationship. How about you?

P.s. Just for fun, check out the videoclip which you can find in my post before this one, quite a funny explanation of Social Media.

Kind regards,

Rik Terpelle