A social media wish list

I was checking-in at my favorite diner the other day on Foursquare, and I got to thinking about the features I'd like to see to make my favorite social media tools more useful for me and for my clients. But I'm also very interested in hearing your take on this. So, be sure to use the comments section to add your ideas on improving your favorite social media tools.

Foursquare

Foursquare is a great app, especially for highly mobile demographics (e.g., high school and college students). I find it most useful during large conferences (which is when I am usually highly mobile ; ) . A good example was last year at SXSWi. If you've attended SXSW, you understand how hard it can be to coordinate with colleagues, especially if they are meeting you there. Using Foursquare, I was able to let my friends know what sessions I was attending and what events I was at (and vice versa). It worked great. It made the largeness of SXSW much more manageable.

However, there is one thing that could be improved. I'd really like to see different reward levels added. I like the idea of mayorships and receiving rewards for checking in, but why stop there? Why not have a Deputy Mayor for the second most frequented visitor, and a Resident distinction for people who check in frequently but maybe not enough to earn mayorship status? And how about an employee-specific mayorship (how does Overlord sound?) to combat employee mayorships, which doesn't help the business who is trying to attract customers?

I believe multiple reward levels would make it a bit more fun trying to move up the ranks. From a business perspective, it would be easier to reward customers who frequent a business. In fact, Gowalla is trying to exploit this weakness with a program that would reward not just mayors for their repeated patronage.

Facebook

For many, Facebook is social media. And while I think it probably is one of the most influential pieces of technology of the last 20 years, I also think there are some things that could make Facebook even better. For example, I'd love to be able to easily customize my news feed, as opposed to FB trying to figure out what is important to me.  And yes I know there is a level of customization, but I want more control.

The one thing that would solve the aforementioned problem and every other complaint I have about Facebook (less the security intrusions) is this: develop a better UI—maybe even a customizable UI. Sure, by now, we've all been trained on how to use Facebook, but I still think finding certain information on Facebook is a tremendeous hassle. For all the great technology behind Facebook, I think the UI is atrocious.

Twitter

I never use the Twitter.com because it just doesn't have the tools I want or need. I tend to use services like TweetDeck to access my Twitter accounts. I think TweetDeck for your desktop is an amazing tool (TweetDeck for iPad is another story). So how would I improve Twitter? First, be more like TweetDeck or HootSuite. Give me more options and better ways to use your service. And second—and I'll take this over any other improvement—please, please, please give me the free Twitter analytic tool you promised a few months ago.

So, these are the upgrades I feel would make an immediate impact in my social media experience. What would you add to the wish list? How do you think the social media tools you use could be improved?

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

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Comments

[Maria Payroll]

Interesting post. I agree with the points you've made here. I use Facebook and Twitter a lot and I also wish to see the improvements you want. I wish they could do those instead of worrying about making a new look for a person's profile.

[The Duffy Agency]

I agree. As I said, I think a major overhaul of Facebook's UI is needed. When a site is as popular as FB is hard to see how they could disregard the design. But I think a new, more intuitive design would be helpful.

[socialmedia28]

This is interesting. But what is your take on YouTube?

[david720]

FaceBook and Twitter are the twin towers of the social media platforms today and their influence cannot be underrated that Google recently announced their Google+1 button which is awfully similar to Facebook Like. The only difference to Facebook Like is the fact that it will be integrated in the Google search results and search ads. What will Facebook do next?