The Internet is a continually changing media format. Web sites (or to be increasingly accurate, web applications/platforms) are updated frequently, with features removed, added, changed, and so forth. Throughout these updates, I am confronted with one truth: I use these platforms for fundamentally different things than what the makers presume.
Most recently, Facebook changed its layout. This change ruins my most clever solution; lists. I made a list called “Interesting,” of 98 people out of 333 friends on FB. I put this list above “News Feed” on the sidebar, so that instead of seeing updates from all 333, I only see info about people I am actually interested in. This effectively reduces my friends list, without actually defriending anyone. The new layout does not allow this, so I am back to seeing uninteresting updates from people I don’t care about. This Facebook “upgrade” directly decreased my enjoyment of the site. A previous “upgrade,” which severely restricted the functionality of Search, also directly decreased the utility of the site.
On Tumblr, my list of things to improve is simple: it not crashing so often. Not on my list: reply with photo, tumblarity, directory w/ categories, “radar,” “tumblr tuesday,” and on and on. A while ago, the layout of the “followers” page was changed. Instead of showing all of them, it is broken into pages. I suppose this is good for people with 1000 folllowers. But for me, having them all on one page allowed me to quickly ⌘F a username. The in-site search feature requires you to type the entire username in, exactly correct. Not useful, and includes no link to the tumblr when you “search.”
Why do all these upgrades result in a reduction of utility? I must use these technologies in a different way than the majority, or at least, differently than how the makers think people use them. Why can’t the Internet work the way I want it to?
