I thought of the DIYability of social media websites, and had to make a comparison between major American sites and Chinese ones. I guess it would be unfair to say Facebook as not personalized, because with Timeline, its users can change their profile picture, cover photo, and use other features like add a badge to your page (although I don’ think it’s quite personalized), etc. But still, the pages of Facebook users look more or less the same. Maybe it’s because Facebook is not like a self-built website such as Weebly, which has better personalization functions although it takes a bit skill to design the layouts.
However, Renren (the Chinese equivalence of Facebook) and QQ (largest online instant messaging provider and online community) offer many more features that are fool-proof to use.(A link to my page http://www.renren.com/239219316/profile) I could not only customize my profile picture, but could also create cartoons or flash of it with the sites’ easy-to-use tools; I could not only upload a cover photo, but could also choose form the hundreds and thousands of themes offered by the sites (although that requires a small fee).I could also put floating images over my page, choose a nicely designed music player to play my customized song as my page music, change the color of my page, and put decorative items on my page, etc. I think it’s fun to customize or personalize my own page with those simple yet powerful tools.
Since personalization is the trend, I believe the major websites will offer more features to make it more DIYable for its users. And I will enjoy designing my own stuff and expressing my uniqueness by then better.
However, Renren (the Chinese equivalence of Facebook) and QQ (largest online instant messaging provider and online community) offer many more features that are fool-proof to use.(A link to my page http://www.renren.com/239219316/profile) I could not only customize my profile picture, but could also create cartoons or flash of it with the sites’ easy-to-use tools; I could not only upload a cover photo, but could also choose form the hundreds and thousands of themes offered by the sites (although that requires a small fee).I could also put floating images over my page, choose a nicely designed music player to play my customized song as my page music, change the color of my page, and put decorative items on my page, etc. I think it’s fun to customize or personalize my own page with those simple yet powerful tools.
Since personalization is the trend, I believe the major websites will offer more features to make it more DIYable for its users. And I will enjoy designing my own stuff and expressing my uniqueness by then better.