DailyBoredom: COMP113 Blog Assignment #3

DailyBooth.com

I joined DailyBooth, grasping at straws for an online community which I could document for this blog. It is a social media-driven site: one which users join after filling in a simple form (name, username, email address and password) and its purpose is to share a daily photo with "followers". It can be likened to the slew of sites for uploading photos to Twitter (twitpic.com, tweetphoto.com, yfrog.com etc).

I initially came across the site by way of Wikipedia - I was directed to a "List of social networking websites".

The rather disappointing "Welcome" page doesn't allow new users to "sample" the site. Personally, I find this an important aspect of a social media-driven site - I would like to know what I'm signing up for. Instead, I was prompted to "Sign up now" and once this was completed, referred to sixteen individual users I might like to "follow". These individuals are recommended for - one presumes - no particular reason, as the site had not yet been given any information about me or my interests (these can be edited, in a Facebook-like profile found elsewhere on the site).

The "Dashboard" page - something which seems to dominate sites like these now - is initially uninspiring. Your profile avatar is an emoticon smiley face, and as you have yet to upload any photos, you can feel quite bored.
Photos can be uploaded through a variety of methods: traditional upload form, through email or mobile, or by using a webcam. While I can't think of any solutions that would improve user experience at this point, as a new user I was bored and didn't feel as if I had much invested in the community - I didn't feel inclined to contribute.

My first submission

Upon uploading my photograph, I was disappointed to discover that it just sat, bored, on my dashboard. How then, did I get it onto the fun, "live" map? This remains a mystery, with the geo-tag function in an undisclosed location somewhere on the site. If it's not easy to find, I can't be bothered looking, and to be honest I think this is to the detriment of the DailyBooth community.

The live map itself was also not as much fun as I expected. At first glance, DailyBooth appears to be a site where people might post pictures of fun, exciting happenings during their day - to me this held the possibility of seeing photos from fun places like "that place", 17 minutes in to the film "Home" - but instead, the overwhelmingly most popular upload seems to be the self-portrait. I fail to see the point. I don't know, maybe some "followers" like to see half-dressed girls lying in bed with a caption such as "mE lying in bEd, LOL". Not really my thing.

DailyBooth appears to lend itself to the ever-increasing number of social media-driven sites, but it's not one I would recommend. Yawn.

This is "that place", by the way. Know where it is? Tell me!