Task: Find 4 social media, or community based websites and analyse them.
The core purpose of this site is to talk about games. Anyone who has a steam account and plays games can post to it. If the user captures screenshots while in game or uploads a screenshot to their profile (including gifs) they can share it to the community page.
Steamcommunity.com manages to create a great place to share game footage by building it into its steam interface. Prompting the user to post their screencaptures straight after they have finished playing. Because steam community is incorporated into its steam client as well as being a website it has a massive reach to other gamers.
To make the site experience better (read easier to use), it makes use of category tabs, it gives the abiltity to sort between viewing the most popular or most recent posts, the ability to search for a player, a group, or specific content. In addition to this it has quick access to the steam store which is great for Valve because only a few clicks away is the ability for users to spend more money.
The core purpose of textsfromsuperheroes.com is to display comedic 'back and forths' between superheroes. It allows users and viewers to like the image or 'reblog' (share) it.
The site accomplishes this quite simple goal by having the homepage be a stream of image posts. Each image that is posted has small sharing icons in the bottom left of them.
A feature that is not so unique anymore, but does help make the experience on the site better is that it is quite minimalist - there are little or no distractions. You go there for the images, and the images are what you get. The site also has a random button if you just want a quick laugh.
Wallaceandgromit.com 's purpose it to be a hub for all things Wallace and Gromit. It is a place for people to discuss, create, and buy things to do with Aardman's Wallace and Gromit characters.
The site accomplishes these tasks by utilising forums and competitions as well as inclusing a link to the Aardman online store. Wallaceandgromit.com has a 'Your Creations' page in which users post their creations and other users rate them and/or comment on them. This page actually serves as the competition page for 'Nick Park's Creation of the Month'.
The Wallace and Gromit styling is not necessarily a 'feature' but I do think it makes the site experience better. The site doesn't really utilise any features which are groundbreaking or new. It uses existing features such as an easy to use navigation pane on the left, links to other related sites on the right, and allows you to create an account which allows to to post in the forums and enter competitions.
In essence the idea and core purpose of this site is to connect people who need land to grow on with people who have land to share. The site was part of the 'Grow-your-own' movement in England.
The site manages this goal by getting users to create an account, then state whether or not they want to: 'find land', 'offer land', or 'help out'. There is also a forum for users and a 'Community questions' section for members to contribute to. This site makes use of tags in google maps to show if there is a landshare near you as well. Landshare.net also has many how-to-guides as well as recipes which add an extra incentive to grow your own.
A unique feature of this site is its use of google maps showing every location for landshare which is available. As with all the other sites I mentioned, this one also includes the ability to like and share the pages. this site has its navigation bar at the top of the page. Once on the page you want, there is another level of navigation - sub headings - to find more precise information.
