Work experience students can be a rich source of insights. Two teenage interns spent a week teaching us (older internet users!) about how they use social networking websites.
They told us what they loved about the sites, what they felt was missing and how the sites fit into their lives. Naturally Facebook was a firm favourite, used whenever possible, but it was interesting to learn that Twitter did not seem to hold any appeal for them.
Even more apparent was the extent to which Facebook has taken over their communication needs. Facebook served as a portal allowing the teenagers to connects to their friends - whether they wanted to talk one-to-one, share photos with a group of friends or let everyone know how they were feeling. Awareness of other photo upload services, such a Flickr, was low and, for some teenagers, Facebook was used in preference to separate email applications.
Even if individual elements within the Facebook site are not as good as separate tools they use (the chat features were particularly criticised for having no offline messaging features or 'status' options) they still use them regardless. However, it probably wouldn’t take much for them to transfer their allegiance to another service, if a better all-round experience was on offer and some of their friends made the shift too.
In any case, these teenagers will be entering our workforce before too long, and I look forward to the great tools they will no doubt help us to develop. Team collaboration could become so much more seamless and engaging.
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