The additions blog has a post up from yesterday comparing the user-interfaces of Twitter and MySpace when you land on their home pages. It’s hard to come at this comparison without some sort of bias, and I’ll admit, I think Myspace is a visual quagmire, especially in comparison to Twitter. The insomniac comes to the opposite conclusion.
Basically, the idea is that users come to your site with a set of conventions in mind. Ironically, I wrote a post a while ago on Web Community Forum arguing that MySpace’s “conventions” were essentially non-existent, and that’s why it’s such a pain in the tookus to use.
Regardless of who’s right about which site is easier to use (I am), the point remains: when you design your blog or web service, keep in mind what your primary functionality is, and make those actions as simple as possible for the user. I could invoke the famous Amazon “one-click” story to prove this point. Amazon helps you buy things. One click.
If you’re not careful about how you set up your interface, you’ll risk turning off potential users (or readers, or clients, or customers) the way The Insomniac is turned off by Twitter.
Also, unless you actually log out of Twitter, your home page looks like this:
Notice the people search circled in Red? The whole process outlined in the additions blog post becomes three steps: search, click, click follow.
It’s appropriate for Twitter to require you to log in because the value in twitter is really in being logged in, and being part of the conversation stream. But that’s just my two cents.
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