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scriptumdesign · 8 years ago

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UX Reflection - Social Analyzer

Have you ever wondered about if your family or friends are actually following you back on different social media apps? Well sadly the app I’m going to be talking about today doesn’t make finding out any easier than if you were to go through your friend's list on the original social media app.

The app I’m going to be reviewing today is called Social Analyzer - version 1.1.2, an app with 2.9 stars in the Google play store.

In the main description for this app, it reads “Wonder if she follows back too? Or did she stop following?” The app claims that you will be able to find out who follows you back and when reading the full description of this application it states that you can “connect your social media accounts; discover your real fans; find out who stopped following you; and prepare surprises for your friends who doesn’t follow you back”

The part of this statement that interested me the most was the last part, “Prepare surprises for your friends who doesn’t follow you back” I wanted to find out what that meant.

When I opened up the app itself it had a pretty simple interface. That was pretty instinctive to use. Clicking the connect button prompts a popup to appear to log you into the social media of your choice - at least if it's in the range of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

I had inputted my information for all of the different social media to get a grasp on if anything changed between them. Within the three social media sections, I was able to gain access to they didn’t vary in many ways. The biggest Difference I found was the subsections as in the Facebook application there are only three while in the Twitter and Instagram sections there are 5.

Something I should mention before I go more in-depth with the review is that when I was connecting my social media accounts, the name of the app did not coincide with the name asking permission to have access to the social media, I found this is a bit suspicious so I did a bit of digging. It turns out this application was originally made in Turkish and was translated over to English which would explain the many grammatical errors that I have found throughout my use of the application. However, let’s go back to talking about the application itself.

Going into depth about the facebook section for a moment, I was confused why that social media was included in this app; As Facebook doesn't have a followers function - it has friends, a mutual agreement between people to follow each other.

When looking at the inside of the of the Facebook section there is no difference in the “your followers” and “people you follow” section - other than the picture’s shown on the outer part of the app.

On the inside of both the section its the exact same people in the exact same order. I’m making an educated guess here and saying it is because of what I mentioned before about being “friends” on Facebook is a mutual agreement between two parties.

The main thing that I found intriguing in this section was the “Secret Followers” section. I wanted to know what having a secret follower on facebook meant, was it someone who regularly checked your Facebook feed or someone with an unaccepted friend request? When I went to open it, however, this section of the application it showed me a subscription screen, meaning in-app purchases to be able to see your “secret followers”

I had originally planned to get a single day subscription to the app just to get the full scope of the capabilities of this app without breaking the bank. This is deceiving however as the daily subscription packet was a trick; for when I clicked on it this appeared.

Instead of being a daily subscription, it was not only monthly but the entirety of three months. If the makers of this app were going to have a 3-month subscription option - it should clearly state so instead of hiding it behind a daily option, which ends up disappointing the user who wanted to try out the full version of the application for a couple of days.

In the ends, however, I wasn’t deterred by this deception and continued trying to experience all of the aspects of this application and ending up purchasing the weekly subscription to Social Analyzer. Looking forward to seeing my “secret followers” that the description and notifications of the app had hyped imagine my surprise when upon trying to open up and see the secret followers, the screen hadn’t changed!

Thinking that maybe an error had occurred and the payment hadn’t gone through yet, I waited a couple hours and tried again. However, nothing had changed since the last time I looked at it - except for the fact that when I now clicked the weekly subscription button this appeared

This error screen clearly shows that I had subscribed and nothing had gone wrong with my payment, the other thing it meant was that there were no secret followers.

In my opinion hyping up a function in both the description of the application and sending notifications specifically about it, and then not having that function exist is a truly underhanded move - if an application says they have a function they should have it!

So far the only good thing I have found about this app is the notifications that they send. They seemed friendly and aren’t constantly bombarding your phone. When you first download the application they send you the following notification.

I enjoyed how friendly these seemed. As well other notifications that were sent were intriguing and made me want to open the application to see what they meant.

Other than the notifications being slightly pleasant, I find this application functionally useless in what it says you are able to do. As well as making it frustrating to even use with all of the ads popping up everytime you try and go unto a different page, and it constantly crashing.

Even in the Twitter and Instagram sections, where it actually tells you who does and doesn’t follow you this app has nothing that the original social media apps don’t have.

In Instagram, as shown above, you are clearly able to see who follows you and if you follow them back; it’s the exact same thing with twitter as well!

In conclusion, this application is functionally useless. The only way to improve it to meet people's needs is to pivot the direction completely, as the function of this application is already covered by the original social media services themselves. If this application ever wanted to be more successful it needs to change the idea it's surrounded on - “are they following me back?”. The question itself is not hard to answer as all you need to do is see who follows you, there is no need for a secondary application to look through your follower list when it doesn’t even alphabetize it.

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