Platforms always love to change their user experience. Recently, Twitter changed their interface on mobile by adding two categories on your home page: For You and Following. For You can get Tweets that are trending but not something you follow. Following only has things that involve people you follow. Wait, isn’t the explore page already the place to get Tweets for people you don’t follow? Yes, but it looks like Twitter likes to shake things up.
I see Twitter's trying to sneak in the non-chronological timeline that turns on by default under yet another new name.
If you see this on mobile, your real timeline is the one on the right. pic.twitter.com/JkPxTq7UdN
— Gwen C. Katz (@gwenckatz) January 11, 2023
I remember when YouTube changed its layout back in early 2013. Before then, every YouTube page had cool backgrounds. After the change, it was changed into a banner. All of a sudden, every channel started looking the same. Those backgrounds gave each channel personality and for them to be gone is a shame. We got used to banners by now because they have been around longer than the backgrounds. To be fair, it’s not like the average person is going to spend most of their time on the channel page, but for those that take pride in their appearance, this was probably a huge blow.
The worst contender is when platforms start adding things that make the user experience less than ideal. When Snapchat changed its interface, people started to get confused over what each thing does. I tried getting used to it, but in the end, I was more frustrated with it than I should’ve been. It doesn’t help that Instagram, the second major platform to use stories, had a significantly better interface. After that, I stopped using Snapchat altogether and haven’t touched it for personal use for a few years now.
Platforms are going to change things up, whether you like it or not. It’s your choice whether to continue using it or not. At the end of the day, it’s all about the content, not the interface.