[kaltura-widget uiconfid=”535″ entryid=”0_pghs62nh” width=”400″ height=”330″ addpermission=”” editpermission=”” align=”right” /]Welcome to YourPage! A social media experience created with you in mind.
We know you are already saying to yourself, “YASNS or yet another social networking site (Boyd 2007)?!?” And that’s a good question.
Well, YourPage is a social media service much like those already in existence such as MySpace, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, but with one cool twist – YourPage is an aggregator, a compiler, a hub, so never again will you miss out on the conversation.
You are probably still wondering, “Will my friends be on it?” The best part is though, that all of your friends are already here.
YourPage’s special coded formula brings together all of your friends on all of their networks and puts them under one roof. I guess you could say we strive to bring people closer together, kind of like a family. We here at YourPage realized how difficult it can be to stay in contact with friends and family when they all might be on different networks. So, we decided to team up with social media giants Facebook, Google, Twitter, and a number of others, to allow their content to be streamed to our site.
What’s even better is that you can now send cross-network messages. If a friend tags you on Twitter, you can message them back from Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, or even send them a Yoohoo! from YourPage.
If your friends haven’t opened their YourPage account, that’s ok too, because a Yoohoo! message will also be sent to their email inbox attached to any of their other social media accounts.
Before we give everything away though, here is a look at our biggest goals for our new site.
Creating a Social Identity
What separates you from the billions of other people out there in this crazy world of ours? What makes you, you? That’s what we want to know. And we are sure that’s what your friends want to know.
YourPage is a place for you to express yourself, to share with the world what you want. YourPage will collect all of the data out there from all of your other social media sites and then let you decide what you want to post. Want to share your posts from Tumblr, Blogger, or even WordPress? Want to show the world your latest lip-synched Justin Bieber video or pictures of your travels in Azerbaijan? You can do it all here.
YourPage allows you to accrue social capital or “resources accumulated through the relationships with other people” (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe 2007). Simply put, by putting yourself out there, you are also accumulating contacts and information that can help you in the future. With the accumulation of all your data all across the web, and from your own input, you’ll never again miss hearing about the concert of your favorite band, the score from your favorite team, and what every one of your connections is saying about it. Our goal is to create a stronger and more connected community.
As Mark Zuckerberg, the esteemed founder of Facebook once said, “People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more. If people share more, the world will become more open and connected (Zuckerberg 2010). And here, we are giving you the greatest ability to do so.
Footprints On the Sands of Time
Some of my family’s greatest times shared together have been sitting down looking through old photo albums. Looking back through pictures of past vacations, little league games, or elementary school plays, allow us to remember and retell great stories over and over again.
On YourPage, you can relive those same stories over and over again as well. And it is all here in one place. And what’s even better, is that these don’t just have to be your memories, they can be the collective memories of all those around you who experienced the same event. These collective memories can help you get a fuller picture of that little league game or class play so many years before (Dijck 2010). Furthermore they can share with you others’ in depth coverage of a story that you may have only heard about on the news (how about that Occupy Wall Street thing). And unlike a photo album the format can be in text, video, audio, photo, and so many others.
Privacy and Security – Our # 1 Goal
We saved the best for last.
Today, we all blindly flock towards the newest and greatest social media sites. Teenagers quickly signup for blogs or other social media networks then get frazzled when their parents or teachers can read them (Barnes 2006). Parents signup for photo sharing sites only to find out their highly personal or even private pictures are being shared with the world. I mean, only a day ago, we all got to see Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend in matching aprons (whoops!) (Allen 2011). Our curiosity gets the best of us sometimes.
Does anyone remember the Google Buzz or Facebook Beacon fiascos (yes, I can say that here, Facebook and Google, have admitted to these failings)? Well, YourPage wants to let you know right from the start that we are different.
Yes, we might make a mistake with our code when a new update comes out – there are always those types of hiccups. But we will always be straight up with you. As you have now seen, on our homepage, you had to check off a box acknowledging that everything you post to our site may be viewable. When posting a video, blog post, photo, or any other social message you will have the option as to whom you are sharing it with, but beware, the web is not a perfect place. Because we collect data from so many different sites, any posts you make to their pages may become viewable to everyone if they have any issues on their end.
But again, we will certainly do our best. Social media sites create a privacy paradox in that the web is open to everyone but you only want your data or information to be shared with a select community (Barnes 2006). We get that and that’s why we will always be honest with you.
The Big Picture (Video, Song, Tweet, and Poke)
Every tweet, Facebook message, shared Flickr picture, or YouTube video will all be here under one roof. And so will all of your friends.
But don’t flock to us because you think Google+ or Facebook are evil. They aren’t (I have it on good authority), but they make mistakes like the rest of us. Yes, they have all of your information from years and years of searches and social messaging, but so will we, in fact we’ll collect it from so many more places (Tynan 2011). We won’t be perfect either if innovation and change is what everyone in this world wants. But we’ll try our best.
At the end of the day, YourPage will allow you to leave your mark on the world, and that’s all any of us can surely hope for.
To learn more about YourPage and how it works, watch the above media clip from our founder and creator. Enjoy!
*Danah Boyd’s journal article Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship played a very large role in the design and development of this website.