Social Media Efforts Towards Accessibility

By: Taylor Golemme

Being a good marketer and company means creating platforms that are inclusive to all. Aspects like the way that an app functions or how easy it is to use is just the beginning of what it means to master the art of usability. The social media platforms looking for long-term success are those that recognize their followers, learn from them, and then create applications tailored to the user experience.

Platforms like Twitter, who have recently ranked in the 82nd percentile for usability, received a lot of recognition for their user friendliness in the past five years (MeasuringU, 2018). Their application has continuously seen a growing user base and therefore has seen a rising inflow of traffic. As of now, Twitter has 396.5 million users internationally, with 206 million of them being daily users. With that amount of inflow, they have adapted quickly to encourage using the app (BackLinko, 2022).

Twitter’s web interface is known for being simplistic and easy to use for new and old users. Features like autocomplete when typing in @ accounts, the ability to create threads, and easy access to direct messages are all prime examples of Twitter making usability a forefront of their platform. When challenged with other rising platforms, Twitter has managed to stay afloat through focusing on what their user base truly wants and needs.

While TikTok is blowing up in popularity since starting in 2017, there are some lingering usability issues that haven’t gone unnoticed. One thing that has troubled the app is the format for video recording. While applications, like Twitter, keep symbols and additional features to a minimum, Tiktok includes many options when recording. These many choices include the clip options (filters, timers, flash,etc), clip speed, the length of how long you want to record, and more. TikTok will have to challenge themselves to find the balance between being unique and keeping the choices simple enough for usability to compete with other large social media apps.

It is important that social media platforms continue to put emphasis on usability in order to keep a strong user base. Without the user, there is no platform.