When somebody will ask me in a few years, what it was like to be on social networks sites like MySpace and Facebook in the early days, the first thing which would come into my mind is:

they had ridiculous bad user interfaces and it was a real mess to use them - but everybody was there.

The whole social media boom of the last years has pointed out an interesting thing: people use the platforms where their friends are and not the platforms which have the best set of design, features and usability. But I am sure that this connection will break up soon.

My Hypothesis

At the moment we still have the situation, that as soon platforms reach the critical mass of users, they more or less don’t need to worry anymore about competitors, who do exactly the same, but maybe have a much better design, because people avoid to change to a platform, when they friends don’t move with them.

But my hypothesis is now:

As soon we will reach the point at which we will have a real data portability and a technology which decouple us from specific platforms - because my data, social network information etc. will be updated in real-time independently from the service I use - we will see a renaissance of awesome interfaces.

Why? Because data portability and the technologies around it will enable us to use the interfaces we want. The fact that all my friends use Facebook, will not force me anymore to also use the web-interface of Facebook.

It will be a kind of liberation and they will be hopefully a growing competition in the realm of good user interfaces again, because platforms providers - especially those whose business model is heavily dependent on advertising - will have to invest again in building better interfaces.

It was really a revelation for me, when I discovered that in the not to distant future, I will be able to use awesome interfaces again, which are really well designed and state of the art, without thinking about the fact: what are all my friends using right now.

Great! Data portability will really change a lot in the end! BTW: that was my personal contribution for todays independence day in the US