Last.fm and Facebook Design

It is interesting to note the similarities between Facebook's homepage design and that of Last.fm. Although it seems impossible to know which came first, it is interesting to compare these two sites against each other. Both include tabs across the top and down the right side in order to help the user navigate through the site. The Recently Listened Tracks feed resembles the News Feed shown by Facebook. Much like profile pictures are displayed on Facebook to the right of their respective bullet in the feed, Recently Played Tracks display the artist's picture as well. There are time stamps on each individual post as well, and other infomation is displayed in boxes to the right.

It could be a mere coincidence that both of these sites went with this layout. It could also just be the best possible layout for either, but I believe it's more than that. By using similar layouts, each site helps the other out. If someone is a Facebook user who makes a Last.fm account, they will find it easier to use because of the similarities between the two. The navigational buttons, although different colors from each site, are both contrasted against white backgrounds. They are located in similar areas, and can help a user find their way around a site without having to look too far. The first place a Facebook user is going to look for a navigational button is the top of the page, and when they go to Last.fm, they will find that the first place to look is the right place.

Both sites place their search bars in the same area. Their overall coloring is even similar. Like Facebook contrasts blue and white, Last.fm uses red and white. Both place their logos in the upper right corner, and their headers only contain links to various parts of the site.

Other social networking sites have similar layouts, but not quite. For example, Myspace shows tabs along the top as well, with a search bar located in the top right corner.

It also centers its feeds, but rather than condensing them, like Facebook, it seperates each individual type of feed. Myspace contrasts against Facebook and Last.fm vividly. The user can choose the coloring of everything from their homepage to their profile. They can decide the layout and font colors. Every individual details can be changed through code on Myspace, but users on Last.fm and Facebook do not have these options. What does that mean about Last.fm and Facebook's message to their users?

Why doesn't Last.fm want you to customize every detail of your profile? For this alone--Last.fm isn't about the individual expressing themselves visually. Rather, this is about the music alone. When the user can't change the look of their profile from their friends, viewers focus on the content rather than the design. Music is the focus of Last.fm, not your favorite color. Last.fm isn't meant to aggregate every bit of information about the user, but rather, specific bits of knowledge pertaining to music alone. Last.fm isn't about finding a new boyfriend or best friend. It is not a social networking site for finding long lost classmates and peers. Last.fm is about finding your new favorite band, which is easier to do when the website's software says, "Here. This is what you like based on what you listen to..."

Recently Listened Tracks

Shown on the user's profile, this chart incorporates the main themes of Last.fm, both visually and conceptually. The color theme is maintained in this chart, while still displaying images relevant to the content (album covers, artist images). These images are small enough to not interfere with the overall visual coloring of the chart and site. The song being currently "scrobbled" is placed on top, and is highlighted and given a larger image. This visual change gives focus to Last.fm's major theme of immediacy. Their information is at the moment. Small play buttons show Last.fm's ability to communicate with listeners tastes. They can play whatever songs they listened to most recently off the website itself. There is a conversation between the media player and the website, but neither depends on the other to play back music or to create an overall display of the user's musical preferences.

The visual design of the chart is very simplistic and therefore very easy to understand. The chart is straight to the point, simply giving artist name, track name, and when it was played. It also displays a heart symbol in order to show which tracks have been "loved" by the user. Asteriks are shown to display tracks in which Last.fm has automatically corrected the spelling of the artist or song title. The symbols help simplify the chart, and Last.fm does not include artist background or even the album in this chart. This is very much with the theme of Last.fm. The simplier the better. Last.fm desires to take a large amount of information and condense it into clean-cut, easy to understand, to the point charts and bullets. The site's overall simplistic design creates the mood of easiness.

Charts

Last.fm's musical aggregating is shown and displayed in charts. This visual device is perhaps the most integral part of Last.fm, and takes the mess of a music player playlist and turns it into an organized design charting musical preferences and tastes by artist, song, and number of plays. By clicking the charts tab located on the side of the profile page, the user can interact with a variety of charts, and in essense, explore their musical preferences in these organized charts. They can manipulate the timeline of the aggreation, and decide if they are to be organized by artist, song, or albums.



The charts can be embedded into other sites via code. The designs for the chart vary, and can be chosen by the user. The charts are a live feed that automatically updates itself. Last.fm uses these immediate charts to represent itself on other sites. By showing charts that are fully live, this represents a website that is fully live as well. They are always current, and there is no lag on their feeds. These charts can be displayed anywhere, and can pique the curiousity of non-Last.fm users. The chart displays Last.fm's site themes in a short clickable blurb of information. It's a simple chart, without much detail, and leaves the viewer wondering how this website can know what their users are listening to at that exact moment.

Scrobbling

Last.fm's software downloads onto a user's computer as a plug-in in their music player. As shown here on Windows Media player, the plug-in is considered a background device. This is interesting because it isn't as if the plug-in is actively asking for input from the user/listener. Rather, it sits quitely in the background "recording" all of the music player's output. Last.fm has termed this as "scrobbling." Scrobbling is the software in essence recording all the information coming from the music player.

As the music player is being used to play a song, a side dialog box from Last.fm can be opened by the user on their computer. This dialog box is the user's direct link with Last.fm's site, without even being logged in directly through a webpage. The dialog box displays not only the song and artist being currently played by the user, but also gives a biographical history of the artist. It displays tags of the song, similar artists, and fellow listeners. It also allows the user the ability to "love" certain tracks. This "loved" feature seems to correspond directly to the Last.fm's ability to recommend artists based on a user's listening habits.

The dialog box corresponds directly the the user's own personalized radio created by Last.fm and the user. The user can play a variety of "radio stations" developed by the user's listening habits. "My Recommendations," "My Radio Station," "My Loved Tracks," and "My Neighborhood," are all based on Last.fm's analysis of the user's music habits. All of the information submitted by the user and "scrobbled" by the software is aggregated and analyzed, and then turned into a radio station the user can listen to at any time that is created and designed for the user personally.

My Profile...

After logging in, the user has an online profile that is customizable in a way similar to other sites. It displays your name, age, location, a photo, and a personal website. It displays how long the user has been a member, which seems to engage the user. There is a sense of loyalty in the site almost, and this is also displayed by the user's number of plays. It shows statistics related to the use of the software, including number of playlists and "loved tracks."

Below these basic statistics is when the profile becomes more personalized. This isn't in the sense of a user's direct input into the website like age and location, but rather Last.fm is more directed towards the user's daily music listening, without them directly imputing information. It is as if a camera was directly following an individual, recording all of their behavior they may not be inherently aware of. An individual may have no idea that they had listened to Britney Spears 566 times since 2005, but Last.fm records this information. The website helps the user view their muscial preferences in an inactive sense. They don't directly have to tell the program who they listen to the most, because the Last.fm software does it for them.

This design of the program allows the user to participate in a larger music conversation. The relationship between the visual design of the profile and the site's function interact with each other. The layout is simple, yet broken down. It does not require alot of input on the user's end in how the profile looks, but rather, remains clean and distinct. This visual aspect of the site reflects the site overall. Last.fm is not looking for the user to directly design their profile, but rather, allow Last.fm a look into the user's preferences and create a design based on that.

Unlike Myspace, users cannot customize every detail of the visual appeal of their profile. All they have control over is content, and solely in the least active of ways.

Let's Log In...

As a user of Last.fm for several years, I have watched Last.fm develop and refine their goals as a website. Initially interested solely in displaying my musical preferences in a cohesive manner, Last.fm provided a simplier way. I didn't have to actively try to understand or analyze what artists I played the most of. Rather, Last.fm would pay attention for me. Their user interface has developed throughout the years, but has evolved into a cohesive, interactive, Web 2.0 website that allows the user to interact with their own profile, other users', and the greater musical conversation they fit in.

On initial log-in, the user sees an initial "dashboard-like" webpage. It shows recent tracks added to the user's libarary, ads, a search bar, and recommended tracks. As the user scrolls down, they see similar units of information, but perhaps not as relevant to the individual user. There are pending friend requests, current friends, and what these contacts are listening to. There is an area of free music downloads available to the user, and tracks "loved" by friends. This initial page give the user many different individual boxes to interact with, yet, we are left with a cohesive design that correllates them all. Although the connection of music is within all areas of the initial log-in page, the level of connection to the individual user decreases as the user scrolls down. Beginning with their own individual tastes, as the user peruses down the page, it evolves into their friends musical preferences and lastly, music that has no direct correlation with them as an individual. Interestingly enough, the website's advertising is directly across from the most personalized information displayed.

Last.fm is directly engaging the individual user with this layout. Although they are asking the user to interact with others and engage with "friends," they are more directly asking for the user to converse with the conversation of music as a whole. Rather than playing their friend's recent plays at the top of the page, they show prefernce to the user understanding their own personal tastes, and how they can find other artists to help develop that taste. Last.fm is placing focus upon the individual user and the development of their music habits, encouraging them to perceive their own listening habits and other music that is recommended based on such.

Last.fm::An Introduction

Last.fm is an interactive site which gains interaction with the user with downloadable software that integrates itself with the user's personal music player. The software, used within programs like Itunes and Windows Media Player, works as a background plug-in, essentially recording the user's musical tastes. The program not only takes a record of each individual song played, but records all information relevant to that individual song, such as artist, number of times played, genre, etc. This recorded information is then sent through the internet to a user profile on Last.fm's website. The profile not only displays the user's musical tastes as recorded by Last.fm, but Last.fm also analyzes these recordings, and develops charts displaying musical preferences, playlists, and user recommendations. Essentially, Last.fm has developed software that pays attention to the music played on a user's laptop. As a song is played, the software "records" this play, and sends the information back to the user's online profile. The profile analyzes this play, and in turn, develops a cohesive definition of the user's musical preferences and tastes. The website passively engages a user by recording their music essentially as a "background plug-in."