These are the results of a small survey I conducted on Mechanical Turk regarding how people utilize Activity Streams (also called News Feeds), how they have used them to coordinate/collaborate, and what features they would like to see implemented to make these streams more useful or usable. More information posted on my blog soon: http://www.sanjaykairam.com/blog Also, look for me on Twitter (if you like activity streams) at @skairam.

1. ACTIVITY STREAMS
Mechanical Turk Survey Results

2. PARTICIPANTS
• 78 subjects (42 F / 36 M)
• Subjects paid $0.10

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Mean = 25.6, SD = 8.0
Range = 14 - 47

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Multiple Choice (choose one) Options:
Personal, Professional, Both, or Neither

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“Please list up to 3 Activity Stream tools that you use.”
Facebook (61), Twitter (41), and MySpace (16) were the

7. ACTIVITY STREAMS
FUNCTIONS
• Participantswere asked to list the top three functions that
they felt these activity streams tools served.
• Theseresponses were then loosely categorized into 17 basic
categories.

8. CODING EXAMPLES
• Status
- “alerting new status of friends”
- “keeps me updated on my friends’ lives”
• Communication
- “help stay in touch with friends”
- “communication with colleagues”
• Information
- “give me a quick overview of important things going on”
- “know whats going on in the world”

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“Please list the top three functions that these tools serve for you:
Top functions listed: Status (33), Communication (32), and

10. FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS
• Feature Requests
- “What features do youbelieve could be added to Activity
Streams in order to make them more usable or useful?”
• Collaboration:
- “Have you ever used ActivityStream tools to coordinate with
others (coworkers/friends/etc.)?”

11. FEATURE REQUESTS -
PERSONAL USERS
• Filtering
- “Filtering out certain people, highlighting key words...”
- “I wish it was categorized more. Some people I don’t really
care to know if they went out last night but I do want to
know about if someone had a baby or graduated.”
- “Tagging friends who you particularly would like to view
your activity, especially if what you are writing involves them.”

12. FEATURE REQUESTS -
PERSONAL USERS
• Storage and Search
- “Long term history of activity streams for reference - filing
changes.”
- “Easier Access To Finding People And A Browse Form For
People.”
- “Search feature, only for certain topics, etc.

13. FEATURE REQUESTS -
PERSONAL USERS
• Groups
- “I would like it if I could make some of updates for a smaller
circle of people only. It would be nice, if you could make
groups and then pick which groups you want to see your
updates.”
• Mobile
- “Make it easier to be accessed via cell phone.”

14. FEATURE REQUESTS -
PERSONAL USERS
• Multimedia
- “Audio features...ie. voice messages”
- “Live video streams from my friends would be cool.”
• Location
- “Real time location: to show where am I when I post
something and where the pictures I took were taken.”

15. FEATURE REQUESTS -
PROFESSIONAL USERS
• “Better filters, showing small parts of a message instead of
everything.”
• “Look at making them more mobile friendly so they can be
updated both on pc’s as well as mobile devices”
• “I would like to have them more customizable so you can
choose when and what to see...”

16. COLLABORATION -
PERSONAL USERS
• “Staying up-to-date with the new product’s rumors allows me
to remains knowledgeable in the eyes of the office’s worker.”
• “Yes, I often use it to corrdinate trips to Chicago. For
example, discussing place/time of meetings”
• “Yes, with school mates to cordinate projects we have
together.”
• “Yea, everybody has their open houses for graduation on their
news feeds”

17. COLLABORATION -
PROFESSIONAL / BOTH
• “Yes - currently my daughter’s sports team is beginning to use
twitter so that we can get team results while they travel.”
• “Yes, several colleagues and I use Facebook for this as we can
access both at the office as well as on the road with mobile
devices.”
• “Yes, I’ve used facebook to coordinate rehearsal schedules
with other actors...”

18. SUMMARY
• Findings from Mechanical Turk users demonstrate some basic
categories of needs which are not yet being completely
satisfied:
• Mobility: Access to information and sharing
• Coordination: Real-time collaboration around planning
meetings and projects (as in Google Wave demo).
• Filtering: Showing a subset of whole stream and then
parts of individual messages.
• Customization: Different views on content for different
users and situations.