PearlTrees is an “interest grouping” online social platform. It enables its users to create an account and create boards to organize anything from their interests and hobbies to favorite recipes and sports teams. Users can upload personal pieces – such as papers or video clips – or can share ones they’ve found on the Internet. To compare it to one of the “Big Four” social media platforms, PearlTrees is best described as Facebook without the unwanted clutter. Sometimes you want to be able to get on a social media platform without seeing 100 new pictures of your random friend’s baby, or maybe you don’t care that everyone is making statuses about March Madness. PearlTrees allows its users to not only dive deeper into exploring their interests, but also allows followers to only see what they want to on their associates accounts.
Once the user has created their site they can personalize it with whatever they please. The application gives its users the opportunity to change their page background to something that identifies with them, as well as move and match their interest boards in any way they choose.
Overview ⇔ Rhetorical Situation ⇔ Design ⇔ Affordances ⇔ Constraints ⇔ Conclusion
Authentically Kat 