Face-off: The blank faces at Flickr and 43Things
The top face is the one you get when you first create a profile on Flickr. The bottom face is the one you get when you first create a profile on 43Things. Which is better?
Each site gives you tools to express yourself and your creativity, and one of the first tools you see is your profile picture. The default Flickr profile picture (top) looks much more blank and expressionless. The default for 43Things (bottom) is more perky and happy (and the Yahoo Answers default is even moreso, though they seem to have stock cartoon faces you can use, too). I immediately wanted to replace the default on Flickr -- who wants to be that drab? -- but I'm less motivated to find a replacement on 43Things. Does making the default undesirable make people more motivated to personalize their profile?
I chose a completely random goal from the 43Things home page: "download episodes of 'Lost'." Then I looked through the list of 539 people who are interested in that goal. Of those 539, just 9 of them (about 2%) had changed the default profile picture to a personalized picture. On the analogous Flickr group, "LOST - the series," I looked through the list of 128 group members, and found that 120 of them (about 94%) had replaced the default profile picture with a personalized picture.
Very scientific, I know! Someone get my lab coat. Of course, Flickr is all about pictures, so presumably its users have a personal picture more readily at hand. But, the results are awfully striking, and they tend to make me think that the completely expressionless Flickr default is a call to action, and an effective one.
Anyone from Flickr or 43Things want to contribute the actual percentage of user accounts that have personalized profile pictures? How about from an IM network, Yahoo Answers, or other examples?
Update: Here's the default face from last.fm, which Mike suggested in the comments as a better comparator:
In the last.fm Lost group (that turned out to be a fortuitous choice), 117 of 122 members (about 96%) have changed the default profile picture to a personalized picture.
Update 2: Erik Benson from Robot Co-op, makers of 43Things, says in the comments that on that site, "20% of people with at least one goal have profile images, and 60% of people with 10 or more goals have profile images." He also explains why the Lost page is not the best sample. Thanks much, Erik.
Anyone from Flickr, last.fm, or other sites that use blank face profile defaults want to contribute their numbers? Even a rough comparison of scale ("More than twice what Erik reports" or "A lot less" or whatever) would be interesting.
Update 3: Stewart Butterfield from Flickr/Yahoo says in the comments that "On Flickr, 44.3% of people who have uploaded at least one photo have personalized their buddy icon and the % goes up dramatically with the number of photos uploaded. " He also notes that the community features (including groups like the one I surveyed) have a higher percentage of custom faces than otherwise. Thanks, Stewart!
So, a little more than twice the people with one photo uploaded on Flickr, compared to people with one goal on 43Things, have customized their faces. Still not definitive because of the photosite/non-photosite difference, but persuasive. We need more data! last.fm? Anyone else?
Thanks much to everyone who has contributed ideas and data. This is turning out to be one of my favorite things about Radar -- the non-proprietary data sharing in threads like this one and Tim's "Database War Stories" posts. Let's do more of this.
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Okay, that sounds good.
Looking at last.fm's Lost-TV group, 117 out of 122 members (about 96%) have replaced the default profile picture (above) with a personalized picture.
Seems to make the case even more strongly.
I am wondering now what is really better as a site developer?
Perhaps using a rather more boring icon encourages people to personalise their profile, more than something fun?
This is something which I will test when we add image uploading for members.
Extremely interesting. The impact of such a detail is amazing, I wouldn't have thing that the difference would be so big. All that with a slight curve in 43Things' default face.
Should we expect ugly faces, ugly-everything on websites starting from now?
The Web is going to be a lot uglier, and that's all your fault marc !
Interesting post. I just took a quick look into the 43 Things database and found that 20% of people with at least one goal have profile images, and 60% of people with 10 or more goals have profile images.
The Lost example is a bit of a non-representative example because it's one of a couple popular goals that get a lot of people from google search (people looking for lost episodes to download) and who might sign up for the site thinking that we have it for them to download.
In any case, it's interesting to think about why people put up a picture of themselves. Part of it is to make your page look more complete, and part of it is probably about identifying with the profile that you've created of yourself and wanting to invest in it a little bit.
The principles of sociable software(that is software that attempts to be sociable to humans) suggests that adding a face will make visitors feel better about the site, provoking a reaction like: "This thing is like me... It has a face."
Smiles have to make a site more subconsciously attractive. You see a smile, and tend to smile back, right?
I'm not sure about a sad face.. not seen the research on that. I'd suspect that it is not as initially attractive as a smile, if not actually negative. Or does it bring out the nurture in visitors: "If I change the photo, I'll make this site happy."
flickr's choice is interesting. I think they are trying to say something like: "Here is an expressionless canvas for you, personalise me", or "play with me, make me feel something".
I'd go with Flickr's one - it's utterly blank, whereas the 43things one presupposes happiness or friendliness. It's a pity Flickr doesn't allow multiple icons or I'd choose to use a customised version of their blank face - maybe an animgif that stays blank for ages then just for an instant pulls a face & sticks its tongue out at the viewer. :-D
We are working in this exact issue! Nice to see the ideas here. We had determined that it is better to have something that the user doesn't really want representing them, to encourage personalization. I would say it is worse for site visitors if the encouragement isn't enough to get rid of the more boring default.
I wonder how many people have taken my approach, and personalized the existing default just a little bit. It just leapt out at me when I first signed up with Flickr: I couldn't resist.
On Flickr, 44.3% of people who have uploaded at least one photo have personalized their buddy icon and the % goes up dramatically with the number of photos uploaded.
Pretty much any "community" part of Flickr will skew very high since people who are involved in those parts of Flickr will be much more inclined to make a buddy icon. Some heavy users who are using the pure hosting/management capabilities never bother to make one.
Personalization is the only thing to be a little bit different, i like Tinos approach...
We are working in this exact issue! Nice to see the ideas here. We had determined that it is better to have something that the user doesn't really want representing them, to encourage personalization. I would say it is worse for site visitors if the encouragement isn't enough to get rid of the more boring default.
Heh, I personalized my flickr face but I did not personalize my 43things face.. this might actually be the reason for this
so what? Indeed the bottom sign is more smooth and looks friendlier in general. But is it such a big deal? For me it´s not. But I would agree that most people don´t want an expressionless default picture. This is really an interesting question.
Mmh, I didn't use flickr until today but perhaps I should try it to share my photos.
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Mike [05.22.06 12:47 AM]
Why not compare 43things' face against the one used by last.fm? As goal setting and music have far less to do with photos, it will be a much fairer comparison, while last.fm's default is drab enough to encourage replacement.