User or account or person or what?

Question

Here on Stack Overflow, you're a "user." On 43things.com you're a "person." On other sites, you're an "account." And then some web apps skip the usage of this kind of signifier, and it's just http://webapp.com/yourusername

Do you think that these signifiers imply anything at all? Do you prefer one over the other?

In building an application, I often come to this step in the process and stumble on whether to call users of the application a "user" or a "person" or an "account." I'm sure there are other examples, but these are the ones I come across most often. I'm curious what others think when coming to building the user management functions of their applications. I think most default to using "user," but do you put any thought into why?

Answer 1

Person implies that there is a 1:1 correspondence with a real human being. Account doesn't necessarily imply this (e.g. service accounts), and neither does User, strictly speaking. For example, here on SO there is a "Community" user who is obviously not a real person. It wouldn't make sense to call this the "Community person".

Answer 2

"Account" implies there could be several users for it. Using just / is appropriate if the user is the central part of your application, i. e. a social network like facebook. I'd use "user" for real users, people that can actually login etc. and "person" if you're just managing people, like a search engine for people.

Edit: In the grand scale of the universe, it really doesn't matter.

Answer 3

This semantic is contextual. In a community site, you are often a 'member', on a paid service you have an 'account'. 'User' is the generic default. You should choose a moniker that best describes what is the role of the 'user' in your application.

Answer 4

While they all mean roughly the same to us techies, regular "users" like to be considered "members" rather than accounts/users. It's a friendlier face. If you're public facing, call them members to give them the warm fuzzy feeling that non-techs seem to crave. :)

Answer 5

I prefer to be a user. Account is also quite standard name for the thing. Person seems cumbersome to me. I am a person anyway, registering at given service does not change it.

I wouldn't discuss about subtle differences between the names. Use what is most common, most standard. This will be more user-friendly, since less surprises are more friendly.

Answer 6

Depends on your target audience and what kind of application you are building:

• For community webistes, persons would be my first choice.
• For a developer community site (like this one), definitely user ;-)
• For banking applications, account seems the most logical choice

etc...

Answer 7

I'm not sure user and account are interchangable. For example , I could be "user" on StackOverflow without having an "account". Though if I had an account , I would have more facilities as a user.

Answer 8

I had a similar problem when designing a small site for members of a sporting team. I had two types of accounts that I needed to track - someone could apply to be a member of the team (i.e. to be a player), or they could just apply to have a login for the site, so they could keep track of the players (i.e. without being a player themselves). In the end I decided to call them "logins" and "players". So someone can create a "login" for themselves, then after they login they can create "players". Each "login" then could be linked to multiple "players".

As has been said several times, what you call it should make sense to your particular audience - and this will usually be what is the most common usage out there in internet-land.

Answer 9

Abusers!

Shuffles off...