Social Networking

Social networking plays an important role in today’s society. Many individuals participate on those social networking sites, same as clubs, business, non-profit organizations, civic groups and political organizations as well. It not just improves our communication from each other also economic. 

It is easy to create a social networking account such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter online. You can post your information, photos, and videos on your account and share with their friends. You also can view other people’s profiles and leave comments. It is very convenience for you to access the account at anytime and anywhere with digital device and internet. Even your friends or family members live far away from you, you can still have close communication with them through these social networking sites. According to the interview make by Stephen J. Dubner, the result shows with the people participate on Facebook, it helped them “maintain or strengthen relationships: they used the site to look up old high school acquaintances, to find out information about people in their classes or dorms that might be used to strike up a conversation, to get contact information for friends, and many other activities.”

Social networking also brings benefit to companies. Many companies are “using the service to keep their customers and anyone interested in the company, informed in real time about a crisis” (Reardon Marguerite 2009).  AT&T is one of company using Twitter to communicate with its customers and update information about the company, such as in the case that happened at Silicon Valley and the San Francisco, AT&T had updated the information through Twitter to its customers about the outage. These online resources provide companies the ability to interact with customers and build up relationship with them. Another example from IBM, it has created “Beehive” (Dubner, Stephen J. 2008) – an internal social network site which to improve workers’ communication and build up the relationship between teams. Social networking sites also are good platforms for business to gather information from people and do the advertising for their business. 

 However, there is also some “dark side” of these social networking sites. There is risk for people to loss their privacy from those sites. People have to be very careful when they post their information or photos because there are some people trying to take the advantage of those sites to use for wrong or illegal purpose. It is easy for them to create a fake account and pretend someone else. Also many Employers view their employees’ information on social networking sites. There are some cases people not get hire or get fire because the information or photos that they post on those sites. Companies are also collect customers’ information by visit people’s site without their permission. Social networking has improved communication online, but also makes people feels less interested in face-to-face communication. There is high percentage of teens communicated through electronic medium and they feel they can talk more freely online. 

In the future, I believe those social networking sites will become even popular because those sites really bring much convenience to people’s life and they have already spread in many areas. I believe they will become one of major tool in education and business. Even there are some risks and disadvantages people wouldn’t stop using them because they still believe “the benefits we receive as a society provided by these tools far outweigh the risks” (Dubner, Stephen J. 2008) which I agree too. On other hand we can take some control, such as think before when we try to post information or photos, is it fine for everybody to see it. There are also some organizations and sites have put some effort to provide more safety place to user, such as Myspace joints Attomeys General together to make agreement on social networking to better protect children online. It is a good staring, and I believe there would be more rules coming out to better regulate the sites.

Citation:

Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum by Stephen J. Dubner. NYT Feb 15, 2008

"AT&T uses Twitter during service outage" by Marguerite Reardon, cnet News, April 9, 2009.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking is people communicate each other through online websites, such as Facebook, Myspace, Friendster and Twitter. Users can upload their photos, videos and information on those website and share with their friends or families.

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites which I like the most. I remembered when I was freshman, many of my friends asked me do I have Facebook, so they can add me as friend. Later I found out almost everybody has a Facebook account. Users can communicate with other people and they also can joint networks that create by organizations or clubs. Even in our college, many clubs create a Facebook account which can post all the information and activities on the account in order to communicate with their clubs members.

I know Myspace before I know Facebook. Back in that time, I heard people said that Myspace is for high school students and Facebook is for college students, because there are more high school students use Myspace and more college students use Facebook. I just created a Myspace account before I did this assignment. I think Myspace and Fackbook are very similar.

I never hear Friendster before, this is first time I hear it, and I also create a Friendster account before I did this assignment. Its background color is green which is attractive. On its home page, I feel a little empty, not as much as Facebook or Myspace. The first two thing come to my eyes are the Shoutout where you post your own word and ten different email addresses list where you can find friends.

I have a Twitter account too. I created it last semester because my English professor requests us to have a Twitter account. We post any things that we want to talk about, and leave comment for people or received comment from other people. It is kind of website more focus on express people’s feeling and thought. I like its design with a bird right next to word Twitter, it is so cute and different from others.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs

Blog is form as journalism, which is like “our day book, our collective diary, which records our common life” said by James W. Carey. It is place where a blogger can post his or her thought or feeling, or sharing some articles or news. Which other people can view it and leave their comment on it. According to (Kathy E. Gill 2004), primary characteristics of a blog include: 1. Reverse chronological journaling (format) – which is every journal that blogger post will be regulate by time. The latest post will be appears on the bottom, and the earliest post will be appears on the top. 2. Regular, date-stamped entries (timeliness) – which is every post will shows exact date and time next to it, and those posts are regulate by time. 3. Links to related news articles, documents, blog entries within each entry (attribution) – which is in a blog, blogger can post his or her journal, and also can links some other people’s work in the blog. 4. Archived entries (old content remains accessible) – which is bloggers can save their old work. 5. Links to related blogs (blogrolling) – which is one blogger and links to other people’s blog in order to view or leave comment. 

Wikis

Wiki is “a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change all content very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration.” (Rob Edmonds 2006) Wiki can be edit by many different people. People can work together by update their information in same topic. The system also allows users to link information, video and picture from other resources. Many organizations are also using Wiki in their daily operation. It provides an “opportunity for organizations to improve collaborative work and knowledge sharing.” (Rob Edmonds 2006) For example employees can add any idea or strategy on wiki, at the same time people can also view other people’s works. It can be a good place for a company to gather most information from different people.

Blogs and Wikis

Blogs and Wikis both are operate online. They are easy to create, and function. They can view by public, and allow people to leave their comments (for blog) or edit more information (for wiki) on their pages. They both can link other people’s resource to their own page, such as pictures and videos. They both can be another way of communication.

Convergence in today's networked world.

Convergence means that a media can be form by combining different functions together into one, such as from old media - journalism into new media - blogs. Blogs have same function as journalism which can record daily activities and journals. But it can post and review by people in any place with internet and anytime. Convergence in today’s networked world provide more convenient to people and users can update information more quickly through network.

How can blogs be used for collaboration?

Blogs are easy to create, and everybody can create a blog account. The main function of a blog is a blogger can make a post on his or her account and allow other people to view it and leave comments. Here is one of real example from my personal experience about blog. Last semester, I took an English class and one of main tool for that class is blog. During the semester, we posted our thought and feeling about each story that we read. We also can link other sources to support our idea. After posting, we shared our posts by viewing other people’s works, and leave comments on each other’s blog. In this case, discuss of story in class is one way, but blog can be another way of discussion by sharing thought and feeling about the story from many people.

Can you think of a new use for a wiki that has not been done yet?
Wiki is also a tool that people can edit information and share information. However, one of big problem about Wiki is that it is most of time it was written by non-professional people and easy for people to edit. So the information on Wiki might not be true and trustable. That is why when we doing research, our professors will always said that “do not use information from Wikipedia.” If writers can edit information base on academic research, and cite those articles or research in their writing, then the information will become more trustable.

Citation:
How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere? by Kathy E. Gill. Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem, May 2004.

Wikis at work: Up from the grassroots by Rob Edmonds E.learning Age; Oct 2006; p. 14-16

Description of research topic

Social Networking: A purposeful loss of privacy

Nowadays, the communication functions of electronic media are very popular in our society. Many people find out that social networking become necessary for their lives, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and so on. Because of huge improvement of technology, people are getting much easier to get online, and create an account for themselves. In my term project, I will list out few different types of social networking, maybe I will use examples that I list above: Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. I will talk how these social networking function and what are positive positives effects and negative effects about it. Positive effects could be easy to use, improve communication, share information with friends, convenience and so on. Negative effects could be loss of privacy- (I will focus more on it because loss of privacy can cause many different harm to people including personal life, and job), inappropriate use, reduce face-to-face communication and so on. I will also introduce different group of people using social networking, such as people, companies, and clubs. I decide to use some scholar articles and presses to support my points.

Describe new media

In order to consider as a New Media technology, it must contains five characteristics. They are “communication”, “collaboration”, “community”, “creativity”, and “convergence” (Linda Weiser Friedman and Hershey H. Friedman 2008). “Communication” means that the technology that can communicate to one each other, such as blog, which you can post information on your own blog or leave comment on other’s blog. “Collaboration” means that the technology can use work together by many people, such as wiki which many people can work on the same topic together and edit it or change it. “Community” means that the technology is relative to society, such as Facebook and Myspace. “Creativity” means that the technology is well creative, which we all know that media technology changes so rapidly from old to new, such as Flickr which you can upload your own pictures, write description, edit or remove easily . “Convergence” means that the technology combines with different functions into new one, such as from old media (book) into new media (Ebook).

Examples of New Media technologies are Blogs, Wikis, Social networking such as Myspace, Facebook, twitter, Virtual worlds such as SecondLife, Video clips such as YouTube and Social bookmarking. As I point out above New Media must includes five characteristics. New Medias are connecting with Internet and digital devices which provides much more convenience for people and more effectively and efficiently than Old Media.

Examples of Old Media are books, newspapers, magazines, journalism, radio and television. They are hard to move around and hard to update, edit or remove information. Old Media is less convenience, effectively and efficiently than New Media and it has limit of five characteristics that list above.

Cite:
Friedman, Linda Weiser and Friedman, Hershey H., The New Media Technologies: Overview and Research Framework (April 2008). Available at SSRN.