Julian Foley
32421857
Two worlds are about to collide and we might all be the better for it!
The world of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research and the new world of social networking are coming together to offer a fresh take on how best we can work together online. This might be a new direction for the field.
Or it might be a costly distraction.
Let’s look at this by tracking the potential impact on the huge and mobile workforce of the community sector. The more than 700,000 workers in this sector visit older people and people with disability in their own homes to offer healthcare and support with daily living. They work with kids on the streets, homeless people and women escaping domestic violence. They are mobile and often work alone. They may be on call 24/7.
These workers sometimes have access to a collaborative corporate internet – MS SharePoint, for example - at their home base. Sites like these have emerged from decades of CSCW research and they work well in large enterprises, especially where there is a consistency in goals and strategies.
But the community worker spends much of their time on the road, sometimes with a mobile phone but more usually only a sheaf of paper forms on a clipboard as their primary link to their corporate base!
Should the sector devise a new system to keep these workers connected? Should it borrow tools from both the social networking world (after all, networking is at the heart of community sector work) and CSCW (after all, so is cooperation!) to frame a new mobile solution?
The head office would still run a corporate site – all of the agency staff need to work well together across a wide area (there is a community sector organisation in practically every community across the continent). But it may not look so corporate. CollectiveX has bundled Web 2.0 tools into a “groupsite”[1] that offers much of the SharePoint functionality, but can be configured as a congenial and personal social networking experience.
How would this be extended to the workers in the field?
The community worker works in the community! This is a world of sights, sounds, stories and snippets of information which the worker can use to build an authentic picture of a client’s needs or how a response might work best. So why not give them all the tools to capture all these inputs?
For example, freshen up the information flow with a link to Twitter. Tag the posts to an agency (or just a small team within it; as Shirky suggest, “spare the group from scale”[2]) and workers can swap information on the road as they visit their clients and meet with their networks. Or they can quickly act together in an emergency.
Configure the location in a Google map and share that, too.
Better still, why not set up a Tweeterfall on the site and organise the tweets by topic and place? Link the workers in the office into the conversation.
Capture recordings of client interviews and upload them to AudioBoo (sure, it’s only for iPhones, but that might be another part of the solution!) The folk back in the office can use these recordings for case coordination meetings and then discard them. Or they may store them as evidence of client agreement and quality practice.
While you’re at it, enable a direct link to an agency YouTube channel and a Flickr photostream. A video of a discussion among at-risk youth can spice up a funding application wonderfully.
And if you don’t think the original video is up to it, offer staff a link to a video solution platform like Kaltura and challenge them to mash it up into something more decent. You’ll get surprising results from the younger staff!
Bringing all this functionality together makes for a pretty active looking site, and some functions will immediately appeal. But is that all there is to it? Does this then constitute a collaboration site? Have we broached the social-technical gap – “the great divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically”[3]
Sadly, far from it.
The field of CSCW is pretty clear about the parameters required for a true online collaborative experience.
One of these is that the site has to be engaging for the user – the term “entrainment” is more precise. This means the user’s “level of desire to use a system and whether they will continue to rely upon it for performing routine work”.[4]
A good level of entrainment is reflected in a critical mass of users which shows the site is a useful place to exchange information with many others.
Another big issue is awareness. A person can’t work well in a group unless they are aware of who they’re working with. “User-interfaces have to be built in such as way that they always indicate if people are either working alone, in one of several possible sub-group constellations, or with all members of their teams or organisation.”[5]
Shared goals are another question. The field worker and management have very different experiences of their work and may need to constantly re-negotiate shared goals and strategies. Shared meaning and histories are key here and it may be important to configure this into the way the site works.[6]
Users will quickly come up against what is known as the privacy problem.[7] A lot of information will flood through this site and the user has a wide network of others who may want to access the information. How do they control the flow?
Concurrency is another issue. While field staff are working with distinct clients in dispersed locations there might be few occasions when several users need to access the same data at the same time. But bring several clients or workers together and this might rapidly change. Add to this the need for workers to access common organisation information, and the complexity compounds. Social networking tools haven’t had to seriously address concurrency but it is central to the CSCW agenda.
The conclusion? Simply bundling all this Web 2.0 functionality won’t build a collaborative site. But it might be a useful prototype.
Web 2.0 has offered up a host of new solutions that can be now considered as part of the CSCW toolkit. But unless they are shaped and evaluated through CSCW research frameworks, they are not likely to deliver collaborative workers who are fully engaged with the corporate direction.
[1] “Groupsites are collaboration communities that enable groups to communicate, share and network to make things happen. They do this by combining the most useful (but not all) features of online groups and listservs (like Yahoo! Groups), collaboration software (like Sharepoint) and Social Networks (like Facebook and Linkedin).” From http://www.crunchbase.com/company/collectivex (accessed 27 March 2009).
[2] C. Shirky, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus. Blog post on http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/, April 26 2008 (accessed 29 March 2009)
[3] M. S. Ackerman, “The Intellectual Challenge of CSCW: The Gap between Social Requirements and Technical Feasibility”, in Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2002, p 303
[4] D. Ambaye, A Socio-centric Model of User Interaction, in Human-Computer interaction: Theory and Practice (Part 1), Volume 1, Mahwah, 2003, p 10.
[5] N. A. Streitz, P. Tandler, C. Muller-Tomfelde and S. Konomi, “Roomware: Toward the Next Generation of Human-Computer Interaction Based on an Integrated Design of Real and Virtual Worlds”, in Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2002, p 554
[6] Boland – p305 HCI
[7] M. S. Ackerman, op cit., p 308
Friday, April 3, 2009
Two worlds collide!
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Social networking sites rate and review.
Written By Dean Jullie (41188424)
Introduction
To begin I should put it out there that I have fallen for social websites and fallen hard at that. When I’m at my computer there seems to be less and less to do other than logging into the five or so social websites to which I belong. It seems I feel content when I get to my Facebook page and there is a comment or friend request waiting for me, however; when there’s not a single comment or request aimed at me I begin to experience disappointment and a little despair. I believe the true experience is when one of every type of social website is combined together, thus providing the user with a complete and satisfactory social experience.
The following topics will take a look at five different social websites each aimed to expand your social network via the internet.
Facebook
Facebook is a social site that provides users with the technology to SPAM APPLICATION REQUESTS. But on a serious note Facebook is a social website that is simply a means for someone to keep in touch with and share photos with their friends. Another quirky feature of Facebook is the applications feature, the applications you can use in Facebook once selected, are linked to your profile and can show different things ranging from sending a friend an e-beer or throwing an e-sheep at someone. The main focus for Facebook is the friends database, Facebook’s combination of messages super pokes and pictures make it a pretty decent way of keeping in touch with friends from school, friends overseas or just your close friends.
Google Calendar
Pretty much what it reads, Google Calendar is an online equivalent to the Microsoft outlook calendar system. This social site allows the tracking and viewing of other users calendars. While this software/website may sound un-secure the process is restricted to how much information you choose to upload onto the online calendar. As a user you can edit your calendar to show details such as work shifts, university times or general catch-up with friend dates.
Twitter belongs in a class of its own when it comes to status updates. Once logged into the website a user can simply update their status. Twitter faces everyone with a single question ‘What are you doing?’, then in 140 words or less you write your status and post it to the site. Anyone following your profile will be able to read your status, it’s that simple. Twitter also takes this status notification setup one step further by adding an external element, the mobile phone. If selected twitter can send you text notification messages whenever the people your following update their status. Likewise you can update your status via mobile phone.
Last.FM is the ‘Social Music Revolution’ or so they claim. Last.FM provides an online music service to users where whenever a user listens to a track on their computer the details of that song are uploaded to your page. Last.FM provides a way to add friends, contact friends and see what your music compatibility rating with other people is.
Last but not least we have Flickr, this is a very neat and tidy way of sharing images you as a user upload with the rest of the Flickr community. When an image is uploaded tags can be added making that image searchable on Flickr. Users can leave comments on any images they view adding a feedback element to the user’s experience.
The focus of this reflection is to provide an insight into the way I view online social networking sites and a little into how, when combined they provide a full experience.
From first being a member of only the one social website aimed at maintaining friends online, I have been introduced to multiple forms of online social networking. There are many websites that collate information about users for fun purposes but do not really count as social sites, for example What Pulse is an online community that is team based where each user uploads data from their computer containing the number of keystrokes and clicks that have been made. Each team then gets a ranking on how well they are doing in comparison to everyone else. This site has little to no communication between its members and provides no quick or current feedback to the user. A social networking site must in my opinion be so simple and feature packed that our grandparents could use it.
One thing that does come into question when using the online social sites is security and how much information should you really post on your profiles. The answer to this question is a relatively simple one, the amount of information available to the world is directly in proportion to the amount of information you choose to apply to your profile. I for one use a separate email address for work purposes and a not so important email address for social websites or anything online for that matter. My second email address contains limited information about myself; likewise do my profiles on social websites. Having basic security like this enables users to in a sense hide behind their online screen name.
Now to the more important side of my experience with online social networking, how well they worked. If I was to pick a favourite site it would be Facebook, now I’m not saying I love Facebook because I don’t its just that it combines images and text and even some music all in one as well it is probably the easiest to find friends and meet people with. The worst experience I have had on one of these sites would defiantly have to be Google Calendar, this being said if I was a really organised person and had the use for a calendar like this I would probably find it a lot more useful. As it stands I don’t have any use for Google Calendar, unless my workplace started using it to show us shifts and we could add our availability (now to get my boss using a computer hmmm). Flickr would probably come in second last, sure its good and neat at what it does but the social side of it is a lacking a little something. When searching through the images on Flickr I find that I don’t really search through the pictures with the intent to comment on a picture. I feel that’s how most users would find it and therefore it seems to me that Flickr doesn’t do as good a job as Facebook’s photo management.
Twitter is the site that I would rank reasonably high as well; Twitter even has a Facebook application allowing your twitter status to be shown in Facebook. Twitter provides a status notification system that far outreaches many of its competitors, the fact that mobile phone technology has been brought into it means great accessibility which means easier to use and can be used more frequently. The ‘Social Music Revolution’ Last.FM is pretty fun to use I will give it that, providing up to date information on what songs your friends and colleagues are listening to and weekly statistics like top artists and top songs. Last.Fm to me lacks the common social networking that some of the other sites provide, I think, however; Last.FM was intended to run like it is as more of a singular use site.
In my opinion most of the sites I have learnt and used have their key features which make them unique and usable; using a combination of your favourite social networking sites is, in my opinion the way to go. If your not a big music fan and don’t like knowing what your friends listen to then don’t sign up with Last.FM, likewise if you don’t really have a need to share your pictures and comments on others pictures Flickr isn’t for you. I think now, knowing all of these sites exist I will find it hard to quit one or the other sites as long as my friends continue to use them. I think the best experience possible for online social networking doesn’t just come from one website; it will come from your tailor made selection of social sites.
- What Pulse.
Keystroke counting team based site.
http://whatpulse.org/
- Facebook.
Social networking site.
http://www.facebook.com/
- Last.FM.
Social music site, shows recently played tracks.
http://www.last.fm/
- Flickr.
Picture / photo sharing site.
http://www.flickr.com/
- Google Calendar.
Public Calender website.
http://www.google.com/calendar/render/
- Twitter.
Status notification site, also utilises mobile technology.
http://twitter.com/
An Addictive Reflection
Douglas Wilson - s4121621
Cigarettes, alcohol, chocolate, they're all addictive, and we know why they are. But what about social networking sites on the Internet such as Facebook or Twitter? These two applications are addictive, as I discovered when my family came into my room the other day, telling me “You've had enough of Facebook and that annoying 'bird' website that keeps texting your phone for today, how about you come outside.” At which I replied, in my flat toned voice, “Just a few more hours”. At this point a suddenly came to the realisation that yes, I am addicted to Facebook and Twitter.
OK just to clear this up, this actually never happened, but you can imagine if it did. The way I really know I'm addicted is when I go on the sites when ever I sit down at a computer. Whenever I see someone on the pages I go on too. And when I am at home, sitting down at my computer I automatically load up the pages. I usually just keep Facebook running in the background, I feel naked if its not there, I use it that much.
So, is this a bad thing? Is it a bad thing that I want to know what my friends (and people I really don't know that well) are getting up too? That may sound a little creepy, but I assure you my intentions are entirely honorable.
Anyway... In this review I'm going to be talking about what makes the Social Networking sites on the Internet addictive, and just to clear my conscious, is this a bad thing.
Launched on the 4th of February, 2004, Facebook is now one of the largest social networking sites available to the general public. Originally this wasn't the case. Created by a Harvard University student called Mark Zuckerberg, the site was only available to students at his University. It then eventually became access able to all Uni students and then finally everyone over the age of thirteen. Facebook now has sixty four million active users and has an average of fourteen million pictures uploaded daily. So what is all this fuss about? What makes Facebook so popular? Well the main reason is that it lets you keep track on your friends and that your able to communicate with them, much like a email account, but the messages tend to be more conversational then the typical email. Facebook, is a substitute for the instant messaging system MSN or AIM. If the users friend is not on MSN then they would send a message through Facebook that is a very relaxed writing style, much like they would be talking face to face. This message can stay on their page forever, much like an email can. So its a fun and easy substitute for MSN, so what? I hear you say. Facebook has an endless list of applications that can be added to the users site. These applications include, likeness tests, movie quizzes, Jetman, Graffiti, Super Poke and my personal favourite Hobo wars. Each program lets the user interact in someway with one of his friends, weather it be competing with each other; seeing who gets the highest score or a certain way of communicating, for example you can poke someone until your fingers bleed, or even throw the odd sheep at someone. Each program is seemingly pointless but never the less fun, and that's what Facebook is all about.
Having never heard of twitter since starting Comp3505 I was a little unsure as to what it was all about. So lets take a look at the deep and dark mysteries that befuddle us all, that is the mighty Twitter. Launched in July 13, 2006 by the start-up company Obvious, LLC. Twitter is an online social networking system that allows the users to send updates of what they are doing to all of their friends. Here is a quote from the site itself explaining what it is.
“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
To put it bluntly Wikipedia describes it as a Micro-Blogging service. So what twitter requires of its users is to post a small comment on what they are doing at that exact time. Allowing everybody else to see, as long as they are following your feed. This is the big daddy of stalking services. Now you may think, people cant say what their doing at that exact moment, because surely all they could say is 'cdougw – using a social networking site'. But the person writes 'walking the dog' they really are not walking the do
g, because to twitter requires you to be on a computer. Unfortunately for the human race it is now possible to be walking the dog and twittering at the same time. Twitter allows the user to send text messages through their phone onto the website. More on this controversial subject later, for now, I must move on.
Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is indeed delicious. In late 2003 a genius of a man called Joshua Schachter founded this social bookmarking site. It lets users add bookmarks to their profile, allowing everybody else who uses the site to see what you've made a link too. This site could be seen as a replacement for Google, if your only looking for popular sites. In del.icio.us you can not find Abdul's Egyptian restaurant, but you can find the most popular site within the del.icio.us community for Golf. You may think this is a little pointless, as Google can find you both of these things, but can Google show you your friends favourite or interesting websites that they've found? I rest my case.
Blogger
Blogger was launched on July 3st, 2000 by Pyra Labs, and was bought by Google in 2003. Blogger is a Blog publishing system that lets the users to publish their thoughts on any topic, upload images and give and receive feedback on Blogs. The norm for a active user is to make a blog post once a day. Its an online diary if you will. Although usually peoples diary's are entirely private these ones are open to the public so generally the topics are restrained to under sixteen viewers, although I have seen some pretty saucy blogs. The general length of the blogs tend to be a bit long, much longer that Twitter or Facebook handles. The user could write a whole book and that would be perfectly acceptable. Frankly I don't really have much interest in Blogger, I am not willing to read a three thousand word blog some random I don't know made about their sad and lonely life or what they had for breakfast that day.
My experience with these social and mobile computing tools is that they can indeed be addictive. To understand why I am addicted, I'm going to take a closer look at Facebook and Twitter to see if I can unveil the mystery of my and many other peoples (perhaps unfortunate) addiction.
Lets start at the very beginning, a very good place to start (thanks Julie Andrews). Facebook and Twitters meet with me did not go down well. I loathed them both, recently coming out of a bad relationship with Myspace, I was looking for a replacement website to upload my photos, comment people and stalk my friends. Eventually finding the very boring looking website, I struggled to get to grips with its very different interface. I somehow managed to find my friends and add them. This was a grave mistake as a flood of invitations came for random quizzes and weird games with Pirates and Ninjas, and someone who I shall not name threw a sheep at me. I gladly accepted them all, which instantly filled my page up to the point of crashing my web browser. It literally took me three days to scroll down to reach my Wall to see the comments made. After a few weeks of this I became even more aggravated. I then realised that Facebook had taken control over me, enough was enough. After much searching this site I found the page where you can delete the applications. With a few clicks they were gone, and so was my hate for Facebook. This is where my addiction started. Facebook is now insanely easy to use, making it a pleasure to work on. And getting pleasure out of something is the first stage of addiction. So there's part of the first question answered, Facebook was extremely pleasurable to use.
A few more weeks passed and I became more involved in what other people where doing on their own profile. The home page or commonly known as the News feed allows me to 'stalk' my friends, seeing exactly what their doing, even if they really don't want me to see. For example I can see Lex Hyde's comment he made on some random person that I don't knows picture. I began to care about what people were doing, it was like the six o'clock news but on the Internet, and about my friends, and their friends. I watch the six o'clock news religiously, why? Because I have the desire for knowledge. This desire is the same I get with Facebook and Twitter, so there is the second part for the first question, why are they addictive.
Twitter is entirely the same for me, I did not like it at first, but after a while I became familiar with the interface and became addicted by the same reasons I became addicted to Facebook. Its a very fun program to use, very easy. And second of all I wanted to know what everyone was up to, its the same desire for knowledge I have with Facebook and the six o'clock news.
Time for the second and final question, is this addiction a bad thing?
As I discussed earlier, twitter seems to be taking over peoples lives. Technology in general is taking over our lives. Is this a bad thing? Well I'm sure the previous generations will say 'Yes! This is terrible, kids should be out outside, running around, getting their hands dirty.' Well this is entirely possible, twitter allows you to be anywhere in the world and still get updates about what people are doing and are able to send information about what they are doing themselves while they are getting their hand dirty. So in this brief argument I think I have justified that being addicted to twitter isn't a bad thing, but what about Facebook. Facebook does not allow you to be anywhere when gaining information about your friends, you have to be at a computer. Again the oldies will say, 'get outside, do something, meet people!' But we are doing something, we are being very socially active with our friends and sometimes meeting new people. So with that comment, I don't believe that being addicted to these sites is a bad thing, I am socially communicating with people.
So some social networking sites are addictive, they provide a pleasurable experience, and gives the knowledge that I crave. Facebook and Twitter may not be the type of addiction that I get violent and start shaking when I've been away from it for a while. But it certainly is enough to miss it, even for a day without them. And now that I have proved that there is nothing wrong with this, I can enjoy their company, guilt free.
[1] http://twitter.com/
[2] Viller, S. (2008). Lecture Notes – Week04 Social SW-Handouts. Retrieved March 20, 2008, from http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~comp3505/Lectures/Week04-SocialSW-handouts.pdf.
[3]Livingston, S. Young People and New Media: Childhood and the Changing Media Environment,
Sage Publications, London
Questions of Identity and social links within a social networking context
Or why does someone want to be my friend on Facebook when they don’t know me in real life?
by Victoria Bansey (s41174436)
Web2.0 is generally considered to be about the rise of information sharing and collaboration on the World Wide Web. The main focus of this “new” Internet are elements such as wikis, blogs (just like this one) and probably the most visible of these, the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, Flickr, Last FM and twitter.
With these considerations, the component that interests me most is the social interaction online on the social networking sites and how this can be distinctly separate to social interactions in “real” life. This interest stems from my surprise at being added as friend by people who didn’t know me in reality. This has been particularly my experience on Facebook.
The second is from a fellow student in COMP3505. This person is a second year student (I am currently a third year student) who I have never talked to in my life and would have difficulty recognising in a COMP3505 lecture, let alone in the street. Several of my fellow third year students have added this person. When I saw this I questioned a couple of them as to who this person was and why they added them. A male friend said, “because he’s in our COMP3505 class”. I asked if he knew who he was and he laughed and said “no”. I questioned further as to why he had added someone as a friend that he didn’t know and he responded with, “because they added me!”. I asked the same questions to a female friend who responded with “because (a mutual friend)
So if that is the case, why would you freely give someone you don’t know access to that information online? I haven’t added either of them – not due to paranoia or general distrust (well, maybe a little), but due to the fact that I wouldn’t consider either a friend in even the broadest sense. For me, there isn’t a social connection there so why do people feel the need to connect to total strangers behind the veil of social networking sites? Is this an online popularity contest where quantity is more important than quality? Or is it because its easier to maintain an online relationship without the restrictions that are imposed in our daily lives?
In the article, “How to make 80 million friends and influence people”, the author discusses the explosion that was then happening (the article is dated June 18, 2006) in Web2.0 social networking sites. It mentions how these sites become a “surrogate social network” where Facebook users have created a new understanding of what it means to be a ‘friend’. A student interviewed, Joe Taylor, talks about this new interpretation,
“At any social occasion you're introduced to many people you will probably never see again. But if you can remember their name you can put them among your Facebook friends, and a huge, loose network develops. There appear to be many people whose sole aim in life at the moment is to acquire as many Facebook friends as possible.”
It is an interesting twist on the now debunked theory of Six Degrees of Separation. This theory came from an experiment run by Stanley Milgram at the Laboratory of Social Relations at Harvard University in the late 1960s. Milgram published his results in 1967 but neglected to mention that there was actually only a 30% success rate of his original aim of an envelope being passed from someone in the central states of the United States to someone who they didn’t know on the East Coast and counting how many people it passed through to its final destination. Of the 30%, that did work, they averaged out to be Eight Degrees of Separation (Ingram P106). Not quite as catchy as six is it?
One of the reasons that has been given for the embrace of the original report is that the late sixties was the epoch for the hippy movement and people wanted to believe that we are all connected to each other in a what a psychologist who examined Milgram’s files calls a “heart-warming parable” (Ingram P106). Perhaps Generation Y are seeking this same kind of assurance. In the post September 11 world, perhaps it is this sense of connection in a disconnected world that they are seeking. But what sort of a social connection is it to someone who you’ve never met before? When I make a status update in Facebook which mentions that I’m home and surprised by my husband Martin making tacos for dinner, my family and friends will all know this is unusual because it is usually me that does the cooking in our house. For someone who doesn’t know me, this will be pointless. Someone who is connected to both of us in Facebook will also see Martin’s status update where he claims to be domesticated in response to my update. I know a lot of my friends in Facebook also aren’t interested in this detail (particularly those who don’t know Martin), but I maintain a connection with these friends through FunWall posts of videos, invitations to events and groups and their status updates. For someone who has no connection to me or my interests, what is the use of this besides to appear "popular"?
In the article “Blog Off”, Natalie Boxall examines the pros and cons of social networking. One of the authors that she talks to, Richard Milward talks about his concerns which mirror my own,
" I worry people will become completely antisocial, spending more and more time in this weird parallel universe where everyone's their 'friend', without actually having to spend any proper time with them."Perhaps the image of having lots of friends is more important than an actual relationship with that person?
It also seems that the identity theft issues that I mentioned earlier aren’t an issue to a lot of Facebook users. In August 2007, Sophos, an IT security firm sent out 200 random friend requests from a made up person called Freddi Staur (an anagram of ID Fraudster). 87 of those contacted responded, and of them, 82 gave him personal information including resumes, addresses, phone numbers and in one case, their mother’s maiden name. Its a short step from having this information to identity theft - it even happens to royal families.
I also find it interesting that for some of my experiences using social networking sites, in the case of Flickr being added as a Favourite or specifically invited to a group is a much more rewarding experience then being added as a Friend in Facebook. In Flickr, someone has to have specifically searched for a tag or looked through my photographs and decided that they like it enough to add it as a favourite. There are millions of photographs of the Taj Mahal but someone has found my photograph of it on Flickr and added it as a favourite. The addition of my photograph has been a very active interaction, whereas in Facebook, after the initial burst of adding people, my addition of friends has been a passive interaction (I have generally let people find me).
My personal experience of using social networking sites, particularly Facebook, has been positive but that still doesn’t stop me being cynical and suspicious about the people who populate its pages. I have made contact with school friends who I haven’t talked to for several years and kept in touch with friends from overseas whilst getting to know my uni friends better. At the same time, I have had requests from people I don’t know which although probably meant harmlessly, I find disturbing.
Though of course there is something more annoying than popularity seeking wannabes - the most annoying thing on Facebook is the seemingly endless invitations to become a werewolf/vampire/zombie or for pointless applications. The only response appropriate to them can be found here and here.
References
Benyon, D., Turner, P., & Turner, S., (2005) Designing Interactive Systems: People, Activities, Contexts, Technologies. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Boxall, N. (2008). Blog Off. Retrieved March 16, 2008 from http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/careers/story/0,,2263478,00.html.
Garfield, S. (2006) How to Make 80 million friends and influence people. Retrieved March 20, 2008 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jun/18/digitalmedia.observerreview.
Ingram, J. (2003). The Velocity of Honey and more science of Everyday Life. London: Viking.
Kaye, L. (2008) Let’s have a look at privacy and consent. Retrieved March 20, 2008, from http://media.guardian.co.uk/digitallaw/story/0,,2225130,00.html.
Sophos (2007). Sophos Facebook ID probe shows 41% of users happy to reveall all to potential identity thieves. Retrieved March 21, 2008, from http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2007/08/facebook.html.
Viller, S. (2008). Lecture Notes – Week04 Social SW-Handouts. Retrieved March 20, 2008, from http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~comp3505/Lectures/Week04-SocialSW-handouts.pdf.