http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfdcfpv7_1dmgpj9
A social network is a network that is concerned with the mutual relations of human beings. Online social networking is a huge part of peoples lives these days. Services such as facebook let you conduct social activities outside what would usually be seen as a social setting. Whilst using the online social networking tools, I felt that there were many aspects of a persons life that, until utilising these tools, were not publicaly available. Social settings that would allow the disclosure of such insight into ones personal life are now being conducted online and in a much more public manner then before.
Facebook.
I would call Facebook a primary service in the sense that Facebook allows for the integration of many of the secondary services to be added and maintained through the Facebook interface. Facebook is a huge social networking service that allows users (real people) to establish an online identity. In this sense people can maintain many identities online that is not viable in many other social settings. A person can have many identities, these identities could also be maintained by many different people, but that fact that peopel can have numerous identities makes Facebook and other similar social networking tools powerful in empowering people. Whether this identity is true or not to the users real character is purely up to the users digression, but what Facebook does for that identity can be empowering.
I found that setting up an identity on Facebook is like going to a new school. most people just act normally, but others like to reinvent themselves. Trying to establish who you are requires you to invest a lot of time into your image and your actions. Meeting new friends requires you show some interest in who they are and what they are doing. Such with finding existing friends sometimes I found it interesting that online, you can have these great interactions with people that if you were in a different social setting you would not normally engage in.
Facebook was very easy to use, establishing an identity takes a life time so similarly setting up an identity on Facebook can take a lot time. Such with any social setting there is perceived knowledge about you as an identity, that others derive from your actions or your appearance, and there is information that you give them. On Facebook there are many applications that can be added to your page. These applications come in many forms and are generally secondary services that can be integrated into the Facebook service. These applications can range from “what I am listening to”, which shows music that you have logged on a service such as LastFM, the vampire application which lets you bite friends and as they are converted to vampires you become stronger. All these applications provide perceived information about you. Your direct interactions with other users, such as posting messages on their walls or posting profile information.
Twitter.
Twitter is a seccondary service that allows users to update information regarding their where abouts, and also what the are currently doing. Twitter's functionality allows it to be integrated into primary services such as Facebook, and allows users to update information online or by txt message. Twitter was relatively easy to establish an account and start twittering, but the usefulness is yet to be revealed to me. I can see where it could be useful in alerting people to your whereabouts and letting them know what you are doing, so as to inform them on how best to contact you, but updating this information is tedious and time consuming.
LastFM.
LastFM is a seccondary service that allows users to log the music that they listen to. LastFM provides functionality such as that allows users to favorite and add comments to songs. LastFM can also be integrated into Facebook, where other people can play your radio station and listen to the music you like. LastFM provides great functionality in recommending other music that is similar in genre that other users had listened too. It also allows users to look up who else likes your style of music, post comments on other peoples music and listen to yours and others radio stations. I found LastFM useful and fun to use. Useful in the fact that you can listen to your music where ever you have an internet connection, this is especially cool if you forgot to bring you Ipod to work. I found LastFM also useful in recommending music to me that I had not listened too that was inline with my musical taste. LastFM is fun to use to investigate statistics regarding songs, for example how many people have listened to a certain song, people that listened to this also listened to.
Google Calendar.
Google Calendar is a secondary service that is integrated into the Google suite of social services. Google calendar lets people share calendars with others, allowing multiple people to contribute to the calendar. Sharing schedules is an important aspect of collaborative work, letting people know what you are doing and when saves a lot of confusion when trying to organise events. The usefulness is there and there are certainly many people who would find this service useful but I did not. Scheduling my life is not something that I am actively doing, I generally take things as they come and use the old noggin to remind me of specific events that are happening.
Online social networks get people involved. They connect people together in a way that is hard to do in normal social settings. Accountability has changed meanings, people now don't have to get involved, if there is a disagreement or someone is causing a problem then you have different choices regarding resolution of issues. Ignoring the issues is a resolution in an online society, so is payback. Not having to deal with people directly, but instead having a buffer in the form of a piece of technology makes interacting or not interacting easier. The social ethics are looser and sometimes non-existent, which changes conflict resolution from being something that is desired but a pain to do, to optional and easy.
Robert Ninness.
6 comments:
(Please note: The following comment is intended as CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and in no way reflects my own ability to write essays).
The conclusion ends on an entirely different note than the intro. You begin by stating that social networking tools allow "insight into ones personal life" and end on issues of "social ethics" and "conflict resolution". The article makes sense but it seems a little unstructured and lacks focus.
(Please note: The following comment is intended as CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and in no way reflects my own ability to write essays).
The conclusion ends on an entirely different note than the intro. You begin by stating that social networking tools allow "insight into ones personal life" and end on issues of "social ethics" and "conflict resolution". The article makes sense but it seems a little unstructured and lacks focus.
I agree! But I took a stab at really stretching the reflective part of the piece and wrote what I was thinking at the time. Reflective writing (I read) was about how the writer feels and thinks about a specific topic... The points made didn't exactly have to be right or backed up by citations and readings, but had to reflect the opinions of the writer, but I agree it is a tad (maybe more than a tad) unstructured...
Robert
Hehe I found my experiences were very similar. Actually looking at it I think our experiecnes were very similar. we both liked face book, we both didnt like twitter and we both found Last.fm somewhat useful. (twitter really is useless isnt it?). I agree with grant your article did change direction a little but it still seemed to flow decently.
(Also I like grants comment that it in noway refects on his ability to write an essay, amusing. I could say the same thing really)
what ho pip pip ;)
I like how you have talked about each service as primary, secondary, etc. I also found it interesting to think that people who sign up to things like Facebook try to 'reinvent themselves'. I think I know a few people from school, etc who have done something of the sort :-P
As much as I didn't like Twitter to start with I have to admit that the idea is growing on me (I still don't really use it though...)
Overall a fairly solid article. Introduction is okay, although it should be more blunt in what the focus of the topic of the post is. No obvious sources. Background is a little broad, and could go into more detail about what parts of the systems you did / did not like. Mainly well written, although some proof-reading and manual grammar checking may make the document easier to read. Fairly well structured. You have an interesting target focus, however it feels as if the focus isn't carried through the entirety of the article. Reflection is okay however you don't seem to state any solid opinions about which tools you think are good/bad for accountability. The reflection seems to be more generalised rather than in relation to the specific tools.
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