David's Reflection On Socializing Network - Community Sharing

David's Reflections On Socializing Network

Overview:

This is a short reflection after using several socializing networks and analyse some certain elements which share the simliarity between them. I have found out that most of the sucessful networks tends to encourage their community to share some certain interest as their main theme, like sharing information, applications, music, artworks...etc. These applications have a broad context of communiation and socialization, however most of their main theme are built by the community who share the same interest. If the systems runs well with acceptable usability, these networks tend to grow constantly and become popular. Why? Because everybody within these community share the same interest and always have similar area of topics to talk about, which will makes the community grow.

Background:

Somehow I am not too much of a big fan of blogging and online socializing but I still tried some of a few systems. Bellow are a few reflections in various socialising applications I had played around recently.

- Blogger
- Facebook
- Last FM
- DeviantArt

Of course I had use more applications beside these, however, I am using these networks as an example to analysis the recent trend of socializing network, what do they share the common similarities.




Focus:

The area of online socializing is no longer just to communicate with other people, but to share their knowledge or their favorites. Unlike the older forums and chat system, the applications nowadays tend to group up people who likes to share certain things. Some system maybe sharing photos, some maybe sharing artworks, some may just share academic research which is more than communications, music, or even application plug-ins. Even though most of the application basically support sharing most of the elements, but they also have a main theme for sharing the people's favorite. Even though it is not too much big deal with it but it seems like this is a trend when the developers comes to producing a socializing network.




Reflection of Blogger:

Blogger is a blogging program developed by Google, which is one of the largest internet companies in the whole world. Blogger, the name is self-explanatory, it is a site for blogging. However, it also contains a kind of sense of socializing. The user will be able to create their own account and post some news and researches or even just some random stuffs. The other viewers will be able to browse your created blogs but of course, need to have the permission from the owner of the blog.

Blogger also allows people to create their own profile and input their images inside, just like other online social applications. Blogger allows the subscribers to have an online identity inside the application and will be able to meet other people’s online identity. This can be useful for people who try to find friends on the internet or even find friends with the same interests and hobbies, since the blog content can speak the author’s favorite interest of dislikes. By doing so, the sense of socializing is created inside Blogger.

Not only the viewers will be able to read the content from other people’s blog, they are allowed to input their comments on to certain topics and when the author of the blog actually replies, the sense of communication is created. However, the comments can be usually ignored by the author and this may create a communication breakdown. For example, if the commenter wants to pick up a point that the author had written wrongly, the commenter will post a comment onto the blog, but he cannot ensure that the author will get the message and the changes may not had been made due to the communication breakdown. And often some amatures reviewers may write something bad or untruth for a person’s content, which may result a serious problem of slander and speech-abuse.

When I use blogger this application, it became really useful when I want to do a group project or just put in some individual thoughts for my own work. I’ve also tried the customize interface function so I can pick my favorite colour scheme for my own personal blogs. The layout of the Blogger is pretty good, even though there is not really a wow factor, but at least it is neat and clean and the functions are there. The text input has a really simple interface and only contains a few genera functions but everything which is common used are all there.

After I had posted this piece, I had just realized I had typed something wrong, so the edit button does come in handy if I want to update or make some corrections in my content. Actually, the text-input is a bit buggy which is really annoying.

Blogger is a really useful and no-so complex blogging application which definitely meets the requirements of socializing and communication needs for people. Users are allowed to express their views freely and share their life experience to other people in a simple program.

Reflection on FaceBook:

Facebook, I still remember like last year, a bunch of my friends tells me to get a facebook account. Normally I am the kind of guy who will only constantly uses one social application and will ignore the rest. However, I still get myself an account since there are so many people request for my Facebook account. I’m like ‘Yeah, let see what can Facebook do”

When I just started, I thought “Meh….nothing special inside, just another kind of social program which allows sharing photos and writing random crap on the board.” However, when I start to give my friends my Facebook account, my friends just sent me a whole heap of applications and groups and speak frankly, I have not finished exploring everything in Facebook, yet.

I started to recognize the power of socializing and communicating in Facebook. The biggest difference in my opinion is that the system has lots of third party applications to make the whole “Facebook” this thing, rather appealing and interesting, IQ test, Circle of Trust, SuperPokes, SuperWall, Presents, Huggies, Tetris and even Counterstrike or Dota in Facebook…etc. I still remember that once I got addicted with a really simple application which is the slayers/vampires/werewolf, just biting each other and get points. Always when I think back, I felt rather silly that I wasted so much time on a no-so like a game application just to find random people and click “attack”.

However, I found myself stop using Facebook since it just cramped up with lots of random requests and I really got annoyed by it. Perhaps the problem for Facebook is just too many stuff inside, well, can’t really say that is a big problem, but it does take me too much time just to walk around the world of Facebook. Ok, even though this is not a flaw for Facebook but I do try to keep away from it just in case that I get stuck on Facebook for a whole day again. Nerrrrrrrd…

In addition, I do find a problem inside. I still do not get it why there are so many people who I had never met in my life will gave me an “add friends” request, which I find it really annoying for some reason. I really wonder to ask them who they are but there are too many of them. Perhaps I had met them before just because that I have a really really bad memory…perhaps…

Nevertheless, Facebook is still a great online socializing application with lots of fun stuffs. Just be warned that it is a complex program and it can get really really addictive.




Reflection on Last FM:

Last fm, speak frankly I rarely use it. However, I got a few good music from that site. According to my understanding, people will be able to share their favorite music with other people. People will be able to search for their favorite artist and play the music online. Not only people can listens to music but can also watch the music video online.

The interface is pretty straightforward since the functionality is not that complex. In my opinion most of the elements works well in that site. Beside listens to music and watch videos, the site also contains some good features like rating the tracks and discussion within the music community, which also contain a sense of socialization. Like any other online social application, people are allowed to have their own personal identity in the Last fm community. People will be able to talk about music throughout the whole world and sharing their likes.

One of the features in Last fm is allowing user to download the plug-ins so people will be able to use this online application without even going onto the browser. This is a really convenient feature however, it may have a drawback that some people is afraid of downloading plug-ins especially when it often loads automatically whenever the computer start up. As a result, this feature is not necessary fit for everybody.

There is also a little drawback for searching as well since the search function often plays the music which is not the what user’s in their mind. The music which has been played is often not the user wants to listen. It may capable to find the similar artist but often does not play the certain artist which the user had input in the search unless the artist is extremely popular. In addition, I assume the music from Last fm is from radio stations, so often if people wants to hear some music at certain time, it will not work and request the user to switch stations, or sometimes the music will just keep switching without finishing a track.

Nevertheless, I highly recommended this online socializing application since people will be able to listen to a range of great music conveniently and with a good strong support of the community who actually likes music. Even though it demands to download certain plug-ins in order to make good use of Last fm’s functionality, it still provides great convenience and people like me who dislike plug-ins still enjoys using that plug-in, well, in my point of view only.

Reflection on DeviantArt:

DeviantArt, a blog system developed for artistic people. Thousands of art works are stored in the server and people will be able to browse a wide range of artistic masterpieces, even though most of them are often neglected. Artists and designers from all over the world will be able to find some cool ideas from that website, from traditional sculptures to digital images. The whole community is built by thousands of people who develop their own online identity, setup a personal blog, upload artworks and develop their own gallery. These galleries will be able to view by the people within the community and outside the community.

Each individual artwork within a person’s gallery and blogs will be able to put in comments which do have a sense of communication within the site. The website also provide the opportunity for the artist to sell their personal master pieces as prints and commercial product or even download for free, which depends on creativity licenses. In order to sell quality merchandizes to the clients, each of the artwork will be inspected before they are sold, for the free ones it depends on how many views and download counts. Each of the artwork have the chance to be favorite and featured by other people within the community and as a result, people will also get their chance to advertise their hard developed artworks through internet.

Like other social website, this website also contains forums which allow people to discuss their ideas or to advertise their art pieces, and of course communication in everyday life is also included. Not only so, the forum also provides job offers and opportunities for artists and people who require artworks. These socializing functionality are also one of the major elements which sustain the community.

I had used this blog site for a period and it is considered one of my favorite. Not only can I gain creative ideas and inspirations from other people but my work can be seen by others which is a great opportunity for a new artist like me to showcase our work. I am always excited if someone favorite or feature my works even though it happens quite rarely. The communication system is quite decent and lots of funny smileys. There are nothing much to say about the dislikes of the system since I am happy at most of the functionalities. That is also the main reason why I am still using this system.

Deviantart is not just a website for artist talk and socializing but also get the artist to express and to share their artistic values. I highly recommended for people who works in creative areas to visit this site and open up their own profile.

Draws a Conclusion:

Of course I could provide more examples but these four socializing network not only just contains communications and socializing elements like personal journals, photo sharing, forum of it’s own community…but also a main theme of sharing things. For example, if people want to read something more academic related articles, perhaps going to Blogger will be more effective than going to Facebook. If people want to gain idea of their artworks, logging in to DeviantArt will be more effective than finding stuff from Last FM, which totally unrelated to artworks at all. If some people who is bored and want to fill out some random quizzes or playing random online application, they can go to Facebook to satisfy their needs. The point is, the trend of socializing network will develop a main theme of sharing. It is not just a piece of tool for communication but to group people together with the same interest. The community will be built up with people who contains certain interests and hobbies so the socializing and communicating will be easier since people will have the same topic to discuss.

Lastly, I will come up a conclusion; thinking about a main theme for the network will helps developing the network and building up the community since people will have a main reason to use the socializing network and they will often get what they want. These are just my personal opinion and thoughts and perhaps you may not agree with me after you read this article, however, I am still glad that you have the patience to read until this point and please do feel free to comment my article.