s4116233 s4116233 - M.Hawcroft
For this reflection I will be looking at varies social networking sites and what my experiences were in using these applications. Over the last 3 weeks I have been engaging and interacting with friends and class mates for our Comp3505 class through sites such as: Facebook, LastFM, Twitter, and Delicious. All of these social software applications are web based, but some interactions via mobile devices are available for some.
A brief description of the following social networking application and my opinion of them:
Facebook – a social networking site that allows people to share, comment and post personal information to friends and networks or groups of people. Facebook consists of a core group of features and applications that can be extended and customized to include interests, events, videos and picture galleries etc. I’m pretty comfortable with using this tool and have had an account for the last year or so. I mainly use this site to stay in contact with family and actual friends, unlike some other social networking sites where ‘making’ new friends seems to be the goal (up until recently MySpace, Bebo etc).
My interaction with people usually consists of leaving messages on ‘walls’ , updating statuses on a regular basis, commenting on photos or inviting someone to the odd quiz. This differs somewhat to when I first started using FB, when adding every annoying application, accepting every possible invite and spamming walls was considered fun.
I like the customizable privacy features, which are important as people are inclined to give a lot of personal information on their site such as birthdays, work and contact details, and details about daily life. Personally up until recently I have had some of these details displayed on my own page, but will have to say since doing a little research I am less inclined to think of Facebook anything less than a public space.
LastFM – a music community based website that collects and complies information on what music you listen to, either from your own pc via their “Audioscrobbler” plug-in or through any other portable music devices such as Ipods etc. The aim of the site is to let each account holder build a profile of their music tastes, get recommendations based off those or friends and find other users who listen to similar music to promote ‘groups’ of people who share similar tastes.
This was a new site for me and I have to admit my first thoughts where “why do I need a sight that shows everyone what I am listening too?” Not that I think I have that bad a taste in music. Being use to sites like FB, it took me a while to get use to the shift in how people share information and the type of information that gets shared. With the plugin provided all a user really needs to do to get started with Last.FM is to sit back and listen to what ever they usually listen to or tune into one of the ‘radio stations’ (and that’s pretty much what I stuck to).
It seems a lot easier to build a ‘community’ feel on Last FM than in Facebook I feel. I think that this might have more to do with the point of the site, it’s a music orientated site and caters very well to users with the tools it provides. For example, a useful feature on Last.FM is tagging, this allows users to search and categorize tracks. How you tag things are left up to the individual user. This doesn’t seem to be moderated as tagging isn’t limited to genre or mood. By adding tags user contribute to how others find and sort music.
Twitter – incorporates ‘micro-blogging’ into social networking. Basically limiting inputs/outputs to a restrictive format. This to me is basically sms-ing but over the internet. Fortunately, sending and receiving messages aren’t restricted to your PC but can also be done via mobile phones. Controls on how you want to receive of send messages are also accessible via the mobile which I thought was very decent and makes the cross over from pc to mobile all that more practical to users.
Twitter when compared to FB or Last.FM seems like a very basic and minimalistic approach to keeping in touch with people. The basic idea it seems is to “follow” and keep friends updated with what ever you’re doing or currently thinking (an extension of FB status updater?). It’s interesting to see how people can make the most even out of the simplest idea. Popularity with tool is apparent with the amount of passing through notifications each day. Quite often these form mini conversations that are easy to track if a “reply to” link is provided in the text. However in what I’ve observed it’s often the case that people don’t either bother to do this or they reply to the first (even if irrelevant) post of that person to reply too. Thus making it difficult when it comes to following any conversations.
I can see how issues with privacy might occur if not careful. Even though Twitter isn’t so heavy on filling your page up with every bit of personal information, having people constantly monitoring what you do does seem a little disconcerting. Users do however have control over who can see what they’ve post by “following” people which in turn allows them to be followed in return.
One issue with this is, that for the rather large group that will be following you (because that will inevitable happen) it will be difficult in keeping track of who shouldn’t or really should be receiving certain messages. Of course this will depend on the user and how they chose to use it as a tool. Whether it will be used as a ‘current status updater’, or to remark on more personal issues.
Delicious – just another way to bookmark web pages? This is probably one of my least used sites. I’m not sure whether it’s just because I don’t really have a use for what this site offers or if it’s because the way it is structured (I suspect it’s a bit of both). The tools it offers are useful no doubt, and a small download provides the user with quick access to their page and a means to quickly make posst to their page to bookmark sites of interest. The only downside to this I found was that eventually, adding descriptions, tags and notes would make things very tedious and I would become slack in tagging things correctly or more thoroughly. This could possible affect other people’s experiences as tagging is used in order to search through bookmarked pages.
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Social software is all about considering interactions amongst people or groups. And as such having awareness into factors such as group dynamics, the types of relationships (or different ‘classes’ of individuals) are important [1]. I can safely assume that the majority of interactions amongst the comp3505 class were with peers and friends as this was a class activity. Of course that doesn’t rule out and other groups, but my main focus will be on these.
For my focus I want to look at the interactions between people, including myself, and how these tools provided can be used by individual or groups of people to create a sense of connectiveness. A sense of community or connectiveness can be created by a number of different things I believe. Having a system or tool that works well for one. The following is a quote from Nick O’Neill, a self proclaimed ‘internet evangelists’ on why Facebook seems to work so well:
“….The bottom line is that all of these tools are evolving so we can constantly monitor each other and communicate as if we were right there with the person as they go through their life. It makes us feel more connected and strangely enough, it often makes them feel more connected as well....Facebook helps us to communicate most effectively in this digital world. Simply put.....” [2]
Facebook could be classified as a synchronous and asynchronous system [3]. It allows for people in different places to communicate and interact in both ‘close to real-time’ (via the wall or the instant message widget application) and at different times (via the wall or sticky-notes just to name a couple). As I’ve stated before this is one of the applications that I myself use on a regular basis and I think the quote from Nick to be pretty spot on. How many of us have seen those mini-feeds pop up on our home page informing us on something a friend has recently added or done and have no once clicked on those links? This awareness of what other people are doing or feeling even, helps to contribute to this feeling of connectiveness. We can in turn communicate back to them and so encourage the same.
At first I thought Twitter was the lamest idea ever, and yes I still sign on almost 4 times a day. Over the last couple of weeks however my opinion of Twitter has changed some what. I am not an overly social person and haven’t actually spoken to half the people in this course. However I am now aware that person X likes to go out and get drunk every so often, and now that everyone’s on twitter an open invite has been extended. Personally I can see a use for such a tool. I recognize that there is a difference between Twitter and Facebook. Firstly the amount of messaging traffic seems to weigh more highly on twitters side, but technically I have more friends on FB than the other. It seems that I am more drawn towards the activity on my Twitter account. I think that this has to do with the actual amount of information coming through and how it is made accessible to users. Unlike FB where you would need to visit individuals page or a group’s page to follow up on any conversations, in Twitter its all right there, confusion and all.
Despite its seemingly simple design, it’s interesting to note the different ways individuals and groups of people use this site. Conversations are kept, random outbursts, personal thoughts as well as just the regular “what am I doing right now” updates. Just looking at my account home page it’s easy to separate individuals into groups of interaction (quite often members of more than one group). In this respect Last.FM and Delicious differ again some what from what the other two offers. Last.FM for me was more about dealing with others indirectly. I could see what they liked listening to and get insights into what type of bands or event they might be into. It seems that my main interaction with people often just involved listening to their radio stations and the odd occasional ‘shout out’. Even so this has had an impact on me. Just realizing what someone is currently listening to or knowing that that Marron5 song you’re playing is going to made public shows that sense of awareness and becomes part of how you chose to interact.
In my opinion is seems that a good Social Networking system or tool has these two things in common:
- They are more likely to be successful and get you hooked if the user is able to integrate what these tools provide into their own lives, whether they are online or offline.
- And that everyone has a different way in dealing with the tools provided, and a good social networking site allows for them to use those to adapt to their own needs.
Sorry, brain died, so the last bits prob don’t make much sense
[1]Matt Webb (2004) http://interconnected.org/home/2004/04/28/on_social_software
[2]http://www.hyperempowered.com/2007/10/why-does-facebo.html
[3]http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_fall/projects/gacha/olivarez-final.html
For this reflection I will be looking at varies social networking sites and what my experiences were in using these applications. Over the last 3 weeks I have been engaging and interacting with friends and class mates for our Comp3505 class through sites such as: Facebook, LastFM, Twitter, and Delicious. All of these social software applications are web based, but some interactions via mobile devices are available for some.
A brief description of the following social networking application and my opinion of them:
Facebook – a social networking site that allows people to share, comment and post personal information to friends and networks or groups of people. Facebook consists of a core group of features and applications that can be extended and customized to include interests, events, videos and picture galleries etc. I’m pretty comfortable with using this tool and have had an account for the last year or so. I mainly use this site to stay in contact with family and actual friends, unlike some other social networking sites where ‘making’ new friends seems to be the goal (up until recently MySpace, Bebo etc).
My interaction with people usually consists of leaving messages on ‘walls’ , updating statuses on a regular basis, commenting on photos or inviting someone to the odd quiz. This differs somewhat to when I first started using FB, when adding every annoying application, accepting every possible invite and spamming walls was considered fun.
I like the customizable privacy features, which are important as people are inclined to give a lot of personal information on their site such as birthdays, work and contact details, and details about daily life. Personally up until recently I have had some of these details displayed on my own page, but will have to say since doing a little research I am less inclined to think of Facebook anything less than a public space.
LastFM – a music community based website that collects and complies information on what music you listen to, either from your own pc via their “Audioscrobbler” plug-in or through any other portable music devices such as Ipods etc. The aim of the site is to let each account holder build a profile of their music tastes, get recommendations based off those or friends and find other users who listen to similar music to promote ‘groups’ of people who share similar tastes.
This was a new site for me and I have to admit my first thoughts where “why do I need a sight that shows everyone what I am listening too?” Not that I think I have that bad a taste in music. Being use to sites like FB, it took me a while to get use to the shift in how people share information and the type of information that gets shared. With the plugin provided all a user really needs to do to get started with Last.FM is to sit back and listen to what ever they usually listen to or tune into one of the ‘radio stations’ (and that’s pretty much what I stuck to).
It seems a lot easier to build a ‘community’ feel on Last FM than in Facebook I feel. I think that this might have more to do with the point of the site, it’s a music orientated site and caters very well to users with the tools it provides. For example, a useful feature on Last.FM is tagging, this allows users to search and categorize tracks. How you tag things are left up to the individual user. This doesn’t seem to be moderated as tagging isn’t limited to genre or mood. By adding tags user contribute to how others find and sort music.
Twitter – incorporates ‘micro-blogging’ into social networking. Basically limiting inputs/outputs to a restrictive format. This to me is basically sms-ing but over the internet. Fortunately, sending and receiving messages aren’t restricted to your PC but can also be done via mobile phones. Controls on how you want to receive of send messages are also accessible via the mobile which I thought was very decent and makes the cross over from pc to mobile all that more practical to users.
Twitter when compared to FB or Last.FM seems like a very basic and minimalistic approach to keeping in touch with people. The basic idea it seems is to “follow” and keep friends updated with what ever you’re doing or currently thinking (an extension of FB status updater?). It’s interesting to see how people can make the most even out of the simplest idea. Popularity with tool is apparent with the amount of passing through notifications each day. Quite often these form mini conversations that are easy to track if a “reply to” link is provided in the text. However in what I’ve observed it’s often the case that people don’t either bother to do this or they reply to the first (even if irrelevant) post of that person to reply too. Thus making it difficult when it comes to following any conversations.
I can see how issues with privacy might occur if not careful. Even though Twitter isn’t so heavy on filling your page up with every bit of personal information, having people constantly monitoring what you do does seem a little disconcerting. Users do however have control over who can see what they’ve post by “following” people which in turn allows them to be followed in return.
One issue with this is, that for the rather large group that will be following you (because that will inevitable happen) it will be difficult in keeping track of who shouldn’t or really should be receiving certain messages. Of course this will depend on the user and how they chose to use it as a tool. Whether it will be used as a ‘current status updater’, or to remark on more personal issues.
Delicious – just another way to bookmark web pages? This is probably one of my least used sites. I’m not sure whether it’s just because I don’t really have a use for what this site offers or if it’s because the way it is structured (I suspect it’s a bit of both). The tools it offers are useful no doubt, and a small download provides the user with quick access to their page and a means to quickly make posst to their page to bookmark sites of interest. The only downside to this I found was that eventually, adding descriptions, tags and notes would make things very tedious and I would become slack in tagging things correctly or more thoroughly. This could possible affect other people’s experiences as tagging is used in order to search through bookmarked pages.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Social software is all about considering interactions amongst people or groups. And as such having awareness into factors such as group dynamics, the types of relationships (or different ‘classes’ of individuals) are important [1]. I can safely assume that the majority of interactions amongst the comp3505 class were with peers and friends as this was a class activity. Of course that doesn’t rule out and other groups, but my main focus will be on these.
For my focus I want to look at the interactions between people, including myself, and how these tools provided can be used by individual or groups of people to create a sense of connectiveness. A sense of community or connectiveness can be created by a number of different things I believe. Having a system or tool that works well for one. The following is a quote from Nick O’Neill, a self proclaimed ‘internet evangelists’ on why Facebook seems to work so well:
“….The bottom line is that all of these tools are evolving so we can constantly monitor each other and communicate as if we were right there with the person as they go through their life. It makes us feel more connected and strangely enough, it often makes them feel more connected as well....Facebook helps us to communicate most effectively in this digital world. Simply put.....” [2]
Facebook could be classified as a synchronous and asynchronous system [3]. It allows for people in different places to communicate and interact in both ‘close to real-time’ (via the wall or the instant message widget application) and at different times (via the wall or sticky-notes just to name a couple). As I’ve stated before this is one of the applications that I myself use on a regular basis and I think the quote from Nick to be pretty spot on. How many of us have seen those mini-feeds pop up on our home page informing us on something a friend has recently added or done and have no once clicked on those links? This awareness of what other people are doing or feeling even, helps to contribute to this feeling of connectiveness. We can in turn communicate back to them and so encourage the same.
At first I thought Twitter was the lamest idea ever, and yes I still sign on almost 4 times a day. Over the last couple of weeks however my opinion of Twitter has changed some what. I am not an overly social person and haven’t actually spoken to half the people in this course. However I am now aware that person X likes to go out and get drunk every so often, and now that everyone’s on twitter an open invite has been extended. Personally I can see a use for such a tool. I recognize that there is a difference between Twitter and Facebook. Firstly the amount of messaging traffic seems to weigh more highly on twitters side, but technically I have more friends on FB than the other. It seems that I am more drawn towards the activity on my Twitter account. I think that this has to do with the actual amount of information coming through and how it is made accessible to users. Unlike FB where you would need to visit individuals page or a group’s page to follow up on any conversations, in Twitter its all right there, confusion and all.
Despite its seemingly simple design, it’s interesting to note the different ways individuals and groups of people use this site. Conversations are kept, random outbursts, personal thoughts as well as just the regular “what am I doing right now” updates. Just looking at my account home page it’s easy to separate individuals into groups of interaction (quite often members of more than one group). In this respect Last.FM and Delicious differ again some what from what the other two offers. Last.FM for me was more about dealing with others indirectly. I could see what they liked listening to and get insights into what type of bands or event they might be into. It seems that my main interaction with people often just involved listening to their radio stations and the odd occasional ‘shout out’. Even so this has had an impact on me. Just realizing what someone is currently listening to or knowing that that Marron5 song you’re playing is going to made public shows that sense of awareness and becomes part of how you chose to interact.
In my opinion is seems that a good Social Networking system or tool has these two things in common:
- They are more likely to be successful and get you hooked if the user is able to integrate what these tools provide into their own lives, whether they are online or offline.
- And that everyone has a different way in dealing with the tools provided, and a good social networking site allows for them to use those to adapt to their own needs.
Sorry, brain died, so the last bits prob don’t make much sense
[1]Matt Webb (2004) http://interconnected.org/home/2004/04/28/on_social_software
[2]http://www.hyperempowered.com/2007/10/why-does-facebo.html
[3]http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_fall/projects/gacha/olivarez-final.html
8 comments:
"By adding tags user contribute to how others find and sort music."
That, in my opinion, is one of Last.fm's little known gems. It's a prime example of how the community builds the website's content, not its creators.
thats a good start. we want more!
I agree with your comment on finding it difficult to follow conversations when multiple people have posted messages since you last looked on twitter. I recently turned off my phone notifications the other day, so reading the feed earlier confused me to know end. But it's bound to happen when you have 10 people posting messages constantly in a space of time, all with different conversations occurring, I guess with this type of social networking, you either have to learn to deal with it or turn your notifications on again to get the messages as they are updated... Question is which one bothers me the least?
Yeah, I agree, I've never really seen the point in Del.icio.us. Probably why I didn't even mention it in mine. Nice thought about twitter in free sms action.
I mainly used delicious for putting up bookmarks that aren't necessarily ones that I want in my own browser. It's more a work-space bookmark holder thingamy.
del.icio.us can be used like a search engine like google. Lets you check out the popular or latest links of your interested category (tags). I believe it'll let us discover interesting web sites that we would never come across with through your habitual keyword search on google.
Hikaru
thats a good point. For those purposes I have to admit it works well enough.
I agree with Hikaru about delicious - i've been using it for a couple of years now and its incredibly handy - especially with the community that you can build with the networks feature.
Its also great when you forget to back up your favourites when your pc has to be rebuilt ;-)
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