If We Need Friends, Why Did God Build The Internet?

A reflective blog from Timothy Barry s4123836

Introduction

Contrary to belief, not everyone on this planet has access to ADSL or higher, like children in third world contries, still stuck on the dial-up teat. There are also the few genetically deformed 'humans' who have no home internet access. This is where I fall in. As a survival strategy, some of us freaks, or 'anti-netters' are forced to engage in coversation. So being forced to apply myself on a social network should seem rather counter-productive, and it most certainly did.
The purpose of this assignment was to get an entire class of uni students and have them sign up to various socialising sites. Throughout my reflection, I intend to express the difficulty and enjoyment I had with the varying social sites. However, I didn't exactly use each of the networking sites, mostly because I would sign up to something, and forget my username (my password is consistant throughout all sign-ins) and as such I wouldn't use the site out of fear of having to create a second user account. So I will do what I can with the lemons I have, and either make lemonade, or sour juice.

Reflection

Facebook



Facebook, originally called theFacebook in 2004, is now the second largest social networking site on the internet, only slightly behind Myspace, Facebook is designed more to suit high-school and university students. With over 55 million Facebookers, or Facebookies, how is it so popular? That answer comes from the sites addictive nature, with the various ways people can converse with each other, the ability to create your own 'wall', and the ability to create your own quizzes. Something so bizarrly addictive and somewhat childish should be perfect for an easily distracted guy lik me, right? Well, you are dangerously accurate, but let me finish my reflection before you interrupt me.

I signed up to create my own account, that was nice and simple enough. I then drew up a simple little file photo, as I was previously aware the site had some privacy issues, as some of my invisible friends had complained about. After a couple of days of seeing the same file photo I realised that the image I drew up was poor quality, and after deleting it from my computer tried to find out how to delete the image from Facebook. It proved a fair bit more difficult than expected, but was ultimately accomplished. I replaced the image with a better drawn picture. Then I tried to sign up to the comp3505 group. There I was stuck, I tried doing a search for comp3505 and even tried finding it through my friends. However, I found no way to join the group. Fortunatly, one of my invisible friends, having recently discovered how to join the group, joined for me. This was most fortunate, now I could see what everybody was doing, all the time... I found that rather creepy, I don't mind people I know and somewhat trust looking in at what I'm doing, but if they can do it, who else could? I tried to find a way to privatise my account. I was fortunate that Facebook makes privatising accounts rather easily. So I gave it a nice, green tick. I found the site really fun to use, the quizzes where entertaining, I could converse with friends I hadn't seen in a long time, I didn't have to worry about other people I didn't know trying to be my friend, which is really the entire point of these networking sites. Anyway, as always I went out drinking and one of my invisible friends took a rather embarrasing photo of e, and since that friend knew the password I constantly use, they made that phot my portrait, and somehow un-privatised my profile. I felt rather depressed and decided to simply delete my account and start fresh. Now, as anyone will tell you, there is no way to delete an account. This is because Facebook makes a copy of your data and stores it, making it impossible to delete without proper authorisation. That is where my luxury liner hit the iceberg. I can't believe a social network this addictive doesn't allow users to delete their profile. Who else is going to? What happens when those people die? People are going to forever see that Facebook profile and judge that person on what they see. I found that to be a major red cross for that site.


Flickr


Since it's launch in 2004, Flickr has been a site renowned for the ability for users to post art, pictures, drawings photos and any image deemed appropriate. Flickr became famous for it's ability to 'tag' certain images as favourites in an easy and straight-forward fashion, grouping photos in terms of interest and chat room style art sharing. I always like showing people that I can draw, it is one of my three best skills, along with making spaghetti and (censored). I love to show off my art so much that I often draw things just for the site. So, with Flickr, one would think this may be the perfect site for me. Well, you would be wrong, dead wrong. I found the site far to difficult to understand. I found later that Flickr is not a site designed for communication, but instead more a forum for people to upload and share images, however, unlike more successful image sharing sites like deviantart, it didn't make the image uploaded free for all to see, instead, you are given a select of permissions as to who can see your image and who can't, and made the purpose of a Flickr redundant. If I drew something, and only wanted my friends to see it, I would just send it to them via msn or meggaging, I wouldn't go onto a website, dedicate a group share network and then give them the image.


Del.icio.us


Delicious, released in 2005 is not so much a social network site as much a bookmarking tool used to determine a sites popularity and usability. I find that a bookmarking tool is useful, but only if you need to de research, if you're too lazy to type a web adress every time you want to go somewhere, or if you hack into your girlfriend's laptop and want to know what sites she's been on, as the old fashioned trick of deleting cookies and the temp history doesn't work with del.icio.us. Now I know what you're thinking. Not really, but I personally wonder why del.icio.us has the full stops where it does, but like religion or grape juice, it's a mystery I will never get the answer to.


Google Calender


I sit at home some days and just think to myself, 'Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I could get a calender on the internet, that way I know what I have planned for the week, and don't have to spend so much time remembering details.' If you sit around wondering the same thing, then do I have the perfect site for you. Do I? Good.


Google calender is useful in that it allows users to view their calender, and update their calender for upcomming events, such and music festivals, birthdays and the apocolypse. Also, unlike Facebook, it allows you to delete information, and the calender has weather updates, so users can get an estimate on what the scheduled day will be like. However, the main purpose of this tool is to remind users of written in schedules, appointments and days of interest. Which begs the question, if you remember something enough to write about it on an internet calender, the chances are slim that it will be forgotten on the day of importance, as people obsess over details. And seeing as I am a human, and not a goldfish, I don't tink I really need a virtual calender, when the real one still works. However, it is easy to understand why people enjoy the functionality of a calender with extra plugins and addons. Although I personally didn't really use it at all.


Twitter

To every single person who decided it would be funny to spam mobiles. This is for you.
Everyone, even those dirty tutors who will be marking this blog, told me that Twitter was awesome and that I had to join it, 'OK', I thought, if everyone is using it then that means it can't be that bad, 'in fact' I told myself, 'it must be pretty good.' So I sign up, which is easy enough, no problems there, then I get told to add the sms option. Fair enough, I then do a tad of research (ha ha) to find a bit more about it, as I do, a text comes through my phone, it reads, "3:15pm Man this was easy," Alright... Anyway I continue to research, within five minutes my phone's battery drops out, so when I get home and plug it in, I get a sudden 67 message list in my inbox. As I sort through I discover the highly important messages were what shorted out my battery, but hey, I got to know "10:02pm Feeling Stressed", "10:05pm Finding Towels"
This makes hating Twitter just that little bit easier, and as soon as that first twitter text comes through on mobile. I hurrily turn the mobile off, as everyone else who had recieved that same twitter text is about to start sending their own 'funny' responses. I use the term funny lightly, as these 'jokes' cost me over eithy dollars of phone credit. So things aren't going that well for twitter at the moment. But hey, things might pick up for this fan favourite. Another problem I encountered with the sms is that they often arrive at very inappropriate times, like when I'm having dinner, sleeping, out with a special lady or concentrating on work. Even now I can't find respite, and have opted to just turn off my phone whenever I'm doing anything, but the worst are the texts early in the morning, at like 3 in the morning when someone has decided it would be funny to send a text pointing out that it's three in the morning. The problem is, I knew it was three in the morning, and I didn't care enough to wake up, but cheers, I'll just have to sleep at some other time.


Conclusion

Having to sign up to all of these various websites was less enjoyable than I initially thought. I do enjoy having the ability to communicate and network with friends I don't get to see that much, but at the same time, I don't like to be forced to learn how to use a website in order to speak to those friends, and neither do I wish to be woken in the early hours of morning because some insomniac finds it funny that they're still awake. In a quick sum up. It is highly likely I will not stick to these network sites, and may delete my accounts when this semester is over. I'm not saying that social networking is a bad thing, far from it. It is simply that these particular sites didn't work for me. And to prove that my opinion has no value, I'm posting this on Blogger.
Sucks to be me.

Resources
http://mashable.com/2006/08/25/facebook-profile/
mashable.com/2007/03/11/twitter/
code.google.com/apis/calendar/
googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/calendar-for-mobile-devices.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr
www.flickr.com/groups/canadianhistory/
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/19/AR2008031900946.html
www.jayonline.co.uk/blog/2006/11/22/twitter-about/
http://www.fasticon.com/
http://www.spankaroo.com/images/
http://twofones.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/12/15/
http://www.gadgetizer.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/