My Reflection

INTRODUCTION

For a long time I have resisted those who told me to sign up for various social sites. "You should join livejournal," they would say, and I would reply "Not right now, maybe later." I would get emails inviting me to join Facebook, which I would promptly ignore. But when I was offered 15% participation marks to try out various social networking sites, I couldn't say no. And it turns out I was right. I'm not meant to be social.

BACKGROUND

the web sites I looked at were as follows:

Flickr:
A social networking site based around sharing photos. Once uploaded photos can be shared with others, as well as being tagged so it is possible to search for photos.

Facebook:
A social networking site which allows you to keep in touch with friends. It has a friends list, as well as networks and groups. It also has a large number of aplications to do a variety of things.

Last.FM:
A social site which keeps track of the music you listen to and offers recomendations of new music. It also allows you to keep a list of friends and lists people who have similar tastes in music.

Google Calender:
This site allows you to record your appointments on an online calender. You can make your calender public or private, however if you make it public it will be visible to everyone and even appear in Google searches.

FOCUS

I guess I should start by saying I am not normally a particularly social being. Before doing this course the extent of my internet socialization was email and instant messaging, and now I suddenly find myself with much more. Of course I don't tend to use all of them very much, and I don't find myself particularly suited to most of these sites at all. My reflection will focus on my experiences with these sites and what I liked and didn't like.


REFLECTION

The main example of this is Flickr. I think it is a good idea, I can see the uses of it, but they don't apply to me. I am not in the habit of taking photos, and do not in fact even own a camera. Because of this I don't have any photos to share with my family and friends, or with anyone else for that matter. I do, however, occasionally look at photos others have place there. Google calender was also pretty useless due to the fact that I am extremely unorganized, and it is normal for me to not know what I am doing until the day before it happens, if then. I am also uncomfortable with making my calender public, allowing anyone to see what I am doing when, even complete strangers who have stumbled on it using a Google search.

The other side of the scale lies with Last.FM, as I am constantly listening to music, especially when I am working at home, and I have just spent the last couple of weeks doing assignments. I downloaded the audioscrober and connected it to windows media player, and it lists all the music I listen to on my page. Then it gives me interesting information on what I listen to. For example, it recently listed Battelore as one of the bands I listen to most, despite the fact that I only have 2 of their songs on my computer, however over time this has change to reflect the amount of music from different bands I own. It also points out all those song I have that I never took the time to tag properly, some of them appear on my page with the wrong information, and the site says it can't find the artist, largely because it is listed as 'compilation' or 'buffy soundtrack', since it is to much effort for me to find out who actually wrote the songs. Then there are other times I have gone to look at my page and it has left me notes saying a song was not recorded because it is insufficiently tagged, and tells me to correct this. I haven't got around to it. I enjoy listening to the music recommendations, and although the social side of the site is limited because I don't know of any of my friends who use it, the site is quite helpful when I am using a public computer and want to listen to music. I may one day even look at that list of people it says have similar tastes. I am quite happy to allow all of my music to appear on the list, as all my friends like different types of music, and my tastes are so varied I consider it normal to jump from Cradle of Filth to The Beatles to crazy Japanese music that where I don't understand a word they say. I also like the pretty collage of album covers it makes from my music.

While Last.FM is the most used of the social tool I have signed up to, Facebook is probably the one I have used most for social reasons. However, this was hindered by the fact that most of my friends on Facebook have been on it for a long time, and are rather static in what they do with it, or I already speak to them too often using instant messaging, and as such we don't often have anything worth saying on Facebook, or if we do it gets said on msn. We can be rather boring sometimes. I do enjoy playing with the different Facebook applications, and comparing my results to others. Apparently I'll only survive for 55% of a horror movie...oh well, at least I lived through the first half.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion social networking sites are not for everybody. In my own case, I used Last.FM, however I didn't use any of it's social features. While the fact that you don't have to deal with these people face to face can be a distinct advantage, hiding away in a dark room playing on Facebook is not as enjoyable as actually going out and spending time with friends. The main reason, however, that I do not have a use for these sites is that I have no desire to talk to people who are not my friends over the internet, and I already have many different ways with which I keep in touch with the people I want to talk to.