My Relfections on Social Services

My reflections on Social Networking Services:

The internet in today’s world consists of three main things… Google, Porn and Social Networking Services. As part of the COMP3505 course, it was a requirement that I should experience many of these social networking sites first hand and reflect on my experiences with them. So I signed up to Facebook, Del.icio.us, Google Calender, Blogger and much to my disappointment…Twitter.

Facebook:
I had actually already been signed up to Facebook for a year before this course, I think it is a great way to keep in touch with friends, even though the site was confusing to use at first, I eventually become immersed in the idea and now it is like second nature for me to check my Facebook account daily, just like my email accounts. I think Facebook’s success comes from its large number of users, I have found people I went to primary and high school with, and as a result, we go out for drinks most weeks to catch up. I also found people that I met overseas through Facebook; it was really quite astounding who you can find. That being said, Facebook also has a serious downside in my opinion…in the form of game and app invites, I think at one point I had 75+ requests to become a vampire, become a zombie, get high, join the dive-man game, Play blackjack, play poker, sign up to this, sign up to that. It got really annoying to finally ignore all 75 requests, only to sign in the next day to see 100 new ones. Although there is now a block you can put up, some still manage to get through the filter.
To conclude, I am inclined to say that Facebook is a great example of how a Social Networking service can be useful, even though I have wasted many hours on its Tetris and poker games rather than on assignments or sleeping, it is still a great way to keep in touch with friends and family.

Blogger:
Seeing that you are reading and contributing to the COMP3505 blog, i can only assume that you know what a blog is...
I have always liked the idea of blogging, and Blogger makes it a lot easier than it used to be to set up a blog and write to it.I have been using Blogger for about two years now and still regularly write to them. The best bit is that you can choose who can read and contribute to your blog, so those ever annoying spam bots and negative people who oppose you for the fun of it can’t fill your blog with meaningless posts. I also found that blogger is a great way to get constructive feedback on current projects and assignments that I am working on. The only setback I found with blogger is that in larger blogs, some peoples posts don’t get read as there are about 10 more in the space of five minutes, and as a result for those who check a blog daily or every couple of days etc, would see the overwhelming amount of posts and just read the latest few. I know I am guilty of doing that, even with this COMP3505 blog, I saw the amount of “my reflections” posts and chose to read the latest two rather than all 15 that were posted. It is something that I believe can’t be avoided in said blogs that have a high number of contributing members.

Google Calender:
It seems that Google is slowly taking over the internet world, however, I welcome it. Google Calender allows you to schedule your whole year, if you’re that organised, and also allow it to be shared with the world. I would have been opposed to the idea; however, it does let you create a private Calender for your more personal schedule that only you can view, which I found great because there are times when I would like only certain people if anybody to know what I am doing at all times. However, I can see the public Calender becoming very useful in organising meetings for uni or work, or letting people know your uni timetable so events can be organised around it.

Twitter:
Great, I can pay to find out that my friend is getting nando’s chicken…why twitter was created I don’t know. Twitter is a waste of internet, essentially all it does is allow you to say what you are up to, and people can follow your status….just throwing this out there…lazy stalkers? And what’s more, you can get mobile updates via SMS for your local standard SMS cost, so essentially I spent about $5 the other night finding out that my friends were out partying why I had to stay home and finish an assignment. I think I will just leave the SMS message alerts off, and make an executive decision to use twitter as little as possible.


Well to conclude this blog, although I cannot say that I am a social network savvy, I find social networking services very interesting, even the bad ones like twitter, and with the internet’s constant advancements, I am confident that these services will be around for a long time.