Student # 41132696 - Christopher Lai Ming Zheng. A reflection.

Introduction

With the help of the internet, people around the world are able to talk to each other, keep in touch with old friends and probably make friends with people from other countries they would otherwise not have met at all. But it is not just the internet that allows people to do this. If the internet were nothing but a “series of tubes”, people would probably prefer to use the old fashion methods of telephone or snail mail. The reason this is made possible can probably be attributed to social websites.

These social websites come in many forms, the most common probably being blogs. Blogs are like online dairies which you share with friends. Commonly, people put up things such as “Hey everyone, today I went to this place to do that thing” and might be accompanied by photos. In a way this is like sending a letter to everybody who knows the blog, just much quicker and cheaper.

In this reflection, I will talk about my experiences with a number of these social websites and what I think about them.

Background

The following are the websites I have chosen for this reflection.

Blogger:

Blogger is a fairly normal blogging website, as apparent from the name. The use of which has been described in the introduction. In addition to publishing entries online and allowing other users to comment on it, blogger also shows an archive of recent posts and also keeps all posts made from day 1. There is also an option to invite other people to add into the blog, turning the blog from an individual blog to a group blog.

Del.icio.us:

Del.icio.us is a bookmark sharing website. People basically share websites that have piqued their interests with other people. It also can be used as an online storage tool for bookmarks.

Facebook:

Facebook is a social website that allows users to keep in touch with each other and to meet new people. Facebook also gives the option of letting people join groups.

Flickr:

Flickr is a social website where people post photos to share with others. Users can put tags on their photos for searching. It is also commonly used as a photo repository and can be seen linked to from many blogs.

Google Calendar:

Google Calendar is an online system where users can post or organize schedules. Google Calendar has a simple to use GUI that allows users to post up events or reminders on certain days, with an option to make a reminder or event daily, weekly or even monthly.

Focus

My experience with social networking websites have been limited before enrolling in COMP3505. Outside of fiddling around with myspace pages on account names I have since long forgotten or just looking at blogs that my friends linked me, I have absolutely no experience with them. I will reflect on what I have found out about these social websites in this small amount of time since enrolling in this course and about what I think about them.

Reflection

Blogger:

Blogger is a standard blog, nothing much special about it. It allows users to post entries, invite other people to post entries. The personal blog pages are customizable. Users can not only change the background and theme of the page, they can add a variety of stuff to the page, ranging from pictures or polls to even their own little programs.

As I wrote this, I thought about how one blog website can be more popular than another? To me, an outsider to all these blogging websites, they all look the same and provide the same function and customizability. So how then, does myspace seem so much more popular than blogger?

Del.icio.us:

Users keep bookmarks on a webpage and can choose to share them with others. Users can organize these bookmarks into different folders and add tags to the folders.

Usage of this website on a social level is on the same line as a person going to a friend and telling them to check out this number of websites. Other users may also look at bookmarks of people they don’t know. Users might find another user that have similar tastes and therefore find out about websites that they might enjoy too.

I am not sure why people would want to use it on a personal level, meaning it’s just an online storage tool for bookmarks. If it is used for a PC that crashes often, I can sort of understand, but otherwise I am not sure why people would use it on a personal level without sharing.

It seems that a user can integrate his del.icio.us page into facebook. That is an option that I will have to explore.

Facebook:

Facebook is probably the most interesting of the 5 sites I’ve signed up for. It allows you to keep close contact with friends or groups through one simple website. Pictures, comments, profiles and videos can be uploaded to a user’s page, providing countless hours of time wasting and/or procrastinating.

Facebook as I have seen it used most of the time around me is about as productive as playing a game of Rock Paper Scissors with a friend sitting opposite you via MSN messenger. There might be some social element that I am missing but I am not sure why people prefer talking to a friend via a website such as Facebook when you can simply pick up the phone and simply call or text a friend.

There is apparently a system where you can embed del.icio.us into facebook, but I have done this and have yet to see anything about it on my facebook.

Flickr:

Flickr is a website that can be used as an online photo repository. Only discovering flickr a mere few months before enrolling in COMP3505, Flickr is probably the website I know the least about. With only 100 megabytes of bandwidth a month for a free account, this is probably not the site to use for linking signatures or avatars for use in forums. Flickr does, however, have a tag system for use in searching for pictures and there is the ability to comment on pictures. This allows for more social interaction than other more popular picture storing sites such as photobucket.

Google Calendar:

Google Calendar is an online personal organizing tool which is more portable than a PC program, but not as much as a palm top or even a simple modern day cell phone. But it being online has its uses. For example a company trying to organize a meeting can simply check the respective calendars for the participants of the meeting. This could apply to a small group of friends too

Conclusion

Although I find the concept of some of these social websites to be amazing, I do not see myself as a person to use any of these websites much. I attribute this to my having a raging addiction to an online game (FYI: it’s Final Fantasy XI, not WoW.) as the majority of my online social interaction happens there. Even if not in the game itself, there are online forums where people discuss everything about it, or just a guild (known in-game as a Linkshell) forum. As for my other friends (the fleshy kind), in my opinion, there’s always the phone, if not, I’m always on MSN messenger when available and have everybody on my contact list, that is if the desire to talk arises when we’re not out partying or struggling to finish our assignment before it is due.

Maybe in the future I might, when I leave this University to pursue my individual goals to keep in touch with friends in University or when I finally have to put to rest my addiction for online gaming. But as it is right now, I prefer social interaction in the flesh when I do not live a plane ride away from my friends.

A side note: Other social websites.

There is a Japanese video streaming website that I frequent called niconico douga (http://www.nicovideo.jp). It is almost like any other video streaming website like youtube. A user posts a video for people to see and people comment on it. This video streaming website stands out among other such websites is in the way the comments work. In niconico douga, the comments are literally on the video itself. It shows up either as scrolling text of varying colour and size or as a small line of text like subtitles in a movie. The way these comments work is that they pop up on the video at the same time the user typed it in. For example, a user typed in a comment at 1:22 into the video, other uses who watch that video will see that comment the user typed in at 1:22 on the video. The result is an atmosphere similar to watching television with a bunch of other people.

As with other social websites, there is a group of people who try to stand out or be different. Not counting the inevitable “trollers” or “flamers”, these people are called “professionals”. This group of users put in ASCII art in the video, some of which make use of the scrolling text to make an animated picture instead. The result can range from something like having a laser show projected into an ongoing show in the cinemas or even like graffiti on a picture.

Although all comments and videos in this website are submitted anonymously, I still believe that there is some form of social element in this website. From what I understand, there are many people who are not Japanese sign up to this website without regard to the language barrier. To make people do this, they must have something good going on for them. Or just really good videos.