What I thought...

Lachlan Krautz 40572576

Introduction

At first I thought it was funny when it was explained to me that we would be signing up to all these social networking programs and that our grade would depend on us using them to some extent. I had been consciously avoiding signing up to these things because many of them I saw to be overly self centred and I felt that often people gave a false image of themselves. For an example of self admitted pretentious behavior on a social network please redirect yourselves here http://www.myspace.com/brisantic . So you can understand where I’m coming from when I say that I didn’t want to be a part of that. Upon signing up I was told by several “purists” that I had sold out, I thought that was funny. My own experience with the programs was actually positive and I found many of them useful and fun.

Background

For this report I signed up to the following social networking programs:

• Flickr
• Facebook
• LastFM
• Twitter
• Google Calendar
• Delicious

I also used “pipes” to make a collaborated feed of the different feeds for each program, I called this my “ultimate stalking link”.

Flickr is used to share photos with friends and groups established on the site. Photos uploaded by me can be seen by my friends and others in my groups. This can be used to see what others are up to if they are the kind of person that takes many photos, or alternatively it can be used to upload work that can be then reviewed by peers in your group, a process currently used by tutors and students in MMDS2200.

Facebook is used as a network to connect friends from all over the world. Each user creates their own “profile” where others can look at your photos, leaves comments, send private emails, and leave public messages. The user can leave a note indicating their status and peers can share quizzes and mini games and other kinds of extras.

LastFm like Facebook involves creating a profile viewable by others, but this one is less customizable and the majority of the information is automatically generated. It lists what music you have been listening to on any device where you have installed the appropriate plug-in. Then over time creates charts of your favorite songs based on what you listen to the most. The idea is that other users will see music that you listen to all the time and will try it out. If you network yourself with many other users with similar tastes in music you can find far more music through them than you could have by yourself.

Twitter is used to keep the people who are interested updated on what you are doing. Yes it’s that simple. This update can be accessed through the website or it can be sent directly to your mobile phone via a sms message.

Google Calendar simply lets you make plans on a calendar and then gives you the option of sharing some of that information with others. The idea here being that you can keep certain people up-to-date on your schedule with out having to tell them personally, this can make organizing events and meetings simpler as you wouldn’t need to ask them about their availability.

Dilicious is a program that allows you to share websites with others who are interested. If you come across an interesting website you can tag it so that it appears on delicious and others who can see that tag and access that site. It’s like recommending sites to others.

Focus

Since signing up for these programs some have had a greater impact than others (twitter) and some I have practically neglected (google calendar) and so in my reflection I will be focusing on Facebook, LastFm and Twitter. I feel I should say that I used these the most because I liked them the most, or I felt that they were the most useful to me at the time. I could see google calendar being wonderfully useful if I was in some kind of serious career… but I’m not, so I don’t find it useful.

Reflection

I’m going to start off with Twitter because honestly I want to get it out of the way. Initially I loved the idea of twitter and thought that being constantly updated on what others were doing would be really fun. Almost instantly however there were far too many messages coming in and I found the program to be a burden. I didn’t want to turn off the updates though because I still wanted to know what was happening. Over the few weeks, I found that I got an idea of the personalities of some of these people I was following and throwing in a few comments here and there I started to feel a sense of belonging to the group. I then had a love hate relationship with twitter as I both appreciated the information and hated the occasional overload. The problem doesn’t lie with the program but like many of these programs the solution will come naturally as the users find and develop etiquette of acceptable use and choose more manageable numbers of people to follow.

I can see twitter being infinitely useful in other situations like a group collaborating on a project or keeping in touch in with friends at a large function. I’m at this point trying to get my friends signed up to twitter but have run into problems with the program’s search (on a side note I just checked my phone and had 15 unread messages, it’s killing me) function, when I type in someone’s exact user name and the network fails to find them. This isn’t a huge program as those same contacts can be found through linking other contacts. The main problem I have is convincing others to sign up to something so public and personal, this shows that it’s really not for everyone and some people like their privacy.

My experience with Facebook was much more positive, almost immediately upon signing up I had people who I assumed were dead (they must have been because I hadn’t seen them in years) adding me as a friend and asking me what I had been up to all this time. I after the initial excitement of catching up with long lost friends and friends from overseas that I never see (obviously) I found that facebook is much more passive. From day to day there aren’t many updates or comments going around but the connection is constant. It’s impossible to loose contact with a friend who maintains his/her profile, although you might not talk to them often but you will have some idea (based on how much they use the program) of what they are doing with themselves and where they are headed in life. I know from my parents that there were many friends that were lost because of a change of address and with digital (unchanging) addresses I can see this being a thing of the past, we will accumulate friends and information our entire lives. Keeping that in mind I can’t see this technology as a phase or something that will go away, these programs will continue in some shape or form simply because people want to keep in contact.

Anther point my use of facebook was more passive and more focused on keeping loosely connected with old friends as apposed to constantly communicating with everyone. I was invited to take part in all kinds of mini games and quizzes that seemed to serve no function other than to waste my time. Something that I don’t want this to become is a pastime or some kind of addiction. There are many people that use it for that and I don’t have a problem with that but I already have more time consuming hobbies than I can deal with so I’m not likely to have more than a passive presence on facebook.

The program that I was the most interested in and entertained by was and is LastFm. Of all the programs this is the one I had actually planned on joining before we were asked to participate in this experiment. Music is something I am extremely interested in and for years and years the radio has failed to provide me with new bands that I like. Finding new music that satisfied my tastes has always been a process of social networking based on recommendations from friends. When I heard that there was a website that did all of that for you, one where you could see what people actually listened to (not just talked about) I decided that this was something I wanted to be a part of. I feel that last point is significant in that in the music world many people think too much about what other people think of them and as a result talk about bands that aren’t really their favorite and they don’t really listen to much at all. With LastFm’s weekly charts I was able to see what new bands my friends had found and better still I was able to listen to clips of them and gain my own first impressions.

Alternatively upon networking up with some others in the course I was able to quickly identify if I had much in common with them musically. Unfortunately more often than not neither party would recognize a single band in each others charts, leading to a less than useful result. Like facebook LastFM is useful as a passive tool to keep in touch with gradually changing information. Over time I can see LastFM becoming more and more useful as I find more people with similar tastes and get glimpses of the new music they are listening to. This program could go as far as you wanted to and could become the sole resource for both finding new music and talking about music with others.

Conclusion

In conclusion I found that all the different programs certainly had their uses but the use to the individual varies from person to person and also the extent to which they are used varies and the way in which they are used. Personally I find LastFM the most useful but I have my plans for Twitter and I will keep Facebook updated. In the future I can see google calendars being useful also Delicous can have the same rewards as LastFm. So despite my initial reservations about social networking programs I can now say that I value them. I can see that there will be a need for a simplification in the process and with pipes we are seeing the beginning of that, so that all these different tools can be combined in one.