Reflection on Social network

Van Hong Quan 4187853

Introduction

The rapid development of information and internet has lead human to a new era of social communication. Human are trying to find vary of method to communicate with other more efficiency. From physically communication, people gradually switch to digital interaction and together with internet, it expend in a dizzy speed. Internet relay chat( IRC), instant message, and now social network, human has entered, joint and now spread themselves into the world of internet. It plays an important role of bringing people closer.

As human lifestyle is becoming faster and faster, we find harder to physical communicate and exchange information between each other, therefore social network is created as a part of the information link between people. With the assistance of social network, information is updated faster and more efficiency.

Studying CSCW and experienced in some of social network provides me some idea about how these community impacts human’s life, how these tools are able to support our connection and affect to the world


Background

Twitter
Twitter (2) is a micro-blogging which was built to answers a very simple question: ”What are you doing?” (2)Twitter is a famous service that people choose to use as a method to communicate with their social online. By using twitter users are able to notice their friends what they are doing via SMS. Twitter message is based on text message which allow user to send only short message in 140 character, therefore it often be describes as the “SMS of Internet.”


Delicious
A very powerful online bookmark tool which allows users to tag and save their favorite sites online. Delicious (4) represents your taste of World Wide Web. Through Delicious users are not only able to add and manage bookmarks but also able to view and compare with others. The website that you save is subscribe to several tag therefore Delicious can provides you other website related to the tag or other user who had tag the same website as you. From there users are able to build their network includes friends and other users who has some common tastes.

Flickr
Flickr(3) is an online gallery that allow user to upload, display, and share photos with others. Flickr is a greatly social community to “Share your photos, Watch the world”. It provides user a lot of functionality such as upload image, create Flickr stream to display on web-blog. Moreover, Flickr is not only and online store but also a tool for user to edit their images online. Recently, this famous sharing site has launched new features which enable its user to upload their short video clips.

Last.Fm
“Based on what you listen to. Last.fm recommends you new music.”(4)
Last.Fm(4) implemented a “scrobbler” to keep track of what are you listening on your player to understand your listening music and compare with other to provide you some recommendation. Last.Fm built database of its user’s favorite songs, arties genre. Based on that database, Last.Fm is able to compare the taste of listening to the music of different user and then recommended them other user’s that has some common tatse.

Blogger
Blogger is a personal webpage service which provides users a place to build profile, upload and share article or writing about themselves. Blogger is known as an online diary which users can write and post a blog about their daily activities or feeling. Blogger also provides a lot of tools and effect so that user can modify to decorate their page. Blogger is also known as a site which compatible with other social network community. Users are able to install a Last.Fm player so that their friends can listen to their favorite songs. A Flickr photos stream which update the latest photo that user want to share is also able to display on Blogger. Delicious account is also be able to subscribe as a RSS to post on blog so that whenever your friends go to blog would know what you have just bookmarked.

Focus

People attempts to use anytime by any means to communicate and share information with each others. These 5 sites above is not everything belong to social communication network but they are some of the most impressive sites that contribute a bigger part of the market. In this article based on my experience in these tools, i will focus on how they impact human life and how people use these tools to join themselves into the World Wide Web.


Reflection


Twitter
By using twitter users are able to notice their friends what they are doing at anytime and anywhere. Twitter is a silly idea if you actually consider it as a machine that has only one mission is to ask answer “what are you doing?” However, the idea just not only this, it is the way people get close to each other. Try to see thought then you will understand the role of Twitter. When you are intend to do something important and need encourage from your friend. We might not know how many people are actually reading your message, and how many people are really interested in it, but human always think the good side therefore the more people are following them on Twitter, the more people know what they are doing which also encourage them so much.

People are using Twitter for many purpose but most of them are fore individuals. I have had a very little experience in using Twitter therefore I’m using Twitter as a RSS where I can update the latest information of very few of my friends and some people that I concern. After a few weeks interact with Twitter I realize that it is not only a tool for people to upload information but also an efficient method to search information and update information. The information I searched on Twitter is not highly accurate but some how it is the latest news.

However, Twitter is being abused. Users are using Twitter to send ridiculous or spam information. Twitter player are spending a lot of time to reply their friends in order to get connect with their follower while their families are getting tired of being witnessed their relative addicted to message and neglect the work.

Flickr
In the era of digital, taking a thousand of photos is not a problem. With a digital camera, it cost you nothing you to take as many picture as you want. However, the problem is how do people are able to share their photo with friends and family. It is inconvenience to send the image through email or portable hard drive and Flickr is the solution. Flickr users are able to upload their images and share with other friends from everywhere. Flickr provides a lot of feature to support user upload and display their images online.

Flickr has changed human lifestyle in many ways. Before, pictured was taken by manual camera and people had has to print in order to view them. And even with a digital camera, we still had to print out to send or share with friends in other places. Internet helps us to send photos through email but it still not enough for sharing. Since Flickr was developed, people are able to share a huge amount or maybe unlimited of picture. Flickr has provided their users emotion to get more and more creative in taking pictures. Photograph on Flickr not only has spiritual value but also actual value. “Mr. Klein said that Getty charges on average between $500 and $600 for “rights managed” images”(1)

Last.Fm
If blog is your feeling then last.fm is your listening. Last.fm represents what you are listening to and what is your music taste. Last.fm builds profiles based on user’s habit. Therefore the first time after installed Last.fm into my computer, I tried to listen to the music on Last.fm but all I got was some random song that I never heard they did not related to my favorites at all. Last.fm disappointed me at first so I stop to listen to it and switch to listen to the music on my own library. However, after a few weeks when I bored to listen to my outdated library, I tried Last.fm to find something new for me and I was really amazing about it, the music now are much better, there is some songs that I had loved but I not even on my computer. Since then I realized that Last.fm profile is not what music you storing but what song you listening. The more you listen to the music, the more accuracy your recommend.

Last.fm was first build for user to share music, there for without social communication, it is nothing. What made the website popular is the way it provides you music. Last.fm analyzes your habit of listening to the music, compare with other users then recommend you to listen to other user playlists. It plays an important role in broadcasting your hearing. By using install “audioscobbler” in your computer, you are agreed to upload your information of hearing, your friends and other users are able to view your profile to see how your music taste.

Delicious
Delicious helps you to express your taste of internet. “Surf net” is now becoming a part of our life. Word wide web is another world for me. Everyday I have to search a lot of information of internet but it is hard to remember and keep track of all website that I’m interested in. Hence, what I did before is that I added to favorite or bookmark of the web browser for later usage. As the time gone by, my favorite collection became more and more messy and it was difficult for me to remember and search the link that I need. It’s even worse when i used other computer or after I restored my hard-drive; everything gone. Life is much better for me I found Delicious is very helpful for me to manage my bookmark. The problem has been solved in a simple way.

Delicious also support user in sharing and searching for information. I have never thought that I would be able to share all my favorite sites to my friends as well as view theirs such easy as it is now. My friends do not even have to ask me whether i have any website that might interest them. All they need is to explorer my collection on their network. Explorer my bookmark collection my give them some idea of what I am concerning and my habit of surfing net.

Using Delicious search sometimes may result much faster and easier than Google. I am able to either search by tag or explorer my network to the results which is more specific to my concern than Google.

Blogger
Blogger is your home on the internet world. It is where you express yourself, your characteristic and feeling. A blog is where people know as your profile. It contains information about you, It is considered as a daily which might be private or public to share with your friends. At first I felt shy to post blog to expose myself on the internet, but then I realized that every time I post a blog about my feeling, I get feedback from my friends, which means much for me. It show me that my friends are always beside and aware on me. Since then i started to writes blog about myself but in a humorous way so that my friends will get more emotion on reading my blog-posts and it give me not only memory but lot of laugh when I read them.

Using Blogger I am also able to expose my characteristic. I lot of feature that help me to connect my blog with other social network such as Last.Fm. I normally, add a Last.Fm player on my blogspot to share my favorite music with my friends. Flickr also provide a Flickr stream which a can share some of my picture to my friends and it is automatically updated every time I add new picture on my Flickr account. Blogger is the most efficiency tools for me to express myself onto the world of web 2.0.

Conclusion

People are becoming increasingly dependent on internet social network. A research based on 1,000 Internet users, said that most of these people can not live without internet more than 5 days. The electronic equipment for information exchange occupies an important position in human life; it dominates almost our daily activities. Rely too much on the internet makes people become passive; they spend hours using the Internet to update information about themselves but get rid of other usual relationship. Concentrate virtual life lead human to the negative sides of social communication network. The more time people consume on internet Consume a lot of time on the internet the further they get to the real world. The purpose social network is no longer connecting people but carrying them further to the physical interaction.


Reference

1. Miguel Helft – last modified 2008 – Available on
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/great-photo-on-flickr-getty-images-might-pay-you-for-it/

2. Twitter – Available on
http://twitter.com/

3. Flickr – Available on
http://www.flickr.com/

4. Delicious – Available on
http://delicious.com/

5. Last.Fm – Available on
http://www.last.fm/

6. kochm - last modified 07-Jun-2004 – Available on
http://telekooperation.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/cscw/

7. Mr.Tweet- “What is your use for Twitter?” – last modified 23-March-2009 - Available on
http://blog.mrtweet.net/what-is-your-use-for-twitter

8. Anonymous - last modified 3 April 2009 – Available on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

9. . Anonymous - last modified 3 April 2009 – Available on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last.fm
10. Bogdan Popa - People Can't Live Without Internet - last modified 6th of December 2007
http://news.softpedia.com/news/People-Can-039-t-Live-Without-Internet-73037.shtml