My Reflections

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Reflections

Introduction

As the society developing, the social software of web 2.0 is becoming more and more significant in our modern life recently. Not longer ago, internet was only a tools for published contents. Simply speaking, it was a browser. The main things you search on internet are to get some information you desire, such as news, weather and travel information, etc. Today, internet has been whacking changed, and it becomes a platform for peoples to interact each other. You are capable of dating, making friends, and knowing someone who have common interest. Now the young generations prefer to discuss topics and communicate each other online more than using mobile phones. As so great advantage it is vital that peoples why this phenomenon is so prevalent.

Background

For this reflection, I have been trying to be familiar with and using social software in the past few weeks. As the experience of my using those webs I believe that more and more users will be benefit from those programs which will form the basic of my case studies:

Blogger- Is like a personal space or diary where a person records his/her experiences and moments, or even emotion, and puts it up online for others to browse and share. Visitors may make any comment and reply with respect to it.

Flickr- Is a site for people sharing their photographs and images with each other. Like blogger, people can also comment on the pictures.

Facebook- is a social networking site that users can find friends based on searching real information such as name, school and location. People using facebook can also share photos, leave messages to friends on board and make up a particular group.


Focus
In my reflection I am going to focus on how the social software interacts with users based on my using experiences. At the meantime, I will outline what the social functionality of the systems is positive and which is lack of community interaction with users.



Reflection


Bloger
Blogger is the one of social application nowadays. The first step you are required to register an account, and then you can edit your profile and write down your experiences or inner thoughts and post it on your blog to share with others. Also you are able to upload your photographs and video clips for sharing your real life with others, such as your taste of music, your hobbies, your favorite movies and even your goal. Moreover, you can join in a group to discuss a topic which interests you, where you can publish your comment against this event. This is the one of path for people communicating with each others online.

Actually I have no any experience with blog before this course. I think I am the person who does not really want to share my inner thought with others. Due to this reflection, I registered an account for my blogger. I started to note down my history about my opinions on topic of my social and mobile computing. After a few weeks, it seemed that there was no one paying attention in my topics because there was no comment to my profile. The only thing indicates me is that my profile page has a counter telling me the number people had visited my blog before, and the times of visitor are so infrequent.

As my experience with Blogger, I found that there are two demerits in social communicating. Firstly, it is very hard to interact with another blogger. It is not easy to make a friend or know others via blogger. The only way you can interact with others is to visit someone else blogger and leave a message to him/her, and then you would have an opportunity to know him/her. Secondly, as I mentioned above, you would not get a friend if nobody left message to you. So Blogger is not a very good platform for people interacting, it is a place where you can write down something about your life, similar to an online diary.

Flickr
Flickr is like a personal space or diary where a person records his/her experiences and moments, or even emotion, and puts it up online for others to browse and share. Visitors may make any comment and reply with respect to it. It allows you to upload your photos or videos. Also you can make a description of your photos and the visitor is able to leave a comment on your photos as well. Due to the time shortage, I am not familiar with this social software, and many functions I have been still in the process of search.

So far as my experience with Flickr, it is basically formed of 3 main services. They are photos, contacts and groups. The purpose of uploading my photos is for my friends to browse and comment on it. What I would like to say is that the Flickr is similar to Blogger. To make your Flickr become popular, you have to obtain a strong relation with people or group which enables them to visit your Flickr so as to achieve interaction.

The disadvantage of Flickr is attributed to limited uploading that you are allowed uploading only 100MB per month and you are not able to upload the photos with GIF format. 100MB upload limit is far too little because one High Distinction picture’s volume is 10MB, namely only 10 pictures or so can be uploaded per month. If my family and friends in home country would like to know my latest news, they may go to Flickr. However, 10 pictures a mouth would disappoint them. Also I find that this site does not have a function of uploading animation. As a multimedia student, I am willing to share some interesting animations with my peers, but I fail to do this on this site. If the above shortcomings can be improved, Flickr will be an outstanding social interacting program.


Facebook
General speaking, facebook is the admixture of Blogger and Flickr. It is originally a tool for students at different schools to communicate. Due to its multi-function, it has been spreaded all over the world. Users may make up their own electronic albums, upload video clips, and date online and so on. Facebook makes itself a bridge to enhance people’s friendship.

In accordance with the experiences of using a couple of social soft wares, facebook is my favourite. I divide my friends in facebook into several groups, primary school, high school and university mates. For instance, if a primary school classmate left a message to me one day but I did not remember who he was, I could pay a visit to his site to browse his album. Facebook enables us to meet friends who we have not seen for ages. The notice of my latest gather of primary school friends was posted via facebook. After this get-together a few of people found true love, and even one of them informed that he was going to married another school mate. Meanwhile I may know some new friends through my current groups.

More interesting is that, we can share flea market information, including share accommodation, car selling or buying, selling second hand personal items. Furthermore, I am a travel-lover, I am able to meet a lot of peers who have the same interest as me. I can get many kinds of travel information from them, such as travel activities, travel agencies, and travel packages. From this information, I can send an online gift to the person as a reward who I benefit from. The advantage of using the information from facebook peers relative to magazines and newspapers is that I can always get double fold responds rather than just one side comments.

One disadvantage of Facebook so far is that when trying to search a person with a relatively common name, it might come out hundreds of results on bulks of pages, people would get tired of reading the information one by one.

Facebook is the most useful and helpful tool that I have ever met, in spite of its tiny shortcoming. I believe it will become more and more popular, based on its strong social interacting multi-function.



Conclusion
It is obviously that the occurrence of the programs Blogger, Flickr and Facebook has had a huge impact on people’s lives in perspective of social, business, arts and education. These programs enable us to track our minds and emotion, share personal details, interests with each other, make new friends or groups, find lost old mates, upload pictures and videos, and get information from other people. Many conveniences have been brought about. People can access these sites at anytime and, gain the valuable information easily and quickly. This is what the old information system could not do at one time. However, too much personal information disclosure will lead to privacy risk. Some intended people would make use of your information to deceive the people you know. In addition, people organize some illegal activities or post indecent photos will have a negative influence to the society.







Reference

“Getting to know you, Facebook”, Clarke.B., Hawkins. J., Zazove.R., Zeter.V.,
http://www.studentaffairs.com/vcs/2006entries/EasternIllinoisUniversity_clarke_entry.ppt#267,1,DiversityUniversityOfficeofOrientation
“Is Facebook’s Search function useless?” Raftery.T., 12th November, 2007
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/is-facebooks-search-function-useless/
“What is Flickr?” http://www.flickr.com/tour/