Reflection

41282948

Yinghui Yu

Introduction
With development of social software, Web2.0 has changed the time of web1.0 users "read-only" status, will become the website to open up a two-way interactive service platform can read and write. A number of users experience in different type of social software. Social Software [1], are built on information technology and Internet-based applications, be able to reflect on the function and the promotion of real social relations between the development and the formation of activity, the activity of people with the software integration. This article will basic on my personal experience to reflect on the trust, privacy and influence beyond social software (especially Flickr, Twitter and Del.icio.us).

Background
Over the last few weeks, I have been experienced and investigated several social softwares. The following are some of today's popular webs of social software, and will basic on these to reflection.

Flickr: is not just a photo album, which more emphasis on the concept of community. Not only is its stability and 2G of storage space per month (or 20MB), but also it provides a opportunity to communicate with other people and sharing. Users look through the eyes to discover the beautiful world of other peoples’ hearts.

Twitter: for the Internet and friend relation, twitter not only satisfies users talk at any time, but also deepens friendship via frequent contact and communication. It let users always feel that there are numerous friends around, users’ heart open up to friends though their thoughts were published.

Del.icio.us: is a software society which browser-sharing similar to IE's Favorites feature. As a society of software, the most important feature is that it provides a powerful information sharing.

Focus
The following reflection is basic on my personal experience, evaluation and research to point out my views on the social function of software and analyze how this effect to the user group.

Reflection

Flickr
The successful social software is that users will love it when they will experience at first time. My first time experience is my friend sent me a Flickr link. Then I am enamored of it. Flickr is not seemed other photo sharing website, I am able to see my friend picture without registration. For the storage, sharing and organization of image, flickr is definitely revolutionary. It is very convenient for the management of images, and able to handle coordination. It also provided a lot of features, such as guestbook, comments and tags for your photos. It allows to release on any blog. Compare with the photopuket, Flickr more focus on sharing pictures. But according to the statistics [2], the market share of Photobucket was up to 40%, far exceeding the filckr owned 3.1%. Most users which were researched will still be just in the eyes of our entry phase: they do not need tags, ajax, society, and require any element of web 2.0, they only want a photo album, a simple operation, can provide the most basic function of storage album.

However, as typical social software which has successful experience in using the technology of web2.0, Flickr is the first social tool that introduces the concept of comments into its system. Users can give suggestion and opinion about photos. Photopuket does not have ability to provider this platform to communicate with users group.

Twitter
Users post at most 140 words to the twitter webpage though Google talk, MSN, mobile etc. tools, and can also browse by computer or mobile. They can clearly know what their friends are doing.
(Example in the following picture)
















Due to the simplicity and flexibility, Twitter was considered as a “mini blog”. It is an effective way write down notes. However, information overflowing phenomena become negative effect of this situation. Initially, I use twitter to connect with COMP3505 students to experience. Meanwhile I add some people as friend in the past few weeks. There are a mass of tweets over the webpage so that I am not willing to patient read all tweets.

Users are able to binding their own user account with mobile phone to1gether. As long as the flowers updated their information; users can realized information of their friends, it is in order to get friends’ latest information immediately. This function helps users to get to know what they friends are doing, what they are thinking, and who is always around me in my circle.

Chirag Mehta[3] point out that social media from social software provided a wealth of information, but the authenticity and accuracy of the information has to consider more. For example[4], A message on Twitter that Twitter users request the Indian government not to publish the news of the terrorist attacks, so as not to affect the Government's anti-terrorist action. Then a famous news website reproduced this message, and reported that terrorist realized the situation outside and the trends of Indian security forces. Therefore, twitter is very useful tool to obtain information, but news resource can not be trusted, just for entertainment.

Actually, Twitter has an effective ability to gather people together. Especially some people like me lived abroad alone. For this group people, Twitter is able to improve their friendship and funny their daily life.

Del.icio.us
Each del.icio.us users have a web page where they save their favorite web tags. So it is convenience to each users, therefore, users can get their favorite tags through the network. Each tag has its own web page, which describe content of tag. Users can subscribe to tags, such as political or music. Users will be notified when label increasing. They also transfer to others website or del.icio.us internal systems through subscribed RSS. In addition, each link consist of content of other users subscribed, thus users are able to know the link who subscribed.

Information aggregation as a significant element allows Del.cio.us become successful social software. Google provides the information aggregation feature enable users’ fingers to shuttle in different web pages. However, Del.icio.us is effective way to find valuable resources through internet consist of all users of Del.icio.us. For example, sometimes I could not find webs that I am interest in, so it is best way to visit Del.icio.us of my friends or someone else to find. In addition, during this process, users can find a few people who are congenial, as well as create their online users community as long as they are willing to share their favorites and the links they think that might be helpful to other users.

Del.icio.us also allows users realize the value of the content of web through the tag. For instance, if 100 people save with the bookmark and add tag, there is no doubt that these users discover the value of the tag. However, in my opinion, users seek for the value of themselves through function of tags Users during the process of saving bookmarks to find the value of their own. With increase in number of users, people will acquire more of their own values. By contrary, if everyone is desire to establish the value of the social network, everyone in network society must discover their own personal value. And then probably are able to make it own contribution to improve value of the entire social networks. Therefore, the most successful experience is Del.icio.us to be an effective way which enables the value of social network focus on the individuals.

Form my personal experience, Del.icio.us does not offer the convenient platform to add comment about the website. When users favorite the bookmarks, they would like to write down simple description. Other users after they read comment, then decide whether visit or favorite this website or not. However, everything has its two sides. Because Del.icious does create a communication platform, enable users have never problem about junk email, advertisement or false website.


Conclusion
In conclusion, taking a few social networking tools as good example, such as Flickr, Twitter, Delcious, there is a significant impact on our social life with those kinds of social tools. Users can discover the value and worth of themselves, so as users become a basic element to contribute the value of social network. Through my research and experience, enable me realized the function of social software.

Reference:
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/opening_education/Social_Software_report.pdf[1]
http://www.deanlee.cn/reviews/flickr-vs-photobucket/[2]

http://cloudcomputing.blogspot.com/2008/08/social-computing-in-enterprise-software.html[3]


http://www.cnbeta.com/articles/70955.htm%20[4]