Tadhg Lulham
s4032335
With the growth of web2.0 we are now seeing an increase in the use of mobile and social applications to stay connected with our family, friends and work colleagues. We use these social and mobile applications to stay in contact, arrange social events or even work related events or even just to let people know what mundane activity we may be involved in at that time. The thing is though, do we find such applications easy to use or do we find them a hindrance? Do we find it exciting to use when we first interact with the application? Or do we become bewildered with the new technology that we thought would be easy to use? Do we continue to use these applications? Or do we begin to find it tedious to interact with after a while? Do our experiences with these applications, whether they are negative or positive, have an impact on the way we use these applications or even perceive our peers, or not at all?
Here are just a few of the many social and mobile applications that are available for people to connect with. Twitter, LastFm, Blogger, Flickr and Delicious.
Twitter:
Is a social application as well as a mobile application, to some degree. Twitter allows you to virtually follow other people using the application and for them to follow you. This application asks you the question, “What are you doing now?” and uses it as a cue for you to let other people that are following you on the application know what your activity/action/thought is at that particular point in time.
This was one of the more positive experiences I had by using this application. I must say it was definitely one of the most entertaining and also probably one of the more useful tools I attempted to use. I only chose to follow those that I thought were doing the same subject as me, as I thought that if I broadened the amount of people I was following I would get lost in all the information that was being posted and may miss something I thought may be important or relevant.
This application allowed me to see “what was going on” [1], meaning that I could see what peoples thoughts were and what activities they were possibly doing throughout their daily routine. I also found it very useful in the fact that people were sometimes posting links to interesting videos, sites or articles, they thought were interesting and thought others may be interested in as well and yes some of them were very interesting and also relevant to the course/subject material and some were quite humourous.
I suppose the only negative experience I had with this application was the “twe2” mobile application of Twitter. As I found out just after I started to use Twitter that there used to be a free mobile service where you would receive free sms of messages posted to Twitter by the people you were following. Twe2 only gave a very limited option of messages from people you followed on Twitter, it would only send messages to your mobile if someone directly messaged you or replied to a message you posted on Twitter and even then you couldn’t retrieve the full message or even reply. After using Twe2 for a short period of time I just went back to using Tweetdeck and the web based Twitter site to view and post my messages.
LastFm:
Is more of a social application rather than a mobile one. LastFm allows you to upload your music library and share it with others that use the application. It also allows you to view other user’s music libraries and matches yours with theirs to see if you have similar tastes in music and gives it a rating of Strong, Medium or Low. LastFm also allows you to see what they are or have been listening to as well as recommending music artists that are similar to the genres you have in your music library.
This was another application that I had quite a positive experience with. To begin with I was a bit sceptical about using this application. However after uploading my music library I found it to be quite an interesting tool to use. As I found that not only did it give me the option to find people who had a similar taste in music to me but that it also gave a list of recommended artists that it thought I might like. It also gave me a chance to listen to some tracks from those artists, which gave me a chance to see if I liked that artist or type of music, rather than buying a CD and then finding out you don’t like the music or the artist. Due to this, I actually have found some new artists that I like and intend to listen to more of.
The thing I really didn’t like about LastFm was how you had to interact with the application to either find a contact or to go and look at what a contact was listening to. As it would only tell you what you had been listening to previously or at that point in time. To find out what a contact on your list had been listening to you had to visit their profile every time. For example, unlike facebook where you receive a small message on your main page letting you know what your contacts had been up to recently.
Blogger:
Is another social application. Blogger allows you to set up an account, where you can tell people as little or as much as you like about yourself through your profile. Like what your taste in music is, favourite books, favourite movies etc. Blogger also allows you to post a message about whatever takes your fancy to share with others. Whether the topic you blog about is to do with what you did or achieved that day at work or in your personal life. You can also join groups that may focus on a certain topic of interest you may have. Where you can post a blog and leave it for others to comment on.
Blogger is the one application I have not had a major positive experience with. Unless you have a strong community or belong to a large group within the application I do not see what positive effect it has.
With blogger I created an account and posted a couple of things, either a little history about myself or my opinions on the topic of mobile and social computing. There is nothing to indicate whether someone has looked at what you write, except for the fact that on your profile page there is a counter that tells you how many times your profile has been viewed. Or is that the amount of times I viewed my own profile?
The biggest positive experience I had with blogger was, joining the comp3505 group and seeing the links tagged by the del.icio.us bookmarking site. As I found them to be linked to useful articles and sites related to the course/subject material. On the comp3505 group blog you could also see the links to other students in the course. So, I suppose it did give one the sense of being a little more connected to their peers.
Flickr:
Is also another social application. Flickr allows you to upload photos and or video. Flickr also allows you to leave a description on each photo for other people to read as well as allowing users to leave comments on the photos if they wish to and vice versa, for you to be able to view other peoples photos and to leave comments on theirs. Flickr also gives you the option to look at random photos at the bottom of the profile page, As well as letting you know what the latest activity was on your profile and whether people have added you to their contact list, or them to your contact list.
My experiences with flickr haven’t been either positive or negative really. If I was to say anything negative about experiencing flickr, it would be that it’s a very plain. You upload photos and wait for someone to comment on them. I suppose you could say it would be similar to Blogger, in the sense that you would have to have a strong number in your community or group to be able to get any real benefit from interacting with Flickr.
On a positive note, it is quite easy to use and to write a description about the photos you uploaded and also to comment on other users photos. Also being able to group photos together is another plus, as having a large number of photos can be quite a task to search for a particular photo.
Del.icio.us:
Is a social bookmarking site which allows it’s users to upload the bookmarks they have on their web browser to this site. This allows other users on this site view and share those bookmarks with other users and vice versa, being able to view the bookmarks of other users and to see if they have similar interests and to be able to add people and groups that they may be interested in to their network, for easy access.
My experiences with this application overall were positive. At first, once I had uploaded my bookmarks I thought that was it, until I started to search around and found different networks I could join and see all the bookmarks that had been added to that network. Once I joined the comp3505 network I could see all the bookmarks that had been added recently as well as all the other people that had joined the network and could also go and view the bookmarks they had uploaded to their profile.
The best thing I found with this site was that if I added a new bookmark to my bookmark menu on my web browser it would ask me if I wanted to add the new bookmark to my list of bookmarks on Del.icio.us. All I had to do was sign back in to the Del.icio.us site using the pop up window it provided and it was done.
Reflecting
Did any of my experiences with these applications lead to positive outcomes that may not have happened if I had never attempted to use these applications? Yes, to a certain degree I believe it has led to a positive outcome for me to continue using some of these social applications in the future. This is mainly due to the fact that I find some of these social applications useful, informative and entertaining in some way or another.
I would say that the only social application that has made me feel any more connected to my peers would have to be Twitter, as there have been numerous links in messages posted to interesting articles and videos that relate to the subject material and are genuinely interesting to see and read about. However, in overhearing a discussion once about people requesting to be added to someone’s contact list, through the means of a social application, when they didn’t even know that person, the reaction of that person was to not even bother and to ignore the request. Now, if that person had met them face – to – face first and got to know a little bit about them would the chance of being added to the contact list been greater? This makes me wonder, that if we have a friend in our contact list on a social networking site, are we more likely to add the friends that they have to our contact list, rather than a complete stranger? If so, then why? When we really don’t know anything more about them than the complete stranger who wants to add us to their contact list.
Conclusion
Do our positive and negative experiences have an impact on the way we interact with these social applications? Do our positive and negative experiences have an impact on the way we perceive our peers? I believe they do, if we have a negative or positive experience in a normal social setting, our normal human reaction is to say to ourselves “I’m not going there again”, or “I really like that person”, or “I’m never speaking to them again”, do have an impact on the way we interact. So, if we have a negative or positive experience when interacting with a social application or interacting with our peers on a social application, wouldn’t it be a normal human reaction that we would either “never talk to that person again” or “never use that application again”?
REFERENCES
1. Paul Dourish, Sara Bly, (1992), CHI 92 Proc. Portholes: Supporting Awareness in a Distributed Work Group
2. Harvey Sacks et al, (1974), A Simplest Systematics for the Organisation of Turn-Taking for Conversation
s4032335
With the growth of web2.0 we are now seeing an increase in the use of mobile and social applications to stay connected with our family, friends and work colleagues. We use these social and mobile applications to stay in contact, arrange social events or even work related events or even just to let people know what mundane activity we may be involved in at that time. The thing is though, do we find such applications easy to use or do we find them a hindrance? Do we find it exciting to use when we first interact with the application? Or do we become bewildered with the new technology that we thought would be easy to use? Do we continue to use these applications? Or do we begin to find it tedious to interact with after a while? Do our experiences with these applications, whether they are negative or positive, have an impact on the way we use these applications or even perceive our peers, or not at all?
Here are just a few of the many social and mobile applications that are available for people to connect with. Twitter, LastFm, Blogger, Flickr and Delicious.
Twitter:
Is a social application as well as a mobile application, to some degree. Twitter allows you to virtually follow other people using the application and for them to follow you. This application asks you the question, “What are you doing now?” and uses it as a cue for you to let other people that are following you on the application know what your activity/action/thought is at that particular point in time.
This was one of the more positive experiences I had by using this application. I must say it was definitely one of the most entertaining and also probably one of the more useful tools I attempted to use. I only chose to follow those that I thought were doing the same subject as me, as I thought that if I broadened the amount of people I was following I would get lost in all the information that was being posted and may miss something I thought may be important or relevant.
This application allowed me to see “what was going on” [1], meaning that I could see what peoples thoughts were and what activities they were possibly doing throughout their daily routine. I also found it very useful in the fact that people were sometimes posting links to interesting videos, sites or articles, they thought were interesting and thought others may be interested in as well and yes some of them were very interesting and also relevant to the course/subject material and some were quite humourous.
I suppose the only negative experience I had with this application was the “twe2” mobile application of Twitter. As I found out just after I started to use Twitter that there used to be a free mobile service where you would receive free sms of messages posted to Twitter by the people you were following. Twe2 only gave a very limited option of messages from people you followed on Twitter, it would only send messages to your mobile if someone directly messaged you or replied to a message you posted on Twitter and even then you couldn’t retrieve the full message or even reply. After using Twe2 for a short period of time I just went back to using Tweetdeck and the web based Twitter site to view and post my messages.
LastFm:
Is more of a social application rather than a mobile one. LastFm allows you to upload your music library and share it with others that use the application. It also allows you to view other user’s music libraries and matches yours with theirs to see if you have similar tastes in music and gives it a rating of Strong, Medium or Low. LastFm also allows you to see what they are or have been listening to as well as recommending music artists that are similar to the genres you have in your music library.
This was another application that I had quite a positive experience with. To begin with I was a bit sceptical about using this application. However after uploading my music library I found it to be quite an interesting tool to use. As I found that not only did it give me the option to find people who had a similar taste in music to me but that it also gave a list of recommended artists that it thought I might like. It also gave me a chance to listen to some tracks from those artists, which gave me a chance to see if I liked that artist or type of music, rather than buying a CD and then finding out you don’t like the music or the artist. Due to this, I actually have found some new artists that I like and intend to listen to more of.
The thing I really didn’t like about LastFm was how you had to interact with the application to either find a contact or to go and look at what a contact was listening to. As it would only tell you what you had been listening to previously or at that point in time. To find out what a contact on your list had been listening to you had to visit their profile every time. For example, unlike facebook where you receive a small message on your main page letting you know what your contacts had been up to recently.
Blogger:
Is another social application. Blogger allows you to set up an account, where you can tell people as little or as much as you like about yourself through your profile. Like what your taste in music is, favourite books, favourite movies etc. Blogger also allows you to post a message about whatever takes your fancy to share with others. Whether the topic you blog about is to do with what you did or achieved that day at work or in your personal life. You can also join groups that may focus on a certain topic of interest you may have. Where you can post a blog and leave it for others to comment on.
Blogger is the one application I have not had a major positive experience with. Unless you have a strong community or belong to a large group within the application I do not see what positive effect it has.
With blogger I created an account and posted a couple of things, either a little history about myself or my opinions on the topic of mobile and social computing. There is nothing to indicate whether someone has looked at what you write, except for the fact that on your profile page there is a counter that tells you how many times your profile has been viewed. Or is that the amount of times I viewed my own profile?
The biggest positive experience I had with blogger was, joining the comp3505 group and seeing the links tagged by the del.icio.us bookmarking site. As I found them to be linked to useful articles and sites related to the course/subject material. On the comp3505 group blog you could also see the links to other students in the course. So, I suppose it did give one the sense of being a little more connected to their peers.
Flickr:
Is also another social application. Flickr allows you to upload photos and or video. Flickr also allows you to leave a description on each photo for other people to read as well as allowing users to leave comments on the photos if they wish to and vice versa, for you to be able to view other peoples photos and to leave comments on theirs. Flickr also gives you the option to look at random photos at the bottom of the profile page, As well as letting you know what the latest activity was on your profile and whether people have added you to their contact list, or them to your contact list.
My experiences with flickr haven’t been either positive or negative really. If I was to say anything negative about experiencing flickr, it would be that it’s a very plain. You upload photos and wait for someone to comment on them. I suppose you could say it would be similar to Blogger, in the sense that you would have to have a strong number in your community or group to be able to get any real benefit from interacting with Flickr.
On a positive note, it is quite easy to use and to write a description about the photos you uploaded and also to comment on other users photos. Also being able to group photos together is another plus, as having a large number of photos can be quite a task to search for a particular photo.
Del.icio.us:
Is a social bookmarking site which allows it’s users to upload the bookmarks they have on their web browser to this site. This allows other users on this site view and share those bookmarks with other users and vice versa, being able to view the bookmarks of other users and to see if they have similar interests and to be able to add people and groups that they may be interested in to their network, for easy access.
My experiences with this application overall were positive. At first, once I had uploaded my bookmarks I thought that was it, until I started to search around and found different networks I could join and see all the bookmarks that had been added to that network. Once I joined the comp3505 network I could see all the bookmarks that had been added recently as well as all the other people that had joined the network and could also go and view the bookmarks they had uploaded to their profile.
The best thing I found with this site was that if I added a new bookmark to my bookmark menu on my web browser it would ask me if I wanted to add the new bookmark to my list of bookmarks on Del.icio.us. All I had to do was sign back in to the Del.icio.us site using the pop up window it provided and it was done.
Reflecting
Did any of my experiences with these applications lead to positive outcomes that may not have happened if I had never attempted to use these applications? Yes, to a certain degree I believe it has led to a positive outcome for me to continue using some of these social applications in the future. This is mainly due to the fact that I find some of these social applications useful, informative and entertaining in some way or another.
I would say that the only social application that has made me feel any more connected to my peers would have to be Twitter, as there have been numerous links in messages posted to interesting articles and videos that relate to the subject material and are genuinely interesting to see and read about. However, in overhearing a discussion once about people requesting to be added to someone’s contact list, through the means of a social application, when they didn’t even know that person, the reaction of that person was to not even bother and to ignore the request. Now, if that person had met them face – to – face first and got to know a little bit about them would the chance of being added to the contact list been greater? This makes me wonder, that if we have a friend in our contact list on a social networking site, are we more likely to add the friends that they have to our contact list, rather than a complete stranger? If so, then why? When we really don’t know anything more about them than the complete stranger who wants to add us to their contact list.
Conclusion
Do our positive and negative experiences have an impact on the way we interact with these social applications? Do our positive and negative experiences have an impact on the way we perceive our peers? I believe they do, if we have a negative or positive experience in a normal social setting, our normal human reaction is to say to ourselves “I’m not going there again”, or “I really like that person”, or “I’m never speaking to them again”, do have an impact on the way we interact. So, if we have a negative or positive experience when interacting with a social application or interacting with our peers on a social application, wouldn’t it be a normal human reaction that we would either “never talk to that person again” or “never use that application again”?
REFERENCES
1. Paul Dourish, Sara Bly, (1992), CHI 92 Proc. Portholes: Supporting Awareness in a Distributed Work Group
2. Harvey Sacks et al, (1974), A Simplest Systematics for the Organisation of Turn-Taking for Conversation
1 comment:
"...if I broadened the amount of people I was following I would get lost in all the information that was being posted and may miss something I thought may be important or relevant."Yea, this is one of the things that bugged me about twitter, as well. Can you filter that updates page? It would be good if you could create groups - work colleagues, uni friends, family, and then filter the tweets accordingly. Otherwise it's just such an overload of information you miss out on the important stuff.
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