Ryan Smith
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Introduction
Social networking sites are not a new thing, but with the increase in public awareness and advances in mobile computing over the last few years, they are becoming an important part of many people’s day to day life. This blog post will reflect on some of my experiences with using these social applications over the last couple of months, in particular it will focus on last.fm, twitter and facebook.
Background
Last.fm
Last.fm tracks the music that you listen to and provides you with recommendations based on your listening habits. The site also offers more social options like journal entries about your listening habits message boards to discuss music.
Facebook
Facebook is one of the most widely know and used social networking sites of the last few years and is intended to help you keep up to date with people that you don’t see on a regular basis.
Twitter
Twitter is a message system that allows you to announce to anyone who wants to follow your account what you are doing at any given time.
Reflections
I have always been reluctant to use social networking sites and there are two main reasons why, I am not comfortable with sharing information online and I have never seen any real advantages over email, instant messaging or actually talking to my friends in person. It has only because it’s compulsory for this course that I have actually given any of the myriad of social networking sites out there more than a second glance.
I have been using Last.fm for as few years now and I have never thought of it as a social application, I tend to think of it useful application to keep track of what bands I listen to and some of my favorite artists where recommended to me by Last.fm and it is probably my favorite social application because it doesn’t seem to push the need to be constantly posting and checking your profile to get the best use out of it.
After resisting for a long time I signed up to face book at the beginning of this year, as I thought it couldn’t hurt to try and get back in touch with people that I don’t see very often, but I was never able to embrace the idea of online social networking. So after setting up my facebook account with very minimal amounts of information and the privacy settings on their most restrictive levels, it wasn’t long before I realized that there wasn’t much point in using the site if I wasn’t willing to use it properly. The real problem I had with the site was that I don’t want to present the same information to everyone in the same way, so I let my facebook account lapse and went back to using my phone and email to keep in touch with people.
Twitter is an interesting concept and I am still unsure about whether it is something that I want to use. My first impressions of twitter I couldn’t understand why people felt the need to announce everything and anything that they were doing to whoever was willing to listen and while I am still not keen on announcing what I am doing, I think I will find it easier to share small meaningless parts of my day with everyone rather than share more important information with my contacts on facebook.
Conclusion
After using some of these applications for the purpose of this course I have come to understand some of their appeal and while I still don’t see a great deal of benefit to using most of these applications, I can see myself using some of them beyond the end of this course, but I don’t think that I will ever be completely comfortable with sharing personal information online.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Reflections
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6 comments:
Haha - "..privacy settings on their most restrictive levels..".
Yes, its true that if you're not much of a Facebooker or some kind of social-website junkie than its not very useful.You have to be active and be an exhibitionist.
Have you read "Time Consuming Applications" by
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I also love LastFM less because of the social network it provides, and more because of the music discovery it encourages.
In terms of Twitter and Facebook I think it is important to note that your interactions within these systems are not necessary reciprocated. This is particularly true for Twitter - you can chose to "say" or post nothing at all but still be "listening" and receiving feeds from a vast array of other users. The experience can essentially be a one way dialogue, but this does not make it any less rewarding.
i agree with you on last fm as it seems to be more of an application to listen to music than for social purposes. However on the topic of facebook, although its not the same as email or instant messaging it is still a great tool socially. It lets you keep in touch with old friends as you said but it offers a less personal level which i think makes it great for people such as old friends you don't have that level of personal relationship with. However having said that i think to take full advantage of it you do need to use it properly... but i think you should give it a bit more of a go.
I agree with you on some level about the usefulness of some of these social applications. I believe that the luster tends to wear off after a time and they can become tedious to use. Still I find them useful to keep in contact with old friends. Even if it's just to see when they come back to Brisbane for a trip.
However, I also agree about Lastfm. I find it a useful application to not only find similar artists or genres of music I listen to, but also to see what others like as well and see if I would like a style of music they listen to.
I don't feel that you have had the intended experience of Facebook due to the restrictions you have placed. Your reflections are pretty lacking in actual usage detail, this would have probably given me a better understanding of how you would have like these sites to operate.
Also, when you commented " I don’t want to present the same information to everyone in the same way", a) you should stop lying, and b) for heaven's sake, don't invite your parents or older family members (although this could be just me because my family is frakked). ;)
The introduction of article is more important, because it is like the eye of the body in a interesting way to indicated the purpose of your article. So my suggestion is you would better to exhibit a charming introduction to attract people to read.
Your report is clearly structure but lack of the professional knowledge to support the whole paragraphs. If you have some reference to support your argument will be helpful.
As you said, Last.fm is excellent applicant which helps us listen to music organized. It is very easy to find which songs I am interesting in. so it also my best favorite social tool that I have experience.
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