Mobile and social networks are booming. People who get involved vary from general users to military staff, from truck drivers to job seekers, from music fans to travellers, from college students to healthcare professionals. The aim of this article is to describe some of the most popular social networks and the reasons behind their popularity.
We live in the decade of the internet revolution. Nowadays internet is widespread and affordable to just about everyone and everywhere. The content of the websites has greatly evolved from its infancy of simple HTML into applications with rich interfaces and streaming multimedia. As a result we are experiencing unprecedented growth of internet users and an avalanche of things to do on the net. Such internet applications with rapidly increasing popularity are the social networking websites. They link people together in online communities to share common interests or activities. In most cases these tools are free of charge, requires authentication, interaction between peers happens asynchronously - i.e. it does not require immediate response, and it helps members keep track of each other’s connections. Members who have never met in the real life are no longer strangers and can communicate with ease.
The following is a description of some very popular social networks as for today: Twitter, Blogs, Delicious, Flickr and LastFM.
Thanks to Twitter it is possible to share short updates about your life and follow the updates of people that matter to you. "What are you doing?" and "How has been your day so far?" are questions we often ask our family, friends and strangers. These messages are short, under 140 characters, and reveal situations of our everyday lives that we would not usually say in blogs and emails. An interesting application of this tool is the one that allows a registered user to see the updates of a popular person or event of interest. Twitter became so significant that it is used by celebrities to keep the attention of the crowds, by businesses to provide information about their products or services, by news agencies to broadcast their updates globally, and by governments to release press conferences.
From my view I found it somewhat difficult to search for available channels. Looking up channels is an area that could be improved.
Blogs
Blogging is about making news and expressing opinions. Traditionally, when news happens reporters write the stories and a then a tiny group of people, the editors, decide what will appear on the newspapers and broadcasted. Blogs allow everyone to be a reporter, an editor and a publisher. In addition, blogs have the possibility to leave comments on the news by the readers, and that could initiate a discussion. Blogs make sharing news on the web much easier. Applications of blogs are endless - news, expressing opinions, advertising your business, etc.
On a personal level I got really interested in the blog site IDE.LI which is an online community for people who live overseas or in a foreign country and share their personal experiences. The articles describe more than 30 countries and the focus is to compare the quality of life in different parts of the world. This blog started about 10 years ago and has attracted a large audience and some of the posts have initiated passionate discussions with strong agreements and disagreements. As a side note, I personally got to meet the initiator of this community who also happens to live in Brisbane.
Delicious
Internet is a global network with billions of web pages and each page having its own URL. Browsing web pages require remembering these unique web addresses. Traditionally, links are remembered by bookmarking from a web-browser. The drawback is that all those bookmarks are saved locally to the specific computer and not accessible from another computer. There is a new way that does not use a browser to make bookmarks, but a website. These are called the Social Bookmarking sites and a popular one is Delicious. Bookmarks saved by a user can benefit other people as they go public and everyone can discover new relevant and related materials. These bookmarks made by users create a network that consequently produces a stream of classified and useful websites organized by tags.
Flickr
In case of a fire in the house, the first things that comes to our minds to save are the important papers, the inhaler, and the photo albums. [1] These days most photos are taken digitally and stored on personal computers and laptops. Even if a fire burning a house is not often a real threat, failures in computer hardware or mistaken file management happen very often, and they may erase all of our pictures forever. Flickr is a popular website for safe keeping digital photos where everyone can backup photos by uploading them to the site. Because the photos are uploaded to a website they might as well be publicly shared. Photos can be titled, tagged, indexed by popularity and commented. Easily sharing photos encourages people to take more pictures. In the past I didn’t take pictures at all. Now I always have a camera with me because I want to show my friends all interesting places I visit. Another example for the social side of Flickr is when a friend of mine uploaded impressive photos with a professional camera. I linked those images and two of my friends got very interested in finding out more about the camera brand and lenses used to take those photos, and through their comments they eventually got to know each other thanks to this particular file sharing which would not have happened otherwise.
Last FM
Last FM is another social website where the user experience is entirely spinning around music. More specifically, what music people like and what tracks they own and play. In fact, it is the largest site of its kind with over 12 million active music lovers.
On a personal level I noticed that using Last FM had two major user benefits. First, there is the fun of getting connected with other music fans who share a similar music taste. The second is that through the connections made and also through the services offered on the site I was able to discover new music and learn more about the artists that I already knew. As a music lover, Last FM has now become my main tool I choose music from.
Considering the variety of popular social tools it is easy to imagine that there might be many more tools to come. People are social beings. Socializing with others is part of our nature and the internet opens up a new horizon of possibilities. Present-day software technologies make it possible and inexpensive to create and experiment with totally new sorts of social websites. The hard part is having a good idea that is not already online. It is a challenging field but it could make anyone a new millionaire. An example for a unique idea is the system of an acquaintance of mine who is still a university student in Europe. His WiseLine site was set online a year ago and now it has tens of thousands of registered users. A short video demonstrates what WiseLine is about and it is available on the main page of the site www.wiseline.com Indeed, it sounds appealing and encouraging to implement new unique ideas for social communities and it reminds me that even Facebook started small and that the original idea behind Flickr was to be a side tool for a failed massive multiplayer online game. [2]
Internet gives us new and exciting possibilities to keep in touch with our families, friends, and to make new friends. Because the number of regular internet users is massive and socializing is part of people’s nature, the social networks are growing exponentially. There is a potential danger for unauthorized misuse of personal information, not to mention the long hours seated in front of a computer which could lead to health issues, but no matter the drawbacks social websites are quite fun, open new possibilities for socializing and will certainly continue to lure enormous audiences. Meanwhile, the social networks will strongly influence system and software developments in the years to come. [3]
References
- Ripley A., “What to Save From a Fire”, Time CNN
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1675600,00.html?cnn=yes - Graham J., “Flickr of idea on a gaming project led to photo website”, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2006-02-27-flickr_x.htm - Wang F.Y and Zeng D., "Social Computing: From Social Informatics to Social Intelligence", p 82
1 comment:
Your blog seems to be a summary of what these social websites are, more than what your experiences have been with them. It would have been nice for you to more thoroughly explain the aspects of the sites that you used / not used, like/disliked, etc. Basically it just seemed to broad and empty of substance.
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