Assignment 1 examples from 2008

Here are some links to reflections posted for assignment 1 last year, to give you an idea of the kind of thing that is possible to focus on for your reflection. These should be seen as examples rather than templates!

All the following received either a distinction or high distinction (links here are given in no particular order). The best marks were awarded to the posts that did the best job of presenting a specific argument and backing it up with specific examples from the author's experience, and/or examples from the literature that I've been presenting to you in class.

• Uploading ourselves digitally; Privacy, trust and identity issues Or – Does this profile make my head look big?
• Questions of Identity and social links within a social networking context Or why does someone want to be my friend on Facebook when they don’t know me in real life?
• My Reflection
• Reflection on Social Software and Groups

Last year I posted something similar giving links to reflections from the previous year. Here's a link to that post as well.



Stephen.

Reflection Assignment 1 post by s40989802

In modern society, internet has become one of our regular activities like watching Television. Many people are exploring friendships online. To attract those who love to share and connect with others online, there are many applications that have been created to stimulate the interest of people in all kinds of aspects. The social and mobile computing applications that I have been exploring includes; blogger, facebook, and flicker. These applications have been popular amongst many members that have interest in different field of sources. These applications have reached a new identity in us to connect with others on the internet. Throughout the following discussion I will reflect upon these applications to focus on the aspect of “online identities”.


Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is an useful application to bookmark your favorites. It does not show an obvious element for identity in this site. When I first used this application, I was inspired by the function that I was able to “tag” my favorites to share with others. I began from the main page to explore the application. In the main page you can see the “hotlist” on del.icio.us. These links are followed with a snap shot of the site and shows the tags they have been given. Furthermore, the most noticeable part was how many people had added this to their favorites. Del.icio.us had created the simplest application with no extra loadings; they were not many images or flashes. Moreover, there is a search bar at the top of the site. For this search bar, the key word is skimpily keyed in and it would bring up a page of links that can saved and see who had post this initial tag.

By using this application I was able to find the most popular site that has been tagged and often leading to find the most useful links in my interest. There is also a helpful tool in this application; you can download a browser button. This button allows you to post your current page to del.icio.us. Furthermore, you could view your favorites by clicking it. I found it useful with this tool button; when I found a good site I could easily tag it with the button. It’s vital to make the most convince for the user to handle with the application. Delicious is an application mainly to share links of own interest or make note of great sites to be viewed. The users do not need to provide any personal information to interest others. Others would be interested with this identity, because by presuming the user has knowledge with the range of the targets and is able to find a various of good links to be shared with others.


Flicker,

My initial experience with this application reflects back to my first class for this course. When I first entered the site, I have been enthused with the clear web design. It recalled my memory of seeing some of my friends using flicker before. This application is mainly sharing photos online with people all over the world. Flicker also use the tag system to custom the photos. It brought back my excitement of using an album. I believe the flicker team has made the most out of it; the users are able to drag an outline to frame anything in the photo. This could be an object or a view, others could add comment with it and it would show up while the viewers move their mouse over to the pictures. This is not the only amazing function, the user can also open a map and tag the photo inside the map and tell others where they have shoot this photo. It can show details of street names, just like a Google map. Most people that use this application shows a high level of interest to connect with most people on the internet. Flicker has developed many innovative tools to achieve such outstanding result of connecting users.

The uploading systems in flicker are simple to use and has various way of doing it. It can be easily accessible via different platform or in alternatives can be used on mobile phone to upload photos through e-mail. Flicker allows the user to organize their photos with two different grouping styles; one is sets, and another is collections. Sets are to organize around a certain theme. Collections are sets in grander themes. This allows others to view the photos more exactness. An online identity in Flicker might be more direct on what your appearances are, and your communities become visible. Most users post photos that reflect to their life. It is most likely to judge users that users the maximum of the application can be seen most clearly about the user’s life style and people that evolve around through them. Some people might only use part of the application and still create a dissemble identity by using fake photos or images of their hobbies. This is also why the flickers had generated a community of million themes.


Blogger

Blogger is the biggest blog website host in the world; millions of users have blog on blogger. The blogger creates a virtual for its users that they are a host of the site themselves. In blogger, you are able to post your diary, thoughts, ideas, or anything you would like to keep in track with. It can take years to design your own blogger, by adding features from other applications and the improvement of blogger itself or even a continual of writing. The blogger mainly categorize by entries, months or you can create a category of your own. Blogger allows visitors to search users’ blogs online and are able to input comments to users’ blogs.

The blogger have the functions of editing user’s own profile, attachment of photos. As a result, the viewers would be able to know the owner by reading their profile. The way that user may create their online identity with Blogger are likely to be depth. Viewers can read through the blogs to get to know the writer as well as commenting the blog to get responses. Comments are the most popular method of knowing the owner from their blog. However, there are moments the owner of the blog ignores the comments. In the society today, blogs could also be used as trade amateur or professional writers would post articles for trading purposes. This would also become a fatuous identity of the users. Common users’ uses blogger to record their life experiences and talk about their hobbies, or make documentation of their professions. Blogger is an application that has included one of the most detailed information about a person’s representations.


These three applications are selected with purposes. They focus on difference aspects to the social mobile computing system. They are all application that has already developed sophisticate functions. To define online identity with these three applications there are three aspects that need to be considered. For Delicious the identity was not the focus of this application. It was to share information amongst the viewers or/and users. There it is not necessary to sign up for this site to locate find the sources that you are looking for. On other hand Flicker and Blogger are more focused on the original posting. Flicker is mainly paying attention on the sharing photos or images that were either about their personal life or professions. However, Blogger has taken the writing from the users. The user of blogger could post articles either they had interest in or original created, everyone can be a writer or journalist. Therefore, the viewers were able to foreseen deeper information over than merely viewing photos. These three applications included the ranges of personal representations, interest and communications between users in this world.


s40989802 Jo Huang

Who Am I? ... Simon Eames 33628961

Simon Eames
33628961

Firstly it must be said that I use Facebook as a portal site to all my other social networking sites. I have windows on Facebook containing the information I wish to share. I appreciate the effect this has on the questions raised here, but will not be exploring the reasons behind this further.

Who Am I…

And How Do I Control It?

The goal of this article is to answer some questions and ideas I’ve experienced through using social computing tools and applications. The focus to be looked at is how representations of ourselves are controlled using social computing applications and which representations of ourselves, virtual or real world, are effected. How our images are controlled is explained through reputation management with examples. The examples contrast my usages of Last.fm and Twitter to explore the effect the information we choose to share on our image. In the same manner, social etiquette is used to examine the effects our actions have on these representations. Experiences in Facebook is used to demonstrate the effect of our actions.

Once the reasoning behind how representations are created is explored, the image we project this representation onto in analyzed. The type of information shared and the actions we perform determines the persona we project the image to. A clear path of information is presented showing the path of how we define out image through to who the image is extend to. This picture summarizes the article;

How do I control my image in the virtual world?

Reputation Management

Reputation management is controlling how people see us. It is the control of a projected image, in this case, to an online community. What we decide to show, share and express decides how others view us. I believe that how we control this information must be considered and our control methods must be justified.

Social computing tools have many methods to allow for controlling what user-defined information people see about us. Facebook can be setup to publish information but the level of interaction by the user will change the user’s control over their reputation. I control my reputation actively using Twitter, whereas I do not perform any actively control for my Last.fm account. My reputation is effected by both Twitter and Last.fm, but my chosen level of control is different for each applications.

My usage of Last.fm is simple. A window on Facebook displays my five recently played tracks. I have Last.fm scrobbling “My Music” folder. No new interaction from me is required. I love the simplicity of the control method. I did go through a detailed decision process to set the control level. This contrasts with my method of control for Twitter. Twitter has a display on my Facebook page showing my last Twitter update. It differs in that, no decision process was undertaken to setup the application. The main difference between the controls is that I can choose to use a complex decision process when updating it or not. I review exactly what I want published on Twitter. The limited characters available in Twitter reinforce this. Once the text is decided upon, it is a simple process to publish.

The justification behind the processes is important to understand how I use these applications for reputation management. My Last.fm control setup is based around having a small number of track which constantly change. This method reduces the chance of people reading into the information displayed and receiving an image of myself that I do not want portrayed. I distance myself from the application and hence reduce the applications control over my image. With Twitter, I actively try to change the image of myself. Messages are either direct, simple and clear, such as “Simon is working tonight in hospitality.” or abstract and difficult to extrapolate personal information, such as “Simon is recovering.”. This way I choose to project an image that can be understood or not.

It is though definition of these controls and deciding what to include, that I managed part of my reputation online. By justifying the choices make, I control how people see me. Controlling this information is similar in the “real world” to personal appearance. We knowingly present an image through what we wear. The other side of the coin is the image we choose to show through our actions.

Social Etiquette

People’s actions effect how people think of them. Our social graces play an important role in how the world sees us and therefore plays an important role in management of an online persona.

Having no previous experience with most social computing applications, I had difficulty understanding the finer points of communication. This is especially true while using Facebook. In the real world, if I walk past someone I have not see for five years and did not consider a friend, I would not pause. If they said hi, I would say hi back, but not want to see pictures of their family.

The same interaction has occurred to me on Facebook. One person has contacted me with a Friend Notification. I denied their friendship. Even after this denial, they repeated sending me befriending notifications. As a result, I remembered the instances when that person was forceful, or the reasons we were not close.

Contrastingly, a person I was equally indifferent to sent me a personal message and not a friend request. The note was simple, “Long time, How’s things?”. This note without the friend request follows what I would consider normal social etiquette. I remembered instances of how polite the person was. After messaging back and forth for a while, they mention a mutual acquaintance. I replied saying I have some photos of the acquaintance and sent a Friend Request. The request was accepted.

In both these interactions, the other persons and I are controlling our images through our actions. In the first example, an image of interaction for the sake of interaction was presented to me and in the latter, an image of interaction for a reason was presented. I do not presume to know what image I presented to the other people.

In respect to the technology, only through Facebook could both these interactions occur easily. The technology allows both good and bad impressions to be made without difficulty. I cannot say it is the technology that shapes how people see us. The technology only shapes the method we choose to present ourselves.

But who am I controlling?

Virtual vs. Personal

Presented here are 2 viewpoints, one about the information we share and other about the actions we choose to perform. Both examples show that we can control the impression we give off. Reputation management in the first example relates to the ability of us to choose the level of control we use. Social etiquette shows the image we present is a result of how people interpret our actions. The next step is to examine the actual image being affected.

On reflection of what information I choose to share using little control, for example my Last.fm details, projects an image about myself personally. I chose to share the information related to Last.fm because to simple and accurate. The information being shared reflects me in the real world. When I look at information shared in this format it is commonly reflecting events in people’s lives in the real world. Therefore, the image, which people project to, is the real life personality, not the virtual personality.

Applications where my chosen level of control is high, like Twitter, the persona to which the image is projected depends on the actual information being shared. For abstract information, the virtual image is the recipient. If the information shared is abstract there is not point of personal reference to me personally, to which the representation can be attached. This results in my virtual self being described by the information. Conversely, if the information is specific, the information shared has enough meaning and description to describe what I am doing in the real world. People reading the information understand that a virtual self could not perform the description. Hence, since the virtual self is unable to be described by the information it is my personal self that receives the projection.

When people’s actions are the basis for the representation to be attached, I believe that the virtual self receives the information. Since all interactions are virtual for this case, it is simple for me to attach the actions to the virtual self. My view of people’s social etiquette is a dynamic image. My view of a person’s social etiquette will be effect by the situation and interaction in which the actions occur. Since the interaction has occurred online, I ascribe the image I have created from their actions to their online persona. Similarly, the image of a person I receive in the real world is attached to the person, in the real world. The implications of this is that the image created is dependent on the environment on which it occurs.

And for review

Control creates an Image, an Image is then projected

To review the ideas presented;

This article talks about how using differing levels of control will effect the image we project. Using little control, in my experience, allows for a restricted image to be created. With high control, the created image can be more control and tailored to an image if want. The article also looked at the effects our action have on creating an image. Particularly, I feel the difference between what I consider normal social etiquette and peoples etiquette online. The version of myself, either virtual or real life, to which the created image is projected and the reasoning behind the assignment explained.

In summary, the what we share and the way we do it effect how people think of both our virtual and real world selves.

Simon Eames
33628961

Note's From sre: The interaction described here is based in a social setting. In relation to work/uni related contact I believe anything goes. Let's flame ppl :)

Tyson Dudley 40969662 - Reflecting on Awareness in Social Applicantions

Posted on Behalf of Tyson Dudley 40969662

Tyson Dudley

40969662

This Post is here to reflect my experiences in using the social and mobile computing applications. The applications that will be looked at in this post are facebook, delicious and Google calendar. The main aspect of this post will be on awareness and how this affects the user, in this case me and how it affected my online social experience. How aware a user is, is only as good as the applications ability to show information that is relevant to you and your interests.

Facebook’s main focus is based on making you socially aware of other people around you. They do this through a profile that you create when you sign up then based of your country, state, university matches you to other people with the same details. Allowing you to ask to become their friend and extend your social network. The awareness aspect of this comes from the clever design of the facebook system, making it easier for users to find people with similar interests to your own. Another way facebook makes for a more aware social experience is through the use of statuses. Facebook allows you to edit your status allowing everyone on your list to see it. This status bar lets you type whatever you like so you can express anything from what mood you’re in to what you’re doing right now. This makes everyone on your list more aware of your current situation and lets them make an informed decision weather to talk to you or not. Poke is another good feature of how facebook makes you more aware by allowing you to poke people on your friends list. This allows for a more instantaneous response, letting you know if your friends are really there and able to talk. The news feeds are also a place of social awareness allowing you to view what people on your list are interested in and making you more aware of current news and social events that are taking place. The thing I liked most about facebook was how easy it made keeping in contact with everyone I know from high school through to work in the one place. Facebook is definitely an application I enjoy using and will continue to use in the future.

Google calendar makes for an easy way to plan your weeks. It allows you to add events within seconds by simply click and dragging over the time and adding a name. Once you have an event planned and it needs changing it is even easier to change. You can expand and retract the size of the event or move it to a different day. It also comes with all the typical functions of a calendar allowing you to repeat a task on a scheduled bases e.g. daily, weekly, monthly. What’s great about this application is that you can share your calendar with other people so you can see who is available when. This awareness makes for scheduling times to meet group members and friends a lot easier. The other strong point about Google calendars is that everything is stored online so you can access the information from anywhere making the information readily available. I use Google calendar to keep track of my uni timetable and that of my friends but not much besides that. This is because my work roster doesn’t have set days or times and I rarely plan more then a day or two ahead. Although Google calendar makes it extremely easy to add and edit your calendar I do not see myself using it for anything more than my class timetable.

Delicious makes interesting use of social awareness in the way they use tags. Instead of restricting a user to a preset list of categories to tag your bookmarks you get to type your own. Not only does it allow you to type your own tags but it makes you aware of what other people have tagged the same bookmark or similar bookmarks as. By allowing people to choose their own tags and making them aware of what is already out there is makes for a more enjoyable experience and are more likely to reuse the site. Again the other way it adds awareness is through the bookmarks themselves keeping up to date with current news and events.

The underlining trend in all of the applications so far is awareness. The basic idea in everything so far is that the more information you have about yourself and your life on any given application, the easier it is to create a social network. The more aware other people are that they have something in common with you the more likely they are to want to add/talk to you. The hard part about awareness is keeping all the information in sync with what is actually happening. The above applications all have their own methods in keeping as up to date as possible but so far I think that facebook has done the best job. The combination of social groups, pokes and the status bar have created a pleasant and playful environment in which to keep in contact with my friend. This makes Facebook the most fun socially aware application on the web.

Julia Goodwin 41205871

Relfection - Privacy

Julia Goodwin

41205871

Introduction
The use of social and mobile applications has risen over the years. As these new technologies are being made readily available to anyone, the issue of privacy should be considered. With websites such as Facebook and Flickr giving out personal details of its users, there is a need to determine how effectively they implement privacy and safety measures. For the subject “Social and Mobile Computing” we were asked to sign up to social networking sites and reflect upon them.

Background
Facebook is an online social networking blog. It allows users to create their own profile, which contains their interests, networks, groups, contact details and photos. The use of ‘Networks’ allows users to find people in their area, or from their high school or work place. Users can add ‘notes’ which serve as journal entries and other users in their friends list can comment on them. Other users can also post on your “Wall”, which is a message board on your profile. A unique feature of this site is, it allows the user to add their own custom ‘status’. This appears as “(User name) is ......”

Flickr is a photo sharing website. This site is principally used for uploading and sharing photos with friends and other users. Users also have the ability set up a profile with information about themselves, such as favourites, interests, contact details. Once you have uploaded a photo, other features can be added to it. Users can add a title and description, and also ‘tag’ the photo with keywords, so that other users interested in that tag can find your photo, and comment on it.

Focus
The issue of privacy online has become more apparent in the past few years, and should be considered an important aspect of social and mobile applications. A lot of users of the internet have a desire to keep their personal details private, however the increasing popularity of social and mobile applications means that users of these sites are often becoming unbothered by the fact that their personal information is made public. The aspect of privacy can be used to not only protect users from people they don’t know, but those they do know. Users of blog sites often create private accounts or conceal their identity in some way in order to make it difficult for friends and family to read their personal thoughts.

The downside of social and mobile applications being so public is that this makes it easy for people to find your personal information. Recently, an ACT student has attempted to highlight the fact that putting information on the internet can be dangerous, by plastering myspace user’s pictures all over his capital city. He states that, “profiles contain far greater potential for stalking, harassment, fraud and other misuse of their personal information … potentially dangerous individuals like me know where you live, what you look like, where you go to school, who your friends are.” (Sydney Morning Herald, 2007) However, a positive outcome of exposing certain information about oneself online can create new friendships. By waiving their privacy of their location and interests, users may find potential friends in their area they have not met.

Privacy is an issue that I had the most trouble with when I signed up for Facebook and Flickr as part of this course. This issue is present in my thoughts for every site I sign up to, and it seems only fitting that I reflect on my experience using social and mobile computers in relation to the aspect of privacy.

Reflection
Facebook’s effective or ineffective use of privacy is an important focus. An significant part of Facebook is setting up your profile. The main way of finding people – and them finding you – is through a user’s profile. This profile contains your contact information, your location, your personal details, your likes and dislikes, education and work information.

Figure 1.1 - Facebook. Personal details on my profile.

When I created my Facebook account, I was not a first time user of social and mobile applications, however I had not signed up to a site as casual about sharing my personal details. This site is heavily focused on networking, and this is the main way for users to find each other. In order for any potential friends to find me, I had to give out details that made me uncomfortable, such as my hometown and country, as well as birth date. I am a regular user of LiveJournal, and I did not have to give out these details on this site, because it is not absolutely necessary. LiveJournal is more focused on locating people by their interests, and communities they have joined. What I loved about this site is that it was not necessary for me to give out any information that I found uncomfortable in order for me to be completely immersed in this site.

What worked well in terms of privacy for Facebook was that it gave you the option to make your profile “private”. This means that it forbids those on your friends list from viewing your profile. However, they still had access to seeing your name, Display Picture and networks you are in (location).

Figure 1.2 - Facebook. Adding privacy to your contact details.

Despite having this option, not many users take advantage of it. The majority of people I looked up, did not have this set to “Private”. If I had made this account out of my own interest, I would definitely have had my profile set to “Private”, as it makes me uncomfortable knowing that anyone can view personal information about me. As I mostly use my LiveJournal account, I have made sure to make my account “Friends-Only”, which means only people I have selected as “friends” can view my details and journal entries.

Having a good deal of personal information readily available on your profile does make a stalkers job a lot easier; however a good majority of users of this website do not appear to be concern for their privacy. As I stated earlier, there is an option to set your profile to private, but many users do not take advantage of this option. I spend a good deal of time trying to ‘stalk’ old classmates, with great success. All I had to do was to know your name and your location (country or state) and search for you. The search brings up results of those sharing your name, and from there I simply had to select which user is the one I was searching for by identifying their photograph, and voila – I’ve found you. From there I have access to all your photographs, where you live and your school/work. I personally am glad for the lack of concern some users show for their privacy, as otherwise I would not have been able to track down so many childhood friends of mine. I am grateful that all of the old friends I’d found weren’t hesitant about placing photos of themselves on the internet, because I found it amusing to discover what they look like after so many years.

However, my innocent stalking can hardly be considered dangerous, there are users of Facebook that do not have as innocent intentions. The escalating use of social and mobile applications such as Facebook and Myspace, by paedophiles has only just been recognized. According to the Onion (2006) a 47-year-old paedophile has begun using myspace as a tool of locating his next victims. To find a victim all he has to do is locate the primary school’s myspace community within his area, and he has access to profiles and pictures of all the children in that community.

Flickr has more respect for privacy, in terms of their profile, then other sites I have used. Although profiles on this site are not the main focus, I was pleased to see that this site was not broadcasting my personal information. In this respect, I found that Flickr has used privacy more effectively then Facebook has. In comparison, it displays a lot less personal information about its users on their profiles. However, Flickr is not as concerned with your profile as much as Facebook is.

The main use of this site is for users to upload pictures and photographs. Users of this site upload their artwork, or photographs of themselves and others. When I signed up for this site I had two major concerns: art-theft, and random users accessing my photographs. For this course I was required to upload pictures of my choice to Flickr. I thought that it would be meaningless and pointless to upload random pictures that I did not create, so I decided to upload some of my own. As I have stated earlier, I enjoy my privacy and did not want to upload photos of myself onto the internet. Instead I decided to use my Flickr account for uploading images that I have created either in my own time, or for university. Nevertheless I was concerned that my pictures may be taken and used elsewhere, without my permission. Flickr does have effective privacy measures in this respect. When you upload a photo you can associate a Creative Commons license with it, which should legally protect others from claiming your artworks.

Figure 1.3 - Flickr. Privacy settings for my profile.

A downfall for Flickr in relation to privacy is it does not restrict users from uploading too much information about themselves. Users can post photographs of themselves, their house, their friends and their families, which makes them easy to find, if you know what area they live in. Another concern I had was people inappropriately using photographs uploaded to this site. This is a concern of many Flickr users, that people may be joining this site for the wrong reasons:

“So, I realize that flickr is an open site, and that everyone posts pictures by choice, but I'm a bit uncomfortable that there are folks who join just to get some free pics of
naked ladies. I am particularly uncomfortable with some users who register, and have hundreds of favorites marked (but no photos of their own, and no profile) of pregnant women. It just seems unfair to the fantastic models and incredible hotographers who did not put their photos up on this site to be used in this manner.” (Amelia, 2005)

Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that both Facebook and Flickr have taken measures to keep their users safe and providing them with the means to do so, however the majority of people have not taken advantage of this. Personally I would not regularly use these sites if I did not have the ability to keep my personal details private. I am aware of how easy it is to find people I know who do not necessarily want to be, as I have done so. Anyone with as much commitment as a few hours could use these two sites as a means for contacting users with less innocent intentions then mine.

Bibliography
‘Amelia’, (2005). Flickr: “Creepy Flickr Users.” Retrieved August 16, 2007 from http://www.flickr.com/groups/central/discuss/33903/

Facebook, (2007). Facebook. Retrieved August 17, 2007 from http://www.facebook.com/home.php?

Flickr, (2007). Welcome to Flickr! Retrieved August 17, 2007 from http://www.flickr.com/

LiveJournal, (2007). LiveJournal.com. Retrieved August 17, 2007 from http://www.livejournal.com/

Sydney Morning Herald, (2007). The Sydney Morning Herald Blogs: Stay in Touch. Retrieved August 15, 2007 from http://blogs.smh.com.au/sit/archives/2007/01/embarrassments_he_knows_where.html

The Onion – America’s Finest News Source, (2006). Pedophile Less Interested the More he Views 13-Year-Old’s Myspace Profile. Retrieved August 15, 2007 from http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46453

Integration (Nathan Hoad, 40760104)

Integration

Nathan Hoad
40760104

There are countless social networking sites spread throughout the many tubes that we call the Internet. Some of these sites succeed, but most of them are never even known to the general public (until they try to sue one of the popular ones). There are many factors that might contribute to a popular social networking site but in this article, I will focus mainly on the one that I think is most important; the openness of a sites data. The ability for a site to cooperate with other software, be it another site or desktop software, is what makes a site more appetising to users. Google, for example, has opened up many of its collection of sites by allowing developers to use public APIs. This has paved the way for countless other uses for their original data and only made said data more popular. In this article, I will be talking about social networking tools such as Google Calendar, Twitter, Last.fm, and Facebook.

Firstly, I thought I'd mention that anything that comes out of the Google factory is bound to be awesome and Google Calendar is no exception. Google Calendar is, as it's name suggests, a calendaring application and is available to any Google account holder. Adding new calendars is as easy as clicking a button. Adding events to a calendar is similarly as easy; click the time of an event and give the event a name. There is a page full of extra options for events if a user needs them. For students entering their university timetable *cough* they can set the events to repeat by week and expire after the semester has finished. Once a user has a calendar they can share it to allow others to see the events it contains. Using the other side of the same process, users can find and view other people's calendars. Google Calendar integrates well with Gmail, another Google service by allowing users to send event information via email. When a user receives an email containing event data, they can simply click it to add it to their own set of calendars. Google Calendar also cooperates well with various desktop calendaring solutions, though some need extra plugins to work properly. The Mozilla Calendar project, in the form of Sunbird and Lightning, gives users a desktop interface to view and edit their Google Calendars through the use of the Provider plugin. Google Calendar users with blogs can easily incorporate any of their calendars into a little calendar application that Google provides. Google Calendar also kind of integrates with Sinet, and before you say “No it doesn't” read my story: I always put my proposed uni timetable into Google Calendar (I used to put it into Google Spreadsheets) once class times are available ready for signon. My fiancé used to just keep her proposed timetable in an excel file on her computer ready for signon. Then, last semester, we weren't at home during the first round of signons. I had my times worked out and available from Google Calendar whereas my fiance had to go back through Sinet and re-work-out her timetable before she could complete her signon.

Twitter is for people who like to make sure that their friends know exactly what they are doing at any given time. When using Twitter, people are asked a simple question: What are you doing? Users can answer this in any way they see fit, as long as they keep their response under the 140 character limit. Users can update their Twitter status in a number of different ways. Twitter can accept status changes from Instant Messaging (with Google Talk, etc), from mobile phones (with SMSs), or from the user logged into the Twitter site. Twitter also has an open API and various other methods of updating your Twitter status have been created. Twitteroo and Twitteriffic are desktop applications that have been developed for Twitter that give users another way to update their status and perform other Twitter related tasks. I don’t use Twitter that often for one main reason: unless you keep updating your status, they become out of date. If there was some kind of calendar based software that integrated with Twitter to update your status based on your timetable I might see Twitter being more useful.

Last.fm is a music based social networking site. Once registered, users can download a plugin for most desktop audio players (some players, such as Amarok, have the plugin built-in) that ubiquitously reports what music they listen to and when. After the plugin has reported, or scrobbled, a few songs, users can begin to see their listening habits mapped out over time. After a while the user can begin to view extensive charts listing things like their weekly top artists, weekly top songs, monthly top artists, monthly top songs, etc. For example, my top artist for this week (5 August – 12 August) is Alain Boublil & Claude-Michel Schönberg after scrobbling the Miss Saigon album on infinite loop for a while. My top artist overall is John Williams after countless scrobbles of his countless soundtracks. Last.fm can take data like this and start to hypothesise about a users taste in music and give recommendations about other music that the user might like. If you like a lot of a certain kind of music and someone else likes a lot of that kind of music then, chances are, you would like most of the other music in their collection. Last.fm offers these recommendations in the form of a neighbourhood radio. This integrates well into some desktop audio players. I use Amarok, a desktop audio player for Linux, to listen to music. Amarok makes use of Last.fm to deliver the same neighbourhood radio. From within Amarok you can either start listening to your own neighbourhood or simply listen to any Last.fm within a given genre. Last.fm also contains an embedded streaming radio that users can listen to within the page itself. Although it has very little to do with integration, I think this also helps Last.fm to be a very useful tool. For example, while I am at work I just load up my Last.fm page and listen to my music collection using the embedded player.

Facebook was built as a general tool to help users keep track of their college friends. The original Facebook wasn’t much more that a bunch of linked profiles. Over time it grew and more features were added and more people joined and so on and so on. In May of this year Facebook released The Facebook Platform, an API for developers to start making applications to interact with the various features of Facebook. In the few months since then, a plethora of applications have been created to integrate the data from other social sites into Facebook. At the last count, there were around 2200 applications. There are applications that provide interfaces to most of the other popular social networking sites. On my Facebook I have the Last.fm application installed which lets viewers see what songs I listened to recently and displays my favourite artists. I also sometimes use the embedded Last.fm radio stream to listen to music when I’m not at home. Delicious, a social bookmarking site, also has a Facebook application that displays users Delicious bookmarks as part of their profile page. Facebook recently announced its new iPhone integration feature that lets iPhone owners fill their hunger for Facebook even when they aren’t near a computer. Facebook has done a very good job of letting itself be connected to almost any other useful site that users can think of.

Integration is an important factor in why some sites seem to be more popular than others. Sites that play well with others often attract a bigger user base and, when talking about social networking sites, a big user base can only make the site more useful. Some connections between tools come from places that you wouldn’t normally expect (eg. Google Calendar and Sinet) and begin to add more utility to the software than the developer could have imagined. Some pieces of social software present countless means of integration through the use of an extensive API which means more opportunities to integrate with other tools. Facebook is great because it acts as a central meeting point for all the other social networking sites. Facebook doesn’t really try to beat everyone at their own game; it just lets people bring their game to Facebook to play. My conclusion: Rather than trying to change people’s habits, sites should just make software that integrates into what people are already using.

Links used in article

Google Calendar – http://www.google.com/calendar
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com
Last.fm – http://www.last.fm
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com
Facebook gets sued – http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2004/8/5/harvardGradsFaceOffAgainstThefacebookcom
Facebook for iPhones – http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=5353402130
API Information – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API

Social Awareness : Anthony Massingham [ 40960212 ]

Social Awareness
Anthony Massingham
40960212

Introduction
Social interaction has been a key factor to human development all throughout history. With the advent of Internet based communications, the idea of networking and awareness moved from the physical realm into the digital. “UseNet” ( “a world-wide distributed discussion system” ( What is Usenet ) ) can be described as the first online social network as it allowed users to converse and interact remotely over long distances. From there the many forms of computer based social interaction increased. From IRC ( Internet relay chat ), to instant messaging systems like ICQ or MSN, and finally on to the latest iteration of digital social interaction : The Social Network. Unofficially Starting with classmates.com in 1995, the internet social network revolution has boomed over the last few years. Juggernauts like Myspace and Facebook dominate the industry, while competitors build up steady followings in the sidelines. But what is it that attracts users to these networks ?

As the world around us speeds up, we find ourselves with less and less time to keep track of our friends, family, and the important ( or not so important ) aspects of their lives. One of the aims of Social Networking is to allow users to be aware of what other people are doing, and to bring a feeling of connection to a system that ultimately is sterile and artificial.

This article will aim to explore the sense of awareness and feeling of connection that Social Networking has brought to the Internet community. Examples will be drawn from a selection of Social Networking Tools or Systems that attempt in some way to complete this “feeling of connection”.

Services
The Services to be discussed in this article are as follows :

Facebook

Facebook is “...the second largest social network on the web, behind only MySpace in terms of traffic. Primarily focused on high school to college students ” ( Facebook, Complete Biography ). Facebook is a networking site primarily for students, it has a custom developer API which allows for customised applications, and supports the creation of groups, events, and communication between other users. The Facebook website says : “Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet. “ ( Facebook.com )

Last.fm

Last.fm is a music related website which monitors a user's listening habits and displays statistics, offers recommended listening, and compares musical tastes with fellow users. Last.fm uses an external piece of software ( scrobbler ) to monitor listening habits. Last.fm describes itself as : “a service that keeps track of what music you listen to, and then produces a large number of features personalised to you. You can use Last.fm to listen to music, find out about artists you may like, other people with similar music taste, gigs in your local area, charts and quilts for your personal site, as well as much more.” ( Last.fm FAQ).

Twitter

Twitter is an (not so) instant messaging system which broadcasts messages out to a select group of people. Twitter utilises SMS, Instant Messaging Services ( like GoogleChat ), and email. Twitter describes itself as “...a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives.” ( Twitter Help Page ).

Pownce

Pownce is a newcomer to the Social Networking Scene, it is essentially similar to Twitter, but sends files, events, pictures and links as well as messages. Pownce also has an external client running on Adobe AIR Software. Pownce describes itself as “...a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends.” ( Pownce Website ).

RSS as a Social Device

Finally, this article will use RSS and RSS readers ( such as RSSOwl, and Google Reade ) as ways of keeping in contact and maintaining user awareness. RSS ( Really Simply Syndication ), is a simple feed of data from a particular website. Blogs and News sites organise data into RSS feeds so that readers can automate content acquisition and view it from within a feed reader. Multiple Feeds can be viewed from within the one reader.

Awareness
All of the services or tools listed above are used by thousands of people in some form every day. So what is it that makes these communities so successful? Although there are many contributing factors, I myself believe that being aware of the other users and what they are involved in is what keeps the community connected. “Being aware” can be defined as “having knowledge” ( Dictionary.com), however this definition is lacking detail. Dourish and Bly, Best describe awareness as “knowing who is around, what is happening, and who is talking with whom”. One of the key aspects of social networks is this understanding of awareness and feeling of connection. There have been many social applications created recently that focus specifically on being aware of what other users are currently viewing. me.dium for example is a program that displays users who are currently viewing the same websites as you are, and allows users to chat about the particular site together. Immediately this brings a new depth to the feeling of connection one finds when browsing the Internet. Being aware of what other users are doing immediately takes a simple web-based application to a new level.

Social Awareness and Interaction
All of the network tools mentioned earlier allow some way for people to be aware of the status of fellow users at any one time. In fact, some of the tools are based entirely around the concept of awareness. To begin with however, a look at the music website Last.fm.

As mentioned earlier, Last.fm is a music orientated network. The music software analyses what a user is listening to and then displays that information on the Last.fm website. However leaving the website just as described would ensurea dull and uninteresting experience for the users. Instead Last.fm offer the users a chance to compare taste with other participants, as well as get updates as to what their friends have listened to recently.

Last.fm friend status

By adding in this extra functionality, Last.fm moves from being a collection of people's favourite tracks, to a collection of users being aware, and discussing each other's musical tastes. Upon loading Last.fm every user is presented with a screen displaying the latest movements of their “friends”, immediately making them aware of a variety of information ( music choice, time it was played, etc ). This sense of awareness immediately brings the users closer together as a group and helps to ensure users don't feel like they are on opposite sides of the world, but that they feel connected to one another.

Last.fm Taste-o-meter

While using Last.fm during the first few weeks of the semester, I was instantly surprised by the musical tastes of some of my peers, and pleasantly surprised to find some common similarities. Immediately I knew the next time I saw that particular friend I could talk to them about a band we had never spoken about previously. This new connection was entirely due to the fact I was aware of what they had been listening to.

Twitter has a different approach to making users aware of each other: it is entirely based around being aware entirely, even to the point where, Twitter's catch phrase is “What are you doing?”. Even as I write this essay I am getting updates on where my fellow students are up to in their article progress. ( “1200 words.. time for a break” was the last message received on my mobile phone ). Twitter seems like a silly idea when you first hear about it; Why waste time sending messages over the internet/IM/phone when you can just tell people what you're doing when they ask you? However after a period of using it, one can see the advantages. It offers quick and easy access to a variety of distribution methods, as well as being able to receive messages no matter your whereabouts. On top of this, one certainly does feel connected, almost voyeuristic, hearing updates about peoples private lives at all hours of the day or night.

GoogleTalk Twitter Messages

Pownce uses a similar system to Twitter. Users sign up as “friends” and then can exchange messages with one another. However Pownce goes one step further and adds the option of sending Messages, Links, Files ( up to 10mb for the average user ) and organising Events. In my opinion, even though Pownce does not have SMS or IM capabilities it is far superior in making myself aware of what the internet-based network is doing around me. However Twitter takes the idea of awareness away from the computer and makes it portable ( with sms updates and messaging ) and therefore has an element which Pownce has yet to capture.

Pownce AIR Interface

Facebook is one of the largest social networking websites available on the web to date, it is also one of the best examples of user connection through awareness in the social network community. Upon logging in, users are immediately greeted with a “news feed”. This Feed displays all the recent updates that a users' friends have made within the last few days.

This “feed” of information can also be customised so that particular types of information are updated less, while other types are updated more often. This selective awareness is highly beneficial to people who only wish to know certain things, about certain people.

Facebook also supports the use of Events and Groups. Events ensure that users are aware which of their friends are attending a particular event. While groups are ways of connecting with people of similar interests or passions. On top of all of this, the Facebook system is supported by “networks” ( locales if you will ) which chop up the users of the world into geographical groups. Once in one of these “networks” you have access to basic information of anyone else within that network. If you want to feel connected, that is one of the best ways to do it.

Finally I would like to touch on RSS feeds as a social tool. Although not technically a social network, they can be used in such a way to give a website or network a social “feel” and help readers to become aware of the author and his/her habits. A large number of websites ( including all of the ones listed in this article, and this article itself ) use RSS feeds to provide data for users. Using an RSS feed reader ( like RSSOwl as depicted in the images ), a user can view all of this information from all of these social sites, and be notified as soon as new information arrives. On top of this, a user can be aware of new posts on Blogs, News-based websites and Forums. Although it doesn't allow for communication back to the original source, RSS does provide an excellent feeling of connection for the reader as well as a feeling of convenience.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it is important when dealing with a isolated tool like the Internet to remain aware of what yourself, and others around you are doing. Awareness and connection with others is what turns a simple web portal into something more meaningful. All of the tools listed throughout the article use awareness to promote a feeling community and connection between users. Each of the various social network systems approach the concept of awareness in a different fashion. Facebook looks at community awareness, Last.fm looks at comparative awareness, Twitter and Pownce look at complete awareness, and RSS feeds are a good example of external awareness. Each tackles the problem in a different manner, but each succeed in their own right. This sense of awareness and feeling of communication remove the normally stark artificial nature of the internet and adds a more human element to the networks. It is this human network that keeps people coming back to various sites, where it is less like an online hub, and more like a place for friends and family to meet, greet, and be take part in eachother's lives.

Default or Passive Inclusion

By Ben Bradford
s4097064

Over the past couple of weeks we have been required to use and review the multiple social and mobile computing tools that we signed up to in week 2. These tools consisted of, Last.fm, Flikr, Google Calendar, Pownce, Twitter, del.icio.us, and Facebook.
Over the few weeks that we used the applications I have noticed a repeated thread throughout the applications that link them together. Each application has an apparent openness to either a select network of people or the public at large, of how two or more people interact with each other. This apparent openness between the applications can be defined as passive or default inclusion. Where people are able to view interactions between individuals by default or with little effort.

Facebook
I have been a user of Facebook for a few months now and from my experiences with it I can conclude that Facebook is practically an online social networking personal ‘web page’ in which the users can customize their page to suit their personality. Customisations include adding programs, changing the layout, adding pictures, display names and more. Facebook also has the ability for the to add all their friends to their page. This enables the user to view their friend’s page and the friends view theirs.

Facebook allows the users to view other users actions and interactions with from their own profile. News Feed, located at the Facebook home page allows the users to see what their friends have been doing either to their profile or others. News Feed notifies the users of things that their friends have been doing, such as adding photos, writing messages on other peoples pages, invitations to applications within Facebook, and recent friend adds between users. Such information can be classified as default inclusion, where the user is notified of these types of these interactions and changes.

The Wall is a default application with every Facebook page. The Wall enables users to write messages on each other’s page. The Super Wall is an additional application that lets users upload movies and pictures to their friend’s page. All the information posted on The Wall’s are available for other friends to view, although News Feed does not notify the users of unknown people commenting on the users friend’s pages, users are still able to view this information. When writing on someone’s Wall, the user is aware that the public will be able to view what is written, this makes the user more cautious, so the user writes in a way that the user is comfortable with the public seeing. If the user has a more private message for the user, they are able to send a message to their friend that they receive like an email in Facebook.

A Status can also be set by a user to inform their friends how they are feeling or what they are doing. This Status is posted on the News Feed every time it is updated, keeping the users friends up-to-date with what the user is doing or feeling.

Facebook uses many ways for peers to communicate formally and informally by using The Wall and by sending messages. These however are only the standard ways that the user can interact with one another but set the best example being the default ways of communication within Facebook. As mentioned, The Wall is able to be viewed by the users friends which enables them to view posts from other people which creates an informal style of gossip, giving the user the ability to read what others have written to their friends. Although the majority, if not all, of the users know that The Wall is a ‘public’ writing area, it would be useful if the user had the ability to restrict selected people from viewing specific things on their page, other than the existing privacy setting which limits people from viewing a default list of things.

Last.fm
Last.fm is a social music application that lets you share your music taste with the public, get information on the bands and tracks you are listening to and listen to personalised radio streams. Last.fm makes a visual representation of the music the user is listening to in the form of a bar graph on the users profile page. These bar graphs show the top weekly artists, top artists overall and the top listened to tracks.
Last.fm uses an application to read the music that the user is playing in their music player and uploads the information to the users profile page. After the information is gathered, bar charts are formed based on the amount of music and tracks the user listens too. The more an artist is listened to, the lager the graph grows, and this forms the users top artists and most listened tracks.

Last.fm users are able to search through their email addresses to add friends that are members of Last.fm to their friends list. Once friends are added to the users friends list, the Dashboard shows tracks recommended to the user from other users, friends that are online, recommended artists and full length tracks. This Dashboard function, more specifically users online, shows users that are currently listening to music or users that have listened to music last. Similar to Facebook, default inclusion is used to notify the user users that are online or have been online listening to music.

Users are able to view one another’s profile pages and see the same information that is available on their own individual profiles. This allows users to see recently played tracks, top artists and most played songs. With this information available to every user, Last.fm calculates on the Taste-o-Meter the music compatibility between users based on the artists listened to and the amount of times listened to. The similarities between Facebook and Last.fm occor here again where the users can read what others have written on profiles in Facebook, Last.fm users are able to view what music other users listen to and their top artists etc.

Overall, Last.fm is a fantastic application that I have been using for about three months and have enjoyed every moment of it. Every time I am able to connect to the Internet, I am uploading my music listening to Last.fm. The ability of seeing my musical listening in a graphical form with very little effort creates a want to continue uploading my musical listening. One thing that I think Last.fm could benefit from would be the ability to upload the album details, not just the artist and track title. When a compilation album is listened to, such as ministry of sound, only the individual artist details are added creating an individual artist graph. If the user had the option to upload the album details, the album would have its own graph along with the artists.

Twitter
Twitter to me is a personal status uploading application that informs others about what you are doing or feeling. The users are also informed on other users status either via the twitter site, email, or even SMS. Twitter enables users to upload their current status that can include what they are doing, what they have done or what they are feeling. After this information is posted on the Twitter site, friends are able to view what you have uploaded to the twitter site.

The user has the ability to update their profile via SMS or using dashboard widgets for OS X called twiget. This eliminates the hassle of having to go to the site to upload a changed status every time the users decide to. By doing this it makes the uploads not as tedious and the users status is able to be uploaded regularly keeping the users status as up to date as they want. Twitter also has the ability to send SMS to the users who are following friend’s statuses, notifying users of other users status updates.

Twitter posed no great desire to be used constantly as the idea of updating what I was doing thought out the day seemed unnecessary and a waste of time. Although feel no great want to use the application does not rule out that it is a good idea. Twitter can be fun when I have some spare time to post between friends. Although the application itself poses not great use to me, it does however illustrate default inclusion by notifying the users of updated statuses from other users.

Conclusion
Throughout the three applications mentioned Facebook, Last.fm, and Twitter, a common theme aforementioned treads between them, the inclusion the users have between user-to-user profiles and interaction. All three of these applications make information, data, and interactions an open source. Users have access to this information via notification or by simple searching. Although this may seem to be intrusion of privacy to some, others, including myself, knowing what someone is doing or saying is a guilty pleasure.

Being Lazy and Social at the Same time

Heath Manning - 40425225

Introduction

I am, as anyone who knows me will happily testify, an incredibly lazy individual. It’s not an uncommon affliction, and history has shown that whenever a significantly faster or easier method for performing a common task becomes available, people are likely to adopt it. In the case of applications, even user preference can easily be overlooked in favor of performance, if the gain is large enough [1]. As such, when I look at social tools and applications, I don’t immediately see the potential for social networking or community, but I have no difficulties noticing how time consuming or irritating they can be.

Background

The most obvious example of a social application requiring significant overhead is Twitter, an application that resembles nothing so much as an annoying five-year old, constantly following you around and asking what your doing. Similar to the five-year old, it also offers the potential benefit of making your answers available to everyone (“Daddy was at da wace-twack today, yellin at da horsies”).

Other applications of interest include Last.FM, Flickr, Facebook, and Google Calendar. Last.FM is a fairly passive music monitor that records the artists and songs you listen to on your computer or ipod, and makes that knowledge freely available to your friends, people with similar tastes, and of course, the entire recording industry, so they know who to sue. It also offers you similar information about other users, tracks the popularity of various songs and artists, and allows you to identify other people with similar musical tastes. It also includes basic community functionality, such as groups, friends lists, message systems, user profiles, and event scheduling.

While Last.FM seeks to add a social aspect to the increasingly individual act of listening to music, Flickr has attempted to add a social element to an online image repository. One such method involves requesting that users “tag” their images with descriptive metadata, allowing interested parties to search by tag to find images of subjects of interest. It also includes basic community functionality, such as groups, friend’s lists, message systems, and user profiles.

Meanwhile Facebook attempts to build online communities around physical proximity, by creating networks of users who study, work, or live in the same place or general area. It also includes basic community functionality, such as groups, friend’s lists, message systems, user profiles, and event scheduling (Notice a pattern emerging here?). It also supports users creating gateways and accessing a large variety of other social applications through Facebook, including, but by no means limited to, Twitter, Last.FM, Flickr, and Google Calendar

Google Calendar, much like Twitter, offers the opportunity to make a portion of your life public, allowing anyone interested to see when your busy or free, or on lower privacy settings, exactly what you have scheduled. While it offers no community tools in and of itself, it is tied into a variety of other google social applications that offer such functionality.

Focus

While exploring the various social tools and applications, I was struck by how similar their community functionality was, how segregated even similar tools seemed to be, and, most of all, how much overhead and effort would be required to participate to a meaningful degree in multiple social tools simultaneously. Stepping back a couple of decades, Weiser described his vision of Ubiquitous Computing as, amongst other things, “doors open only to the right badge wearer, rooms greet people by name, telephone calls can be automatically forwarded to wherever the recipient may be, receptionists actually know where people are, computer terminals retrieve the preferences of whoever is sitting at them, and appointment diaries write themselves.” [2], and yet of all the social tools and applications looked at, the only one that even approaches ubiquity is Last.FM, with its scrobbler passively opening whenever I start to listen to music.

Reflection

In keeping with my focus, I intend to look at two simple, and frequently overlapping questions – how could the social tools and applications be made less obtrusive, and how could the overlap between the various social tools be mitigated, to make for an easier user experience.

Research shows a strong link between user preference and the performance and efficiency of an application, and even suggests that users will happily switch to an application they find more awkward if it offers an increase in efficiency as low as 20% [1]. Perhaps that’s why I dislike twitter, because its hard to think of a less efficient way to gather data on user locations and activities than constantly asking them to input it. In its defense, it does offer a variety of input methods, including web, online messenger, or sms, but all of these require the user interrupt their current activity to update twitter, which serves to decrease efficiency as well as discouraging users from keeping their twitter information up to date. It would a simple enough matter to make the process more passive by scraping information from other online sources to determine activities (e.g. “The user is currently at the dentist, according to their google calendar”, or “The user uploaded an image to Flickr 10 minutes ago”) or using a simple monitor program and ip tracing to determine where the users computer is, what application, if any, is active, and whether or not its being used whenever it was connected to the internet. Admittedly, these add a degree of uncertainty, as it could be someone else using my Flickr account or my computer, but provided they are marked in a manner that identifies them as automatically generated, and as such, less trustworthy, they would still serve to make the application more useful while simultaneously decreasing the overhead for the user. While automated updates will, of necessity, lack the sense of context a human’s would (as even if the system can reliably ascertain that you are performing an activity, it won’t be able to accurately identify why [3]) The only other concern that would arise is whether or not you need the world to know that your computer is presently in Paris and in use while your boss is under the mistaken impression that you’ve come down with a bad case of the flu, but that can be avoided by simply disabling your twitterer, or even telling it to lie for you – after all, the information isn’t expected to be completely accurate.

Another aspect that I found immediately irritating was the initial sign-up process. With the exception of blogger and google calendar, which accepted my gmail login, I was forced to sign up, and then expected to fill out multiple user profiles that asked remarkably similar questions. The idea behind single sign-on [4] is hardly a new concept, and given the predisposition of users to re-use the same login name and password for a variety of web-based applications, the benefits of using an existing account and profile for new applications (such as Yahoo in the case of Flickr, Gmail in the case of Google Calendar and Blogger) make for a simpler and more expedient user experience. I can only imagine how tedious it would become if, as an active member of multiple communities, I was required to sign in to one, check my messages, read up on my groups latest activities, and then open another window and repeat the process for the next tool. While one could, in theory, design a tool capable of integrating their favorite web based applications together, the simplest solution is already partially implemented on Facebook – accept the existence of other social applications, and allow users to interact with them through yours. By using either a single sign-on [4] or alternatively, storing user information for the other applications, you could effectively allow the applications to communicate with each other, allow an event scheduled on Facebook to be added to the Last.FM events page as well by simply checking a box, or allow Twitter to use your Last.FM most recently played list to update itself. The primary concern here is a security issue – if all my applications are linked together, then losing my password or worse yet, having it stolen, becomes significantly worse. A secondary concern is that of accountability and identity – do I want that photo of myself I posted to Flickr, or that time I got into an argument and started posting racial slurs on another site, to be linked to all my accounts on a number of applications?

Conclusion

Social Applications aren’t designed for lazy people so much as for social people, which could easily explain why I don’t see the point in using them. In an ideal world, they could probably be made easier to use and more ubiquitous, but as things stand, they’re frequently competing against each other, working on limited budgets, and worried about antiquated ideals such as privacy. Ideally, at some point in the distant future, they’ll have advanced to the point where I can be social without actually having to do anything – and what a wonderful world that would be.

References

[1] Nielsen, J., Levy, J. (1994) Measuring usability: preference vs. performance, Communications of the ACM, v.37 n.4, p.66-75

[2] Weiser, M. (1991) The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American, p.94–104.

[3] Dourish, P. (2004) What we talk about when we talk about context Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8:1, 18-30.

[4] Pfitzmann, B., Waidner, M. (2003) Analysis of liberty single-sign-on with enabled clients, Internet Computing, IEEE, v.7, n.6, p.38 - 44