From today's lecture:
Presentation tool I used: Prezi @ Prezi.com
The presentation (requires Flash): http://prezi.com/ujy8cttir11i/technology-final/
Includes a video we didn't watch today in class (History of the internet)
What I use on my website: Drupal @ Drupal.org
Tool to see bits of code: Firebug (Firefox extension you can add for free - go to tools>add-ons and search for Firebug.
How has social media changed the way we communicate?
How do we think about communities? What are the issues?
Enrico's (mylifeisaverage.com) coming next week...
Think of questions!
Facebook's laws (Terms of Service?!) vs. Law in "real-life"
Definitions of communities, evolution of our bonds. Breaking down the walls - freedom to associate. What is relevant?
Facebook friends == friends "IRL"
defining the friendship on your own terms
"knowing" someone
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I also wanted to bring up a topic that Professor Presner mentioned which is the blurring between the lines of private and public. Thanks to social networking sites, the line between our private lives and our public lives is increasingly becoming blurred, and I was wondering how that has affected everyone. Of course not everyone has the same definition, but just an idea.
ReplyDeleteI personally still maintain a line between the two.
I keep my Facebook info to a bare minimum.
ReplyDeleteI've learned my lesson that pretty much anything I write online can be found.
With Facebook's newest platform changes, it seems that Facebook wants to know what restaurants and music I like too.
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=383404517130
It's a little unnerving going to Yelp and having Yelp tell me what my Facebook friends are reviewing despite me not having a Yelp account. I'm slightly a privacy freak, so I don't really like the new development, but I see how it can be useful if in their example, Pandora automatically plays the music I like.
It's a little weird imagining a future where I can go to a website for the first time and it'll already be personalized for me.
I was actually very intrigued by Prezi (and drupal and firebug). I've never realized how there are so many resources for the technologically challenged on the Internet. Many things on the Internet are userfriendly and simplified for the average person to use.
ReplyDeleteI feel like social media has made it more convenient to communicate. We are able to respond to people whenever we like, if we like. The problem is that now everything is impersonal and it's difficult to differentiate between those who are friendly to be polite or friendly because they actually want to be your friend. And with the new feature, we are able to create our own lists of friends. To me, this is symbolic to creating our own communities. We choose who to include and exclude from this group and as well as the information they are able to view on your page.
Facebook gathers and more information about the user with every passing day, but I think they need to configure a better way on how to share this information with the appropriate parties. My suggestion on how to make the information more relevant: a status/update preference tool that filters which updates you want on the news feed by specific category or tag.
ReplyDeleteLast week's discussion centered on how we all have many Facebook friendships that really don't impact us on a daily basis. While we want to be able to keep in touch with some of these contacts, we might not necessarily want to be updated on their day-to-day status updates, such as "watching Glee" or "mmmm In-n-Out", but want to know when our friends get a new job, get married, or move to a new city. Of course it all depends on the personality of the user to select what kind of information they would want to see, as some people may want to be updated on everything, but somehow categorizing the status updates and what you actually want to see about people's lives could be effective for Facebook in its efforts to maintain users as acquire busier lifestyle, jobs, children, etc...
They could also do the same with the types of picture albums, like categorizing travel albums separately from the college party nights. It would certainly better personalize the experience and be more relevant to your current daily life.
I was struck by FB's new feature "Personalization" (you can find this in the privacy settings), in which FB will share your personal information with other applications/websites (such as Yelp) to "personalize" your experience. I wonder how much of this personal data is actually "sold" -- ie, what's the marketing strategy behind it? Clearly, FB has some of the most robust consumer profiles in the world (and this is why they guard their data from search crawlers like Google) and this data is extremely valuable for other companies, much more valuable than generic consumer profiles....
ReplyDelete@MikeCasey
ReplyDeleteI like what you proposed about filtering updates based on tags or categories. As of now FB only allows users to filter who can see there posts, in accordance with the new format of the site. I think that this is a good function, because not everyone wants their whole network to see what they write on other individual's walls. However, I don't think people really use this feature. They have just come to censor (or not) the information they put on FB.
In terms of simplicity though, your idea is great. If you want to see more relevant posts, then you would be able to search them. It would allow you to see only posts about "new relationships", "jobs", or "marriages." You would no longer have to sift through the meaningless posts about how Steve ate cheerios this morning and reduced his cholesterol.
I'm sure before long, there will be more filters added to FB, just like how they have reformatted the info sections of the page to include links to different pages, rather than just lists of interests. I'm interests to see how FB evolves in the near future.