Social Networking

Social Networking has spread like wild fire. You can find your and old taking advantage of being able to share information, photos, music, and to maintain relationships. Classmates.com has been long standing and understood that people lose touch and sometimes people want to relive or reinvent their past. It is a great way to find people that might have been involved in their lives before the social networking craze really took off. At this point most younger participants in social networking are already knee deep in social networking. There are many different social networking sites now that give people a forum to communicate with friends, family and associates. Myspace, Facebook and twitter are some good examples. Social Networking sites have also simplified ways for people to share photos and current events. Peoples lives can no be fully followed online through status updates and a chronological display of photos. Personal use is always the most obvious but businesses have also jumped on the bandwagon and realized this is where people spend a chunk of their time daily. LinkedIn is a social networking site geared towards professionals that share correspondence and can share their concerns, accomplishments, and interests. Social Networking is their virtual world where at any time of the day they can escape and see what is transpiring with their friends or communities.

There is a dark side to social networking. Many get completely sucked into virtual communication and spend more time virtually social networking then actually socially networking. It also gives a chance for many people through blogs and social networking sites to spread opinions that might be harmful to human rights and morals. Social Networking is for the most part a unmonitored technology. Administrators will try and keep pornographic material off as this is a easy catch for the most part. But when it comes to judging content and harmful bias material its difficult to manage. Another big issue is privacy. Most people forget they are putting their personal business out there for all to see. Despite certain security restraints with only allowing friends, there really is no full control of keeping this material completely private, outside of not sharing this information in the first place. Tweets and photos are usually meant for an audience people believe they have control off. There have been cases of schools and organizations intruding on the believed privacy of individuals being on social networking sites and using racy and prerogative pictures against them. Another big issue of privacy is the big brother problem. Many social networking sites take privileges of their users memberships and take advantage of that to sell off to marketing and advertising parties. Personal information gathered on the members many times is shared with 3rd party as profit incentives. Many of the social networking sites are free to join so they need to look somewhere to make profit. Advertising is the backbone of their money making efforts. These companies wouldn't be able to operate without this effort. As more and more people react there are certain restrictions being placed to give the illusion of privacy but there is so much information out there being distributed that its hard to know for sure in whose hands it ends up in.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

I have not contributed to the Wiki as of yet. Yes i am a slacker. I know , thank you.
I am interested in adding more content to the Business section. New Media has enormousness potential to be used in a business and corporate environment. Wikis, social networking and blogs can be used in an inter office environment as sharing, collaboration,and communication tools and as well as valuable marketing resource. Not only are all the new media components creeping into the corporate world but as the highly technical generation grows and blends into the business world New Media comes with them. There are pros and cons that come with some of the wants of people to be able to use New Media in the corporate world. Many different opinions on how this effects productivity and the old school corporate mentality.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds have come into the cusp of internet innovations. They have created a home away from home for many that want to experience more then what is available to them in reality. Virtual worlds provide an escape to a land unknown and a land where that person can be unknown. Virtual worlds dont fall far from the gaming tree. It follows the same concept. You play as a character to experience an adventure you would never be able to in reality. Second Life gives people the chance to be in a second existence, where they can develop an avatar to either be completely identical to their present personality or create an extravagant fantasy representation of themselves. Anything seems to be possible when entering a dual existence. With the popularity of this virtual worlds companies have tryed to take advantage of this nifty tool. Many corporations attempted to expand their marketing approaches by going virtual and advertising in the virtual worlds. There were also attempts to build out businesses in the virtual worlds. In the case of Second Life there was a monetary system setup that expanded out into real accounts. Many tried to build assets and capital virtually. Some companies also used it as an equivalent to conference calls and meetings. With the capability to sit at their computers and meet in a common location. This is an interesting way to apply this technology and can be an fun tool within a casual environment but within a normal corporate atmosphere it needs to remain on the side of professionalism. Companies are already attempting to lower traveling and communication costs by pushing video conferencing and other web casting calls. There was a brief display, on an episode of the Science channels "Future of Communication", of technologies being developed to actually virtual a persons room to put them and their actual images in a virtual location.
Virtual worlds can be a positive experience and good getaway but for many it seems to be their only means of expression as they hide in virtuality since they can be fully functional in reality. Not a healthy past time if too much time is spent making believe to be someone else. This split personality works well for kids building their imagination skills but should not be the primary outlet for people trying to run away from their own being.
The virtual worlds within the gaming community such as World of Warcrafts and Halo where people come together for common entertainment is a good release and another good example of social networking where it didnt exist before. It brings strangers and different worlds apart.

Check out Social Networking Sites

Back somewhere after the beginning of the 21st century I had signed into a social networking site called Whimit. This was primarily for the Russian speaking culture with the majority of its free members being from Brooklyn and New York. It quickly grew in size and popularity. This was my first taste of viewing profiles with peoples pictures and being able to interact with public and private messaging within the site. It was a nice tool to communicate with friends as well as meet new people. It also provided a forum area where people could discuss any ideas and topics that were on their mind ranging from politics, sex, to any infinite possibilities. I retain many friends today that I met originally on that site. I was even able to benefit from it as a dating tool and reach out beyond my neighborhood and common hang out spots. I met one of my Ex-girlfriends off of the site that lived in Philly. There would have been no other way our lives would have ever crossed if not in that manner. So early on I discovered the usability of this site.

The owners of this site eventually created MEETSPOT which expanded its horizons to provide the same popular service and functionality to all cultures. This also became quite popular. Some spinoffs eventually evolved whether not from this sites originality or quite possibly others that were following the craze, such as Fly Guy Crew and Myspace. It took me awhile but eventually got on board with Myspace and found the capability of adding your own flavor with music and background designs quite interesting and saw the potential it raised with allowing personal expression. They also seemed to have struck gold with their Bulletin functionality which seems to be the originating idea behind Facebooks status updates that get broadcast to all buddies and as well as the idea behind Tweeting.

Myspace allowed for some people to remain somewhat anonymous with nicknames, same as Whimit, Meetspot and FlyGuyCrew. It presented a very laid back sort of youthful manner. Then Facebook comes in with people actually using Government names. Well not all as some continue to revert to trying to hide their true identities. Facebook itself came out to the public as a tool for college students to communicate. It has grown immensely since its launch. It brings more of a mature atmosphere and allowed not only college students but the older more scared 30+ scene to get involved into something that was deemed as a kids virtual playground. Myspace now still continues to be a great asset to the younger generation while Facebook has taken over the real world with kids, adults and even some signs of the older generation. Another site that I have partaken in is Linked in which is a professional social networking site and allows to keep a working log of references and working associates. I also personally enjoy their groups and discussion groups very much.

The great thing with these tools is free communication without the maintenance of an email account, group cooperation since you can have communication with several people and of course the most popular is picture sharing. They have brought a new twist to the stale email chit chatter and seemingly unneeded calls and texts that all were used to keep the masses intertwined. Facebook also smartly incorporated Instant Messaging into the mix as they take a piece from AOL and Yahoo and realize immediate touch and conversation will always be a major factor of the internet. All these tools are a great sign of the direction that social networking and technology itself is going.

Blog Vs. Wiki

Blogs and Wikis are both new media technology to enhance communication for the masses. Blogs allow for matters of opinions to be expressed and for additional commentary to follow based on current topics or subjects that fuel some form of discussion. The topics of discussion can fall under personal messages all the way up to those that touch on the feelings of the masses such as politics or other news of the times. Blogs are run by one entity and the content originates based on the what that entities interests lay. Wikis are more of a collaborative effort where you have a centralized location to join ideas and have different matters of opinions come together. There is a broader set of subjects and ideas that are brought together. The subject matter can be changed and updated based. With a blog there is more of an archived and written record of content where the wiki can evolve as need be to properly cover the material.
Both blog and wikis allow for people to come together and share ideas. This is an immediately available resource on the web. This interaction is very important for todays generation that like to have everything available at their finger tips.
Blogs can be used for collaboration. Ideas can be thrown back and forth. This is a subtle discussion based formula. Similar to email threads going back and forth with its distribution except this is more publicly available and easily accessible for interested parties.
A new approcah to Wikis that has not been done yet is to put up political initiatives so that people can go see the truths, such as this health care agenda, and have their concerns and issues discussed and addressed based on facts and the ideas that properly coincide with the program at hand.

Old Vs New Media

There are obvious new standards and new way of doing things online that have surfaced the last few years. Old media includes tv, print, shopping and different forms of entertainment. Some quick comparisons are the trend of journalism moving from print and tv to blogging and online forms of the same journalist outlets, CNN, The New York Times, FOX online options. Shopping is now widely available on the web and is being more and more accepted thanks to big efforts of ebay and amazon. Instead of just the old brick and mortar shopping new media allows stores and companies to reach out on a larger scale. With the same respect advertising which was primarily a print and broadcast media is now expanded their touch greatly online. When you look at games as well a major change is taking place. As where you used to have arcades where kids would get together to socialize and play or even actually get up and go to someones house now gaming has shown to be the perfect example of new media. You can play several games from your computer and even from your game consoles now with anyone in the world. New media has become a great business and personal tool to allow people to accomplish as much as they can without having to leave the comfort of their home.

What is New Media?

New Media is the classification of the new way to share information and use the resources of the internet. Ranging from auctions, social networking, photo sharing, chatting, research and information sharing and, of course one of the biggest motivator where the money is online shopping. New Media is a true digital revolution. It takes our old ideas of print and broadcast media and amplifies onto the internet which communicates over computers and PDAs. The internet is instrumental in its role as a vehicle to delivering the different aspects of New Media to the people. Internet brings everyone together and allows open free access to all that is waiting to be shared. Most of the old media is being replaced but at the same time its an enhancement. Music is now readily available on the internet but also enhanced because we can put radio stations on the internet just instead of using radio wave frequencies the medium used is now network packet transfers. TV is now also being enhanced by moving to the internet with tv shows being available online. But at the same time content is now vastly being created strictly for the internet taking over the viewers from television broadcasts. DVDs falling short to the vast, usually illegal, movie downloads that can be watched online. The trend, as i have seen many do already, will be integrating the downloads and watching on a normal tv screen.
New Media has taken over and now influencing how entertainment, business and leisure in america is now conducted. Very well said from 'THE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES:
OVERVIEW AND RESEARCH FRAMEWORK' byLinda Weiser Friedman and Hershey H. Friedman, "The purpose of this paper is to review this so-called new media revolution as a "whole creature" and to attempt to provide a framework of sorts for the purposes of further examination of this phenomenon. We are all affected by the new media. It is not just a small effect here and a small effect there. The new media are dramatically influencing virtually every business, every organization, and every discipline." New Media has become a powerful driving force in on a global scale.

Project Description

I have selected "Effects of new technology on New Media" as my project. New Media as we know it goes hand in hand in with the revolutions in technology over the past decade. As the internet itself, and the tools we use to reach and access the internet, grows the grasp that the different components of New Media broadens its touch and capability to reach millions of users. Design of web pages itself has taken on new formulas as well as the theology and motives of internet web sites are meant to do. The entire backbone of the internet infrastructure has advanced to a more efficient and powerful platform giving it a global stage to perform. At the same time as technology has made New Media more accessible, New Media now pushes the way we develop technology with items that had simple functions such as phones, TVs, and video games. They now all allow us to interconnect and absorb the benefits of new communication channels. It has been a normal progression since the introduction of computers up through the dot com era to now the Web2 New Media craze. With the assistance of many great technology companies, limits keep getting pushed harder as to what we can do with the internet.