Social Networking Sites

Social Networking Sites: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Pinterest

Similarity:

Those are all social networking sites which users sharing information and connecting to other users.  All these four sites contain user personal information such as personal interest. All these four sites can spread news and pictures. All information are sharing on the cloud storage and could be set up by the user to be on public and private. Users can set their own preference and pick to follow interested information. All four sites have their own apps for phone. 

There are some differences between those four social networking sites.

Facebook: Individual and organizations use Facebook more informally then Twitter but has great amount of users in the US. Facebook has been blocked in several countries including China.  Facebook are developing into a “motherboard” model of social networking. Games, videos, and other apps can connect through Facebook accounts to share and spread information. Facebook are more focusing on activities and interaction by users.

Twitter: Twitter is more pictures, news sharing. Personally, I found Twitter is more formal news reading than the news on Facebook. News posted on the organizations’’ tweets are more reliable information. Twitter is also being blocked in some countries like China.

MySpace: I had a MySpace account back to about 2005. It was very similar to a blog and personal diary posting. It was simply a basic idea of personal stories sharing and post pictures. . With about one years using, I fount there was not very attractive activities and very few readers to read MySpace. Then after I using Facebook, I stopped using that. Now, I reregistered a new account on MySpace, I found there are a lots of changes on the social networking site. Not only pictures, it can also share music, videos and radio with people.  I guess there is not a lot of users since I only can find couple of my friends are using MySpace.  Login to MySpace can use Facebook, Twitter and Hotmail accounts.

Pinterest is a new social networking site that I had recently used. It is a web that you can search interested ideas and share those ideas and interest with friends. We can login this site by Facebook, Twitter and emails. This site is pooling ideas and information then grouping them. It providing picture search model, which is very easy for users visually to read and follow.

Social Net'g

Social media software and new technologies’ using had shrinking the world on to computers and networking in front of people. Sharing information, sharing stories, reading News, hearing music, watching videos, exchanging information, shopping activities and so on, are the activities that social media providing to users whom like us.  Benefits from social media networking using are tremendous.

•       Paper less and go green: online bases without mails
• ·      Cost saving for transactions and paperless
• ·      Convince with any devices like smart phones, computers, iPad, etc. on anywhere
• ·      Creativities with sharing information
• ·      Networking relationship building in specific groups of people, such as physicians and patients could share some information
• ·      Educational purposes
• ·      Information technology using for disabilities people (Friedman)
• ·      Globalization tools and helping homogenies users become more and more sophisticated 
• ·      Could be tools helping fight with crime and help providing evidence in legal battles.

Things always have two sides.  There are lots of benefits from social media networking and related technology that we could think of. However, there are some negative impacts to the society on its dark side. 

• ·      The biggest down side is Internet addiction. People could not live on the world without phone and Internet. People tend to be depending on too much on online interaction and paying less attention to real world social interactions.
• ·      Information confusion: there are too much information available and makes confusion to users.
• ·      Abuse of computer technology and lack of legal restrictions on online activities.

Social networking and new technologies have being widely used everywhere and will keeping continued to be one of the major roles in people’s daily lives. From text messages, emails, voice calls to newer social net working and video chatting, Facetime, the new communication style will appear with the improvement of new technology.

"Fight Terror With YouTube" by DANIEL KIMMAGE, The New York Times June 26, 2008, OP/ED page. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/opinion/26kimmage.html>

 "I'm innocent, just check my status on Facebook," by Damiano Beltrami, The New York Times, November 12, 2009, p. A27. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/nyregion/12facebook.html>

"The Use of Information Technology to Create a Better Workplace for Individuals with Disabilities," by R.F. Adler, Friedman, L.W. and Friedman, H.H. Management Online REview, August 2008

< http://www.morexpertise.com/download.php?id=101>

"Physicians and Patients Who 'Friend' or 'Tweet:' Constructing a Legal Framework for Social Networking in a Highly Regulated Domain" by Nicolas P. Terry, (July 29, 2009).

<http://ssrn.com/abstract=1440813

Blog vs. Wiki

Blog and Wiki are two different social mass media web based software that people commonly use for sharing gathered information and managed collective knowledge with a group of people. 

But these two social media tools are different in use. Individuals, with sharing their own life experience and stories, are using Blogs very commonly. Companies or groups of people with more educational purposes to contribute with a set of collective goals more often use Wikipedia.  Both tools are easy to use by the users.  Wikipedia are also helps other users to find information through those contributions. However, because of the ease of creating new materials, there are criticize toward imprecisely contributed information (Cohen).  On the other hand, Blogs could be very educational and collaboration with others. Some blogs are held by organizations or professional expertise, and what those blogs share more precisely information on the web. Some of blogs are open only to who registered within specific areas of users; unlike Wiki most users could access information that post on the Wiki. Additionally, reader of Blogs can put their commons followed the blog if the owner of blogs allow to; but for the Wiki is only open commons to the group of people who can contribute to the set of goals.  Blog holders are one or several and it is unlike Wiki contributors who can be as many as a whole company. And the more users of Wiki would create hardship to organize created information by contributors that is the issue Diplopedia currently facing.

Wikipeida Foundation is a nonprofit organization, and what would make Wiki to survive and growth? Wiki has Wikipedians all over the world and this is the greatest source. On July of 2009, Wiki had spent $600,000 to create a five-year strategic plan. By now on year 2015, I found not much changes to the appearance of the Web but there is donation by Wikipedians who wish to spend the money to those information.  Personally, I think Wiki should have done some changes alone with today’s newer technologies, such as “Wikimedia”, not only words and pictures, but also come together with videos and voice messages contributions that would make “Wikimedia” contains more visual information and easy to read and understand.

Cohen, Noam. "An Internal Wiki That’s Not Classified." The New York Times. The New York Times, 03 Aug. 2008. Web. 17 June 2015.

Cohen, Noam. "Wikipedia Looks Hard at Its Culture." The New York Times. The New York Times, 30 Aug. 2009. Web. 17 June 2015.

Term Project Topic Plan: How WeChat Changes Chinese Way of Life?

WeChat is a mobilephone application for text and voice messaging communication service and which developed by Tencent in China.  It had first released in January 2011. It is the largest standalone-messaging app and it currently has more than 500 millions of users worldwide.  It had shrinking two major mobile companies profit sharing and it had gained the largest market share in China. It had changed the way of people sharing information and life style.  It had also created the new business model and communication styles.