Social Networking [Sites] – or SNS

Chances are, if your reading this post from a computer, you’re a member of a Social Networking Site (SNS). In the last five years, SNS have become ingrained as habit for most people around the globe. There are no bounds to its demographics. There is no end to its posibilities of applications that will keep us using them for many years to come.

Lets get it straight from the get-go: when it comes to social networking, there are two types that need to be distinguished –

• Social Networking Sites -are websites that have multiple users where one user can publish contents himself/herself and connect with others sharing personal or professional interests, and is group centered.
• Social Network Software (or Service) – social software specifically focused on the building and verifying of online social networks and is centered on the individual. Not the community.

Since the beginning of this century, there has been an ever growig number of SNS(ites); the most obvious examples to date being Facebook and MySpace. SNS have swallowed the world in the last 5 years, so unless you’ve lived under a rock, or in central Africa, you will belong to at least one SNS or be thinking about joining sooner than later. Really, society almost dictates that you do.

SNS more or less kicked of with the infamous rise and (some would say) subsequent failure of ‘Friendster‘, the worlds first true SNS. It was probably ahead of its time in so much as the creator of the site, Jonathan Abrams, didn’t expect Friendster to take of at the rate it did – a few million people subscribed within the first year – and didn’t have the technical or hierarchical infrastructure to support and grow the site to the potential of sites like MySpace and Facebook have today. 

Though SNS have sprung from western culture, a suprising statistic (though hardly shocking) is the success of non-English speaking SNS that have taken off. Qzone in China boasts over 200 million users and is a top 10 SNS in the world today. As of January 2009, it had more unique  visits than Facebook (combined with its instant messenger product QQ). Staggering considering its a one language site that is over 3/4’s the size of Facebook that combines multiple languages. It is highly likely it will become the worlds largest SNS within 1-3 years and possibly overtaking google as the most visited website on the internet. This also lends to the idea SNS may over-take search engines such as google, in time.

With the growth of SNS, two major issues have begun to come to the fore; who has access to the data you submit to a SNS, and; ‘Terms of Service’ – i.e. privacy. With the amount of information each person puts on a SNS (and that’s not just the general information you fill in when you sign up to join a SNS – it’s every single word, photo and film you upload to a SNS), there are a lot of interested 3rd parties who would like to know what we are about. Governments, marketers and cyber criminals all want to know as much as they can about you and what you do. Once we sign up to a SNS, we are generally signing over our rights to privacy before we even type a word. Some people take issue with this immediately and never join a SNS. But the majority crumble within time. No one likes to be left out after all.

Where governments take interest is of particular interest to me. China for example in its push for capitalism and “democracy” is shaping up to be THE major player of information in the world. It plays right into the governments hands there that if their citizens sign up to a filtered and regulated SNS on a filtered and regulated internet, they gain even more control of a potentially out-of-control populace. Will it lead the way for other governments to follow suit? Will the SNS become an innocent persons way of “checking in” like a criminal on parole? Australia is already on the verge of a filter internet. Time will tell.

As an already member of twitter (what is considered a ‘micro-blog’ as well as an SNS), we were asked to search for friends and interesting people on the site. I already had friends listed who would not be considered regular uses of twitter, and other contacts I have were not members and could not be swayed into joining. Although I was a member myself, I’d never really used it though I had heard a lot about it. I guess I was one of the multitudes who begrudgingly joined just to be “on it, but never use it”. My loss. After seeing how people were commenting and adding links, I found the site void of the usual crap associated with Facebook that my already limited I.Q. suffers from reading. Being able to target who you want to see your message is a great asset, although not dissimilar from Facebook where you can post a message directly to the person you want (but it takes longer than twitter).

With the connectivity between applications now becoming more and more common, SNS may be appearing to mash (not merge) into one. The applications between each SNS are becoming the same as well. Each hosting its own instant messaging, marketplace or video and photo sharing applications, trying desperately to not let us switch of from their platform and go to another. The battle will rage on for years to come. But will it be a case of 1 SNS left standing, or will it merge into a different beast? And will the beasts hunger for information be satisfied if all the other little beasts have eaten everything there is to be had? As long as the human race keeps breeding, I think not.

Wikis (no…I’m not dyslexic)

Well aren’t wikis a great invention?! I wish I’d known about them sooner as it may have stopped a lot of email spam between my friends and myself over the years.

Wikis (What I Know Is) are a meeting place for many people to confer on one (or many) idea, an opinion or to contribute creativity, in a collective way. Essentially a wiki is a series of database driven pages that can be added to and edited by anyone with the appropriate permissions. (Curtin University, 2009).

A wiki is anything flash, mind you. The whole point of a wiki is to keep things simple and to the point, though provide you with what you want and need to know. Although a wiki is geared to incorporate intuitive linking, there is no flashy css of flash player on a wiki (unless it’s linked to something that is). This is in keeping with Vannevar Bush’s idea of selection by association; that the human brain should be allowed to roam wherever it decides to go at any given time. Not be restricted to limited options that a filing system gives, for example. 

After going through the course material, it struck me that I should begin a work wiki where fellow co-workers can contribute to it. I’m going to call it “Hush” and its intension is for people to contribute to the hearsay, rumour and innuendo of our working environment. The aim being that people can write in and contribute and between everyone, the truth may come out about what actually goes on in our workplace. Because no one seems to know. It’s worth a try. In the meantime, as part of our tasks for this unit, we were required to edit a page on Wikipedia that we knew something about. I chose a page based on Martin Potter, the 1989 world surfing champion. “I dont know why, but I had to start it somewhere…” (Cocker, J. 1995, from the song, Common People). It was lucky I did as it looked as though a Brasillian had done the last edit in pigeon English.

In deciding I might make my own wiki, there were 3 examples given in our readings of where a wiki page can be set up. These are: pbwiki, wetpaint and wikispaces. Check them out if you read this and decide a wiki might be something that could work for you.

The beauty of the wiki is that other pages can be created on the go, as ideas come into peoples heads. If you are writing in a wiki about something, and another idea pops into your mind about something else that is relevant to this topic you are writing about, you can easily make another page to write about that. It’s that simple. And anyone can contribute – should the permissions be set to do so.

There are several issues with wikis in terms of the content that is created on them. As they are generally open to anyone, anything can end up on them. And because some wikis become so large, it’s often hard to police what is written and who by.

The most obvious example of a wiki is Wikipedia. It was founded in 2001 to be an online encyclopedia available and editable to everyone. The idea being that “the sum of human knowledge could be made available to anyone via the web”. (Wales, J.) Wikipedia is a top 50 website that isn’t English dominated, but comes in many languages. To keep the information on Wikipedia neutral, it asks that only the facts be given about something and not an opinion. It is democratic in is views in terms of what is published on the site, but is ultimately ruled on final decisions by Jimmy Wales (one of the founders of Wikipedia) as to whether a page should come or go. Jimmy refers to himself as “monarchical”; that although he lets free reign rule over what is and isn’t published in a democratic way, he has the power to veto certain pages due to circumstance, should he see fit. In a way, it reflects how a civilised society should act anyhow, but generally doesn’t.

In watching this weeks video on Jimmy Wales: How a Ragtag Band Created Wikipedia, I was left wondering whether Wikipedia runs the risk of seeing itself as a corporation in so much as a corporation doesn’t generally have someone, or some people who can ultimately be held accountable for what might be printed on Wikipedia. There have been many instances of people being slandered or had untrue and misleading information about them printed on Wikipedia. Generally the community of Wikipedia corrects these errors as soon as they occur. But what of the instances that slip under the radar? It’s impossible to monitor several hundred million pages of information daily.  

And what of Wikipedia being used as an information source to report by? An example given was of the London Bombings and how a page was set up that day, and of the volume of information that was printed on it. It was staggering to see, but it did occur to me that shouldnt Wikipedia be viewed as a source of information once the facts have been established? After the dust has settled? If information was coming in about these bombings, who was verifying this information? “The Wikipedia community”, you might say. But who are they – the Wikipedia community? How would we know this information is factual on the day if 5, 10, 15 people are writing about the same thing but everyone saw it from a different angle?

Academics have differing views on Wikipedia as well. Wikipedia’s availability of knowledge seems to threaten the establishment rule over who can and can’t be deemed as knowledgable. Some academics are embracing it and even contributing their knowledge. Others are going out of their way to have the site turned off. The debate over whether Wikipedia can be used as a reputable source of information is split down the middle. But whatever way thinking heads, that anyone with a computer can find the answer to just about anything will only be seconded when unlicensed literature finally becomes available to less fortunate people who can’t get online, but may still be able to find a little cash to get a book they couldn’t afford before. The positives out way the negatives.

WordPress v’s Blogger

Further to my last post, I thought I would mention that I cut 2/3rds of my blogroll and all of which were fellow WordPressers! The only people who made the cut were people on Blogger.com.

As I am still finding the facilities to place logo links to my other nodes elusive (though I am able to have sentences instructing people to press “here” to link them to my other nodes – daggy), my count that I’ve started to keep in regards of WordPress v Blogger is: WordPress 0, Blogger 2.

Keep in touch for updated scores…