Social Net'g

Social Networking

            Social Networking is one of the most impactful inventions (for better or for worse) of the 21^st century. These sites allow a large world to shrink and even the playing field for all. Want top talk to your aunt who lives in Bangladesh? No Problem! Want to connect with business professionals in your field about the opportunity to shadow them? Easy! However, to quote Uncle Ben from Spiderman “with great power comes responsibility” and it seems for the most part the responsibility hasn’t come for most people yet.

            Social networking has an almost limitless amount of applications. One of these applications is the use of social media in corporate hiring decisions. According to the article “Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting” by Frank Langfitt, it does just that. The article was specifically referencing the social media site linked in, which has been compared to a Facebook of professionals. This website allows you to create a profile to show people in your industry as well as recruiters in the hopes of landing a job opportunity in the future. Having a strong Linkedin profile has been stressed on me by many people from my brother to a recruiting expert I was able to meet through my internship this Summer. Linkedin is the future and since it was just recently bought by Microsoft for a ton of money, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

            Although there are many positives of social media there is defiantly many negatives as well. One major memory I have from middle school was the emergence of the social media site Formspirng. Basically what Formspring does is allows you to ask anonymous or not anonymous questions to somebody who set up the account, On surface, harmless. However, in the twisted and evil minds of middle schoolers this became a large cyber bullying website. This became such a problem that an assembly was called urging students to be nicer on social media. Luckily I never feel into the trap known as Formspring but I do remember it causing many major problems in my graduating class. According to an article I read “They’re back and They’re Bad; Campus Gossip Websites”, this faceless social media idea has died but instead has evolved. This has become a government issue since cyber bullying is now a crime (which it should be) According to the Maryland Attorney General these websites “home almost exclusively to abusive, harmful, and embarrassing personal attacks…”. Having seen this situation, myself in the past I cant disagree with this attorney. Educating the youth about cyber bullying and social media safety isn’t only necessary but vital to are youth to protect them from the evils of the internet.

            As far as the future of social media goes I think it will become less volatile as the years go on. Think of social media as being in its infancy since it is a relatively knew invention. With time and needed education social media become a place where people can share their thoughts with the world. It would be idiotic to think that all of social media websites will be like this in the future. Of course the Formsprings and other garbage websites like this will always exist, however with an educated youth hopefully the use of these websites will be majorly reduced.

Blog V. Wiki

Blogs and wikis have become a huge part of today's society. If you don't believe it take a look at Yahoos Acquisition of the blogging site Tumblr. According to Stan Schroder the company was bought for "1.1 billion dollars".
 The difference between blogs and wikis are subtle but crucial in order to perform what each forum was designed to do. Some major differences between wikis and blogs include;

• Blogs are posted by a single entity and can't be changed vs wikis which are posted by many people and have the ability to be changed by outside people (this could make the information inaccurate) 
• Since blogs are posted by a single person or group of writers there is no collaboration with the outside world, getting many different views on a subject matter is key in to well written works vs wikis which are all about collaboration, you post something and somebody around the corner or around the world can edit or add to your comment. 
• Blogs have suffered recent backlash over sponsored content. This is content that may or may not be genuine from the blog writer which was paid for by an outside company. For example if you have a home improvement blog and you write an article a bout how good Behr paint is because they paid you money to do so vs Wiki which is completely upfront, since it is a work by many people and frequently edited this leaves little to no room for sponsored content. What you see is what you get (for the good or the bad)

There are many more differences however that was to show some major points. Whether you like it or not wikis and blogs are part of new media and thus part of the future. This future will include allot of working together in teams. However, with any new technology you need to be careful. According to the New York Times "Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog".  They keep watch because as soldiers they are suppose to be the voice of the Pentagon however this is a unique opportunity to for soldiers to give their personal insight, which could be potentially dangerous.

Convergences is extremely important in today’s society. When working at my internship this summer we used are worldwide team to get the job done. For example, some information wasn’t available to are Canadian branch so they assigned me to communicate with that branch of the company to find out and deliver the information they needed. This is just a single example of the global workforce working together.

 think communication between branches of are company could have used a wiki in order to enhance are communications systems. Through email communication some information could be lost of double stated. However, in a Wiki its like working on a single piece of paper with a group of people. 

What is New Media?

COLLAPSE

New media is a buzz word that has been thrown around allot in recent years but what is really meant by it? According to scholars in order to be considered new media the medium must have at least 3 of the “5 C’s”. These include communication, collaboration, community, creativity and convergence. Old media, sometimes referred to as web 1.0 lacks the 5 c’s while web 2.0 or new media features these prominently.  The goal of new media is to level the playing field while making a global community.

This can be seen in the article “taking Student Where No School Bus Can Go”. With the power of Skype, a new media, a 5^th grade teacher in Virginia is able to take a “online field trip” to the frozen tundra of Antarctica. There her class has the unique opportunity to speak with and ask questions to scientists based at Palmer Station, Antarctica. An opportunity like this is valuable especially to children and having a scientist you look up to say “get your education so you can come down here and join us” is all the inspiration little 5^th graders need to try and make their dreams reality. Something as simple as a web chatting service effectively shrinks the world and makes it a tighter knit community.

New media has also changed the way we watch television. A new age of cord cutter and cord never young adults is coming and this is making telecommunication companies rethink the business model of television. According to the article “Who Needs a TV I’m Watching on Laptop” 8% of NBC viewers watch network television solely online. This number may not seem incredibly high but if you take in account that this statistic was from 2008 it may spell a different story. I’m no professional statistician but with the growth of companies such as Hulu, HBO go and Netflix this percentage must be much larger. Many people feel that once live sports and live events get a quality streaming service this could be the end to cable or satellite television as we know it. This doesn’t lead to the death of networks however. Many people feel that watching a show online leads to a more intimate experience with the show and makes you more likely to follow along (for those who binge watched Game of Thrones).

The difference between new media and old media is simple, old media relied on feeding information to a mass unknown audience. New media relies on community and connecting to the audience.