To Share and Share Alike or Will I Be Left Behind?
Introduction
In 2009, the Internet plays an enormous role in both my life, and the life of my friends and peers. As a very computer oriented person (read: geek) I have spent numerous hours whiling away online. I have noticed over the past two years that my offline friends, as I like to call them, have increasingly left behind the mentality that the Internet is a research-only tool. No longer do they judge me for reading web forums and communicating with people in far away countries – social aspects of the web which predate the Internet itself.
This change is due to one thing, the rise of the social computing aspect of the Internet. With websites such as MySpace, and now Facebook allowing people to network online I have noticed my best friend is never more than an hour without checking her Facebook. This reflects on the mobility of the web now – I arrived home from New Years 09 at the respectable hour of 5am to find my friends had already uploaded and tagged all the photos from that night, direct from their phones.
This article will provide a reflective review, from one point of view, on the next generation of social/community sites. These sites move away from straightforward networking and include at least one other specialised element, for example sharing musical tastes. The websites reviewed are:
- Blogger
- Flickr
- Last.fm
These sites will be contrasted and compared with the traditional and arguably most popular social site online, Facebook. Facebook is a fair yardstick to use as it encompassed many facets of these other websites.
Site Backgrounds
Blogger
Blogger is a website designed to allow users to write journal entries. The content hosted is at the users' discretion and ranges from virtual diary entries to logs and information on team projects, such as software projects.
Blogger is owned by Google and uses their credentials to log in and in addition to this it has several advantages over other blogging sites including multi-authored blogs and integration with Microsoft Office products.
My experience with blogs extends back to 2001 when I signed up for a LiveJournal. As a member of an enormous online community based around creating content for The Sims, I naturally followed the other members to sign up for a blog. It was not long before my blog fell to the wayside and was forgotten (though it is still there, however no one wants to read the ramblings of a teenaged me).
Blogger brings a well thought out site design with many useful features, such as those mentioned previously. This plays a major role in its' success as many people must share my frustration with poorly designed text inputs – i.e. MySpace's terrible excuse for a blogging tool.
As a rule, I find blogs a tiresome thing. Reading about my friends' day online will never allow me the same pleasure of sitting on my balcony having a cold beer or twelve with my best friends. Coupled with the rampant outpourings of emotions and impotent rage makes me wary of the whole blogging community. That said, I can also appreciate reading postings by people whom I have never met and would not have conversed with otherwise – bands studio or tour blogs for example.
From a social standpoint, I would never make friends with an online blogger. I don't feel at home in such a community and quite frankly do not want to. That said, however, people I have met from other such social circles may make me reconsider such a statement – but most of my friends feel similarly to me, so I might never know.
Blogger helps people keep in contact with and track their friends (both online or offline) in a similar way to Facebook. The difference is blogger is more a publishing tool to the masses, whereas Facebook is geared towards your network of friends. Blogger is also able to be embedded into other websites for use by non-individuals; however Facebook has revamped their 'pages' to allow a similar sort of publication from groups and organisations.
In conclusion, Blogger is a well thought out website and has a thriving community of bloggers. I feel using a blog to catalogue or follow some sort of process (Microsoft's Windows Live blogs are quite enthralling) is a use of blogs which I feel justifies any negative feelings towards them I harbour.
Flickr
There are many image caching resources on the Internet including ImageShack and Photobucket, however Flickr has risen to gross popularity due to its community based idea of image sharing. Users not only upload their photos for sharing, but to tag them to allow users to see similar photos and pictures by searching for keywords.
Flickr was purchased by Yahoo! and as such uses their authentication credentials, which I find to be a bit excessive – forcing one to choose a username and creating a Yahoo! email address for the user.
As someone who does not own a camera and is not a graphic artists, I had not signed up for Flickr or any similar photo sharing site prior to undertaking this subject. To share any pictures I may have I use Facebook (and previously MySpace). This allows my friends to see my debauchery in all its glory, while maintaining a level of privacy from future employers, parents and young children.
I found Flickr interesting in the vein that it has many features of a social networking site such as Facebook, however these all seem to have evolved around the sharing of media. For example, creating a group for a wedding, and allowing all attendees to share photos from the event permits the hosts to have all the images from their event in one place, as opposed to dozens of galleries on friends' profiles on Facebook. Another socialising tool Flickr provides is geomapping – any user may upload a photo from a location and tag it as such. This allows people to virtually visit spectacular locations globally from practically every angle imaginable. These photos range from amateur tourist snaps to professional landscape photographers.
The social interaction of this site is geared mainly towards those who are in the graphical media industry, or hobbyists. Photographers can share their creations with peers and receive criticisms and praise, much like the artists website DeviantART. This level of interaction is unrivalled by Facebook, which allows groups to be created, but the quality of the media sharing is quite poor in comparison.
As a layman in the visual medium, I did enjoy browsing Flickr and searching for tags to see what images I could find. On a personal level, I found one of my favourite bands created their own unique tag name for fans to tag lives photos of the band's performances. This allowed those in-the-know to view an endless supply of band shots, and connect with those who attended the same concerts. Although I did not actively join the Flickr community, I did enjoy my time as an anonymous 'lurker'.
Last.fm
Of the sites reviewed in this reflection, Last.fm is one which I have been involved with for a significant time. I signed up in early 2006 on the recommendation of an online friend, and installed the AudioScrobbler. I enjoyed viewing my weekly musical playlist and watching how my musical tastes changed over time, mostly moving away from the aural equivalent of Hades opening the gates to the underworld to something more pleasant.
After a year of only embedding the charts on various online profiles, I ventured into the world of Last.fm. I read reviews of my favourite bands, and read about similar artists. I found the tagging of bands to be very useful to me, and the wiki articles containing band biographies have often helped me identify obscure songs I have heard online. More recently, Last.fm have launched an internet radio site. I have not used this feature, as I have a large collection of music already.
With regards to the social aspect of Last.fm, for the most part I have not taken part in this. I have tagged one song, and joined one band's fan group. I know my brother has communicated with several users in other countries who expressed interest in local Brisbane bands due to their tagged status. This shows the site provides a method for music fans of any genre to be able to contact one another, something sorely lacking in genre specific web forums.
I do find, however the social side of Last.fm is largely similar to the Facebook group phenomenon. People join groups to show they are a fan or agree with the group title, but then rarely utilise the group for its intended purpose. There are exceptions to this, and I believe those who do take part in these groups find it a sincerely rewarding experience.
Finally, I find Last.fm is a fun tool to allow anyone to view your musical tastes, however embarrassing (or not, Avril Lavigne comes a close 6th after four Swedish death metal bands). The added bonus of finding new music through it was really helpful, as is finding people who also enjoy listening to obscure bands. The social side is not as thriving as in other online communities, but on a smaller scale it is just as useful and successful as music is something that brings people together in a unique way.
Discussion and Conclusion
The three sites which I have introduced above all provide a niche for a community to evolve, based solely on sharing. Communities evolve around likeminded people, and these sites cater for many groups to spring up around their services. I feel it is a testament to the creators' ingenuity to provide a service before most of their current users even knew they would come to rely on it as heavily as they do now.
As mentioned previously, my friends who are not completely computer oriented could never understand my involvement with the Internet. I grew up relating to people in communities which only existed online, and as such have a fairly large network of friends of whom I have never met. With the rise of MySpace, and more so Facebook, people understand the fun of communicating with their friends and sharing moments with them from both near and afar. I often leave posts on my flatmates wall on Facebook just for a laugh, and I communicate most with the people I see every weekend.
With the rise of (our ever favourite buzz word) Web 2.0 and the collaborative Internet it can be seen that there are those who may be left behind if they do not wish to adapt. The concept behind all three of the sites reviewed is sharing. You put a part of yourself out into the Twitosphere, the blogosphere or any number of other spheres, and read what others have themselves shared. What becomes of those of us who do not wish to share? We can observe from the sidelines and be a leech on the community, or not be involved in the community at all. The former is still a member of the community, and can take the knowledge garnered by listening in and utilise it elsewhere. The latter misses out completely.
I know for a fact, when I organised an Anzac Day bash at my house last year, I did away with the offline invites. All my friends were on Facebook. Or so I thought. Two friends of mine do not have a Facebook and as such almost missed out on the party. This was when I realised there is an increasingly growing divide between those who embrace this online life, and those who do not. Just this morning I had a conversation with a quite attractive young lady on the train to work about Twitter. She did not understand what it was, or why it was popular. She had heard there was a way to tweet song requests to Triple J, and so I explained how she could accomplish this.
The Internet for me is both a place for work, but mainly a playground. I enjoy finding interesting and amusing websites and content immensely, and subsequently take pleasure in sharing these findings with my friends. Not everyone has access to these tools, and as such I view them as an enhancement to my social life, but not as a necessity to them. Since the Web 2.0 explosion of Internet users, I can safely say I have not made any more online acquaintances. The web forums I frequent now are drying up, as people now turn to other mediums to communicate.
Once you have decided to share your life with the Internet the question of what is too much arises. Online profiles allow you to find out information about your friends you may never have known before. This, however, may come at a cost. How much can you know about someone you cannot see, what truths are they telling, and what fallacies? What information are you sharing which may affect you later in life? Kyle Doyle apparently almost lost his job by announcing he was calling in sick from work due to hangover related illness. Personally, I can relate to the Internet's ability to provide a social camouflage. In the few weeks I have been signed up to Twitter, I have amassed a gross amount of followers for no other reason than I share a name with some radio personality. I get messages from people via Skype, Facebook, MySpace and now Twitter asking if I am in fact Hamish Blake. I always reply yes, because I am, but this just furthers their confusion. Some even become openly hostile and call me a fraud or impersonator. Should I not share my name?
With the exception of Blogger, which would allow a user to share anything they desire about themselves, the other two sites will not catastrophically affect the lives of those who do not use them. With Last.fm, one might discover a friend's secret love of the Backstreet Boys, but ultimate sharing too much would not be a bad thing. Flickr, as with any image site, gives the user the opportunity to share too much with regards to personal photos, but the intuitive website is there to aid the user in their organisation of photos to prevent this.
The interactive revolution of the Internet is in full swing, however unlike the revolution that produced telecommunication devices, I do not feel sitting out on sharing will cause anyone the loss of a full life. Though, they might not be able to let the world know their lack of sobriety on a bus and that is a damned shame.
References
Blogger (2009) Available from http://www.blogger.com Accessed: 03/04/09
Ellison N, Lampe C & Steinfield C () 'Social Network Sites and Society: Current Trends and Future Possibilities '. The Potential for Technology Enabled Connections. Issue Jan + Feb. pp 6 - 9
"Facebook 'sickie' guy facing investigation" NineMSN News (2008) Available from: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=651937 Accessed: 03/03/09
Flickr (2009) Available from: http://www.flickr.com Accessed: 03/04/09
Last.fm (2009) Available from: http://www.last.fm Accessed: 03/04/09
McFedries P (2007) 'All-a-Twitter'. IEEE Xplore. Oct issue p84
