Usually I use SMT to stay in touch with friends, stay updated in the technical sphere, take advantage of other people’s mistake, and more than often to discuss topics that I’m interested in.
One of the technologies, or rather a community, I usually use is Facebook. Facebook can be seen as a common platform for communication throughout the globe, while keeping the advantages of regional communities. By that I mean that Facebook is divided into different regions and by belonging to different regions, you automatically get access to more information about other members. For example, I can access more information about a person belonging to the “Swedish Network”, while being member myself, than a person belonging to the “Norwegian Network”.
I can arrange my friends into different groups and also decide what kind of information about me each group should be allowed to access. In my belief, this is a very important possibility nowadays. I have friends which may access all information about me and then I have acquaintances that I would like to hide some information from.
The group of people I know and socially engage with are very particular with who everyone is friend with and especially not friends with. By going through my friend list and not finding a particular person that I’m supposed to know, my friends often assume that I have some kind of dispute with that person. This is starting to happen more than often know. Thus it is important to have your friend list as complete as possible, just to avoid conflicts.
The biggest difference between these kinds of SMTs and the usual emailing contact is the simple interface. I can easily share photos, links, YouTube-movies and other “stuff” with many people at a time. I also give them a possibility to interact with what I’ve sent by simply writing a comment. By this way my friends that aren’t each other’s friend can find each other. This adds a whole new dimension to the simple emailing ritual.
I also think that SMT’s like Facebook encourage people to communicate through short but often messaging. The possibility to comment on almost everything that another person exposes on Facebook is an interesting prospect. I could, for example write that I’m going to attend the SMT-course next semester on my status bar. That will be seen by all of my friends and friends that were considering taking this course would now have another reason to either join or avoid this courseJ. They then, first of all get the information that I’m taking this course, but can also communicate back to me easily by commenting on my status.
Another huge amount of my free time goes to searching and learning about new things, especially about flash developing. By scanning different forums I get advice from user that have had or are having the same problem or question as me.
I also use different social media solutions to discuss and share music I have produced myself. Though that is one of my biggest hobbies, it is fun to get feedback on my work. I see music forums as an interesting place for musicians to meet, criticize and discuss each other’s work.
Different blogs can also be very useful while looking for information. Blogs can be more interesting than forums if I’m looking for a solution for a specific problem and would also like tips on how I can avoid other mistakes involving the same problem area. They are quite many blogs that are updated regularly and consist of accurate and pedagogical information. These are then often sponsored by bigger companies related to the subject of the blog.
One technology that drastically has changed my way of studying is Google Docs. I don’t really know if that can be considered as a Social Media Technology, but I would like to believe so. Google Docs helps me easily share my documents, spreadsheet and presentation with others. They can then tribute to my document by editing it and I always know who has changed what because of the revision history built in Google Docs. This is especially useful while working in projects.
I believe that SMT is a very important part of my everyday life. I could live without it, but I would rather not. An urge to always know what other people are doing and if they have contacted me is one of the reasons I would like to have SMTs present in my everyday life. Thus, SMTs works as a tool for me to stay in touch with my friends (social aspect), find new information and revise already learned knowledge (educational aspect) and even share and develop new ideas (entrepreneur aspect).
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2 comments:
I agree with Hassan that it is very important to be able to limit ones profile on online communities. This function makes me willing to be friends with anyone on Facebook, while only sharing my more private profile with my closes friends. If this was not possible, I believe that online communities could be a bit too transparent and make our lives a bit too visible. This may in turn cause negative outcomes such as the ones we discussed in class concerning “Ivanna’s mobile phone story”, making lots of people harassing the girl who ‘stole’ the phone. This happed even though they could not be sure that she actually stole the phone and even if she did she might not have acted that way if she had known that thousands of New Yorkers would be able to read and react on her actions.
Like Hassan I also use Google Docs to great extent. Without this tool I’d like to think that the last three years of my group assignments would have been so much harder and not that great. When wiring my thesis, together with a friend, we could contribute to writing, commenting on text, analyze together and write a whole paper even though I was part time in the US and she was in Sweden. I will give a lot credit to Google Docs about the fact that our thesis was finally presented on time.
//Karin
SMT is important to me for the same reason as yours, an urge to always know what other people are doing and if they have contacted me. Always the first thing after I get up is to turn on my laptop to check my emails and the updates of my friends blogs. Nowadays communication with my friends happened almost on the internet. We can chat with each other on MSN or QQ, and we comment on each other’s blogs or photos rather than give them a phone call or a visit. Communication with others becomes easier and more efficient.
I strongly agree with you on Google Docs. It is such a good tool when we do a report in a group. I didn’t know Google Docs before I came to Sweden, because we did in a different way when I was in my college. I have to say that the Google Docs speeds up the group work obviously. In the old ways we always have more than 10 versions for the report, and at the same time we had to wait others’ parts. Sometimes my group had to work in school late in the evening for the report until the final version had been done. The group work here always contains maybe twice one-hour discussions and the other work is done on the internet.
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