Don't touch me!

I agree with a lot of the concepts surrounding social grooming. I understand that the concept behind all the methods that SNS sites use to communicate from one user to another are all doing the same thing, which is telling the other person that someone is thinking about them. Definitely a pleasurable thought to have.

There is one aspect that I wish never existed, however. That aspect is Facebook "poking." I HATE poking. Instead of the "remove" button, I wish there was a way to send a "Don't touch me!!" notification to the offending poker.

I have never been comfortable with the idea of the poke. It's like an easy out for people who are too shy to say hi on your wall, or don't have a reason enough to send you a message. And it's just sneaky and hidden enough that if someone gets their poke snubbed, their pride is much better off than a wall-to-wall ignorance would have been.

I think we used to be able to poke someone without being friends with them. That's where my hatred began, I imagine. The idea of these people touching me, virtually or in real life, made me nauseated. Now the pokes I get are mainly from people I haven't had contact with in a while, and I guess they are just using it to get my attention.

I don't mean to sound like a brat or anything, really, but come on. Cut the crap!

Twitteriffic

Recently (as in two days ago) I got into the phenomenon known as Twitter. Admittedly, I still don't "get" it, but it as I am progressing, there are a lot of pretty good features about it.

First, I don't have to mutually follow people. What I mean by that is I don't have to be friends with someone for them to access me or for me to access them. I prefer that. A lot of Facebook "friends" I added out of guilt a little bit, and now I could really care less about their status. In Twitland, I can just pick and choose who I follow.

Second, the trending topics are very useful. I'm sure someone could point out the hive mind mentality here but all the same, Twitter knows the news faster than a lot of media outlets (I don't know how) (I also am not giving them as much credibility but still). And it's popular news, too. Good stuff. Another, more trivial use is that people's opinions on movies trend a lot. I can read what they thought about it in 140 characters. Glorious.

Perhaps Twitter is like the jellybean example, where the individual guesses average is the closest to the amount of beans in the jar. I can't really be sure yet, but I like what I see.

For further reference...

I think if you're looking for any further examples of moral panic, just watch Oprah. Every panic trend that I can think of has been featured on the show. Predators, porn addicts, bullying, eating disorder support sites, etc. Seriously.

This just in..

Apparently Google has a new feature where you can create a profile for yourself that shows up if someone Googles your name. Try googling your own name and then in a blue box at the top, it gives you the option to create the profile. Yikes. What will they think of next?

Couldn't be in class today...

Sorry for my absence in class today. This is my case study work in case anyone was interested in what I would have said in discussion..


I am very lucky to have a diverse group of friends on my Facebook page. I have about a 60/40 ratio of friends from DC to friends from back home in my small town in Rhode Island. A few things I have noticed:

•  My friends in DC use their pages to promote events such as parties, club promotions, football games, etc. My friends from home rarely use the event feature, only for occasional things such as a sorority/fraternity occasion.
• There are more restaurants and boutique stores and independent venues that have pages in DC than there are in RI.
• I have more black friends from DC and they (and the friends who post on their pages) use more nicknames in between their first and last names than any of my white friends (i.e. Boo StrivingforSuccess Jackson or Branden Big Simba Riley). They also use irregular capitalization more frequently (i.e. MARLEY Pollack).

It is hard for me to detect many patterns because I am in the midst of it. However, I think whatever the technology developers can produce which allows people to do more self promotion or talk more about themselves (for example – the quiz or survey phenomenon) will continue to emerge.

 

Not many people have come right out and said it but that is really what all of these SNS’s are about – self promotion. Networking, keeping in touch with people who were not all that good of friends to begin with, these talk-about-you who are you most like surveys are all things that let people examine themselves. They can figure out their personalities and figure out how other people feel about them by tracing their activity on the SNS. It’s such a desirable thing for people that I’m sure SNS sites will continue to develop for people to express themselves further.

 

Shrinking the Gap

In "Say Everything," the idea of the shrinking generation gap was discussed and I'm not sure if I completely agree. My mom now has a Facebook. She is head of part of a Special Education department in a school district and is "friends" with her real-life teacher friends from her schools. I lectured my mom ad nauseum about why someone in a high school setting shouldn't be an active Book user, but if they are, they should take some pretty serious privacy measures. She's fine on it, but one of her teacher friends added one of their special ed students. The student Facebook IM'ed the teacher and started talking about one of the other students. AWFUL! This is the kind of thing I warned my mom about! I'm sure I don't have to go into the issues that surround that type of activity..

So my point about the generation gap is that even though older people and younger people are now using the same mediums, the older people are so much farther behind on the ins and outs of what they're doing. The younger generations have made the mistakes -- they've insulted people, they've done inappropriate things, interacted with strangers, etc -- but now the older generation is breezing in as if the Book can do no harm. I don't know if the gap is narrowing, or if the roles are just reversing, where the younger people have the experience and have to pass it on to the older people.

Free-for-all

You can't help but to think about the incredible amount of money that is being made off of new media. Arguably more money now must be being made off of the new forms than probably any other form ever. Not just talking about ads, but while we're on the topic, does anyone notice them anymore? I hadn't even acknowledged the ones on Wikia until Dr. Akhavan pointed them out. I have AdSense on my blog, here, too. They're allegedly paying me $10 every X amount of impressions.

But then there's the stuff that isn't really paid for in a conventional way. It's not uncommon for any business or venture or enterprise to have a MySpace, a Facebook, a Twitter... It's so crazy. I was thinking in class that some company could have a bored intern who set up those three accounts, then they could make a blog, and possibly even give themselves a shout out on a Wiki of some form. Five free forms of advertising. Email, too.

I wonder how companies made it without these new mediums. The bar industry is centered around them. We're encouraged to promote by putting up fliers on our Facebooks, changing statuses, creating events, etc. whenever there's an event of some sort at work. Basically that's how I generate all my business and let my friends know when I'm bartending. I have no idea how I could have ever been successful without the tools we have now.

Something to think about from Conan...