SOCIAL MEDIA TSUNAMI

My relationship with social media is in the romance phase. Everything is new, so wonderful and enjoyable. However, as with any new relationship, I feel overwhelmed. There are too many choices on the web. I would just describe this feeling as a social media tsunami.

Numerous blogs to follow, interacting with lots of people on skype , checking a bunch of people postings, twitters to follow, videos to comment on, virtual shelves to fill in with books, keep up with google waves, sites to visit and more. Besides all that I also have to take care of someone else's life...My Avatar. It is like I don't have enough to do in one life so now I start a social life in my virtual world.

Despite all of this, I am enjoying this experience very much. I know I have to try to narrow down my interactions and focus on a specific topic so I can succeed on the next assignment. I guess this is a process and part of the process is feeling overwhelmed but as long as I feel that the romance is worth it I should just stick with it and enjoy it.   Who knows, I might end up falling in love.

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND CRIME

I was looking at my niece's facebook page and I saw that she had taken off her pictures and all the postings and profile information. I called her and I asked why she had decided to do that and she told me that in the news in Ecuador they had been talking about the different ways criminals were operating. One of them was using social networks as a way to get to meet the victim. They get to know their family, friends and network and they commit so-called "express kidnappings."

After that conversation, I can't stop thinking about the fact that our decisions to be part of social networks make our privacy vulnerable to any type of crime. That doesn't mean that it always has to happen but it makes me aware of the importance of knowing what type of information we share on the web.

Coincidentally, I watched on the news about some teenagers using facebook to post pictures of a rape they committed. The computer expert that was interviewed just said that once your pictures are online it is very difficult or almost impossible to get them off. I guess this poor girl's nightmare is going to be on the web for a long time.

Now, I wonder if it's worth it to be part of the social networks and being connected to people we sometimes don't even know very well. Do we get something back from all of these interactions? Why do we want to see what other people are doing? What do we think - that people's comments on our postings mean that we are close to them, or even more that they care about us? How about our safety? Is it worth it to be exposed to have someone badly use our information? How about teenagers and all these cases of cyber-bullying? I guess being connected is "cool" and people don't think about the other ramifications and taking precautions to avoid negative things.  Like any tool, social networking can be used for both good and bad.

MY TEN FAVORITES

FIRST ASSIGNMENT

My first assignment for my Social Computing class is to follow 10 different social media applications or sites and write a diary of my experiences and reflections. I started by thinking which are the social media applications or sites that I am already using and I came up with the following list (10 plus a bonus):

1. Skype
2. Google talk
3. Facebook
4. Twitter
5. Delicious
6. You tube
7. Blogs
8. Google docs
9. Wikispaces
10. LinkedIn
11. Second Life***(Bonus)

I was very impressed that social media has been part of my life without even realizing it. I guess the main idea of this new world of communication and collaboration is to be part of your daily life and to make the use of social media as natural as possible.

One thing that I have to mention is that I still find it quite difficult to understand the difference between all these social media terms (sites, applications, tools, platforms, etc). I guess I will understand this better later in the course or I can just keep it as a thought and ask the professor to explain them in class.

Now, I am trying to decide how to proceed with this blog so I can make sure that my ideas are clear and my reflections have a meaning. I will start by describing my past experiences with the social media list I had included above. By the way, the list doesn't have any particular order. I just wrote the names as I remember them.

1. SKYPE

I am going to start with number one Skype. Skype has been a very important "tool" in my personal and student life. I started using Skype a few years ago as a medium to keep in touch and communicate with my loved ones in Ecuador.

I found Skype difficult to use it at the beginning, for multiple reasons. 1. The connection to Ecuador was terrible and there was always an echo. Luckily, this has improved and now my skype communications are crystal clear. 2. Even though my family in Ecuador went to an internet cafe to have our video conference call, the Internet speed was still very slow there and the video was just a frozen screen.  A few calls later, my family got tired of going to the internet cafe and being on the video. Now, I just call using skype credit and things are fine and less complicated. 3. I have to say that I was very self aware of how I looked before I even turned on the webcam. I also felt that I could have been watched even though it was off. I  always made sure to disconnect the webcam completely from the computer after using it.

My other experience with Skype has been studying for exams and collaborating on school projects. Last semester, I worked on a class project where I did research on EFL students in Ecuador and I tested the usability of ABRACADABRA (a software developed by the CSLP at Concordia). I worked in collaboration with a couple of teachers in Ecuador that assisted me with the collection of the data. I spent a few hours on line with them talking about the project. I was delighted to introduce to them to skype. They both were fascinated by that and I continue collaborating with one of them.

2. GOOGLE TALK


I started using google talk as soon as I got my gmail account. This was my principal medium for chatting with friends. I am currently using and testing google talk for some local calls and calls to the US for free. The sound is great, although, I can't say the same thing for International calls to Ecuador. I found the connection wasn't the greatest, but it was definitely cheaper than Skype.

3. FACEBOOK


I remember the first time I heard about facebook, I was on a camping trip with a group of friends and they were commenting about how many friends each had in their facebook account and I thought: "wow, that is amazing that they can have so many friends around when I can count my friends with the fingers of my hand".

That was then, and now I have 87 friends. Some are people that I hardly even know. I used to have more than 120 friends but I guess little by little people get overwhelmed with the amount of postings and decided to cut "friends".

My interactions through facebook have been just simple boring status posting like: "It is a nice day" "I am going to the Black Eyed Peas Concert" "I started school". I guess that is why I don't get that many comments. I just don't want to share personal things or thoughts. I leave those kind of things for my conversations with my few real friends.

4. TWITTER


I opened a Twitter account a while ago and try to follow a couple of friends. I didn't find it interesting and most of all I didn't know how to use it so I stopped checking it. However, I just attended PodCamp Montreal 2010 and during the registration I was asked "what is your Twitter user name?" I was blank! I realized then the importance of having a twitter username.  It is kind of your cyber identity name. As soon as I got back home, I opened my new Twitter account and I am proudly following "radio Canada" "The Gazette" "Engadget" and a few others. At least I am starting to see the advantage of using Twitter.


5. DELICIOUS


This past summer, while I was looking at possible internship opportunities, I opened my first Delicious account. I found it helpful but for some reason I found it complicated to use as well. I have just added three sites as bookmarks and hopefully I can learn how to add more soon.

6. YOU TUBE


Even though I haven't posted any you tube videos, nor have I commented on any you tube videos, I find you tube to be a great social media tool. I can't even imagine life without you tube anymore.  I do find some people's comment in you tube a little bit offensive, however. I also see that there are people dedicated to just create you tube videos. I wonder sometimes who has the time to create all those tutorials but thanks to them I can find everything that I need in you tube.


7. BLOGS

I have been looking at blogs for a quite a while but not really following any per se. I had a couple of attempts to start my own blog but I found it difficult to write publicly what I thought and I didn't find it easy to find an interesting topic to write about. I think this time is different and I find it enjoyable to write about my experiences and reflections with social media.

8. GOOGLE DOCS


My first time using google docs, I really enjoyed it. It was very easy to collaborate. I even suggested to people in one of my classes where we had to do a group project to put all our ideas in one google doc since we all were sending emails to each other. It worked! I thing this is one of my favorite "tools" for collaboration but I definitely have to learn how to use it very well.


9. WIKISPACES


I get very confused with all the wikis (wikipedia, wiki answers, wow wiki, etc). I think that there should be a book in the series "wiki for idiots". As I was writing this sentence I searched online and there it is "wiki  for dummies".

I got curious about using Wikispaces while I was taking HPT last semester and I was requested to create a e-portfolio. I ended up not using that one for the class but at least I explored it a little bit.

10. LINKEDIN


My friend created a LinkedIn account for me. At the beginning, I was a little bit skeptical about it but now I consider it to be a fundamental tool in someone's professional life. I haven't really exploited all the wonderful features but hopefully I can learn more about it in the future.

11. SECOND LIFE


The first time I used second life I was scared. I remember signing on and immediately signing off. I felt that somebody was watching me. I was afraid of making mistakes. I didn't use it for a while until in one of my classes I explored second life as an Educational tool.   One funny thing was that the first time I tried to change my avatar's clothes, I was wearing a box on my head for half an hour and couldn't figure out how to get it off.  Later, when I got it off, I accidentally removed my avatar's hair too, and had to walk around bald!

That's the magic of social media.