Basic Conversation Social Networking Websites. Students
handout9/18/11 5:44 PMThis article comes from the need to do some
considerations after I read a research concerning MySpace, made by
Mike Thelwall. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, are names
familiar to a lot of people and quite often you hear about them on
TV, or of course in the Internet. Some of the readers might be a
member of one of these communities. Apparently some of these Social
Network Websites (I will call them SNW from now on for convenience)
are more and more quoted as new sources of happiness, depression,
addiction, democracy, and new forms of social and political life.
Not a long time ago, during the last elections in the U.S., Obamas
crew set up an online supporter group for Facebook, which allowed
users of this SNW to link with other users actively in the campaign
of the democratic candidate.When we talk of friendship and friend
in SNW like MySpace we define a link that the users have with
others, after a reciprocal agreement. This allows so-called friends
to have access to some part of the profile with personal
information. Friend, IRL(In Real Life), has a meaning strongly
fixed in the private sphere of the individual, with references to
reciprocity, trust and strong empathy to the other, while in
MySpace and other SNW the meaning is just a summary statement of
personal feelings using culturally approved terminology.When a SNW
user has, for instance thousands of friends, its very hard to think
that he could exchange social interaction with all of them, and
that he could consider them to be friends for simple convenience.
Anyway some SNW trace activities of your friends in the
communities, so that you can follow their uploads, changes in their
profile and so on. The author tends to think that usually there is
a core of close friends, and lots of ties of agreement only.
According to his research the average number of friends that a
MySpace user has is 27. Maybe more important about the average is
the fact that the number 27, which comes from the average among a
lot of people with 0-1 friends, many with some friends, and few
with hundreds or sometimes thousands of friends. To have a clearer
idea of the social networking world, I would like to make a
distinction of different kind of social networking sites.For this
article I will suggest 3 kind of differentiation.Professional
oriented: website as LinkedIn, Viadeo or Xing. Their aim is to
create a set of relationship and feedbacks on workers, so to help
both the flexibility of employers, that can built their
professional trustworthy with references and feedbacks, and the
workers recruiting of companies, that can have an on line easy
accessible archive of workers.Interests oriented: Flickr, aNobii,
devianArt, LiveJournal. Here, users are usually linked by common
interests as photography, Digital arts, writings, and we can think
about the topic as the knot of the web around which discussion and
interaction takes place.Socialize oriented: Facebook, MySpace,
Badoo, Netlog, Friendster, Twitter. With these sites you can trace
the activities of your friends, chat, have a look at their profile,
share pictures with others, link music, post articles or videos and
comment on peoples profiles.Some site could have different uses as
their original purpose. Dating, for instance could be seen as a
part of the Professional oriented group but on the other side also
as part of the socialize oriented group. Some of the above
mentioned socialize oriented SNW give the possibility to create
group of interests, theme blogs or walls of discussion however, are
SNW really needed?Watch the video and answer the questions:
What are the issues you can have for excessive or improper use
of
SNW?__________________________________________________________What
are the basic information needed to set up a
SNW?_______________________________________________________________________
According to the video most of people read the agreement terms
before sign up for SNW? Why?
_______________________________________________________________________________________
What is the meaning of 24/7 ?__________________________________Who
has 24/7 access to the internet? ____________________________Why
people are calling Debi
Koeller?_________________________________________________________________________________________Why
people can easily get addicted to SNW? _______________________
Why social Isolation has become more permanent in the U.S.A?
__________________________________________________________________To
Discuss:
1- Do you have a SNW? Which one and why?2- All the people added
as friends in your SNW are very close friends in real life? 3- Do
you see or talk personally to many of them everyday?4- How often do
you check your Facebook page or any other SNW?5- Does your SNW
interfere on your daily activities?6- Do you know someone addicted
to SNW?7- Do you think the president of U.S.A, Barach Obama has a
Facebook page?8- Can SNW help you to learn or practice English?9-
What kind of people can you be friends with in your SNW?10- Have
you ever heard about a SNW called CouchSurfing?11- Would you
participate and have a foreigner staying in your house for couple
days?12- Can a SNW find you a job?
9/18/11 5:44 PM
9/18/11 5:44 PM
