My New Media class - So far

So far in this class I have learned a lot about New Media and the characteristics of the technologies involved. Technologies that are considered New Media have Communication, Collaboration, Community, Creativity and Convergence (The 5 C’s) as unique characteristics. Second life, social networking, wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, VOIP are few of the web 2.0 technologies that are changing the rules concerning how things get done.

The Internet has helped to foster some of the newly generated technologies available, so I would say that it is very important. Most of web 2.0 applications and technologies are used over the internet; I doubt that people would be blogging in the newspapers. The internet is very necessary for these applications to work and it allows for this second phase of architecture and application development for the Web and new media possible.

New Media is replacing and or enhancing the old media because of the high rate of technological advancement. Almost anything and everything in today’s world can be accessed on the internet. As a result, the major influences in today’s New Media such as commerce, telephony, military, computers and even the media, find ways to keep users engaged in their services. Kathy Gill in how can we measure the influence of blogosphere? outlines that “we now have new expectations about both the right to express an opinion and access to information upon which to base that opinion”People are expecting these changes; no one expects to be using the same services and products from ten years ago. We can now choose to read newspapers online instead of going out to buy one, we can now communicate instantly with people on the other side of the world. Also because of the extent to which information has been digitizes and compressed we converge the old media into new

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and wikis are both current aspects of Web 2.0 and what is considered as new media today. They are both similar in certain technological functions but different in their own way. Both blogs and wikis are used to make communication easier in terms of getting information to internet users, they also create communities where people with similar interests can share information and also get feedback.

Ezra Goodnoe in How to Use Wikis for Business defined a wiki as “the simplest online database that could possibly work”. Wikis are updated constantly as new information becomes available, and this gives users access to current and relevant data. Wiki users not only have access, but are able to edit the information as well, all because of the collaboration involved as well as the level of control involved (decentralized control). Since anyone can contribute this enables idea generation. Blogs on the other hand allows users to have more control over what gets published and there is limited collaboration. Blogs are usually focused on specific issues or topics of interest and shows a lot more passion and voice than a wiki would.

In today’s networked world convergence is important because almost everything has been digitized. Convergence makes it more convenient for users to make the transition from old media to new media without any added confusion. In Consumption Convergence by Deirdre Hynes it states that “A major cause for the convergence of technologies is the digitization of all forms of information, the development of compression techniques, and the convergence of transmission platforms enabling the growing convergence of previously separate media and information technologies.” To me, convergence makes it easier to be creative, to have access and to keep up with the changing technology.

CHECKING OUT SOME SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

I was able to look at a few social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and Hi5, these sites are purely social and are usually not related to work. Facebook appears to be the site used by most college students in the United States today and I can see why. Face book is much easier to use, easier to navigate (friend list and photos) and it is also easy to find and connect with others on the site. I personally think that the other networking sites I looked at fall short in those areas.

I’ve noticed recently that Hi5 has adopted a few of the techniques that I saw on Facebook , techniques such as posting your friend’s status on your home page, and even showing who have been added to people’s friend list. I must say that all the sites have the communication tools as a similarity; they all allow their users to connect with old friends, make new friends, share photos and even e-mail each other. Facebook is the only one that I have used for instant messaging; I didn’t see that in the others.

MySpace and Friendster both appear to be very commercial; it’s almost as if there is more selling going on than social networking. All of these networking sites find ways to keep their members to be engaged, I think that face book is very innovative in that way. What is great about these sites is that they all allow members to create communities within a community. This is done by having members create groups based on specific interests and invite friends who might be interested to join.

The major problem with social networking sites is the issue of privacy, which has been affecting a lot of people lately. Also people usually end up having a large number of friends with whom they do not even communicate. On a good note, the characteristics of new media are definitely easy to identify on these sites.

Research Project: Social Networking in Business: Better or Worse than The Real Thing

In Businesses today it is important to have a network of individuals or clients in order to get ahead. Social Networking has created a platform which helps to bring professionals together for such a purpose. Like any other forms of communication in business, social networking has its advantages and disadvantages. With this project the idea is to examine the positive as well as negative attributes of social networking compared with the idea of meeting in person, i.e. ‘The Real Thing’. We will look at how both methods prove to work in some cases and also where they both fall short of pushing professionals ahead.

What is New Media

New Media involves the continued innovation and upgrade of technologies and method of communication in today’s society. Technologies including anything digital, computerized, information and even communication tools. New media is not all ‘new’, it also appears to be a transition from old to new as the technology becomes available. Lev Manovich refers to new media as “the mix between old cultural conventions and data representation, access and newer conventions of data.” A lot of what is new media today exists because of what was already available, some examples include blogs, wikis, social networking, chat rooms, mobile technology, VoIP and more. These all enables communication, collaboration, community, creativity and convergence and that is why they are considered to be new media.