Presence, mobility and micro-blogging.

As part of my second reflection paper I’d like to take a look at Twitter, a social network of sorts, that deals directly with micro-blogging. At first, I’ll admit that I wasn’t too excited about the idea behind Twitter. I was already using my other devices and technologies in sort of the same way, long before Twitter came along.

First let me begin with the T-Mobile Sidekick. If you’re not familiar with the device, then let me explain it to you in a few sentences. It’s an amazing mobile phone that really proved to be a valuable asset to me until the iPhone came along. It was the first mobile device that I had used with a completely functional web browser, built in instant messaging (IM) client, SMS, and phone calling all in one easy to use package. I italicized instant messaging client for a reason, and here’s why: in the same way that Twitter uses it’s link to mobile phones as a primary way of updating your Twitter micro-blog, I used my instant messenger client on my Sidekick to keep all of my friends updated with what I was doing (specifically through the “Away Message”). Here is an example of how it works:

I’m going out to the movies with my friend Kat, so on my Sidekick, with it’s always on internet connection, I type in my away message “Trying to catch the last showing for Juno” into the IM client. A couple hours later, the movie ends and we’re just utterly surprised by how great the movie was so I update my away message to say “JUNO WAS A GREAT MOVIE” and leave it up. Now with my away message set, friends of mine on the AOL Instant Messenger network can see if I’m available to chat or not along with the corresponding away message. Albert, a friend that has me on his buddy list sees that I’ve updated my away message and sends me a message asking me more about the movie.

Now, when I look at how I used my Sidekick 5 years ago, this is exactly how most people are using Twitter to this day. Twitter even asks you this simple question just above their entry box “What are you doing?”, and you have to answer in 140 characters or less. The amazing thing about Twitter was their ability to take the idea of updating your Twitter to multiple platforms. You can update your Twitter through the website itself, your IM client, or your mobile phone. Their ability to make twitter updating ubiquitous makes it very appealing.

Now some people are actually not using twitter to just say what they’re doing, but rather to report on something. This is a powerful use of the technology, because we hear about the news, when it happens, where it happens. Not only does it give the consumer a choice, the news is delivered in a more direct, succinct manner. So whether you’re following your choice for this year’s presidential race, or your friend’s uninspiring day at work, it’s amazing how far a small piece of information can go.

The downside to most people new to Twitter is that, almost none of their friends or people they are interested in use the website. So it should also be noted that in the same vein as Twitter, the Facebook profile status feature is similar in use. Facebook can be accessed on any mobile device as long as they have internet access, and with some phones, there are even specific applications or pages they can access. Actually, as Cory mentioned during class last week, Twitter has designed a specific Facebook application that will link your Twitter updates to your Facebook status, syncing the two. So because I see the link between the two, I promise I’ll update my Twitter more often.

Do you trust craigslist?

The report, “Next-Generation Media: The Global Shift” by Richard P. Adler presents a detailed document that takes a good look at some of the radical changes in the Internet and its corresponding new media. One important topic of discussion that Adler mentions is the idea of trust in the online world. In the business sense, where users of an online community perform for sale/trade transactions, the idea of trust is necessary to help keep users actively involved. Adler uses the statement of a fellow at Harvard Law School to point out that reputation systems can be used to establish trust:

When you interact with someone over time, the history of past interactions informs you about the other party’s abilities and disposition. You learn when you can count on that party, [and] the expectation of reciprocity or retaliation in future interaction creates an incentive for good behavior. Robert Axelrod refers to this as the “shadow of the future,” an expectation that people will consider each other’s past in future interactions. That shadow constrains behavior in the present. Between strangers, on the other hand, trust is much harder to build, and understandably so. Strangers do not have known past histories or the prospect of future interactions, and they are not subject to a network of informed individuals who will punish bad and reward good behavior toward any of them. In some sense, a stranger’s good name is not at stake. Given these factors, the temptation to “hit and run” outweighs the incentive to cooperate, since the future casts no shadow…. Reputation systems seek to restore the shadow of the future to each transaction by creating an expectation that other people will look back upon it (Adler 31-32).

eBay is mentioned as a good example of this, but Craigslist is an online community that would benefit from a reputation system similar to what eBay has for its users. Craigslist has remained largely unchanged since its beginnings, serving as a simple looking, centralized network of online communities that hosts free classified advertisements for almost anything. But because it has kept its simple architecture, I find that doing business on Craigslist to be a little worrisome because of the lack of a reputation system to clue the user in on the legitimacy of another user’s Craigstlist posting.One may argue that the beauty of Craigslist lies in the fact that everything on the website is barebones in structure and not feature-rich. But as a fairly consistent user of Craigslist, I would prefer that the Craigslist platform be improved by including a reputation system of some sort. While eBay has a Positve/Negative/Neutral feedback system along with short user comments, I could imagine Craigslist adopting some sort of system, at least optionally among its users. While the main purpose of Craigslist is for people to perform transactions with users geographically local to them (which would help make the transaction more trustworthy) there is still a question as to how many Craigslist transactions a user has completed, whether or not they have had problems with others in the past, so on.This could also present a problem to Craiglist because the current structure of it is based off a semi-annonymous, free, classified ad model. If a single problem user can just as easily create new user accounts, or new email addresses to post new classified listing ads without repercussion then this would be useless.Regardless, a reputation system should be taken into consideration because the fact is, even though Americans are spending more time online, they are growing more cautious about trusting information on the Internet (9). And with more new users going online, Craigslist, among other business transaction based online communities, need to establish some form of a reputation system to accommodate for the steadily increasing amount of strangers on the Internet.

WordPress vs The Rest

For my first post, I find it appropriate to analyze how I got here in the first place.

It is entirely possible to be fine with choosing any one of these two blogging options. For all intents and purposes, the key to a great Weblog is the content of each post, and not its host (no rhyme intended). Both Weblogging hosts get the job done, it’s just a matter of style and usability/user-experience.

So how did I end up with WordPress? I’ll be honest, I initially chose Blogger without even reading about WordPress. I already have a LiveJournal account for my personal use that I’ve maintained (quite lazily I might add) for the past five years so I wanted to try something new. If you’re accustomed to doing research on comparisons, it’s easy as going to Google and typing in a few keywords, “blogger vs wordpress” for example, and you’ll find plenty of analysis by fellow webloggers that favor one over the other. So let me first take a look at how quickly it would take for me to create a blog, and make my first post on both Blogger.com and WordPress.com.

Blogger: From Blogger’s home page, you are prompted for a sign in to use Blogger with your Google Account. (Most people have one, but if not, then you can easily create one in your first steps. Then once you link your Google Account to Blogger, you can create a blog by providing a name for its URL (http://yournamehere.blogspot.com) and a title for the blog itself. Lastly you choose from a few different templates (none of which really stood out to me) and you were finished. Once the blog is created, you can make a posting using the Blogger post tool.

Wordpress: From the home page, you are presented with a large Sign Up button. Click this, and literally, you can have a blog in seconds. Asking for pretty much the same information as Blogger, the process was straightforward, and navigating the site to customize my blog seemed pretty intuitive. I particularly liked how previewing themes was integrated into the page (using AJAX I believe), vs Blogger’s pop up windows.

What features got me to stick with WordPress, instead of Blogger?

• Well for one, Blogger has no way for you to export your postings to a file, or import any postings from other blog sites. WordPress lets you import/export blog posts easily.
  • Because I plan on setting up and self-hosting my own blog in the future using WordPress.org, WordPress gives me more flexibility.
• As you might have guessed earlier, the look of the built in templates on WordPress appealed to me over Blogger’s.
• WordPress allows for different categories/pages to be created, Blogger doesn’t. (This could be remedied by having a different blog for each category on Blogger, but this can get kind of messy)
• Word count on the built in Post tool on WordPress (this helps for my assignments which require me to write approximately 500 words).

I’ve made my decision now, and hopefully I can stick with it. Here are some links that helped me decide.

http://www.bloggertalk.net/article96.html

http://noran-hussein.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogger-vs-wordpress.html

http://pulsed.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogger-wordpress-chart.html