Creativity and New Media

The above image shows my avatar, Squeege8, flying in a location in the virtual world created in Second Life. In order to create my avatar, I went to the Second Life Website and selected my avatar from a bunch of choices. I liked the outfit and shoes for this particular avatar so I chose this one. Next, I had to use a name. To be extra cautious, I decided to go with my nickname, Squeege, as opposed to using my real name online. To my shock, Squeege was already taken, which just goes to show how large of a user base Second Life has. After downloading the application, I started playing around in Second Life. It has really cool features and the worlds seem incredibly realistic. I have the free version which has limitations such as having no house. I'm still able to do things such as chat, and theres even a window that displays chatting options with all the people in your nearby vicinity. I also really like flying because it looks incredibly realistic. I get why the virtual world is called Second Life.  

Creativity

New Media, due to the increasing popularity, is fostering creativity worldwide. Whether through social media or virtual worlds, users feel the need to become creative, due to rapid expansion. As one user creates something, it's much easier for people around the world to see it, break it down, reconstruct it, and perhaps make it better. For instance, in the article, "1 + 1 + 1 = 1", a user created a mash-up which then became an incredibly popular type of song. As mentioned in the article, the first major mash-up was seen as the The Grey Album, a mash-up of a Jay-Z Album and a Beatles Album. Since then, mashups have become incredibly popularity, through an outlet many of us know as YouTube. New Media allows for many people to quickly see advances and creativity and expand upon it, which fosters creativity world-wide.

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is a simulated environments, that usually plays host to a large amount of users. These virtual worlds can be used as a means to interact with people in a roomier setting, as opposed to the rigid structures of chat rooms and private messaging. In addition, virtual worlds may allow users to show off their personality through customization of space or behaviors that show in the virtual world. Virtual worlds may also be used to model real-life scenarios, since users will interact in a simulated environment, their actions may better reflect their behaviors in real-life. For instance, "In Room 100, It’s Sid and Nancy All Over Again", users interact in a virtual world that models an actual hotel that was taken down. This is a good way to help people find others interested in similar objects when they are no longer available.

Another added benefit that will lead to collaboration, which in turn leads to creativity, is using virtual worlds in the professional setting. As opposed to having to meet up in rooms or conference calls, employees can meet up in virtual worlds. Like it's mentioned in the article, "Going to the virtual office in Second Life" companies such as Enterprise are using it to facilitate better communication.

Although virtual worlds may be used to model behavior, there is a possibility that users will just do the socially desirable behaviors due to interactions with others, instead of the actions they may normally do. In addition, there may be some users with malicious intentions. A virtual world could be corrupted based off the ill intentions of a single user.

With advancements in technology, I think that document sharing and picture editing will be big in virtual worlds. Similar to how Google Doc's allows for collaborative editing, I think that to allow virtual worlds to gain more importance, users will need to provided with certain applications to allow the growth of popularity for virtual worlds.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook, regardless of the user, has the same structure and set up for all users. The timeline feature allows for easy access to a different users activities during a wide span of time. Facebook allows for users to have a public persona, through their page, which they'd most likely want to show others, while they can keep certain other actions private, such as group page activity and private messaging. There is also a focus on ads that cater to the interests of users.

Myspace allows for more format customization. Users can make their profiles match their personalities a bit more. I also like the musical focus of Myspace. Users can upload playlists onto their profiles. Although Facebook has partnerships with Spotify and sites can show what certain users have listened to, Myspace can be used directly to show other users your interest in music.

Twitter is a social networking site that allows for users to instantly update others regarding activities or any piece of information that they'd like the world to know. Anything from, "I'm eating breakfast" to reporting information on political elections. Also, any communication between different users is usually visible to all users and everyone replies directly back to each other.

The last social networking site I chose was Google+. Since Google owns sites such as Youtube & Blogger, there is a lot of synergy between these sites, and user activity in these sites can all be seen through Google+. For instance, if a friend of mine comments on a YouTube video, it may appear on my feed. Google+ also has a very simple interface that allows users to easily make changes and personalize their page.

Social Net'g

In today's day and age, many people find themselves utilizing social networking sites. To take advantage of the booming use of social networks, many corporations and organizations also have dedicated pages for themselves in social networking sites such as Facebook & Twitter. What this has allowed many of the big corporations to do is to become closer in touch with it's consumers. Through a tweet or a Facebook post, large multi-billion dollar companies can get a better idea of what their consumers are thinking. Take for example an error that occurred with Amazon. In the New York Times Article, "Amazon Says Error Removed Listings", Amazon realized how disastrous one error was through multiple tweets made by their shoppers. Consumers were able to directly voice their opinions directly to Amazon's page, as opposed to having to make phone calls to talk to representatives. This helps big corporations know much sooner what their customers are thinking.

Another use of social networking is described in the article, "Why Is Nissan Mimicking Myspace?" The article describes how Nissan is launching a social networking outlet just for it's employees to allow them to become more cost-efficient through better means of communication and voicing their opinions to the rest of the company. It's an effective way of relaying information from different areas of a business to upper management.

Even though the aforementioned articles detail the benefits, there are consequences that companies might have to face as well. For instance, one consumers bad experience with a product is open information to other potential customers, which may hurt sales. Also, some posts can be made that offend some consumers without it meaning to and it'll be tough for companies to retain customers after making such mistakes.

In the future, I predict companies to invest into social networking teams and finding metrics that can be used to help them determine successful business operations. In addition, companies might host their own social networking sites, so people can connect based on their experience with that company. For instance, automotive manufacturers can host their own sites, in an attempt to have events exclusively for those that purchased their cars.

Blog v Wiki

At first glance, due to their online informational purposes, blogs and wikis may seem incredibly similar but in actuality, they are quite different. A wiki is an online information source developed and edited by multiple users. A blog, while also informational, is more personal, since it is usually developed by a single person, and contains information provided in a more personal manner, similar to a diary.

From this, one can easily tell that wikis are made for information-sharing purposes while blogs are more for sharing personal information. There could be exceptions to this but for the most part, wiki's and blogs follow these guidelines. An article in the New York Times titled, "Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog", provides a detailed explanation on how a blog chronicled the life of a soldier in Afghanistan. The blog, titled Embrace the Suck, provides detailed accounts of a soldiers life at war, from stories of roadside bombs to encounters with major sergeants. This blog is quite personal, as opposed to informational regarding news in Afghanistan.

By contrast, another New York Times article on wikis, titled "Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People"details the importance of editing on wiki articles. Since Wikipedia is basically a free online encyclopedia created through the volunteer contributions of editors world-wide, one of the problems that it faces, similar to all wikis, is that multiple users can contribute and sometimes, false information can be provided. To prevent this, Wikipedia is making efforts to ensure that changes made to wiki's are looked over before users see any changes, to ensure the public isn't provided any false information.

In regards to the importance of both, there are many things that blogs and wiki's provide to users that we take for granted. As the internet is expanding, blogs and wiki's are very concentrated pages that users can look to for solving various purposes. Wiki's might be able to provide those looking for anything they can gather regarding certain topics more information from experts in the field. Whereas blogs can provide more personal information, such as shopping tips through a detailed description of shopping experiences or inspiration by going through someone else's work. Blogs may also inspire collaborative efforts by focusing on individual strengths. A blog with high social influence may partner up with an inspiring photography blog to help each other. The photography blog may gain popularity while the bigger blog might showcase photography as another aspect of it's blog. Wikis also have many uses. For one, companies may use wiki's to compile manuals on the operations that happen throughout different components in a business, to help everyone in different departments understand whats going on elsewhere.

Social Media: A Welcome Addition or Hindrance for Sports Popularity

I would like to research how social media has made an impact on sports today. I'm primarily looking for correlations between athlete and sports team social media outlets and their popularity. I'm hoping to find studies that show how much of an impact a Facebook/twitter posting has on the popularity of a team and/or athlete. I'm predicting that popularity has increased due to the closer relationship between the end-user or consumer (potential fan of an athlete, team, or sport) and the athlete, team or sport itself. I will look through Facebook pages for large market teams such as the New York and Boston sports franchises and sales revenue of games and look for any relationships.