Group Work (in class)

1. Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

We don't think media production will stoop down to individual productions. There will always be movies that have this strategy such as (Paranormal Activity, Blare Witch or Clover Field), however, it will never take over all media. It will never be the main way of making movies. We believe it's just another way to convince the audience to buy a product or service, as well as intriguing people to watch movies and television.

2.
Find a news article and write down tags you would use to define what the article is about. Now goto Digg or another tagging site and see how others have tagged it. What did you learn from the differences or similarities in tagging?
New York Times article
Live Analysis; United States versus Canada

Tags: Olympics, Hockey, Sports, Canadian Upset, US, Canada, Sport's Media, Men's Hockey
Digg: Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, hockey, Jaromir Jagr, Men's hockey, Mike Babcock, ron wilson, Russia, Sidney Crosby, Sweden, United States.

The Digg website consisted of more specific details than our tags. We focused more on the sport and the different aspects of hockey, instead of the Olympics in general.

3.Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?

It is important for transparency to be involved in the Social Media world because its what sustain the whole social media or user generated world. If people weren't ready to expose themselves on Facebook or Twitter, than those types of social media would be non-existent. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube rely on people to express themselves and their opinions. If people slowly stopped being transparent then the social media would feel the "domino effect" and eventually fail. As a group, we believe that is just as important to be transparent online as well as offline. Being transparent online allows you to express and connect yourself to multiple people at a time. However, having transparency offline allows more personal interaction as well as creates a more personal relationship. Overall, we think that people have a tendency to be more transparent online than offline. However, we think that there is no distinct reason for transparency to be more important than one another.

Digital Nation (part 1)

Being the first generation to truly be brought up surrounded by innovative technology, we hear about problems like internet addiction and distraction due to the influence of the media. Throughout our schooling we have been told to keep our cell phones away and stay off the internet. In our homes, our parents are constantly getting frustrated with us because of our constant texting and talking on Skype or Oovoo or even on the phone. Our generation tends to be attracted to the idea of being constantly distracted by social networking devices. The video that we viewed in class takes on the task of trying to raise awareness of the damaging affect that this technology and new way of life even is having on society and on our health.

The question is though what types of addictions and distractions are seen in everyday life. Online video games. This phenomenon has become a sensational hobby among many teenagers, especially in males. The concept of online video games is fun all in itself because it is interactive and thoroughly engaging. People could argue that other hobbies are just as addictive, but internet games draw people in with their variety. There are adventure games, puzzles, multiplayer, sports, arcade, and shooting games. The list hardly ends there! The internet video game obsession is spreading, taking up hours and hours of peoples' days. It can get in the way of school work or even a social life. Some gamers ditch the real-world life for the social world that they find on these internet games. I think that that is what the video was trying to warn us about.

My collage describes the web 2.0 concept of cell phones. In the lower left-hand corner there are two "ancient" cell phones, in the upper-right hand corner there are two cell phones that are still around today, and in the center there are two phones that are the most innovative of our time. These three divisions show how this technology has evolved from being solely a telephone to a device that contains the ability to call, text, access the web, calendar, calculator, music, video clips, GPS, etc. This technology has changed how society chooses to communicate with one another.

web 2.0 terms/definitions

user-generated content: (AKA consumer-generated media) web content created or uploaded by the general public; this blog is an example of user-generated content

long tail: selling a product that is plentiful in smaller quantities at a time in order to sell more; also not selling as many popular products in large quantities

web operating services: (AKA webOS) describes network services for large scale distributed computing

folksonomy: (AKA collaborative content) system of classification involving collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content

web syndication: making website content available and updated on other/multiple sites

mass collaboration: form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work on an individual project

computer-supported collaboration: research of technology that affects groups, organizations, communities, societies, etc.

social software: range of softwares that allow users to interact with one another and share data

hosted services: allows individuals and organizations to create and publish their own website to the world wide web

web application: application accessed via a web browser

video-sharing sites: websites where users can upload and distribute their video clips

wiki: website that allows for easy creation and editing of multiple interlinked web pages via a web browser

blog: type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other content such as graphics or video that users can follow

mashups: web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service


*wikipedia was used for information about each term*