Essay 4-Information beauty

Information overload

Every morning after I get up, I start my computer and open MSN, Gmail, face book, Flikr, My Space, Last.FM to check if everything is OK with me and see the latest updates of my friends. Then, if I want to relax, I surf on YouTube and Google Reader to read interesting news and videos. I know I spend too much time on Internet, however, I can not control myself and get addiction to Internet. Why? It seems I know what is good and what is dangerous, but I can not stop my car only because I don’t want to get lost.

Two-way communication

Digital media has changed our communication methods. In traditional media, our mass people are more like listeners. Computer and Internet technology has transformed it into two-way communication which means viewers are becoming co-producers. New technology not only brings us convenience of life but also give us high information pressure. In order to catch up with new technology, people are becoming more nervous and even got ‘Information allergy’. Some people can not adjust to the mess which is brought by information technology and they got the dieses of ‘Information trepidation’. They feel uncomfortable after getting to know some information and always worry about losing other information. Actually, I think the philosophy is very simple: there are too many information today, so make a quick decision and make this decision to be the right one.

Recently, a rule comes out in China which is to define people who get addiction to computer games like ‘World of War Craft’ as mental disease. Talking about the value of spending time on Internet, I think there is no standard to say what is valuable to everyone. If one really get happy when playing ‘World of War Craft’, so why not? No one have rights to judge the meaning of other people’s lives and happiness if personal feeling.

Information beauty

From my point of view, the important thing for social media is to transfer information in a more beautiful way and reconstruct the way we gather information. Information is a kind of product, so product needs quality. And the purpose of information is giving viewers some kind of power. Some information can make goods sell well and some may make us feel shock and give us deep impression. The first stage of information beauty is clear which means make viewers get the point easily and the second stage is unique which means bring fresh thinking and innovative thinking and the last stage is humorous which means make people feel happy except for getting the key point of the information.

Essay 4 – Virtual friend = Real friend?

To begin this essay I started by asking myself the question; What is a friend? To answer that question I would say that a friend is someone who loves you and needs you just as much as you love and need them, who you can share your feelings and thoughts with, can have fun with, and can call at random just to talk. When thinking about this it came clear to me that I have many different types of friends, which I have divided into three groups for clearing things out. One group that is my closest friends that I share pretty much everything with. The other that includes friends that I meet and call on regularly basis but as I wouldn’t refer to as best friends and the third which includes people I would refer to as friends but which I don’t meet often or even talk to on the phone regularly for different reasons.
So with this background I will go back to the question for this seminar; can virtual friends replace our real friends? Are we less dependent of human relationships these days? In one of my previous essays I mentioned that in the global society of today we connect and meet so much more people compared to just a few decades ago. We have the opportunity to travel a lot and see the world which makes our social connections even larger. I believe that different social medias like for example Facebook can in a certain degree help us to easier maintain certain social connections, but in general it is mostly the friends that I defined in group number three that really needs this help. This is the friends that we probably would loose contact with if it weren’t for the social medias. Our closer friends on the other hand which I defined in group number one and two are people that never can be replaced by technology. I don’t believe that sites like Facebook are replacing these real friends with virtual friends because a friend in the real world posses so many qualities that can’t possible be reflected on the Internet. These sites rather help us to connect with people on a more shallow level.
And so I will end this short essay with a quote:

“Life is a balancing act; a friend is the safety net. Love may make the world go around, but a real friend keeps you from falling off.”

Essay 4- Negative effects of social media

New media technologies and Mash -up of social network are providing lot of ease to people but I think some compact negative effects also generated by social media. May be the visualization of those effects is not seen at present but in future these will show its symptoms. Different people argue in different ways, My experience is this, I have left or it seem to me that abilities of the making analysis in depth are decreasing, I mean social activities reduced my physical and educational activities. When you read things on your behalf you have some strong arguments and knowledge, you think more and try to be creative and love to discover some things but new technology and social solutions make the things to easy that we do not feel to use our own skills all the time. So according to my point of view self confidence is lost in previous few years, for example instead reading of some books we trust more on something written on Wikipedia and some blogs and derived some desired solutions , just need of some mixing and base knowledge. Not all but many people are doing so, especially student community.
I have observed that students are sitting in class and they are more interested in the social networks or online social activities than their lectures, now it really a common practice to spend the time to get rid from other. Chatting is positive but excessive chat not only put effects on your mental, physical state but at the same time is source of wastage of time.
If we look in generalized frame we will find that without knowing about results sometime we spend our time on social networks like youtube, on gaming websites that can be used in more productive work and we realize it sometime but ignore every time our developed habits. Now a day’s people are more interfering in the privacy of other on the behalf of social media like Facebook and other, straight forward comments or usage of unnecessary language in discussion mess up other members of social network which can create a social space between the different groups. I have observed it seem that society is centralized on a social network, I think actually people are subdivided into different groups and sects within the network which have strong opposition, feeling against each other and some time they show. This can be dangerous in the future for social networks. Again as we discussed earlier essay we are losing qualities of selection vs. quantity. I have written things on my experiences more which I felt so essay is based on my assumptions.

Essay 4 – Negative effects of social media: lost the ability of independent thinking

In the article of Is Google Making Us Stupid, the author mentioned that he kind of lost the ability or patient for a long text book. And it did happen to me as well. I remember that when I was at high school, most of my time is spent at school having lessons and reading the text books and Even when I got home, I didn't use internet to assist my study a lot, which means that I study without the help of internet. As a matter of fact, most of my knowledge is accumulated during that time. I am not saying that internet might disturb my study, but I do assume that I couldn't have achieved it if I used internet a lot then, which is based on my situation now.

I feel like I depend too much on internet now, especially regarding to my study pattern. In the past, the focus of my learning is the knowledge itself including memorizing the principles or the explanations to the word or the text, the logical analysis steps for answering the certain questions, the practical usage of the knowledge and so on. And I answered every question by the knowledge in my mind or turn to the text book I had in hand or ask for my teacher or classmates' help, neither of which is internet. I was so independent of internet. And now, the focus of my learning is to find out all the relevant information to what I'm learning, since I think as long as I can get access to this information, I get the answer. So it is not necessary to memorize all of the text or go really deep into it, the only thing I need to do is to grasp the general ideas of it and some influential information relevant to the same area, which would make my learning more efficient. I did like this since I entered university, and I was indeed costumed to learn dependently on the internet.

However, I find that I am not that efficient like what I expected, since I was often got drowned by too much information, so most of my efforts are put on filtering the useful ones out of all, which are supposed to devote into independent thinking of answers or solutions. The initial aim of using Google or Wiki is to use that information to give me some inspiration, but it often ended up with an already available and even better solution than mine. So what I usually thought is why not I just adding something based on it instead of coming up with something else merely by myself.

That was just my story about internet changing my way of learning, but I do believe it is not just me, since it is just so easy to be caught by other's great ideas; it is so nature to follow those popular trends; it is so comfortable to just sit in a great and available conceptual idea framework; it is also so efficient to built up your own ideas just on other's great ones… Nothing cost nothing, so what might be the cost of such beautiful thing? I am afraid that it is our ability of independent thinking and future innovative ideas. And it is really disturbing to read the sentence like "The schools teach their children to operate computerized systems instead of teaching things that are more valuable to children." which is form the article: Informing Ourselves to Death.

I would like to post a presentation here, which has very sharp opinions about the dark side of social media. In the last five minutes, the presenter talked about the downsides of social media, which is articulated better than my statements. So again, I think it is no need for me to say more, just let James Surowiecki to finish my arguments here. And it is being a paradox again, am I doing the right thing or not? What about you telling me when you finish the presentation.

Essay3-The future of music

Digital music industry has gone through the experiment of ditching DRM and new mobile offerings in 2007.Along with Nokia ‘comes with music’ service appearing to the market, the whole music industry are looking for new and strong business models. Universal music group cooperate with Youtube which creates a mutually benefical business environment.

As far as I know, there are now five alternative business models in music industry according to a report ‘Digital Music: 2007 in review’ written by Steve O’Hear. A) free (maybe with advertisments) Universal has tried open DRM-free window last year and end it this January and all records come on abroad. B)Subscription which means music works is a service rather than a track. And now there are two main cooperations of this model and one is to cooperate with carriers the other is to cooperate with handset makers. Universals’ cooperation with Nokia’comes with music service’ is one example. C) pay-by-what you want which has been experimented by ‘Radiohead’. D)pay-by-populartiy which is to start off free, then the more tracks get downloaded the more price increases with a top-limits. E)’Music tax’ which is now experimented by Universal music group as I know.

From my point of view, there are some trends in digital music space. The first one is that music style catalogue are becoming more and more specific and segmented and the possibility of huge hit worldwide only made by one song becomes less. The second one is that since mutual share is the essence of internet and depending on DRM won’t be the end of this industry. The third one is to transform huge profits into mutually benefical with more content creators.

I have some interesting ideas in digital music:
a) In the huge and fast-growing mobile music space, Universal music Sweden could consider cooperate with Tele2 with subscription method which is similar to ‘buffet’.

b) Coperate with SonyEcrissson with their future product PSP Phone which maybe next generation entertainment terminal.

c) Interactive music is may be also an innovation with advanced technology support like PureData to make users get involed and even become content generators.

d) With the development of web 2.0, social network could support major labels to customized recommendation of music according to audiences’ taste.

I also strongly recommend that labels should cooperate with the P2P web service EMULE to make P2P downloading legitimate. The logic behind this action is that instead of treat them as piracy which threaten our record sales, why not cooperate with them and make them legitimate? EMULE has high downloading speed and huge music resources and in this way may turn EMULE into a big competitor with iTune store. For major labels, the benefits are cost reduction with releasing and control search engine with keywords which could help labels to promote their artists more easily. Also EMULE has queue and credit system which can actually support and realize benefical business model.

The future of music

I have to say that I am a big music fan and have been so for as long as I can remember. For me music is a natural part in my everyday life, it can make me feel joyful, happy, sad, relaxed, and so the list of emotions keeps on going. Although I have to admit that I have never been a regular buyer of tapes or CDs. I have always listened to the music that for example friends has recommended or songs played on the radio, but very seldom actually gone out to buy them myself. As probably most of my fellow classmates I now download music every now and then which has broaden my view of music. Now I can find a lot of smaller unknown artists that I never would have found earlier, also I find myself going to a lot more concerts than before. So you can say that the creators, performers and record companies are making more money on me, as a consumer, now then they did before. But I realize that far from every consumer are like me and although sales of legal digital music are growing they are not rising fast enough to offset falling sales of CDs, partly because of internet piracy.


(Economist.com; Qualms with music)

But actually I don’t think there will be such a huge change in the music industry in the next ten years. Probably they will come up with some better solutions for legal downloading but there will still be hard to try to stop people from illegal downloads. The young people of today are used to get music for free and I think it will demand something groundbreaking to make them change their behaviour. Why pay for something when you can get it for free? That is an opinion that I recently learned is more widespread than I thought. According to a survey made in Sweden with people from the age of 16 to 65 years old, one out of four people don’t consider downloading as illegal at all. (Dagens Nyheter; Ökad tolerans för illegal nedladdning) That was a bit chocking for me to realize that even the older consumers had pretty much the same attitude. This implies that illegal downloading isn’t an issue that people consider morally wrong and that is the barrier that the music industry need to overcome in the next ten years.

Essay 3 The future of music

From previous couple of years hot discussions were made on future of music with the boom of internet revaluation. Companies are feeling and felt threats to their business models and always trying to find out long term and short solutions. Apple provide a bit secure business model and now bundle of other websites like msn, yahoo they have defined their business model to define and reshape the music industry in different formats. My experience and thinking about is things may be it is good for companies but not for the artists. Artists are noting without money and fame.
I will discuss this topic with reference of social media that how much music industry is facing threat from social media , especially well known social media instead of common music websites which provide you facilities to download songs freely. I think free music download is separate issue. May be I will get some wonderful comments.
I have my own experience that today blogs are also playing key role in downloading and uploading of music freely.
http://bollyhere.blogspot.com/2008/10/yuvraj-songs-free-download.html
Some of brand new songs which are not available on free music websites are available on different blogs. As some songs released people put it on blog, this trend in developing south Asian side. So persons who are attached with these blogs enjoy initially, they download and convey message to other to do so through blogs. Then people send link on other social media websites like faebook.com and even I also did it. If I have got some new song I just published on my own blog or send the link of some other blog to my friends. Sometime after mixing and editing uploaded it on the youtube to share with the people.
With other free websites now a day’s these trends is also creating problem for their business models of companies or to some extend to me advertising the music of companies without any payment, money to people. For the success of every type of music advertisement is key factor. From my point of view social media is big source of advertisement for these companies, a free and viral marketing tool which have definitely threats but in long term advantage, people aware early and take more interest in music and artists. Discussions on groups and blogs provide them guidance and awareness in taking decisions. Youtube also started live coverage of the artists, performers and I am feeling that it will provide them more advantages in long term in business and popularity.
I think usually we see more threats, uncertainties etc but we should see that is the social media have played role in recognition of industry, artist and other. As I early discussed , group discussions, fan clubs on Facebook and Orket and other social sites are free viral and guerrilla marketing techniques and providing them source to made the singer, performer or product open source where everyone comment. I have my own experience that I never heard my country local and folk music but due to youtube, now I know more about those artists and also purchased Cds. My opinion is this, if artists, performers themselves, involve in social media activities like blog, groups or Facebook or Orket groups they can set a business model for themselves and earn money and fame both. They can encourage their fans in adopting legally activities and can keep contact in future activities. According to me, social media made the things much essay for everyone in world just need to explorer the dimensions and way of usage.

Essay 3: The Future of Music

I have forgotten since when the Sony Discman and Walkman had been lying at the corner somewhere in my drawer, but I do remember who replace the role of them, iPod. The rise of the iPod has coincided perfectly with the blooming of the Internet. More and more people prefer to transmit information and communicate with others through the Internet, so transmitting music is, of course, the next logical step. Completely digital transmitted music is cheaper, more efficient and less wasteful than CDs.

Motivation for the changing

There is money being made from digital downloads - it's just not of the scale that the major record labels are used to. In 2007, there were 844.2 million digital tracks sold. Radiohead's recent experiment, in which the band released an album online for free download and asked listeners to pay what they wanted, made them more money from the digital distribution then they made from the digital distribution of all the rest of their albums combined.

Radiohead could do this because of their contract's ending with the record label, which enabled them to do whatever they want with their music. It seems to be a pretty good way of running business for the musicians, but their success also depended on the reputation and the huge fan base they have earned all these years, so the marketing works for them is not as difficult as those indie musicians who despite enjoy the freedom of their music rights and relatively small but loyalty fan base, but lack of enough resources and capability to do more professional and massive extend marketing and distribution work, at which the record labels are pretty good.

So the situation of the music industry is more like an emergency for changing to respond to this digital revolution rather than merely dismissing in it. And a new business model is needed here, which could make both the record labels and artists survive.

Future business models

Who is the target group

In the past, the marketers just figured it out by some market research and assumptions based on it, and make some strategies for this target group. But now, thanks for the help of Internet; we are able to find our target group more easily and efficiently. The free track could be given out on online store or at some SNS like MySpace or Facebook by asking for a email address of the audience and some other personal information, which is much more important than the $0.70 they get form iTunes. All the Big Four have begun offering DRM-free songs, which might be a sign of free digital track next step. Traditional way is still an effective way of segment positioning, but facilitated by the Internet, target group would be more precisely, and the target groups' information is really the valuable and basic resource for the future.

How is the value chain

The artists are always the content provider in this value chain, they write and produce the songs for the audiences and market, their job and role won't be changed a lot. The biggest change happened on the record label, they used to be the interface of the artists and market, which would be still in the future, but the role might be transformed from owning the artists to facilitating them with the booking, marketing, and networking from the promotion aspect instead. They do all those without owning the rights of the songs, and get the paid form musicians. And the distributors are increasingly moving online to deliver the tracks to the audience.

In sum, the roles in the value chain are pretty much the same, but the focus of the job or the position might be changed a little, which is aiming to adjust to the digital revolution and the new customer behaviors.

How to make money

Direct marketing

After knowing the audience who actually listen to the songs, it is naturally to assume that they are the target audiences or at least interested in the artists and their music. The next step should be directly contacting them through the email or the group of the SNS and propaganda the music relevant products, live performance and campaign or the concert. Since it is the target audience who choose the artist or the music first, so they are more likely to perceive that information they get as valuable information rather than merely advertisement.

Live concert and merchandise and limited edition CD

That the songs are making less money than before does not mean that the music industry is not profitable any more. Actually, there are other sources of money. And the biggest one is live performances and concert. The songs especially those free ones become the investments of advertisement for the concert. Some music or artist relevant merchandises are also a good way to make money, and by franchising them, the musicians may make even more money than they image. The CDs are still demanded, just not that much, so the high quality and some limited edition CD have reason to charge more than before.

More channels available

The time of buying CDs form stores laid on street has past. People are exposed with more channels, online store, mobile, and mp3 player or even the cable TV can be the channel for you to reach and buy the music. The only thing an audience needs to do is to decide whether he or she likes it or not.

More versions and formats for each song

Because the songs are no longer needed to be gathered until they are enough for an album, the artist could just release the song soon after they finish it and with more versions. There will be more live performance and acoustic versions of songs, and more interesting bits, more looks into the recording studios, more evidence that songwriters and musicians are humans and that every version that they play isn't perfect.

 

 

Essay 2--smarter filtering

I have my own blogger with the topic of Swedish design with my nickname.I'm now going around stockholm to collect Swedish design and photographs information to represent them to China.I am doing this for interests and not taking business into consideration. The website is http://cookiedesigner.blogspot.com

Actually I think quality issue is difficult to define and I do not agree that quality of content really differiated between trational media and social media. Since their content both have high and low quality. I have read two books which are previously blogger and then published into books. On the other hand, traditional media may not always trustworthy since there maybe some policy control behind it and they can not tell story from a neutral position.

However, I think nowaways, we can use both these two media by different but maybe overlap purpose. Professional writers can give us more trustful informations but we can have more fun with more interesting, open and creative opinions in social media.

Generally speaking, the quality of traditional media is higher than social media. But the content quality of social media is going up. From the point of my view, social media is the future because social media has a lot of advantages compared to traditional media. The hyperlink technology make social media easy to understand and follow up. For example, if you meet with a difficult or professional word in newspaper, it is not so easy for you to find explanation immediately. But in social media, you can have a link to the explanation easily and it saves you a lot of time and energy. Another strength of social media is the new thinking of classified method which is tag or label. It is no need to have chapter name and catelogs. Instead, type key word in search engine, you can find relevant information easily. From my own experience of using BLOGGER, I have a thinking that why Google who owns BLOGGER do not give them simple catelog functions? The answer is simple, if you can find the information you need from search, why do you need chapters?

Another issue bother social media is the risk of anonymity. Actually from my point of view, no matter you use your real name or nickname or any symbol, it does not really make difference since any kinds of name is just a symbol of you. I will be responsible for what I am saying because the symbol is mine. But in general, people will feel less pressure when anonymy and it may cause more free or less trust which is impossible to measure.

In conclusion, I think the quality issue can be solved by person filter both in trational and social media. Social media is the future and the real problem to handle is to have smarter search enginee to help people find what they really want.

Comparing quality in social media and traditional/mass media.

It is a fine line between what is true and what is false in today’s social media. Who decides what is right or wrong? This is a problem that does not exist in the same degree in traditional mass media like for example newspapers. It is easier for me as a reader of a magazine or newspaper to rely on the authors of the articles since I know that some kind of knowledge lies behind the statements they make, or at least I hope so. But here I can at least search the author if I feel insecure of what he is writing, something that is not possible in the same degree in social medias. In a social media like Wikipedia for example it is much harder to determine what is correct and what is not since we don’t know who the author of the texts is.

One problem that I have come across when studying is the issue of reliability in certain social media. When is it acceptable to use references from Internet in reports?
Many times it is hard to judge if the information you find on the Internet really counts as reliable in the teachers point of view since we all can judge things differently. I can admit that I have problems trusting information taken from for example Wikipedia in a report. Maybe not because I think the information is incorrect but rather that the source of the information does not feel trustworthy. Like I said earlier, I can not trace this information as easily as the author of a book or an article.

So then, who decides what is right and what is wrong? I think this is up to one another to judge if we believe something is true or false.
But hopefully this fine line of judging what is true and what is false will become easier in the future.

Essay 2 - Quality Issues and solutions

No doubt today one of the highlighted problems with social media is quality issues. Especially low quality videos are becoming part of the some social websites like youtube which are creating problem of filtering for the users and sometime unnecessary , unproved , without any references text of are adding by some users on some websites like Wikipedia etc. Pictures qualities are very low on some websites like Flicker and Facebook. So why this is happening, it time to know , may be people want to more innovative and want the part of media and may be they need some set of rules to handle these issues in future.
I suggest one best solution is time, I mean now days technologies is improving day by day and now people are themselves good thinker and self examiner. Mobiles phone cameras technology basically behind these issues. High level competition between mobile companies made them able for updating their technologies which will definitely affect the social media and its improvement in the future. I think some of the companies are itself part of these issues, they do not have set of standards to solve out these issues, just need more data and users. Websites allow the users to add low quality videos if they restrict to some standard formats then it will be good solution and user will also get a complete guidelines that should standard they have to adopt at least.
In case information social sites like Wikipedia need to improve it at software development level. May be it look difficult at this time but I think they should have to develop some checks and constraints which will provide some securities to data and check source and some references in that article. It is very hard to hire people for proof reading.
User should be restricted according to professional studies and when they are submitting some article provide some references and book names which will verify at software level. If we look at traditional media we trust on it because of it authentic source and description, just need to implement these strategies, may be it looks difficult but not impossible. Secondly in traditional media quality is also big problem, so we can’t say that, this issue is only related with social media. Social media people still need training and guidance where in traditional media mistakes are done by professionals. So it is time being problem but not threat. Blogs training manuals and some other programs can be helpful to find out the solution.

Essay 2: A wider range but not necessarily lower quality for social media

The social media or we call that user-generated media is different from traditional mass media mainly on three dimensions: the frequency, the quantity and the quality. The charts above illustrate that the traditional media has more frequency to reach the audience with higher quality content while the social media has absolute advantage in quantity but with relatively lower quality content, which seems to mean that traditional media are more efficient and better at providing high quality content than social media. It is indeed true that, in some area, traditional media are more efficient and have higher quality. However, if we notice the fact that the social media have a much more wider range of quality, the conclusion might be totally different. From my point of view, it is unreasonable to compare the traditional media with the social media on the quality issue.

First of all, to evaluate the quality of something, there are, at least, some certain criterions to follow. Mass media or traditional media often have clear content position. The catalog of different kinds of information, such as newspaper or magazine, is quite obvious before it is come out to reach the audience, which may due to the form of information or the brand affection. The content providers could be more focusing on the reputation or brand image in terms of quality. For example, the information published on a newspaper with good reputation of objective naturally has objectiveness as the standard to evaluate the quality of the content and of course is more likely to behave well in this area. While different catalog boundaries of information among social media are sometimes pretty blur to identify, therefore it is also hard for people to assess its quality with no reference standards. Even if we consider relevance, accreditation and credibility as criterions to appraise the quality, it is still too hesitate to decide the information's quality, since every audience's purpose of reaching the information is varied. Some are active, while some are passive; some are looking for the authority and reference while some are just for fun or inspirations. Different aims lead to different termination, which means that the same piece of information may be totally dissimilar in term of quality. For example, a ridiculous advertisement which contains the wrong information may be a "trash" for the one who are looking for the relevant product, and meanwhile it could also be a "treasure" for a funny talk show's editor who is hunting for something absurd. So this irrelevant and unaccountable information could please more people rather than disappointing. Then, how should we evaluate its quality? Moreover, considering "the long tail" theory, the relevance is much weaker to be a convincing standard for evaluating the quality. Therefore, it is not the quality of information from social media that matters, but the methods of finding out you self's high quality information that really matters in this information jungle.

Google and Wiki here perform as two models in providing relatively high quality content, which mainly depend on the text-based algorithm and peer-moderation. What merely provide us the ready high quality information is far from enough. Thank for the help of RSS and Bookmarks, consumers manage to customize and build their own high quality information channels. We cannot just sit here counting on others giving us high quality information; ourselves are actually the best information filter…

Me and my experiences of social media

What does social media technologies mean to you?

If I should answer that question a couple of years ago the answer would be simple; not much at all. But ask me now and the answer would be completely different, today social media technologies is something that I use daily.

There are a flood of different social sites on the Internet today and I am not a frequent user of them all. Frankly I can say that I use very few of them but the ones I like, I really like!

In the global society of today we connect and meet so much more people compared to just a few decades ago. We have the opportunity to travel a lot and see the world which makes our social connections even larger. These connections would be impossible to maintain if there wouldn’t be for social media technologies. For me Facebook is probably the best example of a social site like this. I visit Facebook a lot, it has almost become like a form of every day routine. The purpose of using this site is to keep the connections with new and old friends that would have been to exhausting to keep up in the old fashion way. I mean who writes a letter these days, and a phone call can seem a little bit too personal if the person is not a close friend.

As a student I also find Google docs as a simplifying tool to work with when producing texts along with my classmates when working in groups. Just the fact that everyone can write there piece from home and doesn’t have to meet together in person to join the work makes the process easier.

Other kinds of social sites like Wikipedia and Youtube are also webpages that I visit regularly to seek information or just to get a few laughs.

But although I am a fan of these social media technologies I can’t help wondering; does this process of increasing our capability of connecting with more people instead has the effect of making us unsocial? It depends how you define the concept of social. Who is more social; a person with over a 1000 connections on the Internet or a person with 10 really close “reality” friends? Do I get the same satisfaction of talking to a friend over MSN as I would have got in real life? This is questions that probably would get many different answers depending on who you are asking.

Essay1- Technology is designed to serve us better

The essence of Web 2.0 technology is share and interaction. Everyone is lonely in the world and we always like to find people who are of the same kind as ourselves. With social media technology, we can communicate and find friends who have similar interests with us easily. The key word of social media technology is niche, customized and user-generated content.

I use del.icio.us as my bookmark on the Internet and Google Reader to subscribe what I’m interested in. When doing teamwork, my team member and me use Google Docs to accomplish our group reports.When exams are coming, I go to Slideshare and Studentsummary to find useful study materials and I also upload what I thought useful. Wikipedia is also an excellent way to search professional informations.Based on AJAX and similar to Google Maps, we have Urmap which is built by users. I use Last.fm to share my favourite bands with my friends and find new records and concerts information on specific groups. I’m interested in taking photos very much and Flikr is my favourite picture sharing website, from which I find a lot of photograp lovers who have similar taste as I do and we share our opinions and different shooting styles with each other. From this happy sharing experience, I learnt a lot of photograph technology and made great progress in my skills. When I feel tired of study, I will go to Youtube and watch the most viewed videos and also my subscriptions. Sometimes I shoot video clips in my happy life and upload it on youtube and share the happy moment with my friends. Besides that, I'm a fan of world warcraft and I also make a lot friends from the game. The best example of social media technology is Facebook where we can share everything with our friends worldwide. It’s more like a virtual world on the Internet and more and more young people rely on it.

The trouble around social media technology is all around privacy security. It seems that nowadays we expose ourselves too much and give out too much information, which makes it easier to be traced by other people. In this way, there is risk for not only virtual world but also our real life safety. Google and Facebook has gained incredible amounts of information of everyone in the world. If this information is in better use, then we can be better customized served. However, if someone use it badly, it will be a huge disater.

What will be on after social media technology? Telecommunication network, television network and internet will become combined together.Imagine the day come when we can enjoy work and life with only one terminal. However, I think what I want is to get information I’m in need of immediately and don’t waste too much time searching on waste information. Too much information and too much social network to handle is also a big problem to face today. I still believe that technology comes from human beings mind and the best thing is technology is designed to serve us better instead of make us feel much pressure.

Social media - the world of undiscovered possibilities

I have a sort of vision, a belief in social media’s potential to make a change and generate benefits, not only for the individual, but make contributions to the society as a whole.
And that would be the core of my interest in, and relationship with, social media. Therefore, I am a bit confused when I intend to write some things down about my personal relationship to social media. The confusion aroused from my poor practical experience on one hand, and on the other hand my relationship to the term “social media”. I think that social media will turn to something even more spectacular than a platform for people to meet and socialise. Social media and what we know as communities can play an important role in the larger community, when penetrating business life and industry offering new applications. In order to make my self more clear, I will give a couple of examples:
-Social media can be used to discuss topics within infrastructure planning processes today controlled by authorities, for example participating in the debate whether a Swedish municipality should give permission to building new wind power plants, or discussion of the future city architecture and infrastructure.
-Social media is a practical political tool, where decision-makers can meet citizens on equal premises and listen to their opinions and life experiences.
-Social media is a powerful instrument for organising different people sharing the same view, gathering people in demonstrations where a large group can express its views.
These examples all save both time and money, it raises the efficiency and quality of governmental services, while contributing to democracy, too.
After mentioning a number of democratising effects, I would also like to add some examples illustrating the commercial potential:
-Business commercials can be inspired by social media, and used as a way to gain trust and reaching the consumers by packaging products and services in something one associates with something trustworthy – the attributes of one’s social life. Not a very long time ago I saw a commercial in the underground. Today I can still remember the picture of the cat and dog holding each other tight, a picture that was sent to me by a friend just a couple of days earlier. It is obvious that the advertising industry has found a way leading straight into our hearts by addressing the consumers’ feelings.
-Taking a less “ugly” example would be that ordinary people / users can become entrepreneurs providing services to each other, instead of buying those services from big companies – a large marketing place for small-businesses, interacting and building business networks. Maybe inspiring other people to start small scale business. It might start as a hobby and become a small profitable business.
-User generated content has immense potential to contribute to a better and safer society. For example real-time information about the traffic situation. Just imagine how nice it would be to get that information from a large community consisting of a lots of people reporting about the traffic situation.
-In my own working field – meteorology - there is a huge potential to make improvements due to better local weather information. I just started a web site www.shareweather.com, with the goal to put up a community for weather reporters. Temporarily the site is being used in a research project at department of Media Technology.

This is what makes social media exciting. Perhaps we are moving toward a society that can offer leisure and work at the same time, making dreams come true? It was so interesting to hear on Daniel’s lecture that very little has been explored when it comes to studying leisure time. What do people do? Well, obviously they are committing themselves to social media. I think there are a ways to make what one may consider “meaningless” activities into something really beneficial.

After those reflections I will finally turn to my experience of social media:

1. I joined Facebook and LinkedIn, mostly because someone in my neighbourhood encouraged me to do so. Without really practicing the social networking, I just presumed that being more active would consume much time. I always manage to postpone the grand turning point when I am supposed to get more involved. (Have received some complaints too, as some friends in contrary seem to have adopted the whole life-style of community.) However, I did put my oil and aquarelle paintings online, a hobby of mine which thereby and in double-sense was transferred to a new dimension. Surprisingly, I felt really pleased by the fact that I suddenly had an opportunity to have an “exhibition”. The thought never crossed my mind before!
2. Youtube has become a part of my life. I have noticed that my relationship with TV has changed through the years. As a young student I had a period without TV in the 90’s and it was really a sort of relief. Generally, I think that consumption of traditional media like TV is something that makes you passive and in the long run – quite miserable. People have a need to express themselves, not just listen to someone else. If that somebody happens to be one of just a few players in the market, like big TV stations, it really gets uninspiring in the long run. People need to participate. Everybody is creative. And interacting with others it can be easier to discover one’s real potential.
So, Youtube has replaced TV. Nowdays I watch the news, but even those are available on the Internet. So why not throw the TV out?
3. When it comes to music downloads I don’t practice that because I think it is wrong. That is a typical example where new business models could both give income to the artist and spread the costs over a large number of people, making it far less expensive than in the old days, but still profitable for the artist. Why do we accept to pay a monthly telephone bill, but not paying for downloading someone else’s property?
On the other hand, social media is also a large forum for everybody to develop his or her creativity. People can record their home made concerts and put them on Youtube for instance.
4. The world of blogger changed my life two years ago, when I after a long time of frustration threw myself at writing a story – based on personal experience - reflecting my view on what it is like to have a small company competing with a governmental monopoly, and what it is like working for the latter kind of company. As I started to write, I realised that I could publish the story online and so the blog www.detstatligaverket.blogspot.se was created…
Surprisingly, something that started as an expression of my opinions, ended up in such fun and entertainment difficult to imagine. I really had fun. As a side effect I improved my picture editing skills. One important dimension was the fact that I was sharing laughs with other people. Though it may sound like a dull theme: What is innovation all about? Why do authorities and governmental companies foster people within their organisations to avoid challenges and development, as getting rid of all innovative force they posses? I wanted to describe how innovation can be suppressed by bureaucracy, when individuals within he organisation driven by fear and need for security oppose the natural evolution, in exchange for a dull life with no creativity and plenty of security. Moreover, the established balance and relationships are so strong within the traditional monopoly, that the employees become an institution themselves, fighting all external development and competition on the market and – instead of setting the innovation free - doing everything to avoid competition (which potentially could “discover and expose” their inabilities being a result of inefficiency and lack of innovation…).
The second source of inspiration when writing the blog were the environmental issues. I like to draw a parallel between the importance of biological diversity in the ecosystems of nature and the same need for diversity in the economic system of the society. In order to have a successful, sustainable, innovative and environmental-friendly society, we need a large number of small companies and individuals spreading the power of innovation. Just as large number of different species and small creatures in nature transfer energy upward in the system, feeding the system that actually makes it grow, the world as we know it cannot survive without individuals and small companies feeding the system with innovation, the basis of development towards a sustainable society, in fact the basis of all development.
Think of the potential social media has here, by inspiring individuals to create and generate innovation! One could say that social media technologies gives better starting conditions for the environment of the global socioeconomic system. Social media increases idea and innovation exchange (food and energy) within the system and increases the diversity (number of species) and their resilience as building networks.
However, I must admit that the trigger, the main source of energy that fed me when writing the blog, was a simple and perhaps egoistic need to make a point and spread what my experience thought me, a desire to change things that I consider being frustrating in the (Swedish, or European) system. I certainly will continue my story-telling through blogging (need to finish the story as well…). Anyway, it certainly showed the immense potential of developing my own creativity, and turning frustration into something amusing, both for me and hopefully for others. It was such fun!
3. Now to the final point when it comes to my relationship with social media, which for me is more than just social. I am a meteorologist and therefore, of course, interested in weather. Not only computers have opened up for development of numerical weather forecast models, but development of new media has offered new ways of getting real-time information, which dramatically increases the benefits and value of weather services. So, the next question is of course: What happens when social media enters the scene, can it affect the market for weather services? I believe the answer is yes. These possibilities deserve to be studied, which is what I intend to do at department for Media Technology…

But the main issue is that I think that there are a lots of different areas where social media can make important contribution to society, not only by entertaining and spreading knowledge which itself has a societal value, but within areas to be discovered.