Essay3- Music Industry!!! where does it go?

Music industry has experienced a very bad situation in comparison to other media in recent years. By improving computer network technologies, music piracy has been very commonplace these days. Within young generations, illegal downloading is not a big deal or immoral issue; it is something normal. Having this situation, legislating stricter laws or advanced anti-piracy software lock of CDs and DVDs will not be the remedy. The industry should find another way to solve this problem. If we look at some trends in the digital world, we can find some answers that can be beneficial for us to apply in this case.

Broadband Internet:
If we focus on internet speed and draw a curve of its increasing within last decade, we can anticipate that in 5 five years most of the world will have access to broadband internet with speed of 10-100 Mb/s at least in western world (which is the primary market in our case). Having broadband everywhere i.e. wireless access will be something ordinary in near future. Everyday, we see new standards will rise and being developed in academic and industrial areas. Standards like Wi-Max, 3G, HIPERMAN, GAN, iBUSRT just to mention a few. Within a few years 4G (4th generation of networks) will be completed and then we will have a universal secure super fast network connectivity standard in all over the world.

Mobile Revolution:
Now, it is one decade that everyone is looking for mobile booming but we can say after emerging iPhone, this booming time is near. Most of mobile phones that are produced now are stronger than a 1980’s computer. Growing the market for the smartphones is around 30% annually and it is predicted that smartphones will own 30% market share of the whole mobile market until 2011. Your mobile phone will not be just a device to make calls; it is your gateway to whole the world. Gaming industry is focusing now on developing games just for mobile platforms; new applications are emerging everyday for every kind of services on iPhone platform, any kind of location-based services are being developed day by day; spreading 3G (3rd generation) mobile; new mobile handsets that ares a music player more than being a phone. Knowing this situation, it is better to forget any kind of disk (CD, DVD, Blu-ray) and finding new thing that suits the needs of the new digital world.

Social Media:
Post-modern human is searching his identity within his peers. Being very busy with your daily tasks, no time to see your friends; this causes you embracing your laptop as a friend even when you are at home after work. Emerging and spreading social networking websites like MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, etc. is just some example of next generation behavior in virtual world. Concept of “Second Life” which is a very hot area of research in social networking is one of the signs to see the future of human being living in a virtual world.

Open Source Movement:
Now, it is the open source era. Everything is going to be open source, from media to software application, from academic researches to industrial researches, from political debates to military information. Everything is and should be free on the internet. It is one of the consequences of democracy and thinking democratically. The open source world is the utopia that human being has had looking for it since two thousands years ago. Living in such a world, no one expects that one industry want to restrict itself from being accessible. If any entity in this world wants to restrict itself, it will be condemned dooming.

Future of Music Industry?
Knowing these trends, proves that if music industry wants to be in line with the world, they should change their way of thinking. They should consider their long-term profit and ignore declining short-term revenues. Being always online, at home, at office, at street, at vacation, at beach, … no need to own a music. You just want to listen to it. If it is available for you whenever you want it, then no need to buy CDs, or downloading it (based on a lecture by Spotify representative). In my point of view (based on a lecture by Nordic Warner Bros. CEO) the era of any kind of disks is passed, the industry should think of new kind of sharing concept in music world. Even no need to buy a digital music online. If you could buy the rights for listening music online, then you will not download any music. No need to save a huge amount of data on your hard disk which is unsecure to damages. The musics are saved in powerful servers somewhere in the world and you just listen to whatever you want just by a little amount of subscription fee.

Another big trend in computer world is going back to 40 years ago. The next generation of computers will not be most powerful entities in the computer world, they will be just some interface devices that provide you whatever service you want by connecting to powerful servers that exist around the world. Hence, next generation computers do not have big hard disks or powerful CPUs, they are very simple mobile devices that offer you whatever you want. UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) and next generation Nano-tech based Nokia phones are just some examples to mention.
The bottom line is the music will be free within 5-8 years from now on. The business model will be based mainly on ad-funded contents; and user-funded little subscription fee. This means that no one owns a music track, just rights to listen to it because there is no need to own a music track. Everything will be online and based on mobile platforms and you can easily share your music with your friends but not for downloading; just as a recommendation for listening. Most of your friends have their own subscription (in a universal server like iTunes), so they will be able to listen to your recommended song just by clicking on your sent link.

Essay 3 - The future of music

The world has come to the digital technology and internet era where every house has a computer and accessibility to the internet. In ten years, with support of evolutionary technologies, the world will be even more connected and the high-speed internet will be accessible everywhere. The music industry, it has also come to the digital era where music is available in digital format and compatible with a variety of media platforms. New generation audiences have transformed the way of listening to music from typical media players, such as cassette and CD players, into a digital media platform as a computer. Nowadays, the internet has impacted the music industry in all stages. There is a big discussing issue on file sharing activity that has been a major threat to the industry especially to the record companies. The record sales have dropped in recent years, claimed by critics as an effect of the file sharing over the social media network. If it is true that the file sharing hurts record sales, then albums that are more heavily downloaded should experience lower sales than comparable albums that are less downloaded. However, Stephen J. D. and Felix O.( Freakonimics: The Hidden Side of Everything, The New York Times ) found that downloads had little effect on album sales. So what factors really influence the sales trend? One explanation can be the competition of recorded music against other entertainment products that consumers are spending on. Another factor to consider is the rise of paid digital downloads service such as iTunes. With traditional recorded package as CDs, audiences are forced to buy the whole album which they may not be willing to. Since everything is now moving to computer compatibility and resources can be accessed easier on the internet, people are moving to new ways of acquiring music.
When it comes to the future of musicians, there are many young individual artists presenting their talents, producing and selling their own records, without being supported by a record company. Many of these “indi” artists use the social media to advertise themselves and activities such as concerts that they are holding. This has lowered the important role of the record companies. So what the record companies might head for the future could be to support these talents, offer and help develop it whether with their image, production process, technology, or even money. Apart from this, the record companies will continue selling CDs because, even though the digital downloads are growing quite a lot ( at 35% ), they are not growing fast enough to compensate for the CDs and the P2P service. In the near future, the CDs will not be seen as a packaged good, from both consumer and producer point of view, but rather a link, memory, and relationship between the consumers and their experience with the artists and their music.

Essay 3 - Todo list for the future of music

The music downloading in China might be the most critical issue for the internet. When I study on this issue, it’s kind of paradox. Generally, I support the music downing, and I think finding a new way of music legal downing in China should be set up in ten years. While the bottom line should be, first, it’s ridiculous and useless to blame the consumer; second, all the information should be accessible to all the people, including music.
The most successful digital music store - iTunes store became the largest music store of the world this year. But in my country, there is no market for iTunes store. The reasons should be the price, accessibility, flexibility and the resources. Usually it costs 9 kr for single, 90 kr for the whole album. While in my city, the whole album CD cost around 20 kr when you go to Wal-Mart. Even the price like this, many people consider the price is not attractive enough. So I think the first step to set up the future legal downloading service, the price should be low enough. Scale economy should be considered especially in China, and other Asia countries. And also Free might be a powerful price strategy for the future music industry. Advertisement, peripheral products and concerts are the profitable markets. Frankly speaking, I think the music industry in the past was profitable too much.
Accessibility and flexibility are the next step for the future music. Spotify did a good job in this part, it’s much more flexible to listen to the music on the server without downloading. And also that might be the reason iTunes is not so popular in China. iTunes is very good to connect with iPod, but in China iPod is not so popular as the other countries. There are tons of different kinds Mp3 players, it’s not corporate well with iTunes store. And also I think the mobile phone would become the main role as music player. With the 3G network becoming more popular and cheap enough to use, I think the directly streaming by 3G network might be the transfer way for the future music. The time consumption and storage space cost will be removed. You only need to pick the play list which you like is enough to play the music.
The resources are the final issue of my essay. I consider iTunes store have already hold a huge resources of digital music. But for me, the quantity of Chinese music is basically nothing. This is the common problem for music stores compare with P2P downloading services. They have much more resources than the legal services. Obviously, consumer will go to P2P downloading instead of legal music stores. So in the future, it’s necessary to provide larger resources than P2P, because you hold the original resources.

Essay 3 - An open letter to music.

Dear Music,
it's a long time we are together, that you are along my side. We started with the audio cassettes and the walk man: how many hours did I record from radio or from other audio cassettes? And no companies has never said anything about downloading and royalties. Now I listen to you with mp3 readers or via the cellphone, but I carry on choosing music just talking with friends or reading music magazines or listening to the radio. Even now that I'm so far away I regularly listen to my favourite radio show. We have had many nice times: how many live shows, showcase, concerts did you give me the opportunity to be in?

Now around you things are changing. It's a long time things are changing, maybe they've never stopped changing. I watch a lot of video and listen to online music with youtube or deezer.

And now I'm wondering about the future. I can always listen to a nice album without doing some other stuff (working or reading...), but I see always less people doing that, just if music is something to fill the silence or to cover the noise. This means music is becoming less art and more entertainment? I hope no, but I'm not so sure: just take a newspapers and see that famous singers are just regarded as celebrities and not as artists.

Music will be sold on line more than what is actually done: you take just what you want from an album. Maybe this will take you back to the past, when a vinyl contained just few songs, but now with no artworks attached. Just the song. This is a bit sad, because I was used to long album and not to pass from a song to another.

There is another way too, the one that indie groups are taking ahead and that Radiohead have taken too. Give music for free. Just use the web to advertising and giving, or better sharing, their own creations. Anybody can decide to go to the showcase and buy there the album, without passing by any major or record label, if they have liked what they have downloaded.

Other famous bands, like Nine Inch Nails too, have taken this way, because they have simply thought that, since a lot of people simply download music without paying, is better to give it for free and if someone wants to pay, he can do it with a credit card. Of course they sell an old fashioned vynil for extra money: just for fan. A lot of gropus before Radiohead and NIN have been doing it from a long time: give their music for free using the web and then sell their records during the concerts. That's the first time that the big ones do this, and this is just because the web has changed our habits. Now this way (selling musing through internet) it's easier and doesn't take to pass through major. Are we fans loosing something? Maybe a great producer, or a good engineer sound, but has a band that starts from scratch these? I don't think so. If they deserve they will get them, or they'll simply manage to do without them. And the major? Oh of course they won't disappear; they exist even if they, according to the long tail principle, have under contract less bands than how much the independent groups are. Majors will simply sell music, they will have their stars that make people buy records. They will even sell concerts to youtube, so that anyone can see it on streaming, without moving from home. A bit sad too, for the music groups too.

For me, if I save money because I pay less than befor an album or a song, I think I will soon spend it to go outside to a concert or a live show. As I state before you are, like cinema, a social experience too, something to share with other people, and not only something useful to make money.

Sincerely yours,
Giuliano

Essay three-The future of music

The music industry as we know it today has for a long time been on a downward slope. They have been in denial about the power of Social Media, that it is not something that can be crushed like a bug. No threat or any kind of legal act can or will stop how the spread of music within the social media is developing.
When thinking about the future so will probably still illegal “free” downloading occur, but not in the same wide extent as today. The youth will continue to be youth and therefore continue to download illegally. The change will happen more with the adult. They will use the subscription models of e.g. Spotify, where they pay a monthly fee for unlimited access of music through streaming. Membership in these streaming sites will give the users more value than just getting legal music to your music player. The users can there enjoy bonuses as discounts on concert tickets or preference booking and other kinds of value adding merchandises. The music industry will have shifted from the model of industrial network economy towards a complete focus on distributing music and services on the different Social Medias. By this is it not meant that they will stop producing CD´s but it will not be their source of revenue.
The decrease of the megastar through powerful record companies will not decrease significantly over the years. This since when the music industry changed their focus towards the Social Medias so changed also where their money were to be pumped into to merchandise their “products”. The trend today of the record companies to have fewer artists will continue. The reason for this is that the smaller artists will not, even as we have started to see today, need the record companies to get a fan base. They can promote their own music and products and arrange and sell tickets to their concerts through these Social Medias. Most of these will due to the limitation of promotion money continue to be small artists.
The money and revenue of the music industry of the future will not come from as they try today, from selling CD´s, but through value adding activities. These can be the traditional concert, fees from subscription bases sites and other products where their artist is used, such as Sing Star for videogame consoles.
At the end I think that the change will be towards access. Today am I feeling the tendency by the music industry to close their artists to the paid concert ticket or CD buyer. In ten years time will the users through these subscription sites be able to access more things or value adding aspects about the artists on these sites. The user will not be limited to the one artist they purchase a CD from but from all artists on that site.

Essay 2-Quality comparison of traditional/mass media with social media

Throughout the years have the validity of the information found on the Internet been under discussion. Mostly have the information been discussed in the negative term. E.g. Referencing to information on Internet in a report has been regarded as a un-trustful source. The question is now if these preconceptions soon can begin to alter? And are the world and we ready for this? My answer for this is perhaps (or as in Swedish ”Nja”).
What measures quality? Is it by what one person with a higher authority (e.g. Professor) has written in a published book or is it by what someone has written on Slashdot with a high quality score? This question cannot, and will not, I answer but what I can say is that they both have their pos and cons.

One negative aspect with social media is that we cannot in all cases know that the person writing something actually is who he says he is. A person with authority is known to be more trusted than a person with lesser authority. By stating that someone in authority (e.g. Professor, moderator, well esteemed user) writes a statement, theory or an idea will be a powerful way of influencing people in making it more believable. Also in these cases when people on e.g. Slashdot starts to write positive comments to a text will result in that social confirmation will be activated within us to agree with something that we are uncertain of. This effect will be even greater if someone in authority also writes the comments.
Even though that the same influencing power will affect us when reading a book or a printed article, we can with more assurance know that the author is who he says he is. We can probably also on the supposition that the book has been revised by other knowledgeable people.
On the contrary, the same arguments can be used to assure the validity of what is written on Slashdot’s homepage. If the user comments in majority are positive or negative will be a good way of getting an idea if something is to be considered true or false.
In the end, we will have to use our own good judgment when assessing if something written on Internet is to be believed or not. But since we as humans are so easily influenced by other so will this never be easy, whether it is published on Internet or in a book.

Essay 2 - The quality of social media

Social media has been used in many areas and for different purposes. It can be mentioned as major source of information contributed by individuals, over an interactive platform, or a tool that extends the limitation and widens the boundary of traditional media. The social media alters the way internet users acquire information. The media enables user generated content function which allows passive readers to be interactive users. When it comes to the quality of the social media compared with traditional/ mass media, it is claimed to have less credibility and accuracy in term of content. Since the content can be published freely and is hardly controlled on many sites, and the fact that a lot of contents are written based on the authors’ attitude and idea. However, a number of content producers and marketers have invested in and spent much time on this type media. It can be found in some markets that the seeking behavior through the social media is dominating over the traditional media. Giving the music industry as an example, many music companies have employed a forum for discussion about music, artists, etc. If the task of defining high-quality content on websites based on user contributions, an investigated result can then be interpreted in two ways. First, the topic brought up to a discussion can produce high quality content since it shows a presentation of variety of ideas and attitudes toward such topic. On the other hand, the discussion might contain a load of crap and bias and end up in no final solution and agreement.
In my opinion, the quality of social media versus traditional/ mass media is hard to be clearly defined. What is the standard for saying that such content is of high or low quality? The content can be seen as high quality if it is relevant to the information a user is seeking for, in contrast, the same content can be crap for other users. In term of accreditation, the mass media seem to be more classified in content and credibility of authors.

Essay 2 - The content quality

Social media technology allows everyone to develop and upload on the web his own content, so the total amount is so big that the first thing to do should be classify, to put a little order in all that stuff. The best part can be done using a folksonomy, wich is "is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. Folksonomy describes the bottom-up classification systems that emerge from social tagging. In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is generated not only by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content." (wikipedia). So this shows that one easy way to describe the contents that are on the web is to leave all in the hands of the consumers, that are those who will enjoy these contents. Is this sure? We can say yes, if the people that collaborate in tagging are in a great number, so that useless or wrong tags haven't a heavy weight and don't affect the classification work. This classifing work must be done with a lot of different people so that all different points of view can be considered; indeed any content on the web can be visited by different people, different by a lot of feature (sex, culture, provenance...). By sure some web sites gives different roles in tagging and judging other people's work. This means that the users are reassured that if a content is high rated, this means that it's an high quality content. Different roles can emerge also in little communities such forum, where every user posts comment and, since the community is small, anybody knows how relevant it is.

Now we can ask why classify content? Just rating isn't enough? The answer is no, because another important thing is finding out what a user is really looking, so if we talk about social media quality, we cannot just consider the quality of the content (a nice shot, great video or a working solution for a problem) but also if it's linked with what we were looking for. This means that for a well described request (e.g. a query on google), we expect a correct answer to be shown as the first answer; this can be done with all the work described above.

Of course classifing isn't enough: this is a new and totally different scenario, where anybody can do information with his own content. There's no more only the traditional information system (TV, radio or newspapers), there's internet too, and the credibility has grown up immediately, because people trust what other people post on the web, even more than old information system, ad shown in the image below (taken here)

even if noone really assures about the content, except other contents and this is a chain where any link is based on the link before; are we sure that there aren't any weak links? That's why web sites such wikipedia uses references and external links. This is a reason why great company preferes going into the web and post by themselves their content, instead of leaving this job to user: they just want to be sure about the contens posted. To have a glance just go to youtube and check some video clip: a lot of them are posted by record company. This guarantees quality (I'm really seeing the video I was looking for) but cannot spread out to all the web of course and, in a certain way, it's better not to be in that situation, because the power of internet is to give voice to everyone; voice to answer to uncorrect and low level contents too.

Essay 2- Social Media Quality

The quality problem is one of the critical issues in new social media. As I pointed out in my previous post, there are several issues to discuss in this area. It could be involved to criminal issues, terrorism, abusing people’s authority or deceiving them. On the other hand, it can destroy and change the taste of people about what the good quality is. I mean it can change the whole concept of what the quality means. Just imagine that most of the mass-media corporations become bankrupt gradually because of losing their customers steadily; and hence we have thousands or millions of information sources around us which are user-generated data. Of course, we think that we have chosen the best of them but are they really the best ones?

We should point out to the inevitable positive consequences of new social media as well. In my point of view, new social media has helped people to express themselves and their beliefs freely without any supervising, censorship, social consideration and so on. It is helping people who are struggling for having democracy in order to decrease the power of governments in suppressing the freedom of speech. But is there any reliable filter in order to prevent ourselves from being deceived or misled by the biased content that we think is true.

There are two ways on how to observe the quality of this new media nowadays. One way is by employed staffs and another one is by users themselves like Google and Slashdot. It still works but it has some shortcomings as well. The employed staffs have no enough time to investigate all the produced materials especially when the number of produt issues is increasing due to the shift of internet users as new generations –so called internet generation- are getting older and therefore the number of material producers will be excessively large.

On the other hand, in user moderating models if there is a wave of new belief in the society about something but really it is not true or good, then instead of bad comments on a special posting about that issue, we will encounter supportive good comments on that. Psychologically point of view, when you see that large numbers of people agree on something, then you would never disagree to that even if you think reversely. So, in that case there is a prejudice to your way of thinking and reciprocally that belief will be amplified and become accepted in the society as a normative but it is not and there is no means to prevent it even if scientists or elites are against it. Hence, the truth will be lost and no one does realize that.

For me, as I experienced, I usually rely on the news or links that I see on the blogs of the people that I know and I like their points of views or they are socially respected. I think this way of filtering for myself is a way that works for me but it can have bad aspects too; as I narrow my mind gradually to one type of point of view and cannot criticize it with an opposition thinking. By the way, it is considerable that new digital social media works usually like a forum and you can see different comments on a link or news. As you can see even in famous news website like BBC you can put comments on the news, so people can see different views but of course there is always some kind of moderation or censorship in those websites in order to prevent publishing some critical comments.

Another aspect of quality is about entertainment which I pointed out at first, that maybe the user-generated data in long term causes bankruptcy in big media corporations and gradually change the taste of people for the quality of a product. Because amateurs cannot produce good quality clips or movies but you may become accustomed to them but you may lose motivation to watch them gradually because it does not satisfy you; and when there is no big corporation to do it professionally, it can destroy your motivation to media as an entertainment and finally a very good lucrative market will be shut down because there is no customer and also no good producer!!!

Essay 2 - The quality of social media

First part, I describe my personal experience in using social media. Then according to my experience, I discuss about some different parts and comparisons between traditional media and social media. In the end, some conclusions and suggestions will be provided within the core argument of media quality area.

How to access to the valuable information?

“You need a pair of better glasses nowadays.” After the Internet stage, especially after Blog became popular, the information and self media on the internet is explosion. Searching information capability becomes much more important than before. For example, pick out the accurate key words may be more efficiency instead of learn by heart many pages text from literature book. But on the other hand, there is lots of useless information wasting our time.

From my experience, I use several powerful tools and web services to access high quality media. I think these tools refine the media information in a high degree.

Peer production

From the theory of peer production, this might be the most reliable tool to get the high quality media; however, it must base on a large quantity numbers of “peer”. On the other words, it needs to have enough vote or comment to differentiate one media to the others.

It’s well known that PageRank is the essential algorithm of Google. In social media field, compare with that, I use PostRank as reference in my Google Reader. This Firefox plug-in could give priorities for social media information, especially Blogs. I also use Digg.com and Xianguo.com (which is a web service combine Google Reader and Digg.com function together.) to check the most popular or most rated blogs. These peer-based recommendations usually provide me a filter to get better media message.

But I think the weak point of peer production is that it always high votes the popular information, people will follow the trends. So that, some articles, videos or music etc, will become hit, but many niche resources couldn’t be discovered well because there are not so many peers in these fields.

Mentors

This example is also come from Google Reader. I subscribe some people’s shared items, such as,

I consider their share items are high relevant to my interested area. I think this is similar as traditional media. In traditional media, editors play the role as filter to choose and aggregate information. Sometimes use the tradition way to pick out high quality media information is very useful. But it relies on the people or channel you trust, the potential risk is misleading guidance of your opinion.

Social network

The third tool is high involved with your social relationship. As I mentioned in my previous essay, I usually read the shared items in Xiaonei.com (Social network service).

This service is very powerful to get some interesting media. But it also has some problems, such as, there is not clear topic and the number of shared items is also random. Also, when my friends and I have different situation, such as I am studying in Sweden, they are still in China and already work in company. My shared items which I cared about may be boring for them, and vice versa.

These are my solution to deal with social media. Although, there are still some potential weak points, but generally, it’s very useful for refine the quality and access to more valuable information.

Traditional Media vs. Social Media

In traditional media, the amount of resources/information is usually much larger than social media (One to one comparison). But Internet improves the accessibility to media. Also according to the low cost and less limitation in social media, the total information amount is much larger than traditional media.

Considering media quality, traditional media usually has a good quality. They have mature business model to support hiring qualified media providers. And the employees have the professional responsibility to provide media production. The budget of making a program is much higher than social media or self media (bloggers). But in some other fields, social media has the significant advantages, for example, social media may more immediately to report some news, some people are better understanding the situation, the story may come from themselves and in some niche topics, bloggers may have better competence than traditional media company.

The way of communication is also different. Traditional media/Mass media usually push information to the audience. While in social media, audience become more positive to grab the media which they like.

To sum up, the quality of social media depends on the way of refine the huge scale of media resources. With the development of tools and internet services, people would have better opportunity to get the valuable information. But the essential quality of social media must be self-regulate, only social media providers take the responsibility to produce high quality information, social media would provide more value to the world.

Essay 1 - Me and Social Media

I have connected myself to the internet since I first got a computer and the internet running up at home in 2001. Now I use it almost every day as a source of information, entertainment as well as a major communicating channel since I am away from home. Social Media Technologies have influenced my life since I found a small online community in a form of webboard, a technological evolution of the dialup BBS, on a website of my former university. The webboard has been up and running since 2001. I first found some interesting topics and discussions, especially the ones posted by some people I know of. Since then, I have become an active reader. It was not long before I began to reply the threads and turned to be an interactive user. The webboard provides free space for everyone to publish their ideas as well as give comments on others. The topics I chose to participate in were not only the one related to the subjects I was studying but also many discussions about news and general issues, e.g. current events, what was going on inside the university, music, etc. When I was at the university I also used this webboard as a mean to communicate news and event that would be held by a club I have joined. I then started to use internet everyday as to update news, to get in touch with friends on msn, to search for information needed, etc. Later on I registered for a social networking website, Hi5, when I received tons of invitations to join the network in my email. The website is based on web 2.0 concept where users can edit, decorate, and add gargets onto their own profile page. I added many friends who has had an account on Hi5 to my friend list and also sent out invitations to those who have not been registered to the network. The website was fancy and quite innovative at that time so I spent a lot of time decorating my page, exploring my friends’ pictures, leaving my friends comments, etc. I felt the network was very useful to stay in touch with friends especially the ones who live far away since it takes much less time than writing an email and, ofcourse, it is fun to see activities the others have done. However, I found this kind of social network low in degree of privacy since not only your friends can view your profile and the pictures you have published, but also the people in your friends’ friends list and even strangers who randomly search for friends. Everything you publish on the web page is risky that it may be taken and used from others for an unpleasant purpose. Nevertheless, the admin, later on, added a new function to enable an adjustment of degree of privacy so the users can control who can view their profile, either everyone or friends only.
A few years later, I registered for Bebo, another online social network. I use Bebo with the same purpose that I use Hi5 but with different group of friends. I only have a few friends on Bebo so I rarely use it. Similarly, I registered for Facebook when I came to Sweden to join the Master’s program’s group blog, created by the program’s coordinator. What I have found out from looking at different network is that all of them have active users from all segments including demography. However, the popularity of each network varies in different geographical areas. For example, Hi5 is very famous in Thailand while Bebo is heavily used in New Zealand and Australia. Facebook has burst out in the last few years and become top most visited website in many countries worldwide.
In addition, since I’m very interested in photography, I also have my blog on Multiply.com where I have the photos taken by myself uploaded on my site. Multiply differs from the general social network websites as Hi5 and Facebook in the sense that most of the users are amateurs or experienced photographers who want to share photos as well as techniques used in shooting pictures and editing process. From this community I meet new people who share the same interest and learn from their experience and skill. Also, some people sometimes invent an event such as a photo trip to go out and take photos together, some even make money from organizing a trip for photo lesson and invite the people to join. I am very satisfied with this network and enjoy it a lot. In my opinion, this type of social network is growing and maybe more popular in the future since it serves users’ specific needs.

Essay 1

Social Media: threat or opportunity?

By Homayoun Derakhshan

Network-based media that depends on user generated data is a paramount important issue these days. Everyone is using some kind of social media and communicate with other people in a sense that maybe he doesn’t even know. Instant messaging, Facebooking, blogging, or etc, are just some examples of using social media everyday in our life.

For me, social media usage is rather normal, not too much or too low. However, I always want to do it more like everyday blogging, enjoying flickr, or del.icio but unfortunately I cannot do that due to unknown problems which cause always lack of time for me to do so.

I use social media mainly as a mean to communicate with my friends through social network websites and sometimes instant messaging. Using social networks is a good tool to be in touch with your peers around the world with just a click, seeing what they do, their new photos, relationships, and how they are. Sometimes it may help you to improve your career or even find a better job just by chance. When “information is power” nowadays, so being in a networked place is potentially of vital importance for you to have an easier life.

Moreover, I utilize forums when I am looking for something in the internet that is hard to find related information. When you have problem with a device e.g. your mobile phone and you can not find your answer in the related websites, then the best place to find your answer is a forum and see how other people like you with the same problem could solve their problem. It is a very useful tool to use but we should be moral in some extent to participate in those forums afterwards if we find a better solution.

In my point of view, social media is getting larger and improved day by day and is a great opportunity for the future. There are a lot of ideas if we think deeply in order to utilize user generated data in a new way to make a new concept in this area. Just imagine that you could be the idea inventor of Skype or Facebook. There are a lot of opportunities out there for us to think about and develop. People want to express themselves and be in a networked situation psychologically because human is a social creature. People want to be famous and well-respected among their acquaintances or even unknown people and they try to express themselves in a way to fulfill this feeling. For us as professionals in this area, it is a good business opportunity to find new ideas and participate in improving this area and also making a good lucrative business out of it.

Every opportunity has its own threats as well. In the contrary of great advantages of social media technologies, there are some disadvantages which are considerable. The main differences of traditional mass media and social-online media is that everyone with every kind of thinking can create whatever he wants without any editorial observation. However, it is an improvement towards getting rid of censorship but it can be dangerous in some aspects like making propagandas to mislead people in a way that you want and bias their thoughts toward a fake issue.

Another threat can be bankruptcy of traditional media because of losing their customer in long-term. Since the user generated data doesn’t have the high quality and it is amateur-based, it doesn’t have the required quality to replace the previous mass media. Therefore, it may affect itself in long-run and makes people lose their interest in entertaining media as a whole which results in destroying a very lucrative business.

Essay 1 - Social media and me

What is social media? To answer that question I would like to quote an already established social media and their answer about what it is: “Social media are primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings” (Wikipedia).

How do I use it and what does it mean to me? The social media’s of internet is used every day of my life. I think that the usage of social media are so intertwined in my normal life, and to that degree, that I probably do not nearly even half of the times even think about that I am actually using one. They are used from small things such as getting information about a product from a forum and talking to people over Skype to more clear social media’s, such as Facebook.

Since most of my family members do not live in Stockholm or in Sweden, the use of social media has become increasingly important over the years. Reasons for this might be money and time. To travel to someone costs both time and money. And a phone call can get pretty expensive when calling someone abroad. Social media of internet deals with both of these issues, it is free and it saves time. Skype makes it possible to talk to someone wherever they are for free. To give an update about what is happening in our life is easily done now today through Facebook, MySpace and blogs.

The way that school work and assignments is done has also changed. The need of going to a library to find information about a topic has diminished throughout the years. Today most book, articles and reports can be found on internet, legal or illegal. The use of forums, blogs and Wikipedia has changed the way answers of questions are sought. But still, reliability of the information found on internet is an issue. It is still not as reliable as information found in a book.

What social media mean to me is possibilities to stay in contact with people and get information whenever I can and want to. It means also to me one word and that is: effectivity. It makes it possible for me to do a lot more in much lesser time. In a few minutes you can get updates and give an update to friends and family all over the world. When searching for a product that will satisfy your demands and wishes you can within a few mouse clicks find information about other people’s user experiences with that product.

The danger of these social media´s is that the more we use it, the more other people (in some cases unwanted people) will know about us. But the positive is greater than the negative and it is hard to imagine how to live an effective life without these communications.

Essay 1 - My own social media

Social media are something that have partially changed my approach to internet, most of all because I started to be not only a reader of the contents that are on the web, but I started interacting and, in a sort of way, making contents.

When I surfed the web for the first time I was just looking at things other people wrote or did and now I’m putting my own works, that can be various: code programming, advices, photos... I regularly check flickr.com for new interesting photos, or just to see if my friends have made some new cool shot. Moreover I often use newsgroups to share opinions, ideas and advices about software programs and programming troubles, so expecially informatical-oriented. And, of course, I do an intensive use of tools for online communication. I started with the old IRC chat, wich let me and my friend keeping in touch, even if we were far away, without using telephone (saving money :) ) and sharing, at the same time, the communication with other people. We after started using softwares as skype or messenger, to empower our communication, and for example now I’m kilometres far away from home, but I sort of feel near my family and my friends using such tools. They can be powerful too for exchanging file we are working on for some university project.

Moreover I read a lot of blogs, forums and websites about general thematics, all concerning my interests, at the top of whom there is sport. I read the forums of my favourite soccer team (Frosinone Calcio, the link) and other teams blog, and I regularly keep in touch with my rugby team mates, both by mail and a guestbook (Volsci Rugby Sora). What really makes me crazy is youtube.com: I see a lot of video everyday of sports, expecially the highlights of sunday matches, or music video and discuss them with other people.

Two main things have never convinced me about social media, the first one is related to social networks like badoo, where it’s all like a showcase and users do not create any sort of contents, no interesting information is given, at least according to me, since I don’t see any develop of interests.

The other thing that always frighten me is about privacy, expecially in web site like facebook: I’m not just talking about personal data (like photo, age, work) that can be seen everywhere, but the use that marketing company can do with our personal data, this is why I don’t use other site like delicious or tagged; I mean: it’s nice receiving information linked to our profile, categorize everything, but I sort of feel observed and controlled... And let’s hope it’s just marketing! However I keep using them “with care”: with other friends, we have created a group so that we pendulars, that go everyday from our houses to the work places or the university, can keep in touch, travel together, express opinions about train, tell stories, all done through ning.com. If you’re interested the group is here.

So the most important thing in social network, the thing I really like, is that distances can be tore down and it’s not only a matter of physical distances, but a real leveling, so that we can talk each other informally, and not thinking about the fact that someone is our boss ora an employee. And everyone can contribute to develop the knowledge of a community just sharing his own, which is one of the first things that purpose of www.

Social Media Around Me

The relationship between me and social media technology is kind of complicated, and sometimes it’s contradictory.

I used to be a heavy user of social media services. At that time, I followed the trends of all kinds of web2.0 website, social network services, blogs and microblogs, etc. I read “Mashable” and “Read/write Web”, etc, to find out some new social media web services. Because I feel it’s interesting and also I would like to study in this field. This kind of touching as much new web services as possible lasted for half a year until the end of 2007. Then I was so tired of using social media services. I felt it cost too much time to try those web services. And it’s not a good way to discover or study new media. I don’t think these fuzzy and tricky website provide me much value and knowledge. So I stop trying these new services, but focus on some services which I really enjoy.

Now, I use Facebook, LinkedIn to keep in touch with friends in Europe. For my friends in China, I use Xiaonei.com, Douban.com to maintain and expansion circle. These four social network systems are the main services which I used frequently. However, according to my using habit and relationship intensity, I spend much more time on Xiaonei.com and Douban.com rather than Facebook. Xiaonei.com is the largest social network system in China (active users are more than 22 million), focusing on university students. Most of my classmates and friends are in this service. Usually, I check this website every day. It has the same function as Facebook, but the open API part is just launch which is not as mature as Facebook. One of the most important functions for me is “Sharing”. We usually share interesting, useful or important websites, pictures and videos, etc with our friends. I think the users in China do more sharing information than the other parts. (While the weak point might be there are less original articles, photos or videos created by ourselves.) The other web service, Douban.com, is more culture and art based. There are many independent artists and designers are using this website. I read the reviews of books, films and music. Also I publish some comments or discuss some topic which in culture and art’s field. For LinkedIn, I use this service just for several months. As a student, I don’t have many contacts on LinkedIn. But now this is my final year of university study, so I would like to create the circle on the professional social network. I hope it would be helpful to find some opportunity when I graduate.

After discussion about SNS, blog is another important social media technology. I have written blogs for about 2 years. I use several different platforms, change several ideas and topics of my blog. I even tried to use “tumblr” for a while. This blog platform is simple than normal blog, but rich than microblog. But now, I focus on my new blog “shuguo.org” which I would like to share some ideas in media field, and record my study life in Stockholm. I use WordPress as the platform. There are lots of themes and plug-ins made by third party. I think this kind of collaborate working is also one kind of social media technology. Besides my main blog, I use twitter as my microblog service. When I have some short idea or some interesting sentence I usually publish them on twitter.

I like photography very much, so Flickr and Picasa give me the opportunity sharing and store photos online. But unfortunately, there are not so many people visit my albums, on other words, it seems not so “social”. While at least, my friends and family often watching my photos.

To aggregate my social media services, I use FriendFeed to realize. My friends when checking my FriendFeed could get my new update in different web service; also I can receive my friends’ news. I can also use this to share website which I am reading, so I don’t use Delicious that often any more.

At last but not least, Google, I use many Google services. More and more become or add social media technology in the feature. Such as, Google reader, now we can share articles with friends, and add comments etc. Blogger and orkut are consider as typical social media. I think Groups and Docs are also one kind of social media technology. Even Google Calendar, provide social function.

To sum up, I think social media technology is not one kind of service anymore. I think it will be a compulsory feature existed in most services in the future.