Chris’ Corner

The Internet was initially about connecting friends of interest rather than locality.  This gave rise to the instant messengers and chat rooms we all were a fan of during high school.  However, as social networking sites emerged the random connection to people across the globe was lost.  Furthermore,It seems that much of the social buzz on main stream networking sites reiterates the daily happenings.  Chatting with friends through Facebook or Twitter is like watching the day progress in a mirror. 

This interconnection has formalized our online chat and caused myself, along with a growing number of people, to seek something different.  A return to the early day sort of movement.  AIM and Yahoo have all but just about died unless you are using them for special reason.  So I was left with unfulfilled desire until I stumbled upon Omegle.  It is a simple 1:1 chat website. Nothing prevents you from saying anything or revealing personal information should you want to add the friend to your buddy list or Facebook.  Most conversations end within about 10 conversation topics, but the site quickly reconnects you with one of the other roughly 1800 users.  The only draw back is that you could be talking to someone of any age and in any country.

I recently had to renew my contact prescription, and like any previous time get annoyed with “1 or 2, 2 or 3″ jabber the doctor chants.  The technology is obviously available for a machine to look into your eye, determine the necessary correction, and write spit out a prescription.  However, this time saving technology is only used on children below the age of 5.  This situation has caused me to ponder when I see a young tot wearing glasses if they really need them.

The young tots can barely talk and I would assume not comprehend the questions asked by the eye doctor, thus we create a marvelous technological machine to scan their eye balls.  What is missing that is causing the machine’s ability to only be used on tots?  If it is quality of precision let’s spend some time and money and perfect the technology.  On the reverse side of the coin, if the technology isn’t so great why do we continually jeopardized young children’s eyes.

For those of you who have had to bare an eye appointment, you understand the benefits available.  The lenses get to close to identify any change between them yet you are required to find one, is probably the most common complaint.  Imagine the stress reduction you would receive having the machine determine the right lens without asking you 20 times over.  The only negative thought I can conclude is for the machine to work effectively, it would probably require your eyes to be dilated.  This means about 20 minutes added on to the beginning of the appointment, and about an hour of sunglass wear after the appointment.

After listening to all the hype about Twitter, I choose to investigate the micro-blogging phenomenon.  The initial sign up was quick and painless.  It literally took 2 minutes, which was not a shock because there is basically no information collected.  I have no desire at the current time to engulf myself with tweeting, so I have no profile picture or catchy bio line.  In my week of twittery I have posted 4 tweets and have seen 2 distinct error messages cause from Twitter’s backend.  If something does not change Twitter will begin to fade and I will have yet again escaped a social network failure. 

The first message I encountered was “Twitter is over capacity”.  It was a friendly error message and quite commical.  Had I been a massive user of Twitter it would and not understood what really caused the error message, the message would have aided in my user expierence and given Twitter some personality.  However, I received a delight Twitter would not appreciate. Death is near Twitter!

I’m not sure what cause the capacity crunch but I assume it was the infrastructure or users more than the external factors.  After looking into the problem I generated two probable issues: (1)scalability due to Ruby on Rails and (2) mainstream adoption from press and media.  If Twitter cannot increase and manage is capacity I feel that it might reach the same fate as Friendster.

The second message came over the weekend.  While this is not the image I saw, this graphic is more relevant than the current graphic for the same message.  Most businesses run their website on the five nines principle.  Basically this means the website or network has to be up 99.999% of the time.  Twitter does not have this principal in place, yet there does not seem to a big backlash by the users.  My conclusion is that Twitter is used to highlight the daily buzz and not anything important.  Users do not seem to care if the site is reguarlly down for 3 hours at a time.

After trying to digest the conspiracy theory episode presented by Judd Bagley I have come to conclude that 1) social networks are capable of corruption and 2) we can’t let power consume our digital world.

I often turn to wikipedia for information under an array of topics, as do most of my peers.  I never thought that content posted, monitored, and updated by us, the users, could be manipulated by one or two people.  However, Mr. Bagley gave a vivid example, all be it partly biased, of how SlimVirgin was a super admin.  By buddying up with Gary Weiss the content pertaining naked short selling was manipulated and biased.  The story panned out with the topic being locked down, restricted posting privileges for some, and the possibility the corruption expanded to other sites.

I don’t believe that this was a one time event or that it should scare the social networking world.  I do however believe that we can’t let the corruption continue to spread.  Product reviews are one of the growing trends in social advertising, whether it is about an actual product or the seller of the product. The more reviews something has the clearer image you have before making a decision.  This is because the true power of social networking comes from the numbers of users not super admins.

An assault on the Twitter platform has begun. One in no longer confined to only share tweets with their friends.  Instead you can send and receive tweets from household objects.  With the incorporation of custom hardware kits you can connect just about anything to a tweeter feed.  The hardware no only broadcast messages about its current state but can respond based on your responses.  Whether used for laziness (Knowing your clothes are dry) or convenience (Knowing your plant is dehydrated), as described in the Wired blog, the possibilities of tweet feeds might help deliver the future smart home.

The Twitter API has also created another platform for business to connect with users.  There are many sites that claim to be the “rules of Twitter”, yet in actuality there are no rules.  The lack of rules and Twitters micro-blog design alow companies to communicate feeds about purchased products, discounts, new arrivals, etc. as the list is unending.  With stand alone applications Twitter feeds are easy to observe and respond as you no longer have to go the website to monitor your tweets.  These applications activily run while remaining hidden in you taskbar or own your phone.

Marketing management is at wits end with the roles social networking is playing on streamline advertisement.  The company who used to be in control of its product placement, reviews, and promotions is no more.  The consumer has erroded thier control and taken it for their own.  When you start to intertwine thousands of user comments a richer theme arrises.  There are millions of us browsing the web for the next product or one to avoid. Before reviews start flying south about a particular product the company needs to acknowledge this concept and steer it to victory. 

Having grown up in a tight budget household, I learned to shop around and get the best value for my dollar.  Now out on my own with the typical college budget, the need for value in a product has increased.  This increase in need has left me turning to the internet for product reviews and special offers.  With the internet becoming the billboard of tomorrow, I wonder how we will respond to the clutter.

This is the first of many weekly postings for MIS 373: Social Networking.  I’m not exactly sure what we are to blog about, but that information will come clearer within the first few post.

This class is my required MIS elective but I placed it above the other elective options because I see it being the most beneficial.  The world is transitioning to a digital age where current standards and practices are void.  We’ve already noticed several pushes for social networking and I see a robust growth in near future.  One of the biggest interest to me is interactive advertising.  Corporations are struggling to get the attention of consumers by conventional methods.  Many are turning to Facebook and Youtube for ad placement which is generating huge amounts of captial for social networking development.