Stickiness and Social Class

I found Boyd’s essays somewhat disheartening. Could social class really play a role in online interaction? I was enlightened by Boyd’s explanation of the history of FB and MS, explaining how FB originated as a college only site, which itself may imply social class, but it seems that the driving force behind this are the users themselves. People tend to organize themselves into groups and in this case FB and MS seem to be large organizations of generalized perception of class. Is it this social desire to align one’s self with a group or caste that makes social networking sites so “sticky”? Boyd explains that hegemonic kids (good kids) gravitate to FB while the social misfits prefer MS. Boyd indicates that this preference becomes and identity and this need for identity is likely a contributor to the stickiness of the sites. The “bling” design of MS appeals to the “social alternatives” and the more conservative FB appearance helps define the cultural impulses of the more socially conservative. Of course all of this is vast generalization. My opinion is that the stickiness of the sites is due to designers being keenly tuned into their target audience's preferences. Indeed Facebook was designed and created by a college student. As so much of our lives take place online it only makes sense that socializing online is a natural evolution of our online lives.

Ning

The idea of creating one’s own social network doesn’t have to reside within existing social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace. Ning offers the advantage of customization, allowing one to provide unique identifying characteristics—such as company logos, team mascots or other unique identifiers. Of course what you lose in this process is a built in audience. The immense popularity of FB or MS means users are already familiar with the interface and likely are already logging in to their profiles to update their status or respond to messages.

But would it be advantageous for a company to use Ning to coordinate employees or project teams? I believe it would, much the same way a wiki would. A specialized social network allows for instant udating of status of personnel or project goals. Speaking from personal experience I believe it would be helpful in time-critical situations and also helps build a rapport amongst people working in different departments on a particular project. In a digital library situation it might be helpful for catalogers to know when digital images have been uploaded to a server for cataloging and metadata creation. Programmers might then need to access the images to determine programming needs for dissemination. So the bottom line might be that creating custom social networks is best for small, personalized or goal oriented tasks but a personalized network for the sake of having a personalized network may be swimming upstream, especially with the popularity and ease of use of existing social software networks.

Upload this

Like Steve, I keep Facebook pretty simple. Mainly I use it to keep track of family and friends, so I don't spend a lot of time comparing movie tastes or propagandizing issues or personal likes or dislikes. I mean everyone knows U2 is the greatest band ever and there's really nothing to discuss. Right?

So here's a very brief and simple explanation of how to upload a profile picture to your Facebook account.

Scils favorites

In reviewing my classmates' vodcasts I'm struck by how creative and, perhaps more disturbingly, how much of a voyeur I am when it comes to getting a little insight into who my classmates are. Probably because of the online nature of the class we don't really get a chance to interact with each other outside of class.

That said I think there are more than a couple of really fun and interesting videos. This one I liked because I hadn't heard "In the Jungle" in a long time.

Costa Rica

Of course I think the ferret/kitty comparison is a riot.

Kitty/Ferret

Danger--boring screencast!

This is an attempt to explain the difference between resampling and resizing when dealing with digital images. It's something I understand but have trouble explaining--I can't tell you how many takes this took and even then this is pretty hamfisted.

roelscrcast

Flickr Me Timbers

So I’ve reviewed the SCILS images and what I’ve found is that anyone who is working full time, has a family AND is trying to earn their MLIS should be institutionalized. Really fun photos though. Amazing, but everyone has access to a digital camera, even if it’s just a camera phone. Remember when buying a decent digital camera would cost a month’s salary? Quick show of hands—who still uses their film camera? Who still has a film camera?

Where would we be without our caffeine and our laptops? I see some folks using their desktop computers but when I began this program (online) I went out and bought a laptop specifically so I could leave the house, head to my local coffee house (It’s a Grind) and ogle the cute barista—I mean do my homework.

It looks like some pets are also in the SCILS program. Do they also have to pay computer lab fees or is that just a “per household” thing?

Educational vids vs. Entertainment vids

So in one corner is the knockout artist Entertainment video. Packs a powerful punch and has a strong following of loyal fans. In the other corner is Educational video, equally loyal group of fans but uses much more finesse.

Personally I believe there’s room for both in the current online environment. Certainly the envelope is being pushed with educational video. The grassroots movement of some universities to make lectures available online may have a sort of Gutenberg effect. As informative material is made more easily available to the masses so will grow the world’s collective online intelligence. Perhaps the biggest challenge, as indicated in the Horizon report, is the need to provide educational video on how to provide good educational videos. And of course organizing the content will be key—maybe use librarians or something.

Equally booming is the online entertainment video industry. Currently many high-end companies (Sony online entertainment) are producing made-for-the-web videos and gaming environments with more than modest success. Entertainment videos for the web are a bit of a conundrum though. Personally I much prefer the comfort of my recliner and my modestly sized HD television than being entertained by a video of poor quality broadcast on a small screen with bad sound. Dare I say that educational videos are more suited to the online environment than entertainment videos?

For your enjoyment

My attempt at entertaining you. What a chore this was. I collected and edited the images then found out that my completely updated Windows XP machine has a bad version of Windows Movie Maker. The application crashed immediately on opening. I happened to be traveling at the time and had to borrow another laptop (Vista) to create the movie. I copied the projects to my flash drive and when I got back to NJ I was able to open WMM on a different XP machine, but it didn't like the Vista generated projects I had created.

So after much profanity and with spiking blood pressure I redid the movies in iMovie. Death to Microsoft.

Click To Play

Educational vid

My attempt at an educational video...

What I'm trying to (briefly) show is how library collections make it online. Of course this is very simplified, but you get the idea.

Anderson and Libraries

Libraries are not for-profit institutions. Annual budgets, whether for a public library or an academic one, are designed to be renewed annually, not as seed money to foster self sustenance. Maybe more simply put, libraries are black holes for money. But this isn’t a bad thing. Like any public service, a library operates for the convenience and as a service to its clientele. Because of this relative freedom to act without the idea of turning a profit libraries are in a very good position to exploit the long tail of their collections. Of course there are logistical problems with maintaining analog collections (space, staffing) it behooves a library to digitize its collections to mitigate the concerns of maintaining analog collections.

So maybe the question becomes how a library will serve its customers in the future. Undoubtedly libraries are becoming and will continue to become both digital and brick and mortar entities. Should a library digitize the long tail of its collections or should a library digitize the short head, as Anderson calls it, and make room to accommodate long-tail materials?

Anderson has simple rules for a thriving long tail industry. Make everything available and make it findable. Believe it or not I think libraries have somewhat accidentally worked their way into an advantageous situation. Libraries have built-in cataloging systems to make everything findable and for at least the last 15 years have been moving toward digitizing collections. What’s interesting is how Anderson relates the cultural bias of the Dewey Decimal System. This will be a handicap to libraries that by digitizing their collections are suddenly becoming world entities. No longer is Smalltown Public Library just serving the needs of its community but may find their digital collections browsed and researched by students all over the world.

To Blog or to Podcast

While there are many cool aspects of podcasting it turns out it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. Find a podcast hosting site, upload, then blog and paste in code…it seems like podcasting is for the very dedicated. Or maybe the very vain. Or maybe a professional information disseminator. While podcasting is a very cool experience I found myself recording and re-recording my stuff and still I don’t think it’s perfect. And by now it’s cliché, but I’m thoroughly disoriented by the sound of my own voice.

Whereas with blogging, there’s still a bit of anonymity. Admit it folks, you were wondering what your classmates sounded like so you’ve been listening to their stories, making value judgments based on how articulate they are, the tenor of their voice, their elocution. Or was that just me? Sorry, my bad. Blogging provides one less level of exposure. At least when I blog folks can only say to themselves “that was total crap.” But If I podcast folks would have the option to add “and he sounds like a dork.”

From a practicality standpoint, I think blogging is fast, easy and more manageable. If you spot an error in your blog it can quickly be corrected but if you want to edit a podcast the entire podcast must be recorded. I also think blogging is more of an amateur arena. You don’t have to be a professional writer to post interesting ideas or stories but those interesting ideas or stories may be mitigated or even disregarded because of the annoying nervous giggle you develop when you speak into a microphone. At this point I think I’ll leave the podcasting to the professional voices out there.

E.A. Poe, Portishead and Roel

So rather than bore anyone with an account of my life I decided to read a stanza from Poe's "The Raven", accompanied by Portishead. I was going for ambience but I think it just sounds like me talking with music on. Anyway, here's a link to the mp3:

http://www.switchpod.com/users/rmscils598f08/munozaudio.mp3

Or just play it here.