Check Out Social Networking Sites

Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Hi5, Sconex (R.I.P.), and twitter: all of these are well-known social networking websites. Friendster was the mother of social networking websites.
Founded in 2002, Friendster allowed for members to contact each other, comment on user profiles, private messaging, give details about events and host photos.

In its heyday, Myspace (founded in 2003) was one of the best known social networking websites, allowing people to post pictures, comment on user profiles, private messaging, it even has a blog configured into it and of course it serves as a means for small music artists to be heard.

Hi5, founded in 2003, was popular for those interested in social networking sites outside of the U.S.. It allows users to post photos, comment on user profiles, private messaging and event invitations.

Sconex (no longer in service), could best be described as the Myspace for high school students. It allowed for users to comment on other users profiles, private message, as well as, host photos.

Facebook (founded in 2004), now in its heyday, is the most popular social networking website. It is MySpace's main competitor and allows its users to post photos, comment on user profiles, private messaging and event invitations, give "status updates" (a sort of microblog, allowing users to post what they or doing), create groups, and it even provides thousands of applets (games, e-trade applications and even online dating applications) for use by its members.

Twitter, founded in 2006, allows for users to "follow" other users. By "following" another user, you are notified every time they change their "what's happening" (comparable to Facebook's "status update").

Each of these social networking websites seem to take the best/most popular features from one another and modify it just enough to make it unique to their own site. Personally, I believe Facebook is the best social networking website out there (at least for now). People from all over the globe are joining Facebook, it has more features than I know what to do with and their interface is user-friendly. Myspace is slowly loosing popularity, because of this they are trying to incorporate a lot of the same features that first appeared on Facebook (a bit too late though). As for Twitter, it is increasingly more and more popular, but I just don't care enough about what's happening in strangers lives to be an active "tweeter" reader (which is all Twitter has to offer really). As for Friendster, that was before my time, in terms of the online social networking bandwagon. I had only heard about Friendster after signing up for Myspace and Myspace was far better than any other social networking website at that time. Like Friendster, Hi5 did not appeal to me much, because I was already setup with a Myspace account and there wasn't anything too appealing about it. I should also note, that I had a Sconex account as well. I mainly used Sconex to communicate with people from my high school and it wasn’t until Facebook became very popular* (around 2005-6), did I leave both Myspace and Sconex.

*Popular: a lot of people were on it and it offered features unavailable on other social networking websites.

Blogs vs. Wikis

“Wikis harness the wisdom of crowds, serving as virtual commons where participants can wrestle over ideas and information until something approaching consensus—or the truth—emerges.”

-Gardiner Morse

Wikis are web pages that anyone (who has permission) can create or edit the content quickly (Goodnoe). Wikis differ from blogs, because blogs serve more as an online notebook, or journal, with entries categorized by date and time and usually have only one, or two, moderators (who have to scan the comments and posts for spam, vulgarities, etc…). Wikis allow for anyone to moderate any alterations or comments made to the wiki pages.

Both wikis and blogs serve as a means of collaboration, more so with wikis. Wikis allow for anyone to input their knowledge fast and easily onto a webpage creating an extensive source of information coming from numerous sources. Blogs have the ability to do the same, although, a user cannot modify another user’s entries (no peer editing) on a blog. Wikis, more than blogs, allow for the convergence of many ideas, of net users and data, into one space (a wiki or blog).

Because of a wiki’s simplicity, there are used for a number of things (e.g. for business plans, proposals, group projects and anything that requires collaboration). However, I think it would be interesting to incorporate digital art (jpg, gif, tiff, bmp, etc…) into the world of wikis (most wikis are text-based). Thus, one might create a digital picture (not necessarily a photo), which anyone could add something to. It would be interesting to see a piece of art to which anyone could add their own brush stroke (mouse click is probably a better term).

Old Vs. New

Old Media can best be described as analog media. Analog media is non-digital media such as printed news papers, non-HD television and printed books. We can distinguish Old Media from New Media relatively easily. Anything created/done with a computer is New Media-- CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray, blogs, video games, MP3s, websites, streaming video (youtube.com, Hulu.com and On Demand Cable).

In other words, different types of New Media will often use electronically-stored binary (the language of computers; bits, etc.) to generate whatever it is they output. In most cases, whatever the output is (e.g. Blogs or Websites) can be easily modified or removed later (simple editing). On the other hand, Old Media is much more difficult to edit or modify because of the method it uses to store its data. For example, it captures numerous elements (both good and bad), which it stores for its output. This it may contain elements such as ink smudge on a newsprint or the sound of wind on a vinyl recording.

"They Call Us Pirates: The Subculture Surrounding Pirated Media on the Internet"

This is the topic I have chosen for my research paper:

I will research, as well as, do an analysis of Internet piracy, as a subculture. There are a vast number of people who are part of an Internet piracy network known as "The Scene." "The Scene" has been around since the early 90s and has millions of members worldwide. I will explain the basic foundation of "the scene" (the rules, the hierarchy and social networks), who makes up "the scene" (people: rippers, racers, leechers and site owners) and how it serves as a portal of access to a nearly unlimited amount of pirated media.

What is New Media?

New media describes the arrival of digital media and technologies (as opposed to analog media--News papers and non-HD Television programs) in the latter part of the 20th century. The types of media and technologies include, but are not limited to: websites, video games, CDs, MP3s and DVDs.

The Internet plays a pivotal role in the distribution of the various types of new media. New media can be uploaded, hosted, downloaded, sold, and even promoted over the Internet. Most of the new media available on the Internet has the ability to be regularly updated, as well as, edited. The majority of old media forms did not have such capabilities.

Web logs, more commonly known as, Blogs, are a good example of a new media type that has taken the world by storm. Blogs serve as an open forum for people to voice their ideas, and as Kathy E Gill, author of "How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere?," notes, "Unlike newspapers or television news, blogging is not capital-intensive; there is no centralized registry, no editorial oversight. All a writer needs is access to a computer (free at public libraries). The only cost is time, as some hosting services are free" (Gill). Professional journalists have been stimulated to blog, vis-à-vis, reshaping the news media stories and methods (Gill). It has been suggested that Blogs will become the op-ed pages of the future, to further "feed mainstream print media –what’s new, what’s hot, what’s the buzz” (Gill). Blogs might just be the news sources and op-ed pages of the future, one day eliminating the need for printed news papers.