Social Networking

Technologies can be used for just about anything. They are used as a form of communication, education, entertainment, enhancing businesses,shopping, research, statistics etc etc etc... There is basically nothing that you can't do with today's technology. You don't even need to leave your house anymore! For anything! Social networking sites are a great way to learn new things and meet new people. These sites are beneficial for many reasons. Businesses emphasize how much Facebook and sites similar to it have been the best thing for job recruitment ."Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" explains this in detail throughout the article. "With my Rolodex, I had to call any one of these thousand people and say, 'Hey, Bob. I'm looking for someone that does this, or I'm looking for someone in this industry, or I'm looking for a job, who do you know?'" Steckerl says. "With social networking, I don't need to go to Bob directly to find out who Bob's friends are. Or Bob's friends' friends. So, effectively, I have a thousand contacts that could potentially lead me to 100,000, now I have 8,500 contacts that could potentially lead me to 4.5 million."This is an amazing enhancement in businesses all over the world. People can hire the perfect candidates as well as do complete background checks before even meeting the person and viewing a spruced up resume. Another example of how it is beneficial is seen in an article about India and traffic violators. "The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws. As of Sunday more than 17,000 people had become fans of the page and posted almost 3,000 photographs and dozens of videos". This is a groundbreaking establishment. Crime can be heavily reduced by a website ! 
Despite all these benefits, there is in fact a "dark side" to these technologies in society. The internet has become an increasingly dangerous place. According to an article from iTWire .. "The advice is still to be wary of strangers on the street, especially if they’re offering you candy. But with social interaction now fully available in today’s immersive Web 2.0 environments that are both online meeting space and a new form of ‘virtual reality’, kids are finally learning they need to be as careful and as street smart online as they are off". Teens do use these sites as a means of meeting people and it is a lot easier then it used to be. The internet is a scary place. Your identity is no longer secure and anyone who is interested as to finding out about you is able to within minutes if not seconds. I believe these technologies might ruin us as a society. People have become so fixated on things such as Facebook that we are losing our true sense of self. People are becoming lazier and concerned about what other people are doing and updating their statuses opposed to actually going out and experiencing reality. Economically I feel technology will only heighten businesses and will lead to things we probably can not even fathom.

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Check Out Social Networking Sites

There are many social networking sites on the internet. The specific sites I took the time to visit are Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, and Twitter. My impressions of each individual site vary. I am a user of Facebook but not of the other three. I had once been a user of Myspace but Facebook seemed to take over all of its users. Those two sites are very similar but different. Although Facebook has expanded greatly and you can practically find anyone, there are still privacy regulations and a way to hide things from specific people as well as them not have the knowledge that you viewed them. Myspace has privacy regulations as well but not as much as Facebook. When visiting those two sites I can see that Myspace has become more geared to sharing music and creativity as opposed to Facebook in which people are sharing their ideas and information with each other on a more clean cut professional looking format. I never really got into the whole twitter movement as it really is a means to "follow" people not so much as a means to be creative. The interaction is pretty minimal compared to sites such as Facebook and Myspace. On Facebook people have friends whom they may not necessarily be friends with but the amount of people that follow others are in the charts. Twitter is more widely used to follow celebrities and see what they are up to and their opinions. Friendster is a social network for your average gamer. Its more geared towards a specific topic unlike MySpace, Facebook, and twitter which contains information and opinions about a huge range of topics. It is definitely not as advanced and doesn't seem anywhere near as viral as the other networking sites. The other sites address real issues and real life. Friendster doesn't seem to compare but is a great example of new media, not only do we have video games that can be played on a television but we have games that can be played for free online with people from all over the world.

Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=50&tagfilter=&title=Special%3AContributions&contribs=user&target=Samantharubin&namespace=&tagfilter=&year=&month=-1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Beach,_Queens

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and wikis are different yet similar. Blogs allow people to comment and give their opinions about just about anything. Pretty much anything goes and there are little if any restrictions to what someone can say about a given topic. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. "Facts" are given about a given topic and is widely seen for who ever is looking for it. Collaborators create wikis but it is not a place for individual opinions considered an encyclopedia should be comprised of general knowledge and universally known facts if researched in other areas. These two methods of sharing ideas are similar due to just that, they share information. They are both created by the public and are able to be changed. Blogs are a place for opinion and wikis are a place for "facts" yet both are collaborations of internet users worldwide. Convergence is extremely important in today's networked world. Blogs are used as a way to inform people of everything imaginable. As exclaimed in the New York Time's article "Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write Unfiltered Blog", Wal-Mart says the Web site helps buyers solicit quick feedback from consumers on the merchandise — and shows a softer side of the giant company, which has 5,000 stores, 1.2 million workers and annual sales of nearly $400 billion.Blogs are crucial to businesses. They rely on consumer reports and opinions in order to expand and heighten sales as well as evaluate products. Without consumer feedback companies would be in the dark as to what will maximize profits. 
Blogs can be used for collaboration as shown in the article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid". Bloggers in a local Brooklyn community attracted attention as they all commented on specific things they had seen going around the neighborhood. Through this blog they were able to get these people arrested for criminal activities. Blogs can help save lives and offer a support network for many people. A new use for wiki could be the ability to post videos on them.

Old vs. New

There are many ways to distinguish "new media" from "old" media. Old media is basically the stepping stones to new media. It is everything comprised of old media, yet bigger and more viral. Old media comprises of everything that existed before new media such as, television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, and books. Old media is distinguished by new media due to the fact that it is the information prior to the changes that may be caused by the interconnected transmission of data throughout the internet. The examples of new and old media are vast. Where as you used to only be able to hear a song on the radio, you can now download songs within seconds on a computer of cell phone. The news used to only be accessible through newspapers and television, but now we have access to millions of articles all over the world updated every minute.

Describe New Media

The types of technologies that are examples of new media are internet, websites, DVDS, CD's, computer multimedia, and video games. Old media consists of television, printed newspapers, magazines, books and all paper based publications.  An example of how we distinguish new media and old media can be seen in the New York Times article "Who Needs a TV? I’m Watching on a Laptop". Television would be the form of old media, and new media would be viewing a television show on a laptop. People can watch shows at their discretion and when they want to view them. A laptop is portable and a easy means to access just about anything you can think of. 

What is New Media?

There are many types of technologies that are apart of new media. Software, cellphones, internet, websites, video games, and DVD'S are a few of many. The internet is crucial to new media. The internet is a place where you have access to almost anything you can imagine at your very own finger tips. It has no limits, and as technology advances the spectrum gets even larger. Things that could never seem possible are now possible with the internet. It allows people to rapidly share their ideas, discoveries, and opinions. It has great importance for businesses and expansion. According to the article " Eight business technology trends to watch" it explains in great detail the advances internet has. Internet and productivity tools provide leverage to desk-based workers and help managers exploit greater amounts of data to make more intelligent decisions and develop the insights that create competitive advantages and new business models. Another example is the article from CNN "English gets millionth word on Wednesday, site says". A site is actually able to establish a Global Language Monitor, a Web site that uses a math formula to estimate how often words are created. This is pretty remarkable. The internet is changing the world day by day.

 News Media is replacing and enhancing old media. For example, the amount of news paper and magazine subscribers has significantly decreased over the years. The internet is constantly being updated with information as well as giving its viewers visual descriptions of information with pictures and videos. According to the New York Times article Why Television Still Shines in a World of Screens it is exclaimed that television is at a height due to the constant desire to have video entertainment and information circulation . Things are more captivating and exhilarating when watching it on video.