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Lovink's latest book is all about social media. It addresses a number of the critiques we offered in class - which is not to say it answers or does away with them - but also reinforces that he offers less a theory than a report or journalistic take. (One example is the way he looks at the uneven use of blogging world wide, so that blogging becomes much less monolithic in this account.)

A humorous breakdown of the uses of social media.

This is a podcast-interview of Crumlish and Malone, whom we will be reading in a few weeks. It's a bit long, but if you get the time you can listen to a few parts of it.

For those like me interested in the ramifications of gender, human rights and social policy this is an excellent place to look into. Carol Cohn, one of the foremost gender and warfare scholars is associated with this consortium.

Interesting yet slightly morbid. Does immortalizing the dead on a social media platform that by definition requires interaction among the living to fulfill its purpose reveal yet another narcissistic impulse? For whom are we writing? Obviously not the dead (unless you can make some sort of argument that they check their feeds from the afterlife). For ourselves? If that were the case, we could just as easily sit at home and mourn a photograph. It seems more like this type of mourning is much more performative and public than that...

Facebook is coming out with an IPO within the next few weeks. With all the talk of Web 2.0 being the last bastion of innovation, this offers food for thought on why social networking sites are choosing to list themselves on the share market.

This is a short cartoon that satirizes the experience of using twitter to communicate. It has some funny phrases including when one friend inquires about people on twitter "who are they talking to?" the other friend responds "this is how we communicate now in bite sized yippity-yap!" Once the first friend becomes extremely cynical and essentially awakens the people in the "twitter-sphere" from a zombie-like slumber, the whole reality begins to crumble. As silly as it is, it says some interesting things about social networking and the public's perception of the different forms of communication.  Also, it's worth noting that the video was made prior to some of the Iranian and Egyptian conflicts in which twitter played such an important role in empowering the masses (but is it the opiate of the masses?).

This is another satirical look at what's going on online and how sites like myspace seem to be loosing relevancy. In some ways the video is actually a little disturbing, but it does at least partially bring into question what makes a good social networking site and what causes us to favor sites like facebook over sites like myspace. For instance, was myspace too customizable to the point that it left the user with too many choices and left visitors feeling out of place every time they visited a page that blasted music at them they didn't actually enjoy?

Jobs in social media are apparently very popular and lucrative, especially in Boston.

This brief article is related to our class discussion on identity and social networking.

I really liked the idea from this week's reading that we should look to gaming for the future of interactive interfaces for social media. This article explains the ways that computing could be transforming in the future with motion sensing input devices like the Xbox Kinect. It's crazy to think that some of these things are possible!

This article examines the use of emotional attachment and building of unique stories to create buzz through social media sites like twitter and facebook.

This is an article that responds to some of the issues brought up last class (March 20) about employers asking for facebook passwords.

The idea behind this is to allow for an experience closer to that we have in the "real world." The comments section offers some interesting counterpoints to Terry's arguments.

This is a google book that discusses some of the same things I mentioned in my post regarding the use of wikipedia and other networks and how that shapes our ideas of freedom.

McLuhan and Bogart would probably enjoy this article because it involves procedural rhetoric. It examines how "gamification strategies"--using games to change behavior in real life--can promote energy efficiency. Companies like SimpleEnergy are creating apps that let users track their energy usage, find ways to improve, and compete with friends and neighbors for spots on a leaderboard. Gamification succeeds because apparently social pressure can motivate people even more than monetary incentives, and these initiatives combine both types of incentives: An energy usage competition at the University of Hawaii led to some dorms cutting energy usage by up to 20 percent. This specific method also allows users to save money and conserve energy without "radical infrastructure changes" or the corruption and waste that often results from government subsidies to politically-connected "green" companies like Solyndra and possibly Sapphire Energy. In addition, the apps provide large-scale energy usage data that researchers can use to measure both change over time and the impact of energy usage on other variables.

This article touches on a lot of the topics that keep surfacing in our classroom discussions about narcissism and how we use social media to communicate with others and share our own identities. It also expresses some of the concerns that I am often torn about; how much privacy can we have if we are going to use this technology, and why aren't we more aware of it.

These are the kinds of risks today's digital users face without even realizing it. How many of us actually sit down with a site before registering for an account and read through the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy? Or if you do, how far do you get before you're bored to death or completely confused? This kind of stuff terrifies me. But why are we at fault? Does this mean I have to delete my Pinterest account?

This short article has a unique commentary on the "blog bubble" from a business perspective, hinting that corporate blogging is on the rise and that social media will burst long before blogs. It's something to go along with our reading this week.

Article on the use of milblogs and other Web 2.0 technology in the military.