Readings

Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities

Question: How does the idea of ‘Continuous Partial Presence’ work in terms of building a picture about someone from their microblogging?

This article discusses how and why people use the microblogging service Twitter. It categorizes the short messages members post on Twitter into three main types: daily chatter, conversations, information sharing and reporting news.

• Daily chatter: These frequent and informal postings typically explain what the member is doing at that point of time. Even though one short message does not tell much about a person, accumulating them over time can give insight into the member's daily activities.
• Conversations: Users have adopted the use of the '@' symbol followed by a target's username to address a message for a specific member. Understanding what stirs a member to respond can build an idea of what they find humorous, interesting and offensive.
• Information Sharing: Some members share links to web pages they find useful. Through these others may discover hobbies and passions the member may not otherwise discuss with them.
• Reporting news: When members report what is happening in their lives and the World, others can see what is important to them and what issues are affecting them.

One post on Twitter may not provide a deep understanding of a person, but by analyzing their previous and current messages others can learn a lot about someone's past, their changing interests and be informed about major events in their life.

Activity - 'Ego-Surfing'

In this activity we Google our own names to get an understanding of our online web presence. There was no surprises on the first page of results as I tend to be quite active on the web already. There are other 'Luke Franklins' creating content also, but it is mostly good. Did you know I work for the ABC? I didn't either. I'm quite happy if a future employer thinks that St. Luke's Franklin Health Care Center is named after me; though I don't know how I'll explain being a saint if they don't realize that Franklin is a place! If there was anything that I felt was very reputation damaging I'd be quite prepared to bury it in a wealth of information, but if it was a case similar to the 'Star wars kid' and the content was immensely popular the damage would be irreversible. An interesting service I found is claimID, it lets you specify what references of your name belong to you. "One of the greatest things about having a claimID page is that you can easily provide people searching for you with a real picture of your identity. With claimID you can claim your blog, your website and news articles that mention your name into a central place." - claimID About Page.

Readings

Identity Management: Multiple Presentations of Self in Facebook

This article examines how various groups of Facebook users manage their online profile in the context of work life. It classes the users into three groups: “Reliving the College Days,” “Dressed to Impress,” and “Living in the Business World.” The first group "Reliving the College Days" uses Facebook primarily for connecting with friends outside of work. What I don't entirely understand is why they aren't worried about their employer and co-workers seeing "many photos of (them) drinking alcohol" or other similar information that could be viewed as a reflection of bad character. Personally I wouldn't want some aspects of my social life recorded and retrievable in the future as I could see it being possibly damaging, but the majority Facebook users researched in this article were not worried. The next group "Dressed to Impress" is considered to be more aware that people other than their friends may see the information they upload. They are described as "actively presenting themselves as professionals and view Facebook as a place (for) both non-professional and professional networking". I agree with this view and try to limit what personal facts I release on Facebook. The last group "Living in the Business World" have very little information about themselves and are relatively new to Facebook, this article expects them to become more active users and share more information, but for those that don't I can see not having enough information as damaging as having too much. When I see a profile that has very little information with few friends, I think that they are shy, un-confident people who aren't comfortable with trying new things. This can also reflect badly in business, especially when they deal with the public.