Week 4 Prompt Response

Judging expertise on the web can be tricky. Generally, if I am looking for sound, reliable information, I look at the author and the source. Is the author a well-known, respected professional in the subject matter? Have they been published or quoted by their peers? However, if the source is considered reliable, then I will usually deem the author reliable by proxy. For example, if something is printed in The Economist or The Christian Science Monitor, I take it for granted that the publication wouldn’t risk their reputation by printing bogus material.

That being said, not all information on the web needs to come from an expert for it to be useful. I tend to look at reviews for almost everything on the web, and I know that most of the time the reviewers are not subject matter experts. I trust reviewers to give me lots of supplemental information that I wouldn’t be able to get strictly from the original websites. For example, before purchasing clothes from OldNavy.com I always read the reviews to see what kind of “fit” the clothing has; is it true to size? I read movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and Netflix before going to the theatre or renting a DVD. And I could spend hours reading a plethora of product reviews on Amazon without ever making a purchase. If the original websites don’t host member reviews, then I can usually look on Facebook and find a page dedicated to product discussion. I also use Wikipedia a lot, despite warnings on how unreliable it may be.

Judging expertise in person is different. When in person, reputation and word-of-mouth tends to bear heavily on my opinion. If my boss or colleague speaks highly of someone then they automatically win points with me. Work history is still important, but I think a strong recommendation can speak volumes for credibility.

So, judging expertise online and in person does differ. I think when searching for official “sources” online I scrutinize the information out of fear that I might quote wrongful data. I also think that many people are distrustful of online information because you can’t see the publisher, and we’ve all heard horror stories about people misrepresenting themselves on the web (reference: To Catch A Predator). However, it seems like many people (myself included) could stand to be more skeptical when judging in-person, because we tend to get swept away by the sensory experience of the actual meeting and have an inherent instinct to trust.

In follow-up to Shirky's chapter about Web 2.0 helping to solve social dilemmas, check out this CNN article.

Chavez claims to help nearly 288,000 Venezualans through Twitter

Are You Digitally Addicted?

Check out this really interesting blog posting from Psychology Today. Here's an excerpt:

"A recent social media addiction study by Retrevo reveals 27% of those surveyed under 35 years old admitted to checking their social media pages such as Twitter and Facebook more than ten times a day. Thirty-six percent of the 35 and under group admitted to updating their platforms right after having sex while 40% in this same age group admitted to updating while driving."

Week 3 Participation

This week I completed the following tasks for class participation:

• Completed all week three assigned readings.
• Posted three blog entries (this makes four).
• Read all my classmates' blogs and the official class blog, and posted comments on 12 separate entries.
• Read week three discussion board content and contributed three comments.
• Read some blogs on Web 2.0 and marketing, including investing in your audiences.
• Researched online communities for the observations paper. Began lurking/participating in said communities.
• Researched possible formats/hosts for my produsage project, including checking out a few leads from my fellow classmates. At this point, I haven’t made a decision though.
  

Has Facebook Changed Your Life?

According to this article, sometime next week Facebook will reach 500 million users. To celebrate, Facebook will launch a visual memorial to all the ways that the social network has changed people’s lives, such as through finding love or documenting natural disasters.

I give kudos to Facebook for being able to attract such an overwhelming following to their social utility, but I also find myself somewhat skeptical to the idea that Facebook has actually changed lives. Our lives are altered by momentous experiences such as being accepted to college, getting married, having children, losing loved ones, being diagnosed with illness, etc. Does Facebook really qualify as one of these life-changing experiences? I’m not so sure. Perhaps there are a handful of people who did fall in love through a Facebook connection or landed a job because of their social networking skills, but I can’t imagine that the majority of those 500 million users would fall into that category.

Has Facebook changed my life? Somewhat. Now, I have an excuse not to travel to my high school reunion because I can stalk all my old classmates on Facebook. Now, when I go out to dinner with friends I have to make sure that I don’t let anyone take pictures of me a martini in hand because those pictures will surely end up tagged on Facebook. Now, I have to monitor my privacy settings in case potential employers or old boyfriends decide to look me up on Facebook. For me, Facebook is a double-edged sword. I enjoy the connectivity, but I don’t enjoy that increasing levels of personal information are floating around in cyberspace for people to access.

Would you say that Facebook has changed your life in a positive way, negative way, or not at all? What about other social networks?

Biologically Wired for Connectivity?

This morning I stumbled across the Sunday Book Review of “Hamlet’s Blackberry” from the New York Times, and was intrigued by the article title, “Born to Check Mail.”

The author, Laurie Winer, comments on society’s “obsessive connectivity and its effect on our brains and very way of life.” Winer in fact, admits to frequently tearing herself away from reading to address the email notification pings on her iPhone. This made me chuckle to myself, as I also frequently pause during reading or my favorite episode of Grey’s Anatomy to make sure nothing new and exciting has popped up on my Facebook wall.

According to the article, these kinds of notifications may actually set off a “dopamine squirt” in our brains. Marketers told us that we need to be connected, but our genetic brain processes may have solidified the need to repeatedly do so. We are literally getting a high from the attention delivered through social connectivity.

This information led me to think about the vaguebooking phenomenon posted by Vanessa earlier this week. Are vaguebookers actually being compelled to seek attention through biological chemical processes in their brain? Just some food for thought…

Week 3 Prompt Response

I currently work for a small office that is a division of a state agency in Florida. In this environment, an office wiki would be very useful in the following ways.

For one, new employees coming into the office receive an agency-wide HR handbook but they don’t receive any information on policies and procedures within our specific office. A wiki would be a great way to explain simple items like our organizational chart, emergency notification tree, employee roles and areas of focus, how to reserve a meeting room or conference line, etc. Then, as policies and procedures are changed, the wiki could be added to or edited appropriately.

I also collaborate with a large advisory council and hundreds of partners around the state on a regular basis. One major project we have underway is revising the goals and objectives in our statewide strategy. In order to get feedback, I have to email documents out to everyone, ask them to track changes or write out edits, email it back to me, and I then incorporate changes. If all of this were done in a wiki, it would save a lot of time and cost.

As another class blogger mentioned, a wiki would be a great way to keep track of bills, amendments, committee meetings and so forth during legislative session. Right now we use Lobby Tools to track this information, but it would be easier if everything could be maintained in one space for our internal office and we were all consistently up-to-date.

One challenge to implementing these kinds of changes is Florida’s broad public record laws. At times, our office receives requests for all documents, emails, and notes regarding specific topics. The multiple contributors to a wiki would make it difficult to determine specific authorship and extract the needed information for public record. Another challenge I foresee is management being unwilling to relinquish control over the content and information contained in a wiki. Many management officials within my agency are very specific about having complete oversight into agency work projects, content, who does what, etc.

So, although a wiki would be a useful tool, I don’t see it being implemented in the near future. The State has rarely been accused of being an early adopter of new technology (as I type in software from 2003). We will probably only be able to begin thinking about these possibilities when a national agency, or other state agency, starts modeling them.