First I must say - dang! got rick-rolled by our teacher.
In the spirit of online communities, for those of you that didn't quite understand the Rick Rolling and might have gotten a little lost on the term "meme" I recommend watching this quick (and entertaining) video.
Second, my apologies for the bland title to the blog and class posts. But apparently I am not very creative with my post titles as my other blog can testify to. (I like to think that my creativity is shown in my photography and I am more to the point with my blog posts.)
Moving on. I have read most everyone else's posts for this week and I think that I perhaps suffer the most from "online addiction." Well, that is not exactly correct to say. I am not addicted to things online per say, but I probably spend more time on the internet than most people in the class. I frequent most of the social networking sites/services other people have mentioned and a few more.
Skype of course is a great tool to talk with others who you can't see all the time and I do use it as an IM service and as something to keep in touch with close friends. (I find its video chatting service very useful and niffty.)
Of course facebook is something that everyone has (but I still refuse to friend my mother; not that there is anything to hide - all my status updates are about blog posts, flickr updates, and things I am taking pictures of and the only other thing that I seem to do on facebook is cafeworld). I am connected with a lot of people on facebook. Everyone from my study abroad advisor, to my Professors, old high school teachers, friends from summer camps, professional photographers that I shoot with and have listened to lectures from; it is amazing how everyone is on facebook. I do like how facebook allows you to stay in contact with people that you wouldn't be able to normally and is a good way to let a large number of people know what is going on with your life.
This is a screenshot of my cafe in the facebook app "Cafe World" which takes up a good deal of my time on facebook.
Twitter is another way to do that though (and in many ways Twitter is like a simplified facebook, or facebook is like an over glorified twitter) and it is sync-able-ish with facebook (I use a facebook app called "selective twitter updates" or something like that where it will link your facebook with a twitter account and any tweets you tack "#fb" onto will then be used as a status update for your facebook). Really I think that is what this post is all about and this assignment's goal is to show us that all these communities are interconnected. (And not surprisingly facebook is the mode through which they are all connected.)
Not only can you link your twitter to your facebook that way, you can do the same with your blog (and you can link your twitter to your blog as well with a niffty little app - see below, and I think that I will be putting one of those on this blog as well).
This is the twitter feed from my personal blog, which is put there by an application called "Twitter Updates"
Facebook also allows for you to connect to a variety of other services so that when you do something on those things, say watch something on hulu (which is another online service that I love) or make a new blog post, it will tell all your friends that you did this, and it gets word out about what you are doing. (It will actually import your blog posts as facebook notes, but it will still have all your pictures and whatnot.)
You might have to click on the above image to really be able to see anything, but on your home page you can go under setting and see all of the services that facebook will allow you to link to.
Just as a little side note, all of these screenshots were taken with an app called "Littlesnapper" (which is a Mac app, I am not sure if there is a windows version - and for the record I am not a "All in your face" Mac user, it is just what I use. I also have a windows comp and I couldn't care which you use either way ;) so yea.) It is a cool app I think and I know that I get a lot of use out of it. I will be using it some this semester probably to include pictures and I know that next week I will start with pictures I have taken and maybe even some video!
Ok, time to finish up this post. I guess I would just say that I am a good user of online communities, and I don't mind if y'all follow me. I am a photographer, so I am used to making things for people's entertainment and enjoyment, and I really think that y'all would like my other blog (it is mainly sports pictures from Clemson events) and here is just a quick list of all the online pages/services I am involved with:
My Website (It is a little...ok, a lot outdated, but I will be updating it over the next few weeks, but it is still pretty cool I think.)
TAPS (Clemson Yearbook)'s flickr (I am the photography editor for yearbook so most of the photos on this flickr - any with "JSK" in the title - are taken by me.)
And my other blog (also, my blog has a fan page on facebook here)
These are all the social sites that I am involved in, but I feel like my association with online communities does not end there. I read web comics and manga online (I am an art student don't know if I have mentioned that, so I have an interest in such things) and so I recognized the image for this weeks lesson as coming from XKCD. I don't really guess there is much to say about these things except that they are (for the most part) nerdy (which is something I identify with greatly) and I enjoy them lots. If you were curious or wanted to check some of them out here is a list of all the comics I follow (some are story based and other are not):
However, my involvement with online communities does not actually end there. Even though I can't really say much about it (at least the members of the website like to be more anonymous) I will say that I do surf the boards of the infamously "evil" cesspit of the internet (notice I didn't put "cesspit" in "" because that part is not an exaggeration) known as 4chan. I won't say much because a) if you don't know what goes on there then you don't want to know, and b) I really just wanted to mention that I am a lot more involved with the internet than Facebook and YouTube.
So, at the end of a long post I will leave you with this - some Mudkips ;D!!!! (and a kitty for the week ahead!)
-joshua
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