‘The most fun thing about going out is when you run into friends unexpectedly. With Hangouts, this sort of meeting becomes possible on the internet for the first time. Let your friends know you’re available and find out who will join your video chat. Until we perfect teleportation, this is the best option.’ (Translation of the Dutch introduction to
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Last monday, just after the first lecture, I went home sick. Not that much of a problem, thank God, but I forgot to ask about the assignment at all. Luckily, Geert was so kind as to send me an e-mail in which he asked me to write about ‘why I hate Social Media’. At first, I was a bit confused…
Writings on the value of user generated content tend to stress the (market) value users produce for companies such as Facebook by adding content, labeling these activities as “free labor”. Assuming that there must also be something in it for the users generating the content, this text proposes ways to assess the amount of monetary and social value users gain from engaging in these activities.
I love statistics. I love seeing my Facebook friend count increase. I love looking at what songs I played most in my iTunes. (Unless it is an artist that is too embarrassing to love. Luckily you can reset this statistic.) Loving statistics is really great nowadays, since our computers and the internet are keeping track of everything. On Twitter, every…
First of all, let me warn you that this week’s blog post is a bit more personal than my previous entries. Furthermore, I also fall victim to relating everything I write about social networking sites to Facebook, Twitter and Google+. This said, please join me on my journey through social networking land, towards a possibly clouded future.
In this postmodern age, McLuhan’s thoughts about medium as an extension of ourselves seems more and more accurate. However, if the medium is us and we are the medium, how we can detach from it?
Nowadays, social media is one of the main examples of how integrated we can be. With every information just…
Video games have changed dramatically over the last decades. There is obviously a big gap between 1958’s Tennis For Two and the games we play now on our consoles or PC. Of course, the rapid evolution of new technology is one of the most important factors for today’s variety of games. Another wave of opportunities came when the Internet…
Despite having over 100 friends and former classmates in my friends list on a popular Russian social networking site Odnoklassniki.ru, I left it following a brief Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 and joined an increasing number of people in Georgia who preferred to stick to other popular social networking website Facebook only. “I am…
When your browser is starting up, most people visit their social networking site within three choices. The other choices are webmail and the news. It’s hard not to value a SNS as a great communication device but it also shows a different part of people’s behaviour. Adding a friend and browsing through his or her page can give you…
How to do comparative media analysis on the web: Start small.
I’ve always thought that in order to understand a network, like the web, better, we should be able to understand as much of the objects and actors that the network itself is made of, as possible. Whilst finishing my BA in Communication and Media Studies, I wanted to write my thesis about how/whether the structure of
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