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Twitter: The next “great good place”?

... or isn't it a bit too hasty to talk about Twitter effects? My activated Twitter account could not be more passive. Two tweets in about two years’ time is my contribution to the broadening of horizons of eleven people...
Can conversations become more virtual (i.e. powerful) on Twitter?

Can conversations become more virtual (i.e. powerful) on Twitter?

My Twitter inquiry had as a starting point the question, whether we may deploy the notion of the virtual to enhance the “real”, or that is, the actual. So I was interested in researching whether it is possible to...
Tweet Me Some Revolution

Tweet Me Some Revolution

Create the change, become a Twitizen, fight injustice and eff the system. Revolution here and revolution there. Everywhere we hear about how social media and micro-blogging has brought about a tremendous change in the organization of social movements and...

The divine act of Video Sharing on Facebook

Share it, enjoy it and post another one. One of the most ideal moments in the day of an admin social networker as myself, is the regular discovery of a good, short and  entertaining video clip. This particular discovery is...
World of Tweetcraft?

World of Tweetcraft?

The emergence of MMO gaming and virtual reality, especially the largest artificial worlds such as Azeroth in World of Warcraft, gave us a new way of socializing with people from around the globe. Twitter is one of the...

Facebook Launches Three Key Features To Protect Privacy

It seems that Mark Zuckerberg has listened to all the nagging about how Facebook is violating the privacy of their users. On the live press-conference of Facebook yesterday, Zuckerberg announced a few features that the social networking site will...

Adopted Teen Traced on Social Network

A great example of how the privacy issues we face on social networks are not just limited to our data being sold to marketers. This BBC interview tells how a British girl was traced by her natural sister on...
Not to get too emotional… but what happened to emotion?

Not to get too emotional… but what happened to emotion?

She' ll smile to you if you move to the left. No, try a different angle. I don't know... Is she smiling at all? For over 500 years, viewers and researchers have been trying to interpret Mona Lisa's...

Researching online music networking in the Web 2.0 era: Soundcloud and the demise of MySpace

With the current steady rise of social networking sites, it is by all means an important question to ask how to research these in the field of new media studies. Furthermore, a lot of these sites offer services destined...

Yeey I’m on Facebook! :s

With 500 million active users spending over 700 billion minutes per month, Facebook is gaining more and more traffic each single day. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. With these...

Surfing the Web of Trust: Couchsurfing

Social networks come in a wide variety on the World Wide Web. There’s the generic social network focusing on sharing info and multimedia with your friends (like facebook), professional sites (LinkedIn), forums, collaborative blogs and so on. Most of...
Virtually Yours! The Meteoric Rise of Virtual Game Goods

Virtually Yours! The Meteoric Rise of Virtual Game Goods

In the space of just over a decade, virtual game goods have gone from being a black market cottage industry to an extremely successful business model for gaming and social networking virtual goods industries. This evolution, caused by player...
Thou shall not lie (on your online profile)

Thou shall not lie (on your online profile)

(Untrustworthy) Online Identities in Web 2.0 The example of Facebook As new media history is being written at present time, the discourse keeps revolving around the notion of online identity and “personal privacy” issues that are connected to the...

Social Networks and Multicultural Societies

After the web crash in the 90’s a new way of thinking about the internet arose. This lead to a brand new composition of the internet, often referred to as web 2.0. The term does not refer to any...

Social Networks and Frameworks of Activism

For nearly ten years now, media analysts and commentators like Tim O’Reilly have sung the praises of Web 2.0 and social media. The new World Wide Web, characterised by its writerly, inclusive and connective nature, was to democratize the...

Y this Generation?

To start understanding social networks and their ceaseless popularity it’s important to understand the people who use them most. Although it’s a mistake to generalize about an entire generation there are unquestionably some central themes that apply to Generation...
You Look so Much Cuter on my Computer

You Look so Much Cuter on my Computer

Social networking sites are giving their users the opportunity to influence the attraction they exert on others by creating an online profile and a virtual identity that may in some cases strongly differ from real life. Through the use...

The added value of Social Media through LinkedIn

Working towards a fully connected professional world Eugenie van Wiechen is the Dutch main director of LinkedIn, the largest professional networking site in the world with more than 55 million. Today on PICNIC10 she gave her vision on the...
Book review, Richard Coyne, “The Tuning of Place: Sociable Spaces and Pervasive Digital Media”  MIT Press (2010)

Book review, Richard Coyne, “The Tuning of Place: Sociable Spaces and Pervasive Digital Media” MIT Press (2010)

In his fourth book, “The Tunign of Place: Sociable Spaces and Pervasive Digital Media”, Richard Coyne provides a fundamentally different perspective  for examining the new technological advancements and the way they are appropriated by humans and are integrated into...
Blog theory by Jodi Dean reviewed

Blog theory by Jodi Dean reviewed

Jodi Dean is professor of political science at Hobart an William Smith Colleges. She focus on the contemporary space or possibility of politics. Dean is a blogger herself and in her book she makes some points clear by...

The Arab media revolution

Since there have been inventions for the use of communication amongst the human race there have been institutions, governments and corporations trying to control them. As Noam Chomsky cites: 'Unless people are controlled, they are going to challenge power'....

Who’s stalking you on Facebook?

On the mythical algorithm that determines the selection of the 6 friends in your personal Facebook page. For a while now I’ve noticed that two of my Facebook friends were always being listed in my personal page. Now, I...

The Whole Truth and Nothing But……Or Not?

I keep hearing that consumers demand transparency in advertising campaigns. We don’t want advertising companies to promise us one thing, and end up doing another. What else is new? Especially with the rise of online advertising and the popularity...

Professional networking sites and social-economic status comparison

“Dan was apparent fifty plus, a little paunchy and stubbled. He had raccoon-mask bags under his eyes and he slumped listlessly. As I approached, I pinged his Whuffie and was startled to see that it had dropped to nearly...