Creativity and New Media

This is a avatar that I created using Second Life. There are so much things you can do to customize your avatar.

Creativity

New media fosters creativity. Because contents are shared on the internet, people are being creative to keep others interested. In the article, "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers," users comes up with new ideas that the company can implement. Many companies rely on the user-generated innovations because it saves them tons of money with development costs.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

There is a wide range of uses for virtual worlds. Businesses are noticing the money making opportunities virtual worlds offer. In the article “Toys with a Second Life,” the toy industries are getting their hands into virtual worlds by targeting kids to buy their toys with a redeemable code to use for their online avatars. Most virtual worlds can make more money by selling virtual goods for real money.

Virtual worlds help people with communicate better so they are better at it in real life. It gives people more confidence to be more social. In the article, “iReport: ‘Naught Auties’ battle autism with virtual interaction,” people with autism join virtual worlds join virtual worlds to work on their social skills on situations that they may come across in real life, all in the comfort of their own home.

Virtual worlds bring all kinds of people together by similar interests. People are able to express themselves freely and do what they want which they can’t do in real life. People with disabilities are able to experience what it is like to be someone else.

Virtual worlds foster creativity because people have a tool to think outside the box and create what they want. In Second Life you can design your own building for people to explore or even use it to design a room that you like and bring it to life in the real world. Basically if you can imagine it, you can build it.

However, people may start to become addicted to the virtual world rather than reality and be disconnected with everything else. They like what they have in the virtual world because it’s how they want to live but they don’t have it in real life.

Virtual worlds can potentially become like what we see in the movies such as the Matrix where everyone lives in a virtual world and can’t tell whether something is virtual or reality. It can also be like the movie the Surrogates, where people live in isolation and interact though robots. Or it can even be like Avatar. We can only imagine what will happen in the future.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter, BlackBoard Discussion and in-class discussion are pretty similar. There is a conversation going on to express your ideas. The difference is the timing of the feedback you receive and the amount of people who receives the message you are trying to convey. You can get feedback from the millions of people on Twitter rather than just the limited amount of people in the class. It is also more convenient to use Twitter since mostly everyone has immediate access to the internet with the use of smart phones now a day. It is just a click away to get into Twitter rather than many clicks and pages to get into BlackBoard discussion which most students don’t bother using unless they have to for class. And of course you would have to physically be in class to have an in-class discussion otherwise it wouldn’t work. I would think that people would rather like accessibility of Twitter. However, some people may just blabber about useless nonsense.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites have been becoming very similar to each other. However there are some differences which users may choose over the others. My first social networking experience was through Myspace years ago when it was extremely popular when social networking was getting attention. People are able to customize their own page to their own liking, however it may be confusing too because everyone don't have to have a standard page layout like Facebook does. I did not like how there so many ads being posted on my page. It was very annoying. The users of this site have declined dramatically and Myspace is now mostly geared toward musicians.

My favorite social networking site has to be Facebook. All of my friends and probably everyone had switched over to Facebook from Myspace. Everything is very organized and easy to find. I like the games that they offer but I would not spend real money on them for virtual goods. It can be annoying sometimes and some people even get mad that Facebook keeps changing its layout. Once people get used to a layout, it changes! You would have to find where everything went and what has disappeared.

I do not have any experience with Twitter but I am forced to use it for this class. It seems to be just like Facebook but only for status updates. A lot of companies use this tool for up-to-date news/advertisement of their product. I will see how I like it when I get to use it more for this class.

Another social networking site is LinkedIn. It is much like Facebook but for professional use. It has a more businesslike atmosphere. I like that it allows you to be able to network other business professionals. It may also help people find a job by building your professional contacts and networks. You wouldn’t want to post anything here that you don’t want your boss to see!

Social Networking

For a lot people, social networking is a big part of people's lives. People are using it multiple times a day and whatever chance they get to use it. So there must be some benefits from this. Communication is one of the biggest part of social networking. It helps people stay connected or reconnect with friends and family. It can also help make new friends who has similar interests and likes. It gives people positive self esteem by creating a new self image online for people to see. Social networks helps people stay updated with the latest news more quickly. And of course networking is a huge benefit in this because its not all about what you know, it's who you know.

Social Networking doesn't just benefit yourself, it helps corporations too. According to the article "What's Next? Your Future in Social Networking," companies are using social networking as a tool for research and development. Businesses are reaching out to communities to discuss issues of what customers want and it reduces their cost of doing business. Businesses can advertise their brand on social networking sites to get potential customers since social networking sites is a place people someone would visit multiple times on a daily basis. Social networking site helps people find jobs. According to the article, "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting," sites like Linkedin help recruiters find high quality potential employees for the company. So social networking helps people market themselves since businesses may look for you online before hiring you.

Because you are putting yourselves online, the "dark side" would be the dangers of having a online profile. Because you are putting your personal life on the internet, potential employers are also looking at this and will definitely impact their decision. So do not post anything that you don't want your boss to see. You identity is also at risk when you use social networking sites. Since you are posting personal information, people may put different facts together about you from different social networking sites and do some harm such as identity theft.

Since so much people are using social networking site, in the future, this may evolve to be a one stop site for everything you need. Every business will want to be involved in it.