The EEE pc giveaway

Following the comment stream on Engadget it is pretty clear that the initial reaction to the eeepc giveaway is not good. Read here to check out more. Basically, for a thirty-five pound contract T-mobile are offering a free eee pc and a mobile USB broadband connector. I have to say I agree with the numerous people who have posted on the engadget website - this is not a good deal. I pay fifteen pounds a month for my mobile braodband with 3, and that is more than enough (I actually only paid that much because on some occasions it is my only source of connection). But, the main beauty of the eepc is how cheap it is. My advice; if you want an eeepc, buy one.

MySpace loses to Wiki information

Today I read a interesting argument on the 'Hacking MySpace' blog that stated how users turned to wiki's for more information than the MySpace blog of a particular band. I think I have to agree, when I am looking for band information (and by this I assume people mean tour dates and biographical information) wiki is the best place to go. However, I also do a large amount of searching through listening, for which, MySpace is excellent. I'm wondering if actually there might be a more convoluted relationship between information and the MySpace user. Could it be that a large number of users may look at wiki after doing some 'audio' research through MySpace first?

Also, how many users base their decision on where to look for information based on the perceived authenticity of the site? By this I mean to tap into the still nostalgic members of the MySpace community, who believe groups and bands maintain their own MySpace profiles. This may compare to the commonly accepted idea that wikis can be produced by anyone. One would also assume that the MySpace profile contains more up-to-date information. In light of this why do many poeple choose a wiki for information? The article seems to suggest that the 'glitz and glamour' of some MySpace pages may be off-putting to those users who are thirsty for information. And I agree, there are many ways that a wiki may seem easier to navigate, but to what extent could it also be related to situation issue of being 'caught on MySpace'. I wonder this as I walk around my university library where Facebook and MySpace are frowned upon. Is a wiki now a way of seeming to be in line with the institution while still achieving some personal interests? It is true that it would more difficult to frown upon wikipedia in the same light as it has some obvious educational uses. The regimented style of the wiki page makes it unrecognisable as a piece that is not directed towards a certain activity.I certainly think there are many ways the switch to wiki could be conceived, and a level of information is definitely one of those.

On a final note, it was great to read the line 'we all love MySpace'. For the time being Facebook seems to be growing exponentially and it is nice to read that some people still wrestle with the issues that go on in MySpace.

'Life on the Move': Social network sites and online communities

I would like to join Daniel Skog(here) in advertising our roundtable discussion at this years IR 9.0 conference in Copenhagen. We have a great collection of people coming together to discuss the tribulations involved with studing 'community' now that SNSs are dominating the online social landscape. Here is an extract from the roundtable description:

Social network sites (SNSs) like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace are rapidly becoming a popular area of research investigating online 'communities'. This immediately raises the question of how new SNSs can be understood as a descendent of the 'virtual community' that was popularized in the 1980's (Rheingold, 1993). One irrefutable piece of information is that the number of users that seem to be joining these new sites has been growing substantially over the last few years (i.e. comScore reported Facebook had an increase of 270% between June 2006 and June 2007). This could indicate that SNSs has become an integral part of everyday online activity as a whole. The purpose of this roundtable is to further discussions on the present shapes of online communities in light of the current trajectory of social network popularity. In particular, to what extent are online communities tied to a particular site? And consequently, how can we rethink notions of community in line with recent trends in SNSs?

[...] The underlying premise is that 'life on the move' produces a certain problem for academic researchers as to how we locate the individual (or the community) in such a dispersed social landscape. Therefore, how can we understand community involvement when users are members of a number of different community sites and SNSs and move regularly from one site to another? A further problem here is how we as researchers resist the mundane assumption that inherently complex online communities are only recognisable in terms of the users movement in and out of them, surely there is much more to it than that.

Already?

MySpace Games

MySpace is entering a brave new world by introducing games to be played accross the network. They include traditonal games like solitare and sudoku plus the introduction of some newer looking games like line rider (a game where you draw a slope in a paint-like function that then becomes the slope for your rider). The games are accesible from a link on the front page or by following this link. The games obviously lack a fair amount of sophistication that has come to be expected of online gaming in the last decade. But, perhaps, this is their appeal. I must admit they have a somewhat quirky nature and it seems that the games are intentionally designed to be cut and pasted effortlessly. This could be seen as an attempt to rival gaming such as 'scrabulous' that has become popular on Facebook.

Real Life vs Second Life

Last night there was an excellent show on BBC 2 as part of the Wonderland series that covered Seond Life. Here is the youtube link (unfortunately embedding has been disabled). It followed the journey of two couples who were seemingly ready to make real life changing decision besed on their second life relationships. As you can imagine, the two couples end up at rather different outcomes by the end of the journey. The first couple ultimately get married in SL with the rest of their real life families all hooked into the SL network to see the prestigious event. The second couple how a wife and mother of two kids travels half the way round the world to find out that the person she met in SL does nothing for her in Real Life. It was really interesting to see how this SL committment actually exists in everyday interactions. The clip I have posted in particularily good as it is from the view of the husbad who's wife leave America for her SL 'boyfriend' who lives in England. There are some fantastic clips where all parties involved speak about the versions of 'the real'. And it was great to see that it was all about the people instead of this look at what the technology was doing. It was a cutting edge take and how the people make this technology what is it. There is a lovely clip where the two who meet up in England go for a picnic in the park and they are just sat silently next to each other. Obviously, the build up to leaving America involved a number of intense arguments that were now finished with this very anti-climatic walk through a London park - As if to say 'uh is this it then?' The section that followed showed her talking through how she couldn't have both worlds and actually felt kind of sorry for her. Her SL character she confessed 'was everything that she wanted to be' and that all she wanted to do is 'bring a little bit of that into the real world'. For those two that got married their real life counterparts had been everything they wanted to be, but obviously this took some adjustent from them to see that they would not have the physical characteristic they do in SL. Perhaps what is needed here is an ability to see that they only thing that is really 'true' in SL is the interaction itself.

Deleting Facebook might not be as easy as you think

If you are like me, you would assume that profile pages can be destroyed as easily as they are created. However, the ICO has found that Facbook pages in the UK are particularly difficult to delete and require users to remove each individual wall post. This could be potentially thousands of wall posts for many users. The interesting question is how do we alert users to the problems with deleting their profile pages? The possibility of a banner saying ' we store your information indefinitely' seems a little much. Although I agree with the direction of the argument. Please don't anybody say we need to educate people more. I'm not entirely sure this is always the answer. What we need to do is make the technology easier to use. But, Facebook is certainly under no pressure to do this.


Check out this article on the unofficial facebook blog to read more.