Creativity and New Media

This "me" in the second life socializing with another person. You can do so many things here. For example, chat with people, meet new people, customize your clothing, and etc. You can personalize it as much as you want. It's up to your imagination and creativity.

Creativity

Nowadays, people are becoming more creative using the new media. There's no limit to their imagination. Also, businesses uses new media to create a creative business plan to either drive their sales or advertise. Also for social networking sites, everyday the makers of the social networking try to add more creativity on their sites. That means more creativity more innovation. Users of these social networking sites also help them add more features on their sites. For example, Twitter. Some of the features on their sites are made from the users' ideas. As it says on the article "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers" by Claire Cain Miller, "Twitter, though, may rely on user-generated innovation more than any other company."

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds is the kind of world you want to be in. Everything there is perfect. You're not shy, you can socialize with anybody, youbody is fit, and easy to make money without working hard. The first time I tried virtual world is the game SIMS. On a Facebook app there's an app that you can play SIMS without paying for anything. At first it was interesting. You create this character with your own customization. You can choose any color of your hair, body types, different kind of clothing, you can pick anybody to be your girlfriend or boy friend and you can build your own house. After a while I got bored of it because it's so easy to build a bigger house, buy clothes, get money. There's no drive for me to keep playing this game.

The advantage of virtual worlds is that you can be yourself even more, than being in the real world. You can also relate with other people that's in the virtual world. They are most likely has similar personality of yours. It also let people know how your area of your home looks like. The virtual lower east side is a the actual lower east side area but the online version. There people can chat and socialize. As it says on the "I've Been in That Club, Just Not in Real Life" article by Dave Itzkoff, Mr. Manitoba said, “but it could be a fun, entertaining thing, and if I guess if I lived in Nebraska, I would love to see it.”

The disadvantage of virtual world is that people tend to spend money on intangible things. They would spend on their own "house", new "clothing", and etc. This can get people addicted because it is their fantasy of how living in the real world should be. In the article "No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You" by Ruth la Ferla it says “Throughout the recession we actually saw an increase in spending,” This is bad for people that is out of jobs or broke. I guess they're really into the virtual world that they forgot about reality.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter is a social networking sites that people use to update what are they doing or talk about the trending topic. There is a big difference between a blackboard discussion and Twitter. Blackboard discussion only allow students that are in the class reply to your post. Twitter let all your followers to reply to a tweet or knows as retweet. On twitter people constantly update their status. Whether they're getting coffee at Starbucks or getting an A on an exam. Blackboard discussion usually happens when there's a topic about the class that the professor want you to talk about.
Twitter and in class discussion. They are very different. In class discussion you interact more in person and you can say as much as you want rather than posting 140 characters on twitter. I think Twitter is not that efficient to use it in a class. Twitter should just be for socializing.

Social Networking Sites

Over the years I have join over 5 social networking sites. The four social networking sites that I'm going to compare are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Friendster. The two that I constantly checking on are Facebook and Twitter. Before Facebook came out, I used to have MySpace and Friendster. It was back in High school when MySpace was very trending and popular. We can edit our lay out of our page, put music, different theme and upload photos. Then  Facebook came out. That's when I was freshman in college. Back then Facebook's requirement was at least 18 years of age to join. So, Most of the college the students were in it. A lot of people started making Facebook because of the applications they have, easy to find people, instant messaging chat, and more. I also had Friendster back when I was in highschool. Friendster is very popular in Asia. I joined it because I wanted to keep in touch with my friends and family overseas. Their sites is very simple compare to Facebook or MySpace. Last but not least, Twitter. I love Twitter. You can follow your favorite athlete or celebrity. Also, you can follow a newspaper sites and always be updated with the current event. It is very popular in Indonesia, where people from age 12-30 must have Twitter to be "Social".

Social Networking

Social networking is a used of a website to communicate or share their life with other member of the website. A lot of people use social networking sites today. Even businesses are more and more into the trend. They usually advertise their product or service. I myself use social networking sites every single day. I use it to contact my friend, to keep updated with their life and keeping contact with friends in another country. I also constantly update my status on Facebook. Every time I open Facebook, It asks me "What are you doing?" So seeing that every time I open the website, I update what was I doing at the time. In the article "Being There: The subtle art of the Facebook update", by Virginia Heffernan it says "Status updates are part of a Twitter-like feature that induces­ members to publish their answers to the question “What are you doing right now?” Responses, which are confined to 160 characters" what makes Facebook great is that Facebook does not limit how many characters you can type in one single status update. That's why I love about Facebook. One thing that is bad about social networking sites is that people upload "sexy" pictures of themselves. That can create a lot of problem like stalking or rape. Mostly that upload this kind of pictures are young girls. On the article "Teens getting savvier about MySpace, especially girls" by Alex Zaharov-Reutt. " it says "A new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that more than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites." I feel like young kids ages from 12-15 need parental control over their access to online social networking sites. Parents does not really know who are they friends with, who are they talking to, or what are they going through from that website.