Introduction to Social Networking
Learning Objectives
This week you will get an overview of social media.
By the end of the course you are able to:
- define the notion of social media, and
- use a few social media channels and their applications.
What is Social Media?
(Image taken from Gapingvoid.com)
Social Media has no single term for explanation, because it comprises of many different components. Broadly speaking, social media is referred to content that is created through social interaction using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. It is based on user participation and content generation. Social media tools are internet- and mobile-based, and enable sharing, commenting, collaboration, updates, altering, and immediate feedback. [1,2]
A Brief History
Social Media began in the 1950's on the phone line, when phone phreaking (cheating to get free calls) was invented. This was done by technophiles and information addicts. Also homemade boxes were built for the same purposes. Podcast predecessors took place also through telephone lines and used recorded calls for that. In the late 1980's one could see the first social gatherings through 2600 meetings, which could be the forefather of social events (with fast food and telephone equipment).
Electronic Bulletin Board Systems (social discussion boards) were opened to public in the late 1970's, and were underground services through phone line. There were no graphics in the beginning, and they were black and white. In the 1980's online services attempted to bring this experience to masses. The first service provider, CompuServe, offered expensive services. They were improved by chat systems, and soon by graphic interfaces.
With the birth of the World Wide Web in 1991 gave the people an unforgettable experience we now see as part of everyday life. Even early Internet users were outspoken and needed rules to operate in the Web, thus netiquette, or network etiquette was created in order to prevent flaming or overflowing with unnecessary or rude content. In the late 80's the first Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, was created, which was a predecessor to instant messengers. ICQ was launched in 1996 by four Israeli students. In the late 90's peer-to-peer sharing began with Napster coming live in June 1999, and let people get music for free.
The first real social networking site was SixDegrees, which let people make profiles. This was called Web 2.0. The site was followed by Friendster around 2002-3.. followed by MySpace (2004 – 2006) and then Facebook from 1997. The big event was to move away from static text to instant status changes, like Twitter from 2008. Google Wave seems to be a promising tool as well.
There are very many social media tools, like Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, LinkedIn, etc. We cannot name all services, since there are too many of them, but in this course you will learn to use two or even three of them - a blog for your own learning experience, Facebook, and Twitter for learning. [1,2]
The following presentation lets you understand what social media is:
Social Media has no single term for explanation, because it comprises of many different components. Broadly speaking, social media is referred to content that is created through social interaction using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. It is based on user participation and content generation. Social media tools are internet- and mobile-based, and enable sharing, commenting, collaboration, updates, altering, and immediate feedback. [1,2]
A Brief History
Social Media began in the 1950's on the phone line, when phone phreaking (cheating to get free calls) was invented. This was done by technophiles and information addicts. Also homemade boxes were built for the same purposes. Podcast predecessors took place also through telephone lines and used recorded calls for that. In the late 1980's one could see the first social gatherings through 2600 meetings, which could be the forefather of social events (with fast food and telephone equipment).
Electronic Bulletin Board Systems (social discussion boards) were opened to public in the late 1970's, and were underground services through phone line. There were no graphics in the beginning, and they were black and white. In the 1980's online services attempted to bring this experience to masses. The first service provider, CompuServe, offered expensive services. They were improved by chat systems, and soon by graphic interfaces.
With the birth of the World Wide Web in 1991 gave the people an unforgettable experience we now see as part of everyday life. Even early Internet users were outspoken and needed rules to operate in the Web, thus netiquette, or network etiquette was created in order to prevent flaming or overflowing with unnecessary or rude content. In the late 80's the first Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, was created, which was a predecessor to instant messengers. ICQ was launched in 1996 by four Israeli students. In the late 90's peer-to-peer sharing began with Napster coming live in June 1999, and let people get music for free.
The first real social networking site was SixDegrees, which let people make profiles. This was called Web 2.0. The site was followed by Friendster around 2002-3.. followed by MySpace (2004 – 2006) and then Facebook from 1997. The big event was to move away from static text to instant status changes, like Twitter from 2008. Google Wave seems to be a promising tool as well.
There are very many social media tools, like Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, LinkedIn, etc. We cannot name all services, since there are too many of them, but in this course you will learn to use two or even three of them - a blog for your own learning experience, Facebook, and Twitter for learning. [1,2]
The following presentation lets you understand what social media is:
Introduction to Social Media
View more presentations from Kelsey Ruger.
Task and discussion questions
Week's assignments:
Resources for further reading
[1] History of Social Media, http://socialmediarockstar.com/history-of-social-media
[2] Social Media in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
[3] Google Images of Social Media, http://www.google.ee/images?as_q=social+media&um=1&hl=et&btnG=Google+otsing&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgtype=&imgsz=l&imgw=&imgh=&imgar=&as_filetype=&imgc=&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&as_st=y
[4] Katri Lietsala and Esa Sirkkunen, Social media. Introduction to the tools and processes of participatory economy, University of Tampere, 2008
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Week's assignments:
- Read and watch the week's materials.
- If you do not have a blog, create one either in Wordpress or Blogger.
- Based on the provided materials and other, discuss about the pros and cons of social media in your blog.
- What did you learn from this lesson? What kind of questions/ideas did it raise for you? You may use the template from evaluation page.
Resources for further reading
[1] History of Social Media, http://socialmediarockstar.com/history-of-social-media
[2] Social Media in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
[3] Google Images of Social Media, http://www.google.ee/images?as_q=social+media&um=1&hl=et&btnG=Google+otsing&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgtype=&imgsz=l&imgw=&imgh=&imgar=&as_filetype=&imgc=&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&as_st=y
[4] Katri Lietsala and Esa Sirkkunen, Social media. Introduction to the tools and processes of participatory economy, University of Tampere, 2008
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