Other Social Networking Environments
Learning objectives
This week you will get acquainted with other types of social networking environments.
Contents
Introduction
If you start browsing the web, you may notice different web pages, which are mentioned as having "social networking" elements in them. Several areas are covered with these networks in order to share and collaborate between users.
Besides social networks of people, like Facebook, you can also find networks with different names. They may have different functions, but the idea is the same - share, collaborate, communicate between old friends and acquaintances, and also find new ones.
The most famous sites be found on the Internet are Orkut.com, Myspace.com.
Estonian popular site among teens is Rate.ee, where you can post your profile, find friends and connect with old ones, post photos and rate them.
Odnoklassniki.ru is a place where you can find mostly Russian classmates/friends. This is a great way to connect between old schoolmates and organize meetings between them.
Bigadda is an Indian social networking site, which is not different from the others in the overall concept, as well as the network for dating and new friends, Badoo. Biip is for Norwegian users, and BlackPlanet for African-Americans. You can find more of these by looking through the list of social networking sites. [1]
Categories of different social networks
You can also find social networks for different purposes. Below you can see a few social networks for various purposes.
Picture taken from Shamzu’s blog
Weblogs
The widest area of social networking is covered by blogging, or keeping internet diaries in other words. This is also a social networking tool, in the meaning that it is can be used collaboratively, the content can be shared, and you can also follow other people's blogs. Via RSS-feed you can aggregate all the posts into one page and monitor them as often as you wish.
Most famous blogging services used are blogger.com, and wordpress.com, which you got acquainted with in the beginning of the course or had been familiar with before. You can read more on blogging from this post.
Professional
Professional social networks help to show yourself to possible future employers, and find colleagues from the same fields you are interested in. The most popular social network is LinkedIn. You can also find communities like Latino Professional Network, or SixApart.
Photography
Flickr is a network for photos, where the users share and show their photos. In some cases users can freely take the photographs in their websites or materials only for referring to the author. Similar services can also be found under the names shutterfly and snapfish.
Music
There are a lot of pages related to music, and they are used as social networks as well. You can create your own favourite playlists and listen to them online as well as share with friends. The most famous page is LastFM.
Video
YouTube is certainly the most favourite video uploading page that you might have heard. It enables users to upload videos and share them with their viewers. One can make a channel to broadcast their videos. TeacherTube, Vix.dk, Google videos, etc. are other sources for viewing or uploading videos.
Social Bookmarking
To keep your favourite pages accessible from other computers besides your own, you can add them to delicious or StumbleUpon, not to mention Diigo, Clipmarks, and Faves.
Ecommerce
There are many web-based retailers where you can shop for variety of goods and services worldwide such as, Amazon.com and Ebay.com Amazon is an American-based multinational
Time Management
To manage your time well there are free online Calendars which you can download and fix your time schedules and slots. Such as calendarhub.com and evenful.com [4]
In trying to list all possible categories I would need the whole day. One could find a social network for every walk of life, even pet owners, learners(Estonian), or housewives. They all serve the same purpose of joining people with similar interests and sharing content, ideas, materials, etc. with them.
Tasks and discussion questions
Week's assignments:
Weblogs
The widest area of social networking is covered by blogging, or keeping internet diaries in other words. This is also a social networking tool, in the meaning that it is can be used collaboratively, the content can be shared, and you can also follow other people's blogs. Via RSS-feed you can aggregate all the posts into one page and monitor them as often as you wish.
Most famous blogging services used are blogger.com, and wordpress.com, which you got acquainted with in the beginning of the course or had been familiar with before. You can read more on blogging from this post.
Professional
Professional social networks help to show yourself to possible future employers, and find colleagues from the same fields you are interested in. The most popular social network is LinkedIn. You can also find communities like Latino Professional Network, or SixApart.
Photography
Flickr is a network for photos, where the users share and show their photos. In some cases users can freely take the photographs in their websites or materials only for referring to the author. Similar services can also be found under the names shutterfly and snapfish.
Music
There are a lot of pages related to music, and they are used as social networks as well. You can create your own favourite playlists and listen to them online as well as share with friends. The most famous page is LastFM.
Video
YouTube is certainly the most favourite video uploading page that you might have heard. It enables users to upload videos and share them with their viewers. One can make a channel to broadcast their videos. TeacherTube, Vix.dk, Google videos, etc. are other sources for viewing or uploading videos.
Social Bookmarking
To keep your favourite pages accessible from other computers besides your own, you can add them to delicious or StumbleUpon, not to mention Diigo, Clipmarks, and Faves.
Ecommerce
There are many web-based retailers where you can shop for variety of goods and services worldwide such as, Amazon.com and Ebay.com Amazon is an American-based multinational
Time Management
To manage your time well there are free online Calendars which you can download and fix your time schedules and slots. Such as calendarhub.com and evenful.com [4]
In trying to list all possible categories I would need the whole day. One could find a social network for every walk of life, even pet owners, learners(Estonian), or housewives. They all serve the same purpose of joining people with similar interests and sharing content, ideas, materials, etc. with them.
Tasks and discussion questions
Week's assignments:
- Read and the week's materials.
- Based on the provided materials discuss which areas of social networking would you be interested in and why.
- Personal reflections:
- What did you learn from this lesson? What kind of questions/ideas did it raise for you?
- What kinds of things were difficult or frustrating? Which were easy?
Resources for further reading
[1] Wikipedia's list of social networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
[2] Wikipedia post on blogs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
[3] Wikipedia article on social networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service
[4] Social networking categories http://socialnetworking.lovetoknow.com/What_Types_of_Social_Networks_Exist
Back
[1] Wikipedia's list of social networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
[2] Wikipedia post on blogs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
[3] Wikipedia article on social networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service
[4] Social networking categories http://socialnetworking.lovetoknow.com/What_Types_of_Social_Networks_Exist
Back
