Blogs and wikis both play an important role in today's society. They have a part in how people socialize to researching for information. But in order to see the similarities and differences between blogs and wikis, we need to ask ourselves the questions "What is a blog?" and "What is a wiki?" A blog is a type of website where it is run/managed by an individual who can share almost anything on it ranging from their daily activities to informed product reviews. A wiki, according to one of our assigned reading, is a "website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor.[1][2][3] Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative works."(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki)
One aspect that blogs and wikis are similar in many ways yet different in many ways is the aspect that they both provides a source of information. However the source of information they both provides are different since a blog which is usually managed by a individual could provide bias or one sided information (i.e. information about politics) while a wiki is managed by a group of individuals so the information provided would be less biased. This lead to the first difference between blogs and wikis, a blog is managed by one person while a wiki is managed by several. Wikis involve a sense of teamwork and collaboration efforts while blogs involve a sense of forum where other "bloggers" can comment freely on a post and give their true options which can often lead to collaboration. According to a New York Times article "Brooklyn Blog Leads to Drug Raid” by Michael Wilson, "peering turned to blogging, and blogging turned to action, as neighbors started filing complaints with the 68th Precinct station house and attending Community Board 10 meetings and generally making noise until a narcotics investigation began, leading to the arrests." This show an interesting case where blogging can make changes and this case is also the case where blogs can be used as collaboration to voice out and make changes. This lead to our next discussion about the importance of convergence of blogging and wikis in today's networked world.
Wal-Mart is a fine example of how important blogging is in today's networked world. According to Michael Barbard, author of "Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write Unfiltered Blog", "Their decisions about what makes it onto Wal-Mart’s shelves have enormous impact, earning (or costing) vendors millions of dollars." People's opinion on Wal-Mart's blog can influences which products get placed on the shelves and which don't. It can even change a company's reputation if enough people blog about it. For example, if a group of people start blogging about how bad a company is, then it will eventually affect everyone and the company will lose customers.
As for wikis, there's a new use that I thought it would be cool if they can create it is a feature that allows users to give out awards to certain wiki members that have achieved a certain task such as posting a important relevant piece of work on wiki. This would certainly increase the amount of editing/contributing on wiki.
Sources used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/nyregion/26bayridge.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/business/03walmart.html?_r=1
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Social Networking: A purposeful loss of privacy.
There's a lot of social networks out there on the internet but in order to narrow down the range of social networks and get a more prescribed view of how social networking can lead to a loss of privacy. I decide to based my research focus on Facebook. Since many of us have a Facebook account or used Facebook at one point of our lives, we noticed groups that people joined that are something similar to "Protect your privacy on Facebook" or "FaceHooked will make you lose your privacy." So there are a loss of privacy regarding Facebook but I will research what kind of privacy that you lose when you're on Facebook and does those privacy affect you deeply.
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