Exploring Instant Messaging

Instant messaging has become a common feature over the years. It is useful for everyday personal friendly conversation between people (or groups of people), conversations in the workplace, and online gaming just for a few examples.

While some messengers have more advanced features, most offer a number of the same. Lists of features can include the following:

• Add/Delete Friends (Contacts) – Import/Export (even through social media sites or e-mail accounts)
• Voice Chat
• Video Chat/Screen Sharing
• Personal Status Heading
• Status – Online, Offline, Away, Busy, Invisible
• Spell Check
• Tabs for Multiple Messages
• Emojis
• Photo and File Attachment
• Font Customization
• Interface Theme/Skin Customization
• Ability to send Text Messages to Mobile Phones or E-mail Accounts
• Ability to Create Groups/Lists/Favourites out of Added Contacts

Of course, the above list is non-exclusive. As messengers have changed over the years features keep being added or tweaked in favour of appealing to those who use the programs.

Personally, I remember using instant messengers back when AOL launched their messenger, AIM. I also had Windows Live (Microsoft), Yahoo, Jabber, Skype, Google Talk, Facebook, Myspace, ICQ, Battle.net, and Trillian over the years. I still have a few of these today.

I’d like to make a quick extra mention of Trillian. If you haven’t heard of this before and you use multiple messaging services, this is a great program! It works across a variety of operating systems, to include mobile. It has the ability to connect to any number of messaging services and e-mail accounts and gives you access to them all in one user interface. In the past, the program was able to incorporate messengers such as Skype and Windows Live, for example, but since they have changed their programming, these are two of a few that are no longer supported. If you’re using multiple messaging programs, social sites and e-mail accounts from the following list, you may want to consider checking this program out!

• AIM
• Bonjour
• Facebook
• Google Talk
• ICQ
• IRC
• Jabber
• VZ
• Yahoo
• Foursquare
• Twitter
• IMAP/POP3 e-mail accounts

Most of the people I talk to will either correspond through e-mail or through Twitter’s direct messages. For anything else, I normally am using Facebook Messenger these days. Even though it is a social media site I don’t like to use as often as others for personal use – the contacts I have make frequent use of the site, so I do have use messenger daily. Running a business page and multiple groups also means it’s something I have to make sure I’m staying on top of. Response time is really important when being in an administrative role, when it comes to answering and sending instant messages.

A lot of people will use messenger instead of writing in an e-mail because they think the response time will be faster, which in a sense is correct. It sounds a bit bad, but people are going to knock out taking care of social media messages far quicker than those than come through e-mail, even though it is the preferred method of interaction. It is far easier to get bad word of mouth for even taking a normal amount of time to respond because a user is already using a social media site in the first place – they are right there to publicly voice their anger and displacement.

Using a messenger for inter-office correspondence is quite common and can get questions answered and information passed along much quicker than typing up a formal e-mail message, although in certain situations, the later should still be done. I think the biggest bonus to using a messenger in the workplace would be when you need to collaborate or get answers from multiple people in a short amount of time. People in offices and other places of work are not always on the same schedules so conversing through a group message will get responses faster than waiting around for a bunch of e-mails, when people have the time to create them. A message can offer a quick and short response, which is often all that is needed in some cases.

A Bit About LinkedIn

LinkedIn is basically a professional networking website. You can choose to connect as a business, student, or professional and create a profile for others to browse and contact you. I would say that the site is mostly used by professionals (or those seeking jobs) and recruiters. You can market yourself and your skills in a profile you create, that job recruiters can pull up during their searches. You’re basically infusing your resume into a social media profile.

Features of the site now include options to have conversations, ask and answer questions, and even have informal interviews. You can allow job recruiters to contact you should they come across your profile who think you should apply for a position.

Once you’re signed up, you can add connections (people) to your network. These can be friends, classmates, professional references, family, etc. You also have the option of connecting to groups such as previous employers, schools, alumni, clubs, or you can show your interest in the same groups.

As far as suggestions go for using the site, my first and most important piece of advice to anyone thinking about using LinkedIn, is to make sure to not treat it like any other social media site. Too often you browse around and see unprofessional photos, headlines and summaries on a profile. If someone is signed up in hopes of landing a job position, they more than likely aren’t going to be contacted, because a recruiter is going to pass on all of the above when coming across it.

Another issue with the site that I found out is that you need to have some sort of knowledge of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to be noticed in searches. Just like those automatic resume programs that search for certain words – profile results are filtered similarly. Having the right keywords in your profile and placing them multiple times (appropriately of course) will give yours a better boost than those who have no idea about how to integrate this SEO practice.

Personally I have not been very fond of this website, but I realize that the day is coming where I will need to invest 100% into making a proper profile. The more I search job boards elsewhere, the more I notice a decline in the amount and quality of jobs available. I have seen many more people and companies flocking to this site over the years. In fact, I was looking for some jobs this last week and saw a couple of places where the only place they wanted you to contact them was on LinkedIn. If companies are being this selective in their hiring process, then a proper profile here is something we should all think about investing quality time into.

VOIP - Skype

These days I don’t get much use out of Skype. When I was in the military, I was overseas for over seven years. This is the time when I used it the most. I connected with family back home, especially during the holidays. I remember having some kind of trouble initially because of the countries being different. They had kept trying to insist that I needed to purchase credits to use the program, but I was able to work out getting a United States number and everything was smooth after that.

On occasion I have used Skype to collaborate with other YouTube artists on videos and song parodies. I once was on a phone call with someone producing a science fiction podcast, who recorded my lines through the call as well. I have used it on multiple occasions to live screen share and provide instructions or visuals through calls to someone. The most recent use I have gotten out of the program was to get job testing instructions from a company I had applied to this last year. They delivered the instructions and followed up during and after the test through the messaging portion of the system.

For the most part, however, I use Google Voice to make phone calls and if I need to use video with a call, I can do so through GoogleHangout, or more often – Facebook Calling.

Anyone can benefit from using Skype I would say. I feel as though it has a more business type of feel to it these days than it used to. The mobile application of the program is wonderful for people on the go, but does require an internet connection, so you will need to be on wi-fi or use your mobile service as an internet connection to make use of it. Strictly as a messenger it works great! For video, it is good for domestic calling, but when you start to make international calls, it can become a hassle, although it is still low cost compared to other services. The biggest downfall I think Skype has going for it is that group calling is gated behind their premium service.

Social Media Comparison Chart

	Facebook	Twitter	YouTube
Active Users	1,712 (million)	313 (million)	1,000 (million)
Daily Users	1,130 (million)	135 (million)	Only referred to as hundreds of thousands
Foreign Accounts	85%	79%	70%
Pros	Easy for business start  up to reach customers	Anonymity, fast reach	Entertaining for longer periods of time
	Integrates other media (videos, photos, slideshows)	Status updates in  real-time	Educational/Instructional
	Instant messaging and calls	Brings/sends users  across sites	Livestreaming available
	Cost effective customer  service for businesses	Integrates video and  gif playback	Free hosting/high quality
Cons	Expensive to advertise	Word limit to posts	Ads ignored via adblocks software
	Privacy Concerns	Need to stay active daily for reach	Limited user interaction (comments)
	Potentially hurt you  professionally if employers search for your information  and see anything negative	Takes time to build audience	Difficult to make money from ads; must be partnered with an outside network or use Google Adsense

Sources:

Donchev, D. (2016). Youtube Statistics - 2016. Retrieved from http://fortunelords.com/youtube-statistics/ 

Harden, S. (2016). STATS | YouTube Company Statistics - Statistic Brain. Retrieved from http://www.statisticbrain.com/youtube-statistics/

Ingram, M. (2016). Snapchat Now Has More Daily Users Than Twitter Does. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2016/06/02/snapchat-twitter/

Millward, S. (2015). Tech in Asia - Connecting Asia's startup ecosystem. Retrieved from https://www.techinasia.com/facebook-surpasses-half-billion-monthly-active-users-in-asia-for-first-time 

Statista. (2016). Facebook users worldwide 2016. Retrieved from http://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/

Statista. (2016). Twitter: Monthly active users 2010-2016 - Statista. Retrieved from http://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/

Twitter. (2016). What's Happening. Retrieved from https://about.twitter.com/company

Tynan, D. (2016). Facebook's journey 'only 1% done' after surge in revenue, Zuckerberg says. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/27/facebook-ad-sales-growth-quarterly-results

YouTube. (2016). Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

Zephoria. (2016). Top 20 Facebook Statistics - Updated July 2016. Retrieved from https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/

Podcast: No Better Than Average

One of three podcasts I chose to talk about for this week is called No Better Than Average.  I chose this podcast as it is right up my ally -nerdy. It is just a couple of guys discussing technology, television & movies, video games and their families, among other geekery.

In the most recent episode I listened to, they had been discussing the controversy about drugs being used in the Olympics. They discussed an interesting theory that in this year’s Olympics the United States only won so many medals because they must be using a drug that is currently undetectable by the testing methods used on the participants. They had a guest on the show who covers medical topics as they relate to sports, who disagreed with this theory. (Jacob & Jeff, 2016)

The episode still had some geekery included, as they discussed Virtual Reality (VR) video games. There’s been a rise in the publicity of such games since more VR devices have been being released. As always, they also briefly touch on what they are fond of at the time. Technology-wise that week were specific earphones and an iOS ad blocker. (Jacob & Jeff, 2016)

If you’re looking for an all around geekery related recorded cast that’s fun and more on the casual side, give this one a shot!

Jacob, & Jeff. (2016). No Better Than Average -. Retrieved from http://nobettershow.com/

Technology in the Classroom

The video “Did You Know 2.0” touches on a number of interesting facts. One of these are that children are being given technology sooner in life. The example shown was that of the One Laptop per Child Project.  For my first discussion post this week, I have used the shifthappens wiki to search for a related topic. I came across a post where a teacher was asking what other educators were doing to help children be successful growing up in the 21^st century. She mentioned that she was one of the teachers using Moodle in her class. At her institution, this program is voluntary. (XPLANE, 2007; Jennifer_Kolb, 2007)

I saw one response that mentioned focusing on social media. Personally, I think it is a bit scary to think about young children engaging on the social media sites of today, but I can see how it could be useful, if heavily moderated. Individuals and companies across the world use this method of engaging (a big factor in web 2.0) each day. I wasn’t able to look more into the course provided on Moodle, but there was one in socially networked learning. It claims to offer help as far as teaching and learning through the use of social media in classrooms. Perhaps this is an example of how she could visit this topic further. (Jennifer_Kolb, 2007)

Another person made a good point on the argument of technology’s side, mentioning that as long as students are taking the time to learn the material, it shouldn’t matter what way they are doing so. I can see backing this statement up as well. Personally, I am not very keen on classroom settings and learn better in a comfortable and solitary environment. This is a huge reason why online learning has been successful for me. I don’t have the hang up of classroom anxiety, the pressure of needing to make it to class on a specific day or time, and I have many more materials to help my learning process on the internet. (Jennifer_Kolb, 2007)

Overall, I think that learning along with using technology will only be of benefit to children growing up – it’s the way the world is heading non-stop. The challenge is how to not make it such a huge part of their lives, where they are missing out on social interaction and life experiences.

Sources:

Jennifer_Kolb. (2007). Shifthappens - Preparation of students for the future? Retrieved August 31, 2016, from http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/share/view/1658333?replyId=2000827

XPLANE. (2007). Did You Know 2.0. Retrieved August 31, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

Flickr - Web 2.0 Photo Creations

The first part of our assignment this week was to create three photos relating to concepts of Web 2.0. Following their creation, we then had to use Flickr and add them, along with appropriate tags. Then we were to determine how many other photos were using those same tags and describe our experience using the site. My breakdown for each image is below:

Web2.0 had 80,656, but many of the images I saw did not pertain to the topic, as I would have thought. There were photos of just people’s names, nature, baby and pet photography, and random colour swatches. Personally I feel that this tag could have thousands – hundreds of thousands of related photos, but it seems to be inflated.

PrinciplesofWeb2.0 only had my photo with the tag

Oreilly had 47,669 results that were tagged. Many of those photos again were not similar to what my tag intended. There were a handful that were relevant from conference talks, however.

My second photo also used the tag Web2.0 (80,656 tagged photos)

Social Media had 267,424 photos with the tag, and a lot of what I scrolled through seemed to be relevant, but again, I would say in the manner I meant the tag to be used – the number was inflated with photos that wouldn’t have been relevant.

Networking showed 2,550,953 photos with the tag, and had similar results to the above.

My third photo used the tags Web2.0 (80,656 tagged photos), Tagging, WebTagging, and WebTags.

The Tagging tag produced 10,324,992 results, WebTagging, returned 2 results, and WebTags had 270 related photos.

Again, the tags with a high number seems to be inflated to me. Upon further inspection, I noticed that some of the photos didn’t actually have the words as tags. Instead, they were being returned in the search because of the use of the tag in their description.

I created my Flickr account back in 2005 and only used it briefly – I preferred Photobucket. It wasn’t a site I was completely unfamiliar with, so I did not have any issues uploading to my profile and tagging the photos. A feature they did not have previously, was the various copywrite options, which I liked this time around. 

REV2 Review

I chose REV2 as the second blog to review for this week’s assignment. When I first looked at the blog, I was excited to browse, as it came across as clean and well organized. It focuses more on technology and business start up and news, which can be viewed by subject, latest posts, and popular posts. Skimming through, there are a ton of posts written discussing social media or internet information specifically. I didn't notice anywhere on the site where users could connect on other social media, but you would have been able to share any post through your own Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest, and a variety of other sites. There was however, the option to subscribe to the RSS feed. It looks like the blog isn’t collaborative and involves one writer: Dave. (Dave, 2015)

I was quite disappointed when I noticed that nothing on the site was recent. The latest articles I saw were from a year ago, and many go back to 9 and 10 years. Many of the articles no longer have photos displayed, which makes me question if they were linked instead of hosted (a big no no for web sites). One article that caught my eye was on Dave’s list of most successful 2.0 web sites. He mentioned he started with a list of 20, before narrowing it down to include the following:

1. MySpace
2. YouTube
3. Facebook
4. Wikipedia
5. Bebo
6. Digg
7. Flickr
8. Netvibes
9. Del.icio.us
10. Meebo  (Dave, 2015)

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve been familiar with all of these other than the last three on this list. A good chunk of these still thrive today and keep evolving and delivering to the public effectively. I would have been interested in seeing his top 20 after viewing this list!

Digging a little deeper, perhaps I found something even more irritating than the lack of current articles: SEO. I’m a bit crazy sometimes and like to looks at the source code for web sites. I noticed that the meta data in the code was highly lacking, which may or may not be a reason this site is no longer running (did it do well during it’s life – I don’t know). It seems to have been a package made by another individual, but that isn't an excuse to not be "in the know" with your own meta data. There were not many relevant keywords either. What really irritated me were ones that were included and awfully spammy. Just to give you some examples, there were ones such as get massive followers, junk twitter accounts, app auto follow, chain membership of twitter, and the list went on.  If a site is going to have shady keywords and nothing of relevance to the subject matter, it runs the risk of getting banned from search engines all together. I don’t know how many people search for terms such as these, but it can’t be as many as those looking for actual content.

I didn’t look any further into the blog at this point, because I didn’t feel respected as a reader and didn’t want to waste my time with information that was so old to begin with. 

Source: Dave. (2015). The Latest Tech & Startup News. Retrieved August 13, 2016, from http://www.rev2.org/

Web 1.0 Versus Web 2.0 Pictures

Today I found a couple of pictures relating to Web 2.0, which I thought I would share. 

(Ahmed, 2015)

(Nickull, Hunchcliffe, Governor, 2009)

Sources: 

Ahmed, O. S. (2015). Web 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/olaonyx/web-10-web-20-

and-web-30

Nickull, D., Hinchcliffe, D., & Governor, J. (2009). 3. Dissecting Web 2.0 Examples [Book]. 

Retrieved from https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/web-20-

architectures/9780596514433/ch03.html 

Review of Mashable

I had heard of the site Mashable  previously, but never really looked around long enough on it before. I surely would have gone down the route of thinking about it relating to Web 2.0. Now that I’ve been introduced to the points of the subject, I think it is a great example! Information is shared on various social media platforms and is aggregated how the site owner sees fit. Not only is it jam packed with articles and external links, but you can customize your experience for future browsing.

You’re able to follow specific topics of interests or authors to see more of the things you like. There is a small bar on every post to show how popular a post is. The more shares according to the time it was posted, the higher it will show up on the site's feed, which separates articles as new, rising, and hot. You are also given the opportunity to sign up for a daily e-mail, which contains content tailored to your preferences. Whether you are always on the look out for trending stories, social media guides, or just general information and opinion on a number of subjects, you should have no trouble finding something of interest here.

Further interaction is encouraged through commenting on the articles provided, but you are forced to connect through a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+ account, which may be the biggest negative factor about this site. Not everyone will want to connect either of these accounts just to interact on a story, which means the site could be losing out on valuable opinions.  This could be somewhat of a dilemma when it comes to children using the site as well. With the growth of social media and the increase of lower aged users, privacy and security may become a problem, as connected users can easily interact with each other publicly and privately. As with any internet browsing, we can only hope that children using such a site will be monitored by guardians.

One great feature to mention is the job board area of the site. Here you can build a resume, search for jobs, and sign up for alerts that meet your preferences. There are some pretty big name company’s listed as well. It was interesting to see both domestic, as well as international job listings. While this portion of the site does not have nearly as many job listings as actual job searching websites, there are close to 200 to browse.

I do have to note, the frequency in which the site refreshes its information is very frequent - about every 15 seconds, which can be a bother. The ads get replaced each time. They are not always even close to being the same size, which can alter the position of things you may be browsing on the main page. 

Overall, even though there are a couple of things that didn't appeal to me, I think it is a great interactive site to spend time on. I think perhaps I might stumble back to it in the future. The articles may not be professionally written, but they don't have the same tabloid type feel to them, as similar sites are loaded with. 

Source of post: Mashable. (2016). Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/