Views from the Ivory Tower – June 2009 edition

Social Networking

By Ted Bade

As long as there has been a computer, some geek or another has tried to use it to communicate with someone else. Back in the ancient days of computing, this was just the simple text message. As time went on, those computer guys (and gals), gave us services like email, IRC chat, and Newsgroups. To communicate with one friend, you send an email, to actually chat live with a friend, you used IRC chat and to share your ideas with a group on a specific topic, you used Newsgroups.

 

This started with local networks, but as time went on, someone else created the concept of the Internet. Now one could communicate not only with anyone on the local network, but anyone connected to the Internet. Geek communication heaven!

 

Personal computers became more sophisticated, which means that we could add graphics, audio and eventually video to our communications. When the World Wide Web was created, everyone involved wanted to go out and create a personal web site. This gave one the ability to share their thoughts and interests with anyone else on the WWW, who knew your web address (URL). The problem was that guessing a URL wasn’t a simple matter. So one would have a nice web page and only a few friends would ever see it.

 

Audio and video chatting arrived well before typical home user bandwidths could handle the traffic. I tried playing with it first using a standard telephone line connection, It worked, but not very well. Yet I could talk with a friend (although with large delays which today we call lag) and even see very slow video. It was marvelous!

 

Today, we have a wealth of ways to communicate with our friends. While there still are the old ways of IRC, Newsgroups, the web, and email, there are more interesting options available to us.

 

If you are into video chatting, there are a couple of options I am aware of and have personally tried some of them. For immediate friends and family, there is nothing like iChat .

You can text, talk or even video conference. My experience with it is that it works very well. iChat isn’t the only such program for the Macintosh. If a friend invites you to use a service, check to see if a Macintosh version is available, it usually is.

 

These type of applications function to provide easy peer to peer communication. The real trick with these type of programs is to figure out which the majority of your friends use, and keep that one running. Alternatively, you can run them all! I have tried a few of these chat programs with video, just to see how they work, and so far I haven’t had any issues. A couple I am aware of are Yahoo Messenger and (ICQ).

 

For video chatting with groups there are programs where you use the application to connect to a server that offers a variety of “rooms” with specific topics. Friends can meet there or you can look for other people who post information about themselves that might be of interest. There are a couple of programs like this that work on the Macintosh. (for instance one called CamFrog.

 

For general getting in touch with friends and family, there are some good choices for social networks. I personally haven’t tried anything other then “Facebook”. This service lets you create a personal space, providing as much or as little information about yourself as you like. The site gives you a variety of ways to locate friends and lost family. You can search by using an email address or a name. If you provide the graduation year and school name for your High School or College, you can search for others who graduated at the same time. You can also see the list of people who are friends of your friends. You might get a match that way. For instance, when my niece added me as a friend, I saw my brother also was on and invited him. The more information about yourself you provide, the easier it is for people to find you as well.

 

The site provides a wealth of goofy yet sometime fun things to do with or (virtually) to your friends. I can recall getting invited to take a number of silly surveys, received a virtual “hug”, got involved in a squirt gun fight, and so forth. While I am not necessarily a fan of these things, many people enjoy them, so what the hey!

 

You can share things of interest with your friends. You can post photos, links to web sites, movies, and so forth. The site allows the people on your friends list to comment on just about any aspect of your space there. Don’t be surprised to find a friend having made a comment on some obscure area! I once carried out a long conversation with a high school friend after commenting on a picture in her album. Facebook is about communication with friends. There are new activities arriving daily. I personally have only touched the surface of what can be done.

 

I expect that the Facebook owners make use of, at least some, of you personal information for marketing purposes. I have noticed some of the adds I find on my pages are related to things that might interest me. However, since Facebook is free to the user, the company needs to make money in some way. I won’t complain about that as I see it as a fair exchange. Also, if there is something about what you do that you don’t want as general knowledge, don’t post it. Like with any social interaction, don’t go shouting the things you don’t want others to hear.

 

There are other social web pages like this, which I have little experience with. Twitter seems to be all the rage lately. I believe it is geared more toward short statements about whatever you want to post. Another I have visited but not joined is (MySpace). It is a lot like Facebook, but with some different rules.

 

Another type of social network are the online virtual worlds. While playing a game like World of Warcraft doesn’t sound like a social thing, I have a friend who actually married a women he met playing. In these types of games there are groups called “Guilds”. These people often are or become friends in the real world, not just in the virtual. But even without a Guild connection, I have met and interacted with a few people and had a great time. If you are a gamer, sites like these are social!

 

Going beyond a game environment and into more virtual reality, there are services like “Second Life”. In this world you create an avatar and have it live a life. While I don’t have any first hand experience, I have read a little and have to admit, I am a bit intrigued. In this world, you can interact with other players, build places to live, go to a variety of events put on by other players, and do just about anything you might it real life. Except, of course, it is totally anonymous. I will leave further information about this and other services to those who actually tried them.

 

So today, we have a wealth of social networking options. None of the older stuff has really dies and new ways to interact are arriving all the time. Who knows what the future might hold. Perhaps we will have telepresence, so instead of watching your avatar interact in a virtual world, you will be the avatar in the virtual world. Then again, perhaps the basis of the movie “The Matrix”, wasn’t that far off....

 

So get out there and socialize!