Digital Footprint

When I search my name on Google I found that I had a digital footprint and this is probably because my name is uncommon. Links to the class Blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, High School awards, College awards, and information about where I live/where I’m from appeared. I was actually surprised as to how many links came up. In relation to the Pew article, someone could find information on my last job this past summer, my home address, and things I have written. I’m sure if I typed in more than just my name on Google, people would be able to find much more information on me.

It would be beneficial to everyone if there were increased standards of Internet safety. I’m lucky that my phone number, photos of me, and other more personal information aren’t searchable, however if someone really wanted to access this information they would be able to.

Because we cannot control what is searchable and not searchable, everyone needs to manage their image so that if a potential employer, or anyone for that matter, searches your name, only the information you’d want them to see would come up. Everyone should have appropriate social media profile pictures and display only appropriate information about your self.

Definition of Community

In my opinion, when defining another community, you look at observable objects and values. You look at what people wear, how they talk/interact, what they do in their day-to-day activities, type of community (whether college, high-school, housing, or organizations, business or personal). Then you can begin to form ideas and belief's about what type of community this is. For example, when looking at the University at Albany, you see that it is a college full of diversity. This is UAlbany's mainstream community, but then their are hundreds of small communities that form between friends, class mates, professors, and employees. You might notice that similar people are "grouped" together or people communicate in different ways according to who they hang out with. In the reading but Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe, we see that each type of social media is it's own community as well: Youtube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. All of these websites have formed their own community. For example, Facebook has a community of mainly college students while LinkedIn has a community of more middle-aged professionals. Just as in observing behavior of an actual physical place, you can observe community by going on and creating an account on any one of these social media sites. Because we belong to so many different things (for example, I am a Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter user, and I attend college, live in a house in Albany with friends while having a house with my parents on Long Island, etc.), I believe we are all a part of multiple communities.

In our next blog will be on a tool that no one has used yet. Since our community is this class and college, to attract people them to read our post, I need to be targeted at our class/general college students and it needs to relate to the common social media sites that we use everyday, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Resources on the Definition of Culture

Here are 5 resources I have found on the definition of culture:

Link 1: http://cindyking.biz/21-definitions-of-culture/
--This site lists 21 definitions of culture taken from twitter users.

Link 2: http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
--This site contains a slideshare presentation of organizational culture and how it relates to the company Netflix.

Link 3: http://www.everyculture.com/To-Z/United-States-of-America.html
-- This site lists the history of US Culture of political, economical, and social aspects of society.

Link 4: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/culture
-- This site from dictionary.com lists multiple definitions of culture.

Link 5: http://anthro.palomar.edu/culture/culture_1.htm
-- This site lists the different layers of culture all over the world.

4 tools of interaction

The 4 tools of Computer Mediated Communication we are discussing are Prezi, Blogger, Webpage, and Twitter. Each of these 4 tools enables social interaction, personalization, active participation, and collaboration. Quoted by Tim O'Reilly from our reading, “Web 2.0 is a set of social, economic and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the internet – a more mature, distinct medium characterized by user participation, openness and network effects.” After the webpage, we have seen cites like Prezi, Blogger and Twitter emerge.

In class we worked with Prezi, an educational and interactive cite for students and teachers. It is similar to powerpoint but it involves active participation. We also worked with Twitter, a social networking cite. Through this medium, we are able to update our followers about anything we want, anytime. Blogger is how we are going to post our opinions and responses to each others ideas.