Social Networking in Wikis

Wow! This social networking thing is going crazy! Even wikis are adding social networking tools.

This week I went looking for new social networking tools and found that a company called Wetpaint (which offers free wikis to people) are starting to take steps to provide people with “fully-functional social networks with the release of several new features that are typically found on social networking sites (Nicole).” What once was only used as a resource for enterprise solutions is now siding more towards feeds which will allow users to communicate with one another more easily. They plan to place this right in their dashboard making it hard to resist talking to others when they are online.

Another thing they are doing is adding in a “friends invite option” so people can invite others into their wikis. This is supposedly so that the friends can help contribute to the wiki the user is currently working on at the time.

An option they will provide is a compliments area so friends and foes alike can tell a wiki writer if they like it or not. This is useful from the standpoint that if one is not the authority on a subject and they insist on writing about it, an authority could come in and straighten out any misgivings the original writer may have had. Of course they hope this will be a place where people can encourage others so wikis become more popular, but I am not sure that is all that will happen.

A lot of people are asking if the social networking area is really necessary for wikis. I am just getting familiar with wikis within this past year, so I really can’t give my solid opinion of whether it is a good or bad thing. However, generally speaking from what I do know, I don’t see that it could hurt. It is at least worth trying, right?

Here's the link to the article

Keeping your stuff private

This week I chose to write about how ones image on a social networking site reflects who they are and how this image, if bad, can come back to haunt you.

I have read in the news that recruiters from major companies look on sites such as MySpace and Facebook for potential job candidates (link to the article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523). Keeping this in mind, I believe it is important to keep your social spaces as “clean” as possible. It is important also to let the viewers see who you are as a person, but keep the crazy stuff for a picture album in your house where one can pull it out only when it is appropriate.

So, you may think this is silly. No one can view your site that isn’t invited and therefore your “crazy” pictures are safe, right? This is not true. People that one invites into their site as “friends” can take the pictures off of their site and either post them on their own for others to see or pass them on to others. This happened to one of my friends. She had to request the other person to take the picture off of his site. He reluctantly agreed, but who knows where it went before he removed it.

Keeping ones social networking sites clean and professional will help with ones career in the long run. Professionals are looking at potential candidates through these sites. It is important to keep this in mind while creating and maintaining social networks. Just because one has something posted doesn’t mean it will stay with them and only them. These pictures may eventually come back to haunt you someday when you least expect it.

Should we allow “worthless content” on the web?

Yes, I believe we should. I wrote about this in my last blog and had one comment that pretty much disagreed with me and another who thought my point about porn and kids was a good one (see below). So let’s talk more about it.

I would like to defend my position on saying, “Should people be allowed to create music on their own without record companies and the like regardless of the quality? Sure. Why not? What will happen? We won’t listen to it or we will because it is so terrible."

I interpret Keeny’s point below as saying the record companies and the like are not doing a great job of getting rid of the junk just like the internet is not doing the job. Keeny believes we should let others take charge and get rid of the junk so there is more competition (that’s my interpretation of this argument). Keeny’s point is, the competition would become even greater because it would be the good against the better (right?).

I understand what Keeny is saying, but I still hold true to my belief that if we leave everything the way it is now, the bad will eventually be weeded out and we will be left with the good against the better, but under our own terms and when we are ready. In this situation, the content left on the web will be up to us, not others trying to steer us their way. We should be able to decide what is good or bad. This is art and can only be recognized as “good” or “bad” in the eyes of the beholder, not government officials deciding for us what is art and what isn’t.

I think the best way to explain my point is to try to imagine if one were a songwriter who wanted to see if ones songs were good, maybe even good enough to think about starting a singing/songwriting career. Putting ones music on YouTube could help with this decision and would be less time consuming and cost free. Going to a record company would cost precious time and lots of money with the chance of being turned down even though the actual music might be popular with the public (kind of like the last major election so many were upset with – the popular vote did not win). Let the public decide, not the government.

Thanks for reading :D