Micro Bloggin Vs. Blogging Site

Micro blogging as the word suggests is Blogging in small pieces. It allows you to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group chosen by the user. The main attraction of micro blogging is that you can submit your piece of text by variety of means, such as text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web.

Facebook (blogging) and Twitter (micro blogging) are currently the most popular social networks used every day by millions of people around the world. Twitter acts as an "RSS reader" in which to users are shown short messages from the people their following. They can select exactly what it is they want to know or find out and from whom they want to hear about.

 A Group of users on Twitter consists mostly from professionals who are promoting a business venture, or seeking administrative permission to acquire representational figures to help with branding or marketing ideas. A few people use Twitter for messages such as "I've just cooked great spaghetti," But this is not a regular thing that happens on Twitter; Facebook is more about contacts between friends, family and loved ones through chat, events, and photo gallery created by you or anyone else you know.

A few reasons why I utilized Twitter are that, I use it to follow majority of the sports here in America such as; The National Basketball Association (NBA), The National “American” Football Association (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and The National Hockey League (NHL). Using Twitter, I can get the latest updates when it comes to trades, highlights, stats, moves, free agency, or just aimless shot from one player to the next.

Twitter is an American based social networking site; Millions of people around the world use this site, although, the reason they’re using this may be different from yours. Some of those who use it are sports agents, or magazines companies and these are the groups of people who use Twitter for other means than socialization such as; journalism, political communicator and/ or an organizational tool.

For instance, there is a man by the name of Sam Laird who wrote an article titled “How an African Chief Uses Twitter to Keep the Peace” . In his article he states “Chief Francis Kariuki — or, @Chiefkariuki, as he’s known online — tweets to defeat thugs and thieves, locate missing children and farm animals, and organize village logistical matters”.  He continues on by stating, “In one example reported by the AP, criminals were raiding a school teacher’s home at 4 a.m. until Kariuki intervened via Twitter. After receiving a phone tip, Kariuki sent a tweet that mobilized village residents to gather outside the teacher’s house and scare the robbers away. In another example, Kariuki used Twitter to organize a rescue operation after a man fell into a latrine pit”.

In conclusion, in the battle between Micro blogging (Twitter) vs. Blogging sites (Facebook) which ever one I choose to use will be predetermined by the type of message I am attempting to communicate, professionally I would choose Twitter, and family orientate I use Facebook.  

Using Facebook and Social Networking sites

Well for me, I had a Facebook account for a while now.  I believe I started my Facebook page in 2005. I typically use Facebook to connect with my family and friends that I know from high school.  Occasionally, I will play them games on there, like Wheel of Fortune, Café World, and Texas Hold’em.  I also use it to post quotes I see or hear from movies or TV shows I’ve watched. I would get “likes” and “comments” from my friends and family. Without Facebook, I probably would have fallen out of touch with everyone I knew from my high school years. For the most part I really don’t be on it all like that anymore now.  The reason being is that now everybody posts everything that they do from them walking outside to taking a nap and feeding their pet ant.  It’s getting ridiculous now. 

Besides the ways that I utilize Facebook, there are other functions that also can be used.  One is the “poke” function, poking someone gives you a way to say nothing while suggesting a relation or a connection.  Another use is for your company, if you have a company that you would like to get out there, you can make a Facebook page to get more exposure.  Last but not least you can make an event such as a Birthday party, or a Family gets together and invites all your close family and friends to it.

The purpose of making a new Facebook page is mainly for this class.  Meaning, that our instructor didn’t want to see what we do in our social life. This is for class project ONLY!!!! Point blanket period.   

My information on my Facebook account is private.  The reason I say that because when I set up my account it ask me if I want my account to be public meaning for everybody to see (friends or no friends), or private meaning only your friends that you accepted are allowed to see or view your page(s).

Social networking sites, such as Facebook and twitter are fun ways to keep in touch with friends and meet new people. However, you have to be careful about the information you put on these sites because it can sometimes lead to embarrassment and incidents of stalking, identity theft, and harassment.  Meaning; Change your privacy settings. The privacy settings can and will vary from site to site. Some social networking sites are totally public so anyone with access to the Internet can read the information that you post. Another way is to think before you post. Meaning, be careful about what you post on these websites. Pictures, comments, and blog entries can be saved and forwarded on to others. Also be wary of strangers. Because the Internet provides a sense of anonymity, it's easy for people to fake their identities and motives. Make sure you choose quality over quantity. Make sure you be selective about who you choose to add to your friends list. You don't have to add every person who sends you a friend request, and make sure you create a secure password. Create a password for your social networking accounts that can't be easily deciphered, a password with a little bit of everything in it (from Dashes down to letters and numbers).   If you follow those simple steps your personal information will be safe.

When it comes to Facebook many awkward moments can occur. Like someone posting a picture up of you that embarrassed you to a post from somebody disrespecting you to the fullest.  For me personally, I haven’t had anything outrageous like that happen to me and I hope it never will.

What is Important to me

While making this project, I was enlightened by the useful information received through the transfer of vibrated sounds traveling through space between myself and other living entities. Through their cooperation, I was able to conduct a reasonable subscription of their detailed logic into my version of interpretation with technology.

I posted my video/ project on Vimeo and YouTube; from a personal point of view I chose these two domains to upload my video due to the fact they both have identical infrastructure.  After taking a closer look at YouTube. YouTube is known for being the largest and most popular video hosting site out here. Thousands of people log on and watch videos on YouTube daily like myself.  YouTube is a great way to promote yourself and for your business, including: display ads and in- video ads. Another pro for YouTube is getting an account. It is very simple and you don’t have to pay nothing to get an account. With a YouTube account, each section is categorized and shows all your videos that you've uploaded or watched. It's a good feature when you don't want to go through the search bar to look up your resent videos. Now here’s the worst part about YouTube. YouTube player can get very ugly at times as we all know.  The frustrating part about YouTube is the pop-up ads; some of the video might not have it or the option to skip the ad. Another con is the length of the video; you only get 10 minutes to record something.

Now with the pros of using Vimeo it has good quality when it comes to watching a video with a pro account.  Vimeo offer “complete customization” of its video player allowing you to embed your logo and branding into the player itself.  With Vimeo it has more viewers that are likely to watch your videos because it's a smaller community. It's better to have viewers who actually stay and watch your videos, than just people looking at it and then selecting something else. Now for the cons of Vimeo, Using Vimeo would be harder to make your videos get more exposure; it’s especially harder for businesses to get exposure to their company. Vimeo only allows you to upload one HD video per week and a maximum of 500 MB with a free account.  Now if you want to upgrade your account, its $59.95 a year to basically have access to better videos. To me that’s just a ridiculous price to be paying to watch or upload videos.

While shooting the video I did not receive as much correspondence as I would have liked from those who I requested to interview; with the Editing I encountered an issue with the audio which resulted with a one second pause midway throw the film I was using; with Posting my Video to YouTube and Vimeo I encountered no problem once I created an account for each of them.

As a communication tool, video seems to be the best way to rely a message to friend, family, and associates because with video you are able to utilize visual intercept with body language assisting the verbal tools. The public nature my video did not affect the subject matter that I have chosen to discuss.

BufWiki experience

Being from Buffalo myself, I actually attend the celebration from time to time. For the most part, the event is held at downtown Buffalo, New York every year during the first week of June. Before it was located at the current spot here in Buffalo, there was a different location where the courts were aligned vertically, meaning one behind the other, but with the same concept; the location was between East Ferry street and East Delevan street along Grider street. The halftime shows they have prepared are, without a doubt, the best I’ve seen since attending and scrimmaging during halftime of a pre-season football competition. The food that’s served are by those who sponsor the event such as, Sahlen’s, who just happen to serve the best Hotdogs in the city next to Steve’s Meat; Applebee’s, one of the best dine-out spot’s on Elmwood avenue.( that’s what I call good marketing!), Also, having sponsorships from Wegmans, TOPS, and Verizon. They have little booth-like table settings along the side of the road at every court, keeping score at some of the sidelined view of the game, others are just selling they’re product or testing a new to see the response it gets from consumers. Gatorade is another sponsor I see set up throughout the event, located in the most obvious of spots reasonably though. Even local businesses have an input to this yearly successful event like, Holiday Inn, Walgreens, McDonalds, but then again, who doesn’t McDonald's sponsor? But, getting back on topic, let’s see, who else is a sponsor? OK, Burger King, and to end this very long list of sponsorships, AT&T, which is a worldwide phone line and all the amenities that go along with it.

 I like this basketball display of talent because it allows us a chance to possibly get a glance of the next street ball, College, or maybe even NBA superstar of the future. Or maybe that could be my imagination working in that expression, but you never know. A safe and secure environment is a constantly warm feeling while attending this festival; A party-like atmosphere, with the sun shining bright, music blasting, grills going with the savory smell of bar-b-q baby back ribs, corn on the cob, and the all-time great classic, good old American cheese burgers; You know, they hire specific instructions for strict personnel to handle, manage, and prepare various food, beverage, and desert items listed on signs presented in comprehensive language that allow them to feed hungry crowd in the thousands in numbers gathered. A lot of hard work and determination is exzubriated from the hard working employees who show up day in and day out, collaborating with vendors, VP’s, CEO’s and other forms of leadership positions to help keep and stay in order, allowing precise division of obligation to exchange means among each other to carry out this massive task between five and seven months of the fiscal year starting in February.

 Buffalo, is not the only place to call home for this event; No, they travel around the world to places that appreciate the value of the game like, China, Europe, and England just to name a few. Basketball is known and loved by people worldwide; Now-a-days, and maybe before, you couldn’t go to a park or playground suited for high school students that didn’t have a court since the 90’s. All ages from 3-93 love basketball, and we can either watch a game and enjoy it, or participate in a game and have some fun, which of them you prefer is fine by me, but we can agree to disagree with the underling of watching. So many chances to take photos of the festival are available with just the reach of a camera, because I don’t think anyone person from here wouldn’t mind being in a picture, especially at an event like this; Almost equal to the taste-of-Buffalo with the turn-out of what they would call us “the consumers”, to test, taste or sample their best dishes.          

At first glance, I thought doing this page with another person/ classmate would be dreadful, but it turned out to be very helpful. Instead of me doing all the work myself to come up with the proper amount of words, it was like I had five hundred words to give and my classmate contributed five hundred. Using a common tool as the base, we came up with very descriptive words to use while describing our ideas. With a little help from our own individual word banks, it helped us put together a collaborated piece of work that we both are proud to share with the viewing public and those who seek to understand the reason behind this work. In the time used to create this piece of work, there were ideas thrown around in the air by both parties; some were used, and some weren’t, only the best and brightest suggestions were enabled and recorded together for this project which made the final project successful from my standpoint; I’m pretty sure my classmate feels the same way. The Gus Macker tournament was actually cancelled this past Sunday, which was June 3, 2012, due to weather conditions, so I presumed that the event will continue once the weather permits to allow the tournament to crown all champions of the courts. With the help of prior knowledge of the Gus Macker, it was fairly easy to come up with a base understanding as to what was to be implemented; Come to find out later, the three on three tournament that was to last at least two days was cancelled, but not due to the downpour of the rain, but by the threat of lightning storms. Finding the right words to manipulate my thoughts on the experience of this project was very, very rough, but I think I managed to put the right words in the right places.

Web 2 affects on me and my community

There are more than a few ways that web 2 affect me and my surrounding community. discussing them in full detail would be too time cosuming, so i decided to chop it down to three compntents to help give an understanding to the helpful ways it affects; facebook, myspace, and twitter.

What Web 2.0 means to me is basically an upgrade from Web 1.0.  It’s more advance now, and without Web 2.0 we wouldn’t be able to use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or any other Social network.  Web 2.0 not only gives us the opportunity to use just letters and words to communicate, now we are able to communicate through our cell phone as far as updating stats on Facebook, and cameras by sending pictures to Facebook by using the “share” button if we wanted to.  One of the many reasons why Web 2.0 lives up to the Hype, is because of IM (instant Messaging), with using IM you can talk to basically anyone you want without them being in front of you. You can use Facebook to look for family members or even friends that you haven’t spoken to in a while or seen since high school. I believe by the next generation it’s going to be even more advanced.  We might then be able to operate our computer by just talking to it, by stating what we want to search for, down to turning the computer off by just saying shut down.  Furthermore, Web 2.0 is as it says it is a work in progress.
  Facebook allows you to view, blog, and keep in contact with friends and family; myspace does about the same, and twitter you could do the same, but with different types of people. let's stay with facebook for now; you can reach out to those you lost contact with years ago due to distance, or keep up with a member for whatever reasons you wish.

With the amateurization of the web avenue, a person can put their creation up on the web for others to view; it happens to be a participatory web, in other words, it makes the progression from static web pages to dynamic interactive web pages. There is some importantance to as why it was made; the value content is based on the creation itself; the better design you have for the page, the more attractive it becomes to viewers, the more enticesive the reader becomes, and that gives cause to others read what you wrote.

Once you have a stationary subject to update, you must upgrade frequently in order to compete. Everyone will be hip to hop on track with whatever is current or happening at the moment, don’t be the last to hear, because if you are and there’s someone else who has the same format as you with the info, they are more than likely to attain their attention on the subject matter due to punctuality on behalf of the source, and obtain their daily dose of that information from that source opposed to you, so stay current.

Myspace has the same basic principles of facebook, it's actually  a copycat of the site with a different name; Although facebook is more popular in the world today, myspace was it's original form.

Now along comes this new and faster way to communicate with family and friends with an added bonus; now you are allowed to follow certain celebrities who use the social site to reach fans and the public to give thier message to or follow your favorite(s) star, and it's called twitter. You can also, just as you can on facebook or myspace, post up pictures of things you enjoy, or images pertaining to the subject matter at hand.

All in all, using this social networking site creates more ways to communicate among other civilized individuals to embrace working situations ,or just simply a way to keep in touch with the world around you.