The Power of eCommunication

My online community is the University of Sydney's Digital cultures community. To be honest it was my flatmates idea to come up with this community. The basic idea about this community is to share information and knowledge about this course among the new students,older students and also involve the faculty as well.

This community will help new students interact with the older students and share their experiences about this course as its a brand new one.

COURSE RELATED-

• To integrate all participants (teachers & students) of the course into the community.
• To share knowledge and information pertaining to the subjects.
• To share experiences within lessons discussed.
• To build a forum for discussions, debates and feedback.
• To integrate this community with other communities relevant to the subject of study.
• To organize external presentations.
• To build a liaison with the industry

In constructing my community I look for support from the University, in helping provide the infrastructure (technology) for the construction of the community. A key discussion to support my cause would be to explain the difference between Moodle and this community. However once the University provides the initial support and continues to provide the founding technology for this community. Sustaining it in terms of its content would be the sole responsibility of its members. This however is the challenge!

The name of my community networking site is Sydney Commuters. The motive is to create a virtual space in which the centralised community of Sydney can share opinions, problems, stories, and much more in matters related specifically to traffic and commuting in Sydney. The domain will attempt to attract all types of content including photos, videos, stories, reports, news, and information that are exclusively related to traffic and commuting in and around Sydney. The benefits for Sydneysiders will include access to local weather, updated traffic reports, maps, timetables, links, and local services such as legal advice.

Currently, there are no other sites that offer all of the intended features in one space. It is possible to get most of the information elsewhere through search engine queries, but the purpose of this website will be to bring together all the essential information as well as extras into one domain. Furthermore it proposes to invoke action and policy changes derived from the public opinion of Sydneysiders exclusively. 70% of the population of Australia are users of the internet according to the records of Australian Bureau of Statistics and Internet World Stats. Furthermore, it is quite clear that internet usage is more common in metropolitan areas. This website intends to replace the traditional concept of the neighbourhood community centre, which can be found in many different communities within Sydney. Sydney Commuters will offer the entire city of Sydney one single community centre where all matters relating to traffic and commuting in this case, are entirely dealt with by means of links, contacts, forums, advice, and services. Sydney Commuters intends to address local issues in order to create a sense of common ground for Sydneysiders. The website shall focus on a localised community glocally, which will ambitiously become known as the glocalised community of Sydney. In other words, the global information resources of the internet will be utilised for a local purpose.

Most social networking sites currently operating successfully such as MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, and others focus on providing a social space to communicate with, and find potential friends and contacts. Sydney Commuters however, intends to attract Sydneysiders exclusively, from all walks of life, to invoke a widespread involvement in matters relating to Sydney traffic and commuter services.

The site will mainly rely on the strength of weak ties as defined by Granovetter (1983). It will not merely depend on strong ties that are associated with close social networks, but rather, weak ties maintainable by frequented participation by commuters in general. However, strong ties will inevitably form when users begin to reap benefits from the site and endeavour onto a membership scheme of some kind.

It will merely provide a space where certain matters, as in this case are traffic and commuter related issues, will be posted, discussed, shared, reported, and potentially even resolved. In addition to this, it will provide user generated tips, advice, and feedback on various aspects of commuting and traffic. There will also be a billboard for people interested in carpooling.

The intention is to invite all Sydneysiders together to participate in a virtual community where public action is invoked and initiated. This will be the core theme of the site… to create, accumulate, and enhance public awareness and opinion to a state of action. To do this, Sydney Commuters will need to be supported by the law authorities of NSW. It will obtain the status of an official community based organisation. I believe sponsors will be quite easy to find once benefits become obvious. The site will attempt to bring all matters relating to traffic and commuting in Sydney into one communal space in which outlets for information, news, and assistance may be found. The point is to provide a central point of access to all traffic and commuting related issues. There will be opinion polls and surveys that researchers may utilise to create efficient changes in laws and regulations. If communities had access to networks that could make a difference and could enforce change, I believe that the majority would participate.

People tend to enjoy empowerment and empowerment may be gained through a majority voice. This domain intends to provide factual information and bring ‘produsers’ together to form a community based organisation rather than merely a social space to communicate with others. This ‘prodused’ community organisation will address localised traffic and commuting issues in and around Sydney.

The motive behind Sydney Commuters is to bring awareness to local occurrences and record events that are usually found scattered in and around local newspapers and magazines. This virtual community space will enable anyone to tell their story. The intended outcome is a virtual community space in which all matters relating to traffic and commuting in Sydney can be shared, discussed, researched, and possibly resolved.

The site will be a mash-up of APIs as well as file and photo-sharing utilities. It will also utilise web2.0 features such as wikis, widgets, blogs, and skype. I propose to display a homepage that encompasses all conceivable issues related to traffic and commuting in Sydney. There may be maps, routes, guides, forecasts, and a variety of other information together with a linking network to things such as car pooling classifieds. Alongside these features will be a thematic social environment that will attract all those who are concerned about anything related to Sydney traffic. There may also be a members section that offers benefits such as legal advice or services.

This completes the introduction of my community website proposal. I look forward to presenting the completed project in the near future. Thank you.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site, mainly used for professional networking For example, if you established a network of 20 individuals who you personally know and trust, and each of them created a network of 20 trusted friends, you now have access to 400 individuals across many different industries who all share a very high degree of trust. There are over 13 million experienced professionals in this huge network. The response for your questions is always faster than your expectation.
There are several functions listed in the main page of LinkedIn.
Home contains some special function of LinkedIn, for example, you can find your former classmates or past colleagues here.
People is a super search engine that allows you to Search for people you know from over 13 million professionals already on LinkedIn.
Jobs and hiring help people posting advertisements of hiring and finding jobs.
Service contains a category that lists almost all industry. User can find those industry’s professionals here.
Answers With a service like Yahoo! Most users are asking questions to have a little fun or waste some time when they are bored on the Web. However, LinkedIn answer is a great way to get immediate feedback to a business-related question.
It also includes my profile that allows you to edit your current job description and education background. My contact is just like a friend list; you can add friends from your emails contact list directly from the special function LinkedIn provide here.

Special feature

If you are then looking for a person to help you with a specific need, you can use the search feature of LinkedIn to see if you can find anyone through your network of trusted friends. If you find someone you wish to contact, you submit a request for your mutual friend to make an introduction. Through this "virtual handshake", you now have access to someone you need, with an endorsement from a mutual acquaintance. This is the core philosophy that allows LinkedIn to function and why they say, 'Your network is bigger than you think'.
When you see this star on a profile, you know that person has proven their expertise by answering questions.
Find jobs provide you the newest recruiting advertisement in LinkedIn, it’s not like you are looking for jobs by newspaper because when you use LinkedIn to contact for your job, you already prove that you know how to explore and use a new technology to find opportunities and you are ahead of people who contact job through newspaper.
If you are looking for a trusted experienced professional employee, Hiring&Recruting function in LinkedIn can save you a lot of time Since the basic core principle of LinkedIn is based on establishing a networking through trusted friends.
How do you know the people who answered your question is an expert? LinkedIn has an Earning expertise system there: firstly. Find questions in the areas you know like browse questions to find categories familiar to you. Secondly, answer those questions, remember private answers wont help you earn expertise. Every time the questioner picks your answer best, you gain a point of expertise. The more points of expertise, the higher you appear on lists of experts.

Documents the feedback that you received from the class during and after your presentation

My classmates feel a little confused about the purpose of my social network and the advantage I listed is too broad to specify for University student use. As a management of my social network, I have to explain how and why people join my network but not others specifically.

Replies to this feedback

This feedback has given me new ideas and will lead me to make some changes. I’ll analyze the special technology that is useful for university student in LinkedIn. For example, students who have question about their current major or assignment, the response from their professor always take hours, but they can get multi professional feedbacks from LinkedIn right away.

As I presented in Seminar 6, my online community is a language community which is created for people who is learning English as a second language. My proposed online community is about knowledge sharing between domestic and abroad students with the technology of web 2.0. The initial idea came from my personal experience: there are so many Chinese students in Sydney University, but most of them are not well networked, which prevents them from sharing experience in the aspects of life, study and language, especially for the new comers.

Contents:
0:00 : Self-introduction and a brief description of the content of the podcast

0:41: General presentation of Facebook

1:00: Expansion and rank of Facebook

1:40: My experience on Facebook

2:14: Something interesting I found

3:10: The use of Facebook in META 6903

3:58: Conclusion

1. Self-introduction and a brief description of the content of the podcast

Hello everyone, this Sophie with the first podcast. As a student of META 6903, which is a short form of Managing eCommunication, today I’d like to talk about the social network Facebook. First, I’ll give a brief introduction of Facebook, and then I’ll share my own experience when I logged on it. Later in this podcast, I’ll talk more about its application in our META 6903 study.

2. General presentation of Facebook

Facebook is a social network website, which was launched on February 4th, 2004. Initially the membership was restricted to college students with university email addresses. Science September 11th, 2006, it had been made available to any email address.

3. Expansion and rank of Facebook

As of July 2007, Facebook had the largest number of registered users among college-focused websites, with over 34 million active members from both college and non-collegiate networks. In July 2007 it was ranked between 10-13 websites, and was the number one site for photos in the United States, with over 8.5 million photos uploaded daily.

4. My experience on Facebook

When I registered on Facebook at the first time, I was asked to add my contacts through email list. Because most of my friends were on MSN, I could simply fulfill my hotmail address and password, and then all my friends’ email address could be transferred on Facebook, as options for me to invite them join it. I thought it was amazing and very convenience, especially you’ve got many friends from the same email company.

5. Something interesting I found

What’s more, Facebook allows you to “label” the relationship between you and your contacts. Relationship includes “go to college together”, “work together”, “be in a same organization”, etc. The most interesting thing is once the relationship is “labeled”, it needs to be notified by your contacts. You can also edit how and when did you know each other, and this needs notification, too. When all the relationship are notified, there will be a social timeline for you, which shows your relationship history.

Facebook also has a “wall” on each user’s profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see.

6. The use of Facebook in META 6903

As a student, I think we can use Facebook to help with our study. Firstly, we can set up our META group as the place where we can post the study resources on it, as backup of Moodle. Moreover, in this META group we can discuss questions and share ideas, also we can link our group with other similar groups, which can improve our knowledge and give us a new horizon. In the end, I hope all the members of our course could make friends from the META group. We are not just co-workers or students, we are friends!

7. Conclusion

Ok, this is my first podcast. I hope it’s not too boring. Also I hope all of you can get a general understanding of Facebook and find something useful or interesting. Because Facebook is quite new for me, there are still other features I didn’t mention. Anyway, I’ve had my first step on it, how about you guys?

A Podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.

Table of Contents
Introduction 2 0 sec
General presentation of the LinkedIn 2 30 sec
How the LinkedIn is used 2 1.50 min
Educational use of the LinkedIn 3 4.25 min
Conclusion 3 6.03 min

Introduction
Hi everyone, my name is David Wang and I’m a student of META 6903. META 6903 is a very good course that introduces the newest network technology and gives students a further understanding of the power of ecommunication. I’m going to talk about LinkedIn – a free social network software. You may find that LinkedIn can solve all the problems you are having in your real life from my presentation.

General presentation of the LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a network software that involves a series of advanced services, such as Inmail, advertisement, advanced search engine and book proper reading service for your company. Moreover, LinkedIn have around 9 million members through out North America, Asia and Europe, and there are about 100 thousand new members join in every week. The major reason that LinkedIn so popular is because it’s special advanced search engine. For instance, you can find a trustable, skilled and inexpensive lawyer easily here; it can also auto review how much should you spend to employ a vice president for expanding your business for you. According with the data from LinkedIn collect, 13 million professionals use LinkedIn for keep in touch with friend, Establish a professional presence, Hire candidates and find job, find and research business partners. And the normal account is free for all people; the majority income source is from their advanced services.

How the LinkedIn is used
I’ll give an example of LinkedIn super service here. You are going to have a meeting with your customer this afternoon, and you only have a couple of hours to get the information of him. LinkedIn can offer you an advanced search engine here with the following steps: Register an account in LinkedIn website first, then you can find there are seven main options totally. Click ‘People’; import your customer’s name in the frame that is followed by a ‘Name search’ label and click search. All the people with the similar name will pop up in the following page; the most similar name will follow a special icon that stands for this name is recommended for your search. Moreover, each name has a subtitle of that people’s company name. Click your customer name with a correct subtitle (correct company name). All the information about him will pop out then with his Current and past situation and Education background. For example, I clicked a name “Dave Wang” with a subtitle “Blue castle games”, and then I found he’s position is character modeler in the Blue Castle Games company. And his past working experience are associate modeler at Electronic Arts Canada, Artists at EA Vancouver and Environment Modeler at Bardel Entertainment. His education background is Art Institute Vancouver. Scroll down that page, there is another section labeled ‘Contact Settings’ with his interest. So all you need to do is login your LinkedIn account, enter the name you want to investigate, and click that name. The total duration of this process is less than 1 minute, and you can get most of information from him even if he likes to play baseball. Then you can use the extra time to design a conversation plan for your afternoon meeting.

Educational use of the LinkedIn
Here is an example I have found of educational use of the LinkedIn by groups from universities. http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=groups_directory_acadalumni Saint Louis University provides a LinkedIn group space for their members to ‘Connect you to experts, Give you a free subscription to Gateways, the Entrepreneurship Program newsletter, Give you priority access to program faculty and Smurfit-Stone Center staff for help in answering business questions and finding referral sources in the St. Louis area. Get mentored - either through our own Mentor-In-Residence or a referral to InnovateVMS.’ Most of people involved in this group are students or graduates and this is a public space. They use email to communicate each other and keep member information up-to-date. This space also provides the link to a lot of websites that have something to do with Saint Louis University.

In my opinion, students in META6903 can use the FAQ function in LinkedIn network to explore and discuss ecommunication issues with experts over the world. And you can post your question in ‘Answer’ section, and waiting for professional solve your question.

Conclusion
To sum up, the function I feel most interested is ‘Answer’. People can use it as omnipotence software that can deal with all of my problems from professional angle.

INTRODUCTION

I’m Suneesh, a student of the META 6903 class. Being a student of this class has helped me use technology creatively in different ways.

I am an active user of Orkut. It is one of the social net works that is as popular as Face book, MySpace, Flickr etc. For the purpose of the task assigned to me I shall be talking about Orkut. My podcast shall be addressing the following topics:

• Importance of a social network (includes the uses of the network as well)
• Origin and Audience
• Usage – a personal experience
• An educational use of the network with respect to META 6903
• Conclusion

IMPORTANCE OF A SOCIAL NETWORK

MSN (chat), Yahoo! (chat), ICQ, Face book, MySpace, Flickr etc, are some the popular social networks around for a long time. Social networks cater to a wide variety of needs. Certain networks are primarily for business networking (Linkedln.com) and some specifically for contacting friends and families (Reunion.com).

In an age which is characterized by speed and lack of time, social networks provide many benefits to us users. They help us to socialize without having to move from our work stations! Sitting at home, we could save up on the enormous telephone bills of international calls to family by having them chat with us online through these networks. We can meet up with classmates and friends long forgotten and catch up on all that’s gone by without having to reschedule our work commitments. Business networking couldn’t get easier! Some of us have also turned to the social network to help us find our dream partner / s! Such and many more are the uses of social networking.

For the owners of these social networks it indeed is big money! Other parties like advertisers stand to gain enormously from this important source of advertising.

ORIGIN AND USAGE

Orkut is run by Google and has been named after its creator a Google employee. It was designed with the primary motive to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. A few of the features that are unique to the network of Orkut itself are scrapbooks, communities etc. These are all apart from the normal features like messaging, and photo sharing that it also has. Orkut is the 8th most visited site across the world. It is the 2nd most visited site in India and the 31st most visited site in the United States. The Orkut community has been seeing a large surge in Brazilian users. The number of Brazilian users accounts for 55.81% of the total users of Orkut, and then followed by India and the United States. Here are a few statistics to show you the impressive growth of Orkut:

• At the end of July 2004 (it was launched on January 2004) Orkut surpassed the 1,000,000 member mark.
• At the end of September 2004 it surpassed the 2,000,000 mark.
• As of August 2007, the number of members was over 67,000,000.

In Brazil and India, Orkut is as popular among students and young adults (forms as large percentage of the users of the network) as Facebook in the United States.

USAGE – ‘A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE’

I have personally been on Orkut since mid 2006. I was introduced to it here in Australia. In about one and a half year I have built up my friend list by about 100 friends! As a student and a young adult, Orkut is indeed quite entertaining. I have kept in touch through Orkut with most of friends in my home country. (This now, does not give them reason to complain about me not being in touch!). I have also met a lot of people who had studied with me in primary school and now doing well in different parts of the world. I have never used the site for any business or dating activities though. A lot of my friends, who are connected through Orkut, primarily use the site to keep in touch with friends (and even family).

As already mentioned before, formation of communities is a unique feature to Orkut. Anyone with an Orkut account can create a community on anything. There are more than a million communities on Orkut on absolutely everything from pizza to pasta from Film star to superstar, from your pet to your teacher. I personally am a member of communities pertaining to my school and universities and the church I belong to. The 1st 5 communities on Orkut were started with in 24 hrs of launch of Orkut!

Orkut is more about staying connected with friends and making new ones. I personally have not seen much of an educational use of the site. Thought it does have the potential and resources for one. I have been part of the community of my school and University (as mentioned to you) however; I have just used these communities to keep in touch with my school mates and even the teachers who have joined the same.

AN EDUCATIONAL USE OF THE NETWORK WITH RESPECT TO META 6903

As a student of META 6903, I do see very good use of this tool of social network. Orkut has a video embedded feature which allows us to upload videos from YouTube and Google Videos. The features of communities can be used extensively as well. We can create communities on topics studied in the course. These communities form individual forums as well. Any new information can be added to the respective communities. Features enabling users to directly post photos, videos, audio files and other embedded objects in the messages sent can enable us students to share a wide variety of information at any time.

CONCLUSION

Being a course that looks at e communications in a creative way, Orkut surely provides an interesting way to learn with the simple ability of sharing our ideas, knowledge and information with each other. It could just be another resource to our learning but it sure is an effective one.