Hi team members
Leanne, James and Elyse.
Sorry but i wont be able to attend the presentations on tuesday as i am having my wisdom teeth out that day. I would have emailed but i dont have anyones info.So i hope you guys get this.
My email is jo691@uow.edu.au if you need me.
I have applied for academic consideration so we should be able to do it next week.
Thanks Guys
Jenny
Group Members
We studied messandnoise in our blog last week, it is a music forum predominatly with members from Melbourne and Sydney. Some of our questions are directed towards the troll of the site.
This questionaire is to find out how different people use the forum and how the community is established.
1. Age, Gender
2. How long have you been a member of this community
3. Is your profession related to the music industry?
4. What is your interest in the music industry?
5. Why did you join this forum? What are the other online communities you are a member of?
6. What is your blogging process? How much time do you spend planning or editing your posts?
7. How do you feel about some people in the community percieving you as a troll? (trolls only)
8. How do you feel about trolling in this community?
9. How often do you contribute to posts?
10. What makes a community member valued?
11. How does the online community extend to friendships beyond the forum community?
12. How does the way you feel about a persons online presence affect the way you treat them beyond the forum?
13. Is there anything you would like to add about messandnoise?
Online Forum: Mess and Noise
(Group: hazblr.tumblr.com / jennyorr.tumblr.com / leanne-.tumblr.com)Language… jargon/specialised jargon
- “Craig David” - http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/1309081
- DAFSFFS (Do a f#*k’n search for f*#ks sake!)User: outerspacextrapnel “I’ve DAFSFFed, but I have not been able to work out what the f#*k it means? What’s the in joke? WHY AM I EXCLUDED? WHY DO I FEEL LIKE I’M AT SCHOOL AGAIN???!!!”
User: annehelena “When you leave a thread.’Cause he’s ”walkin’ awaaaaay…” Craig David”
- *name* Injured: Someone (a celeb usually) has died. Started via a thread about Steve Irwin’s ‘injury’ as publicized in the media, then re-confirmed death.
http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/1319609
http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/210282- “Sook”: someone who complains too much about something
http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/2161106Multi-modal?
- interaction of text and image, eg. “Caught Staring @ Boobs” http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/847874
Authority/order/social behaviour is constructed in conversation:
- Who is allowed to speak?
Everyone’s allowed to speak, but there is a certain etiquette… both unofficial, and official, eg. User agreement: http://www.messandnoise.com/about/useragreement
- Turn-taking (frequency & length)
Some users are frowned upon/excluded for posting too frequently, or excessive off topic/personal content.
http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/3352970
User: bolta “he contributes nothing of value to this site. sign here if you wish to ban angelic layer (plus his aliases) from mess and noise magazine discussions.”- Treatment of “noobs”
Need to contribute/be involved in conversation… starting new ‘threads’ when you’re a ‘Noob’ to promote your own interests/gigs is criticized
http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/3502884
”Flic007 has been a member since February 5, 2009. Starting 2 Topics, replying 1 times and has 0 Friends on Mess+Noise”- Norms and enforcement of norms
Threads are rarely delted (unless flooding occurs), but users are regularly banned.
- “Power Users”
There’s no hierarchy, but there is a number of users who have been part of the site from the beginning, and some who would be considered ‘influential’ or ‘popular’
Eg. User: Wipey … http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/1231348- Definition of purpose
http://www.messandnoise.com/about/
- Moderation
Danny Bos – creator/moderator/services site
Common phrase: “Danny, fix this sh*t!”
User agreement: http://www.messandnoise.com/about/useragreement- Silenced?
Re: the user agereement: “We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to suspend or restrict access of any user of messandnoise.com if we believe that these Terms of Service are not being followed.”
- Decisions about what’s “on topic”
User Agreement: “By using any area of messandnoise.com, you agree that you will not do any of the following: Post or broadcast repetitive and/or redundant material to any discussion forums.”
- Who/what is a “troll”? (intentionally disruptive user)
User: BADALEX: http://www.messandnoise.com/people/235078
- How/when/where is help offered, accepted, or asked for?
Regular users will help each other out all of the time
Eg. “M&N Arts Job Hub” - http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/3266153- What amount of ‘in real life’ is used/included in conversations?
Users often meet up outside of the forum, visit interstate.
Eg. M&N Scrabble Interstate Final: http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/3731860- How far do people let ‘strangers’ into their private lives?
Some users talk a lot about their private lives… more so if there’s a problem others can help with. Excessive ‘sooking’ is looked down upon.
Good Points
* Questions were easy to understand for interveiwee
* Transition from one question to another was clear
* Easy for reader to understand
Bad Points
* No non-lingustic cues
* Double barrelled questions
* Some questions were very long
Jenny Orr 3604172
Industry Analysis Report
Why do social networking sites fail?
Social networking sites have become a part of daily life and have changed the way people communicate. They have changed the dynamics of relationships by providing a space for friends to communicate for free, regardless of distance. They have also allowed people with common interests to form friendships who might never have met. This form of friendship could never be possible without these new technologies. It would seem crazy to look people up in the phonebook and request their friendship, yet we do it on social networking sites all of the time. If social networking sites are this fantastic communication tool, why are some failing? To answer this question three sites will be evaluated The Hub, Friendster and MySpace.
One of the most discussed issues is how can social networking sites make a profit, Swartz raises the concern that some social networking sites struggle to make profits to match the billion dollar valuations placed on them. (Swartz 2008) Advertising is currently the main revenue raising feature of social networking sites. The advertising depends on the popularity and traffic of the site so it is important to discover what makes the site attractive or unpopular.
The Hub was a site created by Wal-Mart, one of the world’s leading retailers. However the Hub was a miserable failure. It was targeted at teenagers. “teens were formerly encouraged to upload photos and videos and create shopping lists of their most desired Wal-Mart” (Rosmarin 2006). The Hub only lasted ten weeks online. It didn’t appeal as much to teenagers as MySpace did, user profile information was sent to parents for approval before they could join up, something teens weren’t very fond of. Some profiles were clearly fake with some member’s interests including shopping at Wal-Mart to attract boys. Cashmore provides a quote from one of the fake profiles “I’ll school my way by looking hot in my Wal-Mart clothes…to catch a cute boy’s eye”. ‘(Cashmore 2006) The Hub was a shameless marketing attempt with users encouraged to have shopping lists on their profiles. The Hubs Failure is summed up by Rosmarin (2006) in one sentence ‘the lack of interactivity between users, heavy-handed corporate messaging, and parental notifications on the site used have hastened its shutdown. After all, why would teens spend their time maintaining a Wal-Mart profile when MySpace has none of the same restrictions?’
Friendster was launched in 2002 and was extremely popular to start with it ‘grew to 300 000 users through word of mouth before traditional press coverage began in may 2003’ (boyd and Ellison 2008). Friendster’s problems began with the site being unable to cope with its popularity, Friendster encountered many technical problems ‘Friendster’s servers and databases were ill equipped to handle its rapid growth’ (Boyd and Ellison 2008 p215). These weren’t users only issues with friendster. Friendster unlike MySpace was very rigid and required users to have their profiles set out in specific ways, in fact Friendster’s creator Jonathan Abrams ‘killed off anyone who didn’t conform to their standards, most notably ‘Fakesters’ and those with more creative non-photorealistic profiles’. (Boyd 2006) This made users feel alienated and destroyed their trust. Users were now happy to move to MySpace with the much friendlier Tom Andersonas. Friendster failed to evolve giving users limited options and ‘for a long time took away features rather than adding them’. (Boyd 2006) Friendster was seen as uncooperative, unfriendly, rigid and ruthless and so users stopped logging on, or deleted their accounts.
MySpace still is one of the largest social networking sites, as seen above MySpace has become home to many alienated users from Friendster. MySpace has survived so long by evolving its site with members, allowing them to hack the codes to create personalised backgrounds and themes using HTML. MySpace also encouraged changes and new groups, instead of expelling band pages and fan pages as Friendster did MySpace encouraged these new profiles and sold advertising space to promoters of clubs. (Boyd and Ellison 2008 p217). MySpace is also one of the few social networking sites to make a profit, cutting deals with Google worth 900 million and making money with ring tones, tickets and merchandise, (Swartz 2008) by creating ‘partnerships with major record labels Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group’ (Swartz 2008). However MySpace’s popularity has started to fade against Facebook, which now has users spending more time on its site. According to Nielsen’s online in the United States alone minutes spent on Facebook increased 700 percent in April 2009 compared to April 2008. In the same time minutes spent on MySpace in April 2009 compared to April 2008 decreased by 31 percent. (Nielsen Online 2009) Unlike Friendster, MySpace has not lost its members due to any fault of its own, rather Facebook has increased its minutes spent by including applications and games. MySpace is still ranked as the second most popular social networking site (Nielsen Online 2009) and does turn more profits than Facebook. MySpace has succeeded in creating an online culture for a generation.
By evaluating these different sites it is interesting to find that reasons for failure are not solely focused on profit but also on user satisfaction. To be profitable social networking sites need to be popular. To be popular they need to invest time and money into creating faster connections while creating new features to keep users interested, and be constantly evolving with changing technology and trends. Some networks like Friendster failed to make users feel welcome. For social networking sites to succeed they need to adopt a marketing perspective, to create the sites around users want, not that of the creators.
References
Boyd, D. 2006, ‘Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?’, Apophenia, Weblog March 21,
accessed 22/09/09 from http://www.danah.org/papers/FriendsterMySpaceEssay.html
Boyd, D. Ellison N, 2008, ‘Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship’ Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, vol 13. p.210-230
Cashmore, P. 2006, ‘Wal-Mart Clones MySpace Badly’ Mashable, Weblog July 18, accessed 10/09/09 from http://mashable.com/2006/07/18/wal-mart-clones-myspace-badly/
Nielsen Online, 2009, ‘Time Spent on Facebook up 700% but MySpace Still Tops Video’, June 2, 2009, accessed 23/09/09 from http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/time-spent-on-facebook-up-700-but-myspace-still-tops-for-video/
Rosmarin, R. 2006, Wal-Mart’s MySpace Experiment Ends’, Forbes.com, March 10, accessed on 10/09/09 from http://www.forbes.com/2006/10/02/myspace-walmart-youtube-tech-media-cx_rr_1003walmart.html
Swartz, J. 2008, ‘Social-Networking Sites Turn Users Into Profits’ USA Today, December 5, accessed on 24/09/09 from http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2008-05-11-social-networking_N.htm
My online community is a forum about Turtles. Its called Australian Freshwater Turtles.
I am fully licensed, but I’m waiting for my little babies to hatch so I am not actually a turtle owner yet. This has not stopped the turtle experts from giving me lots of advice and tips.
It’s a site dedicated to the little fellas. It has lots of information about reptile licensing in all states of Australia and its full of FREE husbandry advice, (most pet stores will try to sell you a book) Caresheets, Albums full of photos of healthy turtles in proper set-ups. Unfortunately they also tell the horror stories and pics of not so healthy turtles.
There is no better place in the country for learning about turtles. Many members of the forum are also members of the Australian Freshwater Turtle Conservation Research Association (AFTCRA). They are highly respected by the reptile community and state governments for their research.
The only thing that bugs me about this forum is they are so anal about spelling and grammar.
This online community has established itself as a ‘real’ community with some members holding annual events where all members are invited to stay on their property and go on research based diving trips. I find this to be a great way to meet people with similar interests.
Can anybody find this weeks reading???
Which Industry?
Social networking sites
Why is it important?
Social networking sites are important as they enable communications between people regardless of distance. It is cheap form of communication as oppose to phone calls and much much faster than mail. The interactive qualities also provide a place for people to search profiles and make new friends. Not sure anybody ever looked through a phonebook and rang random people up asking for friendship. It is also new and expanding industry. There is alot to learn and discover.
Research question
Why causes social networking sites to fail? I am asking this question because if we don’t understand what makes a site fail. We will never understand how to create a successful one.
Resources
I will look at two failed websites The Hub, which was created by Wal-Mart (my personal favourite) and Friendster which was at one point very very successful and then slowly died I will then look at MySpace, which is very successful but seems to be loosing its place as the social networking site leader.
I will compare these with some other sites but these three will be my main focus I intend to use different formal blogging sites, hoping to find reviews of people who have used the failed sites and their comparisons with more popular sites. Also some academic journal articles, Danah Boyd has done alot of very good research in this field.
Issues/Problems
Primary information is going to be difficult to find, seeing as the companies have failed. Not too much literature has been written about social networking sites. Most journal articles are written by danah boyd or are written by someone else about her findings so the information may be a little bias. Also finding quality blogs and opinions will be difficult. i will have to sift through many.
Brief Findings
Wal-Mart’s The Hub failed because of too much advertising clutter on WebPages, It had too many ‘fake profiles’ of people who just spoke about how great Wal-Mart is. It was intended for teens BUT they had to get parental approval before the profiles were put up to do this user information was sent to parents emails. HOW UNCOOL.
Friendster had an age limit on members- they had to be over 18, Friendster lost its members to MySpace, which had all of the same features. A lesson learnt to the sites founder who once was offered 30million for his site from google and turned it down. Friendster failed to update features.
MySpace is now loosing its members to facebook. perhaps because it is easier to use.
TimeTable Plan
I hope to have it done by the due date. lol
What to discuss during the 5min presentation
Research Area
- which industry
- ImportantResearch Question
- What are you asking?Resources
- sources
- where are you looking?
- what type of research?Issues/problems
- any probs you anticipate
- where to get help or assistanceBrief findings
- what you’ve found alreadyTimetable/plan?
- What timeline you working on for completing?Question time
Here is the Commercial Television Industry Code Of Practice.
Its a whopping 66 pages, It covers Classification, Program promotions, News and current affairs programs, Time Occupied by non-programme matter, Classification and Placement of Commercials and Community Service Announcements.Handling of complaints to licencees.
Yes it is more of a code of practice than a code of ethics, it does link up to the AANA code of ethics, with such strict guidelines i highly doubt that its possible to make any ethical mistakes.
