Topic 6: Trust and reputation

Trust and reputation how is it achieved?
Discussing across any TWO online communities.

Twitter was developed in 2006 and is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read brief messages known as tweets. The site is used by 6 million unique monthly visitors world-wide. The author's profile page displays the tweets and they are sent to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website. Twitter developers have made changes to their site to ensure its reputation remains reputable, some of these are including passwords and the ability for users to select their followers.

Twittering has dramatically increased in popularity over the last couple of years and it is seen as a respectable site. Its profile has been lifted with politicians, news services and celebrities twittering. Twitter is used for spreading news, spam, self-promotion, social grooming, conversations and for passing along information. Some aspects of twitter that I find appealing are no advertising, no quizzes like ‘what colour is your aura’, and messages are brief. Twitter has managed to have its service incorporated into business, as it provides an easy and fast form of brief communications between colleagues, this builds its reputation and trust within the community.

Wikipedia states that only 40 percent of Twitter's users are retained, this may be due to the services’ exponential growth and many people try it out, but have no real purpose for the service. Another aspect of twitter, which many novice users may experience are that if they do not block new followers initially they will end up with thousands of followers all sending irrelevant tweets. Also I have found by following a prolific twitterer like Radio National or a news company you get so many tweets that at a quick look once a day you often miss a tweet from a colleague or friend.

Facebook is also a free online social networking website. Wikipedia states that Facebook is the most used social networking site world-wide. It has an intuitive interface and users can be actively involved online quickly. Users can form groups that share a common interest, they can also share thoughts, photos and private emails with friends. Real-time chat is also available.

Facebook developers have included features to reduce invasion of privacy and the risk of identity fraud. They have included username and password to access the site. Also a user can select only to show limited information about them self prior to accepting a person as a friend. These actions show credibility. There are still security issues, which may not be being addressed purely because many young people share too much information about themselves online, users may in the future demand Facebook developers need to accept some of the responsibility for educating its users.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Facebook

I have been a member of Facebook for a few months. I really enjoy the brief comments and chats people have and it is a quick way to keep up-to-date on what people are doing. I have been able to get in contact with old school, uni and social friends.

I must say that some of my kids friends, who are in their 20s are at times a bit doggie and I don't like the language they often use, but I mostly ignore it. I have ignored requests from people who have (in my eyes) inappropriate homepages and I tell them if I run into them in the real world why I ignored them. As I live and work in a small community I have friends who are parents of the kids at school, so I need to be very mindful of the content and contacts on my page, but so far all is going well.

I am not into all the quizzes and game stuff people play on Facebook and I mostly ignore them. Even though I do chat with people I tend to avoid chats if I can.

Just a bit more to add, I actually would not want my school kids to access Facebook at school and I'm glad it is blocked. There is often inappropriate language and pictures being posted.

While I think there is value in learning how to communicate online with each other and learn about online social etiquette and we do need to cover these things as part of a values framework in school. But we don't have time to do this comprehensively in school and I actually think the teenagers learn these skills by participating in their own time outside of school. My kids have managed to make many friends through online games and social networks with very little guidance from us. We only guided them in understanding about giving out personal information that might put them in a risky situation.

I think the best thing about learning how to get along online is that if you get it wrong you can reinvent yourself and start a fresh. This is not so easy in the real world.