User:Hammervr/My sandbox

Practicing Wiki

Relationships on the Web: Hiding Behind a Computer
With all of the technology we have today, we could use almost all of them for the same purpose but in all actuality we don’t. For example, there are some people you would rather text than talk to on the phone because you don’t talk to them near enough in person to have that be comfortable. Or if you just have one question you might text someone, such as your best friend or sibling, if you are not looking for an immediate response, whereas if you were in a hurry or wanted to have a more extensive conversation you would just call them up!

The same idea applies to social networking. My freshman year in high school I was on MySpace talking to my friend and I told him that I had a crush on this guy that we had both known since second grade. We were on Christmas break, not even in school, and in a matter of minutes he had me add him on msn, started a conversation with all three of us and then dropped out. We started talking on our own over instant messaging for the next couple days and then he finally asked me to be his girlfriend. I had had a crush on him since the fourth grade, went to elementary, middle and high school with him and still, we were both too nervous to approach the topic in person after being such good friends. We ended up dating for over a year and it was a good relationship but still, it would have never started if we hadn’t had that technological component between us even though we saw each other more than 180 days a year for over seven years.

Even while we were dating I remember there were some things that we would only talk about over msn! I feel like speaking through text over the internet has more cons than it does pros. We were both very sarcastic people and a lot of the time and tone of voice is so easily misinterpreted in text. Abbreviations become more common and we lose the grammatically correct way of speaking. People lose that face to face connection and if you took away the web and phones it would make normal, everyday encounters “weird”. How many people from my generation know how to read and write in cursive? From what I’ve witnessed in school and during the SAT/ACT exams it’s next to none and I believe a lot of that comes from the large part social networking plays in today’s society. Why try to fix something that’s not broken?

But most importantly people don’t talk the same way they do over social media sites and we forget who we are in the real world because we are so wrapped up with who we are online. We are more comfortable with who we are on the web because we are more distant and less interactive than we are with who we actually are in real life.

Who Owns the Things We Say on Facebook?
In our quiz section we discussed the lawsuit between Facebook and Timelines.com and the trademarks that Timelines claims Facebook had violated. Another key aspect of the lawsuit is the claim that Facebook deleted Timelines’ Facebook page in order to advertise their new Timeline feature. The question then presented is whether or not Facebook has the right to delete any content that users publish on the website, even if only for their personal gain. Facebook states that “you own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings.” (https://www.facebook.com/terms.php) This means that our statuses and photos are our property. Facebook does reserve the right to remove any offensive or obscene content, but I’m not sure deleting an entire page for commercial purposes is justified. In reality, Facebook did not delete Timelines’ page. Had Facebook done so, I believe it would have violated the rights Timelines.com has as a Facebook user. Once a website gives users the ability to post personal information, it needs to remain property of that user. On the other hand, what part of Facebook does Facebook actually own?

Facebook’s Statements of Rights of Responsibilities states that “for content that is covered by intellectual property rights…you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.” It also holds that “when you publish content or information using the Public setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information…” (https://www.facebook.com/terms.php) This means that although each user technically owns what he or she shares on Facebook, nearly anyone else also has the right to use or repost his or her content. As users, we give Facebook the right to do whatever it wishes with information posted on our pages. Because of this agreement, it appears that Timelines’ claim is meaningless. It also means that any type of ownership on the web is incredibly difficult to define. I feel that when society accepted technology so fully, we also accepted the sometimes confusing and blurred lines of ownership, etc.

Competition on the Internet
Earlier this year, Facebook turned down an offer from Google to enter into a partnership. Google had been hoping to grow its database by having access to all of Facebook’s personal information about all of its users. This is particularly interesting to me because based on our conversations in section, hasn’t Google already found a way to access all of that information? This also brings up the question, yet again, what Facebook would even be able to release to Google (based on our privacy settings).

It was speculated that Facebook declined the partnership based largely on Google’s new Google+ social network. This really relates to all the things Bob has mentioned about competition and which site gets the most activity. Was Google trying to erase the competition by attempting to join with Facebook (maybe because Google knows it doesn’t really stand a chance) or did it have a goal of becoming a social network powerhouse? Interestingly enough, Facebook is partnering up with Bing. I think it really speaks a lot to the relevance of competition online.. even though Google is by far the superior search engine, Facebook did not feel comfortable working with the company trying so hard to invent the next Facebook.

Online Identity
Are you sure you can trust people by looking at their online identity? My answer would be a “No”. You cannot easily trust people on the Internet because people can always create fake online identity by lying about their name, ages, sex, and other information. Remember, not all internet users are honest about their identities. False online identity is really frightening and might be potentially harmful to everybody, especially to the youths now a day, who spend numerous hours surfing the social network sites every day.

Many internet crimes are happening through internet chat rooms and social networking sites every second during the day, and most of the victims are female teenagers. One of the cases I found is about a sixty-one year old male who gave out false information on the internet. He claimed that he was eighteen year old in order to chat with younger females. He started to chat with a sixteen year old teenager constantly and they then started an online relationship. One day, he telephoned the girl and said that he was the father of the eighteen year old boy. He also said that his son got into a serious car accident and started to contact her several times to give her information about his son’s condition. After they had several conversations through the phone, they decided to meet each other. The guy was trying to invite the girl to stay at a hotel but the girl noticed that something was wrong so she escaped and decided to contact the police. In this case, the sixteen year old girl was lucky enough but you never know if you will be the lucky ones.

[| Danger of Internet Dating]

Criminals started to use fake online identities because online identity is easy to create and internet is easy access. Making new friends through social networking sites such as Facebook, chat rooms, or games online is not a bad thing but you also need to know how to protect yourself from false information. You never know if your friends’ online identities are the same as their offline identities; thus, it is important not give out your information to people who you meet on the social networking sites. Do not forget that people can make themselves look perfect on the internet, but in the reality no one is perfect.

I found a really good website about the importance of online identity and the dangers of it. This website can help you to understand more about the dangers and protect yourself from criminals.

[| Importance of Online Identity and the Dangers]

Social Networking Relationships
As soon as I log onto Facebook, I check on friend requests and scan my news feed, just as millions of other users do. Within the newsfeed, I see a variety of updates: pictures of my cousin’s homecoming, my friend’s relationship status changing from “in a relationship” to “single,” and my best friend’s post about her weekend plans. Not only are these newsfeed updates informative and sometimes scandalous, but they help me keep up on the relationships I have with my friends and family. I’m always in tune with the lives of those I care about. However, there may be a point when this convenience is taken too far.

Yes, social networking is the ideal way to connect with others and build relationships. It has made creating relationships and keeping them so much easier. First, we can connect with those from the past. We can instantly reconnect with childhood friends or family we haven’t spoken with in years with just a couple clicks of a button. Maybe you haven’t seen that boy from your fifth grade class that went to a different middle school. Now, with social networking, there is no need to worry; you can rekindle that relationship by simply typing in his name in the search box and sending a friend request. Piece of cake! We can also stay connected with those who live far away. In my case, for instance, because of my social networking sites, I can keep in touch with my best friends who went to colleges in other states. Lastly, we can connect with those we just meet. All we need is the name, some courage to request them as a friend, and there you go: instant link. With a campus the size of the University of Washington, it is definitely nice to make it smaller with some familiar faces. As much as I, and others, complain about how relationships have become too technology based, social networking makes the concept of keeping in touch with friends and family very convenient; maybe a little too convenient.

Now, the downside of social networking relationships. Networking sites like Facebook have made relationships more of a science than just a way of connecting with those we care about. Now days, social network users analyze EVERYTHING. For example, a new friend request can lead to a list of questions:

•	“Why does this person want to ‘friend’ me?”

•	“Do they think I’m cool?” •	“Does he/she like me?”

Then, there’s the power of the “like” button. This brings about another stream of thoughts. “Am I close enough with this person to ‘like’ their status?” “Should I ‘like’ my mom’s status, or would that be weird?” “Why did my mom’s friend ‘like’ my status about my girls night out?” Every single action that a user does on a social networking site seems to have a hidden meaning. While researching “Social Networking and Relationships,” I came across this link: [|5 Social Networking Mistakes Daters Make]

It basically gives rules about how to maintain a romantic relationship on a social networking site. Sounds bizarre, right? But actually, because social networking sites like Facebook have become such a way of life, users want to know how to use them the correct way. In this day and age, keeping a romantic relationship over a social networking site can be a very fragile thing. This site discusses the action of “unfriending” someone. Sadly, a bad breakup means that one has to virtually erase their ex from his or her social world. And who knew that just friend requesting someone who could be your potential beau or simply “liking” his or her status had to be so dramatic? It’s just one click of a button; how much harm could that actually do?

In our technology savvy world, it’s hard to escape the hype of social networking sites. Along with social networking comes some intense drama. The idea of being able to connect with important people in our lives, and some maybe not so important, brings about excitement and relief, but also confusion, conflict, and dilemmas. It makes it hard to decide if social networking site relationships are a simple convenience, or a massive hindrance. On the surface, these sites are just helpful and fun, but once they are analyzed more deeply, they can be almost harmful to relationships.

One shot...Make it count!
In today’s society it’s so easy to access information over the internet that sometimes we forget that it also applies to information about ourselves. If we have a question, “Google it!” we say. The fact of the matter is that if you Google someone’s name the first thing that comes up in most cases is their social networking site (Facebook, Tumblr, etc.) I know that if you type in my name, not only does my Facebook pop up but so does my MySpace, my ex-boyfriend’s MySpace, and then anyone else that has my full name on their site. Even if you have privacy settings set on your profiles, that doesn’t mean that everyone that has tagged you in a picture or everyone that has posted a comment about you has the same security features enabled on their’s.

What a lot of people don’t take into account is the impact that this has onrelationships. More specifically, relationships with people you haven’t even met yet. If you go into a job interview most of the time your potential new employer will Google your name. The scary thing is that this is your first impression, and in some instances it’s the only impression you’ll ever be able to make because of how competitive the workforce is. Like I mentioned before, Google brings up everywhere your name appears in it’s index. If that happens to be on somebody else’s non-security enabled site, and they say things about you that could hurt someone’s opinion about you, you are once again jeopardizing this first impression. In this case you aren’t even the one that they are judging directly. Unfortunately, people are quick to go off of what other’s say and consume the opinions of people they’ve never met simply because they have nothing better to go off of. Even my old MySpace isn’t who I am now and I would be embarrassed for anyone to judge me based off who I was back in eighth grade, when I last made updates to the site.

Recently I was talking with one of the girls I live with and she mentioned that a few days after she moved in she mentioned one of the other girls’s names, Kayla, that lives in our house to her parents. The first thing they did was Google her and they found out things about her and even her parents. My friend admitted that now every time she talks to Kayla, sometimes Kayla will mention things that she already knows because of what her parents had told her because of what they found online and she has to pretend she never knew! Just some food for thought, it could happen to anyone!

Are you popular?
Google based their page rank in terms of popularity. So the question is ‘Are you popular enough?’ Google takes into account other factors when deciding page rank but the most important one is how many pages are pointing/linking to you. I get that if multiple pages were to link to one specific page then that page must have some valuable piece of information to make all these other pages to link to it. But, on the other hand, what if it isn’t?

Google’s page rank system is very interesting. It’s like the example that I got in class about the kid in kindergarten class. Just because he’s the most popular, is he always right? When you pay attention to him, does he always give you what you need? I don’t know either. These are just some questions that popped into my head.

Google takes into account other factors when determining page rank, such as title, URL, etc. But in class Bob also mention gaming. What if they don’t get block? There are many ways of scamming and they try very hard to get higher on Google. If these sites were to be ranked higher on Google wouldn’t we be getting bad results then? We would be getting a page that most likely doesn’t have the information that we need.

Google page rank has served to be very useful though. Like what we talked about in our Quiz section, we are able to type down something and instantly get what we need. A feature that I enjoy is when you type; let’s says Kobe Bryant’s birthday. If multiple sites have the same information it would display it in bold at the very top of your results so you get a quicker answer without having to go to another page.

Google page rank is an interesting concept and learning about it is intriguing. It makes me wonder how many links does those pages have that are ranked lower on Google, and vice versa. I think that those that are ranked first are ranked first for a reason. The other pages that linked to them must have found that page to be worth something, otherwise others wouldn’t have linked to it either.

Google and Relationships: A New Connection
Google and social networking relationships…never thought I would put the two together.

I thought I had Facebook down, then along came Google +. It took me forever to finally learn how to use Facebook correctly, and now I’m restarting this cycle with Google’s new social networking site. To be completely honest, I just recently created a Google + account because we are studying Google in Info class. I probably never would’ve made one if it weren’t for the class but I thought, hey, might as well!

Even though I literally have NO idea how to use it and I probably won’t use it too much, I feel like Google + is giving me a new, fresh start. I thought of a few things I could do with a new social networking site:

1. build a new friend list

2. contact old friends in new ways

3. encourage other friends to join.

Yes, if I wanted to, I could skim through my friend list on Facebook, delete people I’m not really friends with and add new people, but that’s no fun and it would take way too long. Having a Google + account could potentially give me a chance to start over with my online relationships.

Google + is just another way to build my relationships, or maybe hinder them… On one hand, it’s a fun, new site used for staying in the know when it comes to friends and media. It seems great to me- they even have a group chat option! On the other hand, it’s just one more way that the internet is hampering face to face interaction. I thought Facebook was enough, but I guess I have to think again. Everyone just keeps coming up with ways to make communicating with others easier, not to mention lazier.

On a completely different subject, I thought I would have some fun using my new, insightful knowledge on Google searches, and incorporate relationships into this. I wanted to see how Google had my friends and I connected in its index. First, I typed in “Brooke Skagen AND Jessica Hall,” to see what would come up (P.S. Brooke is my best friend from high school). It brought up some online articles about us from our high school newspaper. Then, I tried another search, “Jessica Hall AND Carlie Blanchard” (another friend). This time, our high school tennis team roster and match scores came up in my results list.

I had never taken Google searches so seriously until I learned how the process works. I find it so fascinating how complex the whole procedure is; who knew that adding a simple word such as “and” between two terms would find pages with one term, the other, or both. Maybe it’s just me, but I am so intrigued. I just think it’s crazy how one search engine can find so many ways that my friends and I are socially connected over the internet.

I know that Google searches aren’t directly related to social networking relationships, but I found a distant correlation between the two. Google searches are nowhere near as advanced as social networking sites like Google + and Facebook, which allow us to connect with other people through chatting, messaging, status updates, and much more. However, I think that being able to type in two names into a search box and find results that include both is a version of social networking relationships.

In conclusion, at first glance, I didn’t think that Google and social networking relationships could be related. But, throw in Google + and some intense search methods and you’ve got a connection.