In the first activity, I learned about new social sites that I’ve never heard of like Line, Ibibo, Faceparty, and Hike. The Line app is basically like Whatsapp and Hike are kind of like Messenger it seems like (except you don’t need to have an account that connects to Hike). I also learned that Ibibo was a talent site. I wasn’t aware of social sites specifically for talent, so it interested me that there was actually something specifically about talents. I think that this could be useful to know in the future because if someone wants to connect but they’re out of country or if they have a talent they want to show, but not necessarily on YouTube, I can tell them what kinds of social sites/apps that they can use for each of those. It also is cool to know since I have some cousins in the UK so I don’t have to just use Messenger (they don’t go on much), and there are other apps that they might use that I am able to connect with them on.
In the second activity that I did, I learned about using LinkedIn. I’ve used Tumblr, Facebook, SnapChat, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter before, so it wasn’t anything new from those. I’ve heard of creating and using a LinkedIn for professional things before, but I had never really actually made a LinkedIn. By having a LinkedIn, it’ll help me with connecting with other professional people in the future, as well as making connections for jobs.
In the third activity that I did, I explored and learned about the differences each of the social sites have by comparing the honeycomb framework. One of the common elements between them was sharing. They all had a way to share something, whether that be your profile, a post, or a video. I noticed that Instagram and Pinterest hadn’t actually really had any groups, unlike the rest. With Twitter’s character limit, the identity element is sort of limited. Unlike Facebook where you have an ‘about me’ section where you can write as much as you’d like, Twitter has a small bio but has a character limit to be short. YouTube, I found out actually earlier in the school year, has messaging on its phone app. You’re able to chat or directly share videos. I’ve got an iPad, but I don’t see the feature on the iPad or the computer. Across all social media, they all seem to have some way to have conversations or communicate. They also all have some form of relationships as well. Most of them are following a person, but on Facebook, YouTube (mobile), and SnapChat you can friend people instead of just following. In terms of presence, Facebook is the only one that seems to indicate if someone is on or not. Finally, reputation. A lot, but not all of them have a reputation aspect. YouTube, for example, is where you can just kind of comment on videos and have a public conversation (if it leads to that). But there really isn’t anything that builds reputation unless you’re a YouTuber that uploads regularly. Any normal user would just comment, like, subscribe, and/or share the video. SnapChat also lacks reputation, unless you consider having streaks with a person reputation. You’re expected to keep the streak up, and every day you SnapChat each other within 24 hours of the last snap you sent, the streak count goes up one. But it’s more between you and one person rather than your entire friends.