HW Creativity

New media allows for its users to each be creative in their own way.  With so many forms of social media, there are countless ways to express ideas.  You can do it through text, through pictures, through an Instagram story.  Social media provides a medium for anyone to be creative.  This in turn helps social media because it can get ideas from its own user base.  In the New York Times article, "Twitter Serves up Ideas from its Followers," it says the following; "Technology companies have been the most active in relying on others to innovate for them. This is in large part because the Internet lets people exchange ideas easily and rapidly with large groups, and computing tools let people design new products cheaply."  Twitter like many other tech companies, is leaving change and innovation to its users.  With so much software being open source, and almost everyone having access to a computer, the age of new media lets others who couldn't be creative before, express their ideas on a platform where it can be easily seen.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

These virtual worlds can be used in a couple of ways.  They can be used for training purposes.  You wouldn’t need to pack 0 employees into a room for training now when they could all just log in and have their virtual avatar complete the training.  They can also be used just to experience new things or demonstrate new products.  Like in the article “Ive Been in that Club Just not in Real Life,” if someone wanted to visit a place but couldn’t get there physically, it would allow that to happen..  I think the two main pros are the accessibility and the creativeness this offers.  It opens up a whole new platform for artists and designers because now they can design actual worlds.  In the Forbes article, “After second life can virtual worlds get a reboot,” it says “Basically we envisioned it, collected ideas, had brainstorming meetings, and said to ourselves, what if we did this?”  It basically has opened up a new creative outlet.  I do believe that there are some cons though.  The main one being that people can get too immersed in these virtual worlds.  These virtual worlds are not a substitute for human interaction in my opinion. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/arts/television/06itzk.html?module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Television&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianemehta/2013/04/30/after-second-life-can-virtual-worlds-get-a-reboot/#41493907735a

Blog: Social networking sites

Social netowrking sites have increased in numbers in recent years.  among some of the most popular ones are Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. Now all of these serve a different purpose.  Facebook is the most versatile in my opinion.  It allows you to post pictures, share content, and post statuses.  Tumblr is more like a blog than the other ones.  It also seems to focus more on the creative side of things as opposed to news, or family pictures .Twitter and Instagram are the most simple.  they serve very similar purposes.  Quick short messages (in Instagram's case photos and videos) being broadcast to your followers.  I do believe that they are all very similar though.  The biggest difference in my opinion is the demographic that is represented.  Facebook and Twitter seems to have older users than Instagram and Tumblr.

Blog Social networking

Social networking has become a huge part of society today.  It is integrated into multiple parts of our lives.  It can be used to connect with other people, to help expedite a job search, and serves as sort of a background search for recruiters.  A great example of the benefits of social networking is a site such as LinkedIn.  For those who don't know LinkedIn makes searching for candidates for a job much easier.  "Typing keywords into a search engine, Crawford can scrape the entire network to dig out high-quality candidates that she can't find elsewhere."  It is basically google for employers.  The downside, is that since social networking has become so important,  it is hard to find privacy anymore.  According to writers at U Penn, "Few of these users realize that the information they post, when combined with new technologies for gathering and compiling data, can create a fingerprint-like pattern of behavior."  There are tailored ads base don what you browse, and people can find out so much information about you with just  a name or even a google image search.

Works Cited

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/leaving-friendprints-how-online-social-networks-are-redefining-privacy-and-personal-security/

Blog v Wiki

Blogs and wikis are both forms of new media.  although they share some similarities, they are also very different.  One of the main differences is that blogs usually have a single author.  It is usually one person posting new topics.  Wikis however, are usually a collaborative project with multiple authors.  According to Wikipedia, it is a site where " users collaboratively modify content and structure directly from the web browser."  Anther difference is that wikis usually grow faster.  Since more people are working on it there is more content flowing through.  Another main difference, is that wikis are constantly updated.  Blog posts are usually left unchanged after they are initially published.  The most important difference in my opinion, is that blogs are mostly opinionated posts, while a wiki is usually facts.  Forbes describes blog users (in this case Tumblr) as people looking  "to get their fix of hot dog legs and otters who look like Benedict Cumberbatch."  In general, blogs are a lot more casual than wikis.

Works Cited
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/01/21/yahoos-next-problem-tumblrs-traffic-isnt-growing/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki