Jack's Blog for LIBR 559M (3)

These days I am almost crazy because I have never been exposed to so many words in social media in such a short time. However, after glancing at these terms, I feel it’s important to analyze the affordances and constraints of different tools to get an overall understanding of social media; it allows us to grasp how users interact with each other in the digital age. Especially after reading Stamatiou (etc.)’s paper entitled Twitter: Design of Online Communities, I have a clear understanding of Twitter, although I just opened my first Twitter’ account. Therefore, I will talk about Twitter here.

Affordances:
1) Speed: users can text a message in seconds and get updates. It is more mobile-focused and a way of “fast and wide spread of word-of-mouth”. (Kwak’s slide, 2010, p.63.)
2) Real-time, “Bloggers use Twitter as a tool to enhance the popularity and reach of their blogs.” (Stamatiou, 2008, p.10)
3) By answering “what are you doing?” users can keep up with current news and friends, which “makes it ideal for scheduling and managing impromptu events.” (Stamatiou, 2008, p.25)
4) Selectiveness. Users can select their followers and block followers who don’t have activities to share.
5) Simplicity: only requires a username and email address to open an account. Users may customize their profile in various ways including changing background colours or images, uploading avatars, and altering text, sidebar, links and other features. (Stamatiou, 2008, p.7)
6) Marketing tool to reach a large public directly.

Constraints:
1) Tweets are limited to 140 followers, so Twitter’s capability is small.
2) Because no filters control the type of content users may tweet, it may result in “vulgar and explicit language” (Stamatiou, 2008, p.8), and users are sometimes bothered by offenders.
3) Most users’ profiles and tweets are public, and “it does not stop unwanted viewers” (Stamatiou, 2008, p.9). As a result, it raises some concerns about privacy.
4) Due to the simple structure and features, Twitter does not have any explicit gathering places to focus on a certain topic (Stamatiou, 2008, p.12), just about any timely topics.

In addition, some people are skeptical about Twitter’s social network role, and they debate Twitter connections are not reciprocated and see Twitter as an Anti-Social Network. Jordan McCollum points out in her blog, “based on the survey by Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, more than two-thirds of Twitter users (68%) are not followed by a single person they follow”.

Likewise, Frederic Lardinois states in her blog- “Study: Twitter Is Not a Very Social Network”, “Yahoo 360 has an 84% reciprocation rate, even Flickr has more than three times the reciprocation rate of Twitter-68%. Twitter, then, appears to be less of a social interaction sphere and more of a news broadcasting medium.” Lardinois mentions that “According to a group of researchers at Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Twitter is not a very social network. After analyzing over 41 million user profiles and 1.47 billion follower/following relationships, the researchers concluded that only 22% of all connections on Twitter are reciprocal. On Flickr, this number is closer to 68% and on Yahoo 360 it’s 84%. The large majority (78%) of connections between users on Twitter are one-way relationships.” “Unlike most social networks, following on Twitter is not mutual. Someone who thinks you’re interesting can follow you, and you don’t have to approve, or follow back.” (Kwak’s slide, p. 7) Apparently, with regard to Twitter as a social networking tool, it seems to be controversial.

References:

Kwak, Haewoon; Lee, Changhyun; Park, Hosung (2010). What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? July 17th, 2010 Access at http://www.slideshare.net/haewoon/what-is-twitter-a-social-network-or-a-news-media-3922095

Stamatiou, Paul; McCree, Jarryd; Marshall, Taneshia and Robertson, Matthew (2008). Twitter: Design of Online Communities. July 16, 2010 Access at http://paulstamatiou.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/cs4803doc_twitter_paper.pdf