Some Social Networking and Web 2.0 Research Info

For Week 10, I decided to look first at the collective thinking on the subject of social networks and online communities.  Here's what I've decided to use for our post:

changes in the manner in which we communicate in general (Kaye & Medoff, 2008) can be classifed in three unique substructures:  Social Networking, Social Media, and Social Bookmarking.  Each distinct subcategory is often bundled under the general term, Social Networking, and has become somewhat prolific in part due to the overwhelming need for human being to be social, even when the communication paths that we choose are ripe with limitations.  The Internet, for example, finds most of its users interacting from behind a monitor and with a keyboard – largely solitary behaviors which promote isolation.  Social Networking, then, might just be a way for folks to preserve some of our inherent social interaction – and is also why online communities are so popular.  I recall some of Dr. Robin’s earlier work (in 2003), where he focused on the online community as a necessary way to harness collaboration and human interaction in an otherwise antisocial user environment.  I think it’s fascinating, today, that the EUODS site has become the defacto-online community that has grown in popularity and really out of necessity.

To that end, I think YouTube is the end-all-be-all in terms of Web 2.0 and social networking integration.  YouTube’s primary distribution technology utilized full-motion video, however a brief investigation will produce many digital story-like videos (including the Ken Burns Effect – and other transitions) in what is obviously a collection of still images and voiceovers.