Task 1b: Professional Communication Technologies

I have a confession! After reading the Professional Communication Technologies handbook my eyes have been opened. In today's society so many of us rely on the internet for our professional and social lives and without realising I have been using Web 2.0 without even being aware of its existence and its specifically categorized platforms.

O'reilly's meme map really helped me to understand exactly what Web 2.0 is and how we have progressed from Web 1.0. It has many specific principles but my main understanding is it has enabled one to one communication to be improved by enabling more people to interact and subsequently making the user become the creator as well as the reader. Valtysson suggests that more participation leads to less distinction between the reader and the creator (or consumer and producer) establishing the 'Prosumer' and Bruns' calls the act of users both producing and using 'Produsage'. These two ideas really help me to understand one of the main principles of Web 2.0.

So much of my current social and professional life relies on Web 2.0 already and the thought of going back to a one to one communication system is quite daunting because as sad as it is to admit, I would be somewhat lost without it. Living in Estonia for one would be a lot harder as contact with family and friends back home would be a lot more difficult and I would be likely to feel pretty ostracized. Having the likes of Facebook and Twitter help me to feel a lot closer than the 1090 miles away that I actually am and lets face it, why would I spend the time and money on writing a letter to have a reply a week later, when I could communicate with others there and then for free?!

As a professional Web 2.0 is extremely useful when it comes to networking and learning. An example being Youtube. This has been extremely useful especially since being a professional. Other than to be on there and goggle at incredible dancers who I aspire to be, it has helped me to learn choreography. I learnt a solo for a competition purely by watching it on there and have used it recently to watch parts of our newest ballet Raymonda. Another being Network Dance, a site designed for dancers to communicate and network between other dancers and companies as well as find important information and news.

"Ullrich suggests that one of the key aspects of a Web 2.0 model is that these services are constantly evolving and that each platform is progressively developed and replaced" (Reader 1)
This immediately made me think of how facebook is constantly changing the layout. I used to get quite frustrated when I'd log in and have to find my way around a new news feed layout or page/timeline settings but that made me think. What is it that keeps us all on facebook? When other sites alike such as Bebo and myspace were around they grew out of "fashion" pretty quick. Maybe part of the reason we all stuck to facebook is because its constantly developing. I believe many would have got bored if we were still only shown the top 3 status' of the day and a timeline was something we learnt about in History lessons!

Ethical consideration is a big thing in social media. As users we create interest on these websites for others to see but it is easy to forget exactly who can read them. Once posted, nothing can be re-done and although you can delete, out of those 1 billion users of facebook, 4 billion views on Youtube a day and the 200 million active users of twitter, SOMEONE is likely to have noted it. Although privacy settings are (or can be) high there are many ways to access data on someone and when applying for a job these social networking sites could quickly become your biggest enemy. Copyright is also an easy mistake to make and we must be wary of exactly who owns the right to things we post and do we have permission to post them.