Social Internet Sites

I must admit, before taking the Electronic Publishing class I am currently enrolled in, I hadn't really given a lot of thought to social sites. In fact, I really had no idea how many social or Web 2.0 sites existed out in cyberspace. If someone had asked me to name some, I probably would only have come up with Wikipedia, MySpace, and YouTube. Since doing some digging, however, I realize just how many have appeared and in how little of time it took for the phenomenon to happen.

I couldn't really see the motivation for me to join in, however. I have not been one to share my photos, so didn't use sites like Flicker or Photobucket. I thought blogs were mainly places for angst-ridden teenagers to gripe about their parents and their friends. And I thought YouTube was just full of mindless drivel- people behaving badly. You don't have to search very much at all in YouTube to find examples like this- what I would call complete time wasters:




Since doing some research, however, I have come to realize that many of these social sites can be very useful and informative. As I mentioned in an earlier post, during my research I discovered a great site that has put together a directory of Web 2.0 sites. I literally spent hours clicking on each link, and bookmarked several that I would like to take a closer look at.

Another interesting thing I found during my research is that some people actually make money by uploading content to various sites. I found this site which lists ways users can make money from social sites. Coincidentally enough, when I logged into Blogger to post this, I noticed that they had this announcement on the dashboard page:

AdSense recently introduced a feature called video units, that lets you include relevant YouTube video on your blog, and make money from ads on it. Here’s what they have to say about it:
"We're excited about the launch of video units -- a new way to enrich your blog with quality, relevant video content in an embedded, customizable player. Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your blog. You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your blog's content. Companion and text overlay ads are relevant and non-intrusive. To further blend the YouTube player into your blog, you can also customize the color scheme and layout as well as choose from three different player sizes."AdSense Help has some more information about video units. Once you’ve created the code for a video unit, you can easily add it to your blog’s template using an HTML/JavaScript page element.

So, the upshot of all this musing is that I need to rethink my assessment of social web sites. Many of them do have value, and provide ways for families and friends to keep in touch. In fact, my daughter and I jumped in with both feet the past few weeks. We both created blogs that allow us to update each other on our goings-on while she is in Japan, and she will regularly be sharing her pics on Photobucket. These sites will allow her to instantaneously keep her family up-to-date on her adventure, and also allow us communicate often and for free- something which would have not been possible 10 or 15 years ago.