Blogs vs. Wikis

New Media has had a large impact on society in the past few years. Two of these aspects of new media are blogs and wikis. The definition of a blog is a web site on which an individual or group of users record opinions, information, etc. on a regular basis. This allows an individual to express their feelings on whatever topic they choose to write about. The definition of a wiki is a web site developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content. Both of these aspects of the internet have similarities and differences. One of the similarities are, within the website users are allowed to create the content within the site. My opinion is that the use of blogs is for something more informative, and a user can have access to new information quicker than with a wiki. For example, there was a blog in Brooklyn that lead to a drug raid. Members of the community would post about the dangerous events going on and caught the attention of police. As a result of this their community became safer. Wiki’s seem to be used more for general facts and outside people can edit the site, unlike on blogs. One of the most widely used wiki’s today is Wikipedia.com. Unlike blogs, viewers of the site can edit it to say what they want. This has become a problem sometimes with people adding false information, but this is becoming limited. According to the New York Times article, “Wikipedia Will Limit Changes on Articles About Living People”, a policy called flag revisions has been implemented on articles about living people so before a change can be made public, it is reviewed by a knowledgeable individual. Blogs can be used for collaboration, since individuals are also allowed to comment on these pages, ideas can be shared with many. A clear blog collaboration is when the drug raid in Brooklyn occurred because of bayridgetalk.com. Convergence is extremely important in todays society. In the workplace this is a huge aspect, as stated in the article by Ezra Goodnoe, “How to use Wikis For Business”. Wiki’s have evolved so much that I cannot think of something that has not been done yet, but I’m sure they will come up with something new soon.

 

Social Networking: A purposeful loss of privacy.

My topic for the term paper is, Social Networking: A purposeful loss of privacy. Social networking is such a big aspect of life for a large amount of the population in today’s age. So many good things come out of Social Networking, but also many bad things. With my paper, I will be focusing on the negative aspect of Social networking; and how it affects things like jobs, school, and personal relationships. People throughout the world have had their lives destroyed just because what they put on their personal page.