Assignment 5Twitter and Slideshare:

What’s it all about?

Christina R.HC 205 Global Technology

and Social Change

A Little Birdie Told Me…I enjoyed my Twitter experience. It was interesting to know what everyone in class was doing. I felt like it helped me to get to know people by learning what their everyday activities were. I realized that I did not know too much about any of my classmates and Twitter let us all share a little bit about ourselves.

Twitter vs. Blogging

Twitter

Blogging140 word brief

messages

Messages show what user is doing at the moment

Spontaneous

Quick to update

More frequent updates due to quickness

Reader may have a limited idea of the user since messages are so short

Whole entries with no limits

Expanded topics, not brief

More thought out

Takes longer to update

Less frequent updates due to time it takes to update

Reader gets a well-rounded idea of the user since blogs are longer

Twitter vs. Blogging (con’d)Similarities

Twitter and Blogging are not all that different, they have some things in common:

•Social networking- they both have ways to connect to other users

•Updates- they can both be used to tell what the user is doing at the time even though Twitter’s updates are more brief

•Add-on Features- both blogs and Twitter can have pictures, backgrounds, and a user profile added on

•Purpose- both Twitter and normal blogging are forms of self expression, put out on the web for all (unless they are set to private) to see

The Difficulties of TwitteringTwitter was easy enough to operate. After creating an account I added a picture and wrote my first “tweet,” or status message. I saw that you could “follow” people which means that you can add them to a list that displays their updates so you can see what your friends are doing when you log in to Twitter. I didn’t find anything about Twitter to be difficult.

The Difficulties of Twittering (con’d)

SlideShare was not difficult to use either. After creating an account I explored around the site for awhile, watching other people’s slideshows and checking out the other features. It was a little confusing at first just because there are so many things on the homepage but I didn’t find it difficult to upload my slideshow. When I uploaded my slideshow I had some problems. I tried to do it with the bulk upload feature which didn’t work and showed me an error message. After becoming a little worried, I noticed that there was another option. There was a link that said “Having problems with bulk upload?” I clicked on this and it worked fine. It was really easy so I don’t know how the bulk upload was supposed to work, but I can’t imagine it being much easier than the uploader I used.

Community Both sites have the option to have favorite users. On SlideShare on the My Slidespace part of the site, a user can add favorite slideshows, join groups, and send/receive comments about their slideshows. In this way users can join groups to form communities and also comment on each other’s slideshows to make community interactions.

Twitter’s favorite users feature is called “following”. Users follow each other by adding them to a list to see what their updates are when they log in. Users can also send messages directly to each other just like the comments part of SlideShare.

Community Participation

I used the following feature on Twitter to add my classmates to my list. I liked this feature because I could see a list of everyone in our class and scroll down to read their updates. I didn’t have to search for each individual user, they were all displayed on my homepage.

I didn’t use any of the community aspects on SlideShare, but I did view some of the other user’s slideshows. I didn’t find any that were my favorites to add to my Slidespace page, but I would have added one if I found any slideshows that I particularly enjoyed.

SlideSharing

I also enjoyed my SlideShare experience. I have never tried using SlideShare before but I think it could be very useful. I like that users can share slideshows by sending them to people via an email link. I think that this could be helpful for classes if the professor found a slideshow that maybe they didn’t create, but found interesting or useful for their class. As long as users cite other user’s material it’s open for anyone to use. I also like that using SlideShare users don’t have to slowly download slideshows like I have to if I want to view a powerpoint presentation that someone has sent to me. Users can view the slideshows on the website without a wait. I really like the idea of posting comments because users can improve upon their slideshows based on what other users think. Maybe there is information that one user knows that another user could add into their presentation to make it better.