Facebook

I spend more time on facebook than any other website in the world. Is this a bad thing? Does it make me more vulnerable? Could it possibly cause me problems in the future?
First of all I will tell you a bit about the history of facebook. (A more in depth history of facebook can be found here, The History of Facebook). Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg while he was a student at Harvard. Originally the site was only available to Harvard students, this was then expanded to colleges in the Boston, Then to colleges in the Ivy League, then to Stanford University. It then became available to High school students, and is now available to everyone older than thirteen. Since starting three years ago Facebook has gained over 175 million users and made Mark Zuckerberg the youngest billionaire in the world. Yet there are many controversies surrounding facebook, and there have been many problems with people's security. Originally facebook was not that private, this time last year anyone in the same network as you could see your page, meaning if you were in the London network millions of people could see your page. Students who have had facebook throughout University are being turned down by employers. In the past they have posted pictures, videos or written comments which do not put them in a good light with employers. If an employer saw a picture of the person when they were at a party drunk and they were doing something like jumping off a table they would probably trust them less and would be less inclined to hire them. People also can get bullied over facebook, internet bullying is a as bad as bullying in the real world. People can be discriminated over facebook, say if someone wrote on someone else’s wall, "oh so and so is being really annoying at the moment" if so and so saw this he would be upset, so friendships are easily ruined over facebook.However it is very easy to use facebook and get around all these problems. Security has been tightened on facebook; it is possible to have a limited profile so some people can only see certain things on your page. If you go through your settings carefully it is possible to choose who sees your page whether it is just your friends, people in your network, or anyone in facebook. If you are careful with what is put on facebook you can avoid the problem with employers, or you make you page private enough so they can not get onto your page. The same applies with what your friends see, you should never insult someone over the internet behind their back, as the odds are they will see what you have written.
In conclusion I think facebook is brilliant, it connects people all around the world and makes it easier to talk to your friends who you do not see everyday. If you are careful with you privacy settings and with what you written there is no reason to be scared of facebook, although you should respects its power.
Below is a very good video which explains social networks on a more general way.

Our Digital Identity

England is the most watched country in the world, more so than China and America. On average we are caught on camera around three hundred times a day. Everything we do is monitored, it is now impossible to make your way through life without leaving a single digital footprint. Your digital life starts before you are even born, when your mother has a sonogram, that sonogram is saved onto the hospital's database, thus your digital identity is born before you are born. From then on everything you do is monitored, your school records, your passport, with the invention of the oyster card you can not even take a trip on the tube without people knowing about it. Every time you buy something with your credit card a record is made of it, every time you drive in a car past a speed camera and you are speeding your photo is taken and it is saved onto a database, CCTV cameras plague our streets, and this is not to mention all the info that the government have on us.
So that is all the information that people have on us without our consent, to be honest we can not do anything about it, no matter how scary we find it, to be honest Orwell's prediction of "Big Brother is watching you" has come true. But what do let ourselves into? What digital information do we give about ourselves to the world and how much can someone tell from that information? I myself have a Facebook, a blog, a Google mail account, and an MSN account. Although all of these are private it is still possible for others to hack onto these accounts. If they did get onto these pages what would they find out about me? Well to be honest nothing that I would not mind them knowing, I have been very careful about what I put on these accounts, at the most they would find out my name, my friends and they would see a few photos of me. When you Google my name you get 45,900,000 results, clearly this gives me extra protection as they would have to trawl through pages and pages to find anything about me, and at the most they would probably find something that I wrote on someone's facebook years ago, even that would not bother me as I have been very careful as to keep what I say on other people's pages not to personal, in case someone like a future employer found it. Having a facebook account makes me a little more exposed, but you still get thousands of results when you search my name.
In conclusion I think the fact that records of what we do are splattered across the internet is nothing to be scared of, so long as we are sensible with how we behave on the internet. As for the government having so much info on us, there is nothing we can do but hope it does not fall into the wrong hands.

Microblogging

Microblogging as suggested by the name is a form of blogging done in less detail. Microblogging is basically a way of keeping people posted on what you are doing right now. There are no rules about what you tell people and who you tell, you can choose to tell everyone, or just a select group of friends. You can tell them anything you want, from I am mowing the lawn, to I am about to take the biggest career step in my life. You can also post pictures and videos on microblogs, this is a useful feature as it means you can not only tell people what you have been doing, but you can also show them. Microblogs are starting to be used as advertising tools and business features. The tourist industry has latched on to this idea, the following monuments and famous landmarks have their own microblogs which keep people updated in what is going on, these include Tower Bridge, The River Thames and an orchid in Greenwich London. Barack Obama has a microblog which gives brief descriptions of what he is doing and thinking. The two main examples of Microblogs are Twitter and Jaiku, (the videos below describe Twitter and Jaiku in a little more detail and if you follow these links, Twitter and Jaiku, you will get a Wikipedia article on them). Twitter and Jaiku are almost identical, they are everything I described above, the only slight differences between them is Twitter is slightly more popular and more widely used than Jaiku, and also to be a "follower" of someone on Jaiku you have to be invited by the person, however you can follow anyone's microblog on Twitter. This means business' will generally use twitter more as it means people can go to them instead of them having to chase after people. I am sure many facebook users who are reading this will be thinking a microblog is just a much simpler version of facebook with people just showing status updates and posting pictures and videos, this is true, but unlike facebook, it is a much more personal appliance where you really are just speaking to your close friends, which depending on the person makes microblogs a good thing or a bad thing.
A video about Twitter

A video about Jaiku