JOMC 191.3 Blogging, We the Media and Virtual Communities

Hey guess who finally got blogsome to work for him??

I know we’ve beat thefacebook to death, but I thought I’d revisit it one more time.

Regardless, thefacebook stats post interested me. I got in on thefacebook a couple weeks after it came to UNC. It was hard finding anyone from school on it at first. However, word of mouth spread it like wildfire. Within 2 weeks, 100 people on my buddylist had facebook me! links in their profiles.

But does the rapid rise in popularity of these online communties bode poorly for future prospects of some of the less savvy members?

Who knows. But recently some University of Missouri students have been warned against joining and creating facebook groups dedicated to professors they want to sleep with and other topics that lack judgement.

Here’s a really interesting article regarding online accountability, especially regarding the facebook. Interestingly enough, some researchers predict a lot of current student will be embarrased by their online trail when they enter the job market.

What really surprised me was the fact that thefacebook sold your personal information to companies. This accounts for all the spam i’ve suddenly started receiving.

Just as Yahoo! starts to include blogs in their news search, I notice from Fred’s Facebook data that very few incoming first years at UNC list a website or blog. I do notice that many of them use myspace or facebook in ways that we might use blogs.
If, as Doug Rushkoff says, we should be learning from digital kids (aka Children of Chaos) as they Play with the Future, are we learning that blogging is dead and replaced by more complex hosting sites based on social networking and friend of a friend discovery in which blogging is just a small part of the whole?

I blogged a little about the sessions that I attended at the ConvergeSouth conference on Saturday. After seeing the discussion at the News and Observer Editor’s blog, I wish I could have made it over on Friday too. There NandO editor Melanie Sill opines on the filtering role of newspapers based in part on her reaction to Ted Vaden’s blogging about Jay Rosen’s talk at Converge (got all of that? good because there’s more).
But Sill hears back from Rosen in the comments (and others). There’s also a broken Trackback to Ed Cone’s blog.

Now that’s blogging for you.

Someone just sent me a story about The Bobs, Deutsche Welle’s 2005 International Weblog Award. The awards recognize excellence in journalism and freedom of expression and are accompanied by iPods and iBooks. There are 13 categories. Voting on the journalistic blogs takes place online and an international jury will choose the winners. You too can participate! Vote for blogs in the User Awards category. This website has some great articles on blogs, by the way.