I tried to find a balance between hammering home points I’m sure everybody else has made on the same readings (second entry), and glossing too broadly over (my first entry). The readings did a lot to clarify in my mind the central question of “why?” in my head, which was nice. I mean, I know why I participate in online comms, but I also know I’m not Joe Standard, either. As my sister would point out on occasion, I’m skewing the data (which, yes, unfortunate, but fun to say: “skew”). So I tried to take myself out of the equation this time as I read, and to be a little more objective.
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Hang out online:
It’s interesting to see the data on why people join online communities. Like the researchers said, it would take more time to survey a broader spectrum of communities, but it’d be interesting to see if the results in the future follow these. I expect they would, honestly.
social psych:
This kind of research always piques my interest because I like knowing why people behave the way they do. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, because I’d just finished reading the previous paper, if why the people had joined in the first place had any impact on their participation or on how the emails they recieved affected them. I would think that someone who joined to make friends would be more likely to be swayed by the implication that more activity would help other people rather than the implication that more ratings would help specifficaly him. It would be interesting to see this kind of research conducted in a community based on Health or Professional topics.
Schrock:
There were a couple of colclusions Schrock made that I found interesting, namely that with more multi-media content, extroverts are becoming more interested in contributing to SNSs, and that men and women use SNSs differently, but for about as long during the day. I was also interested in the conclusions he drew about trans-media experiences. Not to mention that it was great fun to hear “A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila” used in all seriousness. I’m curious about the success of trans-media works. How do the developers guage success? Like Schrock said, the ratings for Quarterlife and Tequila were comperable, but for MTV that means a hit, and for NBC a massive bomb. I haven’t watched much made-for-web content, really, a few webisodes of Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Horrible (he has a Ph.D…in horribleness.) are pretty much the extent of it, and honestly, I didn’t see much of a difference between the content and the conventions used to make them and what I see on TV. It makes me wonder if as this type of thing evolves if web-based shows will develop their own conventions. Maybe trying to shove a show based on something online into our living rooms just won’t work because the environments are too different.
contributing:
I’ll admit, I feel a little bit like the rat in a cage with the pain, food, or pleasure buttons in front of her. It’s a little disconcerting to have people study ways to manipulate my involvment online. It’s not a new idea, but it’s still a little disturbing. I think the most reailistic ways companies will choose to reward users would be intrinsic ones. They don’t cost additional money. At least not outright. There might be additional costs required to get the design of the program right, but not like paying money for a t-shirt or gift certificate. I’ve never been a particularly big participater in the corporately funded OC, but I’ve noticed an increasingly large push on network tv to get watchers to go to a show’s website, and I’ll admit it’s sort of worked for a couple of shows. But when it did work? It was interest in additional content-deleted scenes, outtakes, behind the scenes interviews and things, that led me there. On the other hand, I wouldn’t really consider watching the psych-outs online as actual community involvement. The only forum I actually participated in at the encouragement of the network was the firefly one, and even then it was more ‘in the desperate hope the network won’t pull the plug’/’look! nathan fillian!’ rather than anything FOX did. But I won’t get started on that. I’d be curious to see the conclusions the authors put forth tested, they seem like genearlly agreeable propositions to me. I follow the logic they’re using so it’d be intersting to see if the logic is applicable to the way people behave.
micorblogging:
The map that illustrated the global spread of twitter was pretty interesting. There is something to the whole “it takes less time” aspect of the site that encourages use. But after reading about theories behind contributors to online communities and their motivations, I can’t help but wonder about Twitter users’ motivations. What makes people want to updated the world on their daily lives, several times a day? I wonder, too, how something with such a limited messaging system (180 characters) can foster a community.
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My strategy for AB was to sign up and jump on in. I figured if I got going, I’d be able to roll into the objectives. I lurked a bit, trying to find areas I could actually provide answers in (which, lets face it, sent me directly to the Out Of The Bag section, and the section on TV. Like we didn’t see that coming.). I tried to answer some questions that hadn’t been answered, and chimed in on interesting-looking conversations. I noticed that frequent posters would greet each other and inquire about things in that general small-talk way people have. It was kind of fun to see. I asked some questions I was genuinely curious about (for example: Do lizards feel pain?–this is incredibly relevant right now because I think I accidentally killed a lizard that was ON MY BED, and I really hope he didn’t feel pain. the trauma runs deep, people. I don’t like harming animals…back on track.), and then more pointed topical answers, because I noticed people tended to glom onto their topics–the gun people really know their stuff, and sort of stick to the gun section of the Bag, so they gain some level of comradarie with one another. But I am not actually a gun person (yet), so my questions would all be answered with “try a few, whatever works the best for you”/”whatever you can shoot and aim well with” and various other answers that had been answered before. Although I did learn you can kill a bear with a pistol (although it’s not recommended, as bears are testy and getting off the second required shot can prove difficult).
At that point, I noticed that a lot of theoretical questions or What If…scenarios were getting a lot of notice, and I tried a few out. This was along the same time I began to feel seedy, trying strategies and working different angles to get points out of the seemingly nice group of people. I’ll admit I wasn’t a fan of that. I never like it when I’m made to feel like a rat in a cage, and I don’t like making other people the rats. I think my goal would have been better achieved if I had ignored the moral part of me who pointed out the site wasn’t made for me to try to weasel points out of people and just gone with the never-ending barrage of questions and answers. I stayed logged on for several hours several days, but ultimately I needed a more aggressive strategy to accumulate the necessary points and answers.
I did like looking at the types of questions that got answered most frequently (the bizarre and the terrible to think about ones), which ones got ignored (the ones that sounded like the lit teacher’s handout of the essay question). However, exploiting those observations didn’t seem to do me enough good. I needed to interact with more people, I think. People indicate that they join communities for interaction and entertainment, and I don’t think I appealed to those needs very well. I would have liked to pose more original questions, I think, something that really reached out and grabbed attention and piqued their interest. Also, if I had really stayed focused in say, the book section, I could have built more exchanges with particular individuals, which would have probably led to mutual bumping up of points. A more targeted approach would have worked better.
I signed u with the username iv_love, here: http://www.answerbag.com/profile/ I’ll admit, I don’t know how to link directly to my profile page, as that’s the only url I can find when I’m there.
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