Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

What's the Difference: Website, Blog, Social Media

There are many different ways to create an online presence. The top three are: a website, a blog, or a social media page. What determines your choice is what you want to accomplish. Once you have that, very abstract idea locked into your brain, you need to know which of the three is the best fit. Fortunately, that will ultimately be up to your preferences; what I can tell you is what each of the three - website, blog, and social media - are geared towards.

Website


Websites are typically structured to contain/present content that ought to be presented in a hierarchical format. For example, think online shopping - those websites are divided into categories; now, think about a book - most books progress from beginning to end of some particular event or topic. (Keep this in mind...it will come back.)

Blog


Weblogs are typically structured to contain/present content that ought to be presented according to time. For example, remember that dairy you got when you were little...that's a weblog. HUH? I have to post something everyday? No. The typically blogger might post weekly, some everyday or even several times a day, one must remember that those prolific bloggers are earning money from their blog, while others, like me, post when they remember to post or because they decided on the way home that this would be a great post for their blog.

Social Media Page


Social Media Page is typically structured as a stream of consciousnesses or as a personal conversation with a group of friends at a bar/restaurant. For example, one minute you could be talking about politics and the next you could be talking about the surgery your cousin had last week or possibly your sex-life. What's important to remember is that these conversations are occurring in a bar/restaurant. When you're there, don't you hear the neighboring conversations? Another point to consider about a social media page is that is behaves much like a RSS feed - that's really simple syndication; think AP news, they write most of our news but we get that news from other places than AP news.

Overlap


Ok, so that's the basic overall differences, however, there's overlap.

Let's say you are a quilter or a gardener. You want to share your knowledge with the world. Obviously, what you know is structured content. There is a beginning and end. So, one might think a website would be the best possible choice, and it could be. What ultimately decides is your preference - Do you think like a book? In a progression of stages? If you do, then, yes, the website structure would be best for you. But if you think in chunks or want a little more 'freedom' then maybe a blog would be your best choice. But then again, you could decide that a social media page might be the best solution, since you want to have a more personal, stream of consciousness, conversations with others just like you.

Interactions


Each one of these three - websites, blogs, and social media pages - have different levels of interaction with viewers. The social media page - obvious, social - has the most intimate interactions; typically you are expected your 'followers/friends' to either like or comment on what you share, while the website typically has the least (a little to none - your choice) interaction. Meanwhile, the blog is in the middle. Each blog post has the possibility of having or not having comments and how much you, the blogger, interact with those comments is completely up to you. 

Summarize


So, which one do you pick? .... Answer the following questions:

How do you think? 
What do you want to present?
Do you want to interact with your viewers? 

Those three questions will help you decide which will be the best fit for you.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Evaluating the Web & Homework is more than busy work....

There is always a debate about whether or not homework is essential to learning. From my perspective homework can be a very important step to one's learning process. It is for me, although I really, really hate doing homework.

A couple of years ago I had a rather detailed homework assignment for one of the courses I was taking. At first, I thought that the homework was really unnecessary - it was just "busy work". 

The assignment was to quickly write down the steps I use to evaluate online materials - in other words, whether or not the website can be trusted. Then to go online and find five resources that I would use, and why I would use them. 

Really? I teach this stuff - do I really have to do this? 

Yes.

What I discovered was what that it's not as simple as I thought. Sure, there are the common sense checks, such as: 
  • Who's the author?
  • Credentials?
  • Can the information be verified?
  • How current is the information?
  • Are opinions clearly identified?
  • Who sponsors the website? 
But today, there is this new phenomenon - social media, blogs, and wikis. 

Can those questions above be applied to these types of websites? I think that they can, but there are other questions one needs to ask as well. 

Social Media questions: 
  • Can the identity of the source of shared information be verified?
  • Can the information on the profile page be verified?
  • Can institutions and/or companies be identified?
Blog questions:
  • Is the blog posting signed by an identifiable author?
  • A guest author?
  • Who are they? 
  • Is the blog posting cited on other blogs? (Use Technorati - a blog search engine - to find out.) 
  • Do new postings appear fairly regularly? 
Wiki questions: 
  • Can one identify all of those who are able to edit or add content?
  • Who are they?
  • Are there guidelines for contributors to follow?
  • Is the wiki moderated? That is, is there an editor? Who are they? 
As one can see the questions are very similar to the basic questions one uses to determine whether or not a website can be trusted; they are just a little more detailed. They dig deeper. 

So, does this teach me anything about homework - yes, I still hate it, but once again I did learn something new and that is always wicked awesome.