Twittering your breakfast – and the earthquake in China

Since setting up my Twitter account a month ago, I haven’t been bothered to update my status or follow other friends because I could do just that – and much more – on Facebook. I’ve struggled to think of how Twitter, a micro blogging service which provides bite-sized messages, could be useful to me or anyone else, beyond letting each other know what we had for breakfast.

Until now.

The blogosphere is currently abuzz with debate over whether micro blogging is an effective tool for providing and reporting the latest news. This follows proof that users on Twitter beat the news wires and journalists in reporting the earthquake that hit China on May 12 .

According to a timeline of tweets, the first message on the earthquake was posted by Twitter user scribeoflight at 2:35:33pm Beijing local time, and said simply: “earthquake. not sure how big. maybe four”.

The earthquake occurred at 2:28pm.

Minutes later, news agencies like Bloomberg News, Reuters and Dow Jones broke the story of the earthquake hitting Beijing, and later, Sichuan province.

In this blog post, Robert Scoble, famous for having 24000+ followers on Twitter and receiving a tweet every second of the day, says several Twitter users in China reported the quake to him while it was actually happening. He then used Twitter to provide news and updates about the quake to other users. Scoble also claims that Twitter had news of the earthquake even before the United States Geological Survey, which monitors seismic events.

Since then, users like inwalkedbud have been providing regular tweets on the earthquake and its effects, making Twitter one of the main sources of news on the quake. Users on Fanfou, Taotao and Jiwai.de, Chinese social messaging services, are doing the same. Photos and videos of the quake and its devastation have also been posted on Flickr, YouTube, and Chinese video-sharing sites like Tudou and Youku, providing eye-witness accounts that mainstream media have struggled to get. Global Voices Online and the BBC provide a roundup of social media coverage of the quake.

Social media in emergencies

A recent study at the University of California claims that social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia are more effective than traditional media in providing information and warnings in an emergency/disaster situation.

During the Virginia Tech shootings in the US last April, the study found that emergency services and the media were slow in providing updates on the situation at the college and of the students who had been killed.

However, within 90 minutes of the shootings, a Wikipedia entry accurately describing the events had been posted and updated several times. Twenty minutes later, Facebook users had set up a group called “I’m OK at VT” for students and staff to reassure their friends and family that they were safe.

Researchers found that during the California fires last year, web users used Twitter to inform their friends of their condition, while traditional media struggled to provide updates on the fire. They also used Google Maps to track the fire’s route and indicate the areas where businesses and schools had been closed.

The study says the mass media were “unreliable” as they struggled to gain entry to remote areas from which users with Internet access could easily report.

It found that while traditional media focused on sensationalist news like the burning of celebrities’ homes, ordinary web users could provide important and accurate information as it unfolded.

Mainstream media

While the recent earthquake in China is enough proof for me that Twitter has greater utility beyond letting the world know what I had for breakfast, we should be careful about glorifying it as a rival news source.

Twitter and other social media tools may provide immediacy, global reach and first-hand information, but how accurate is it as a news source? Ofcourse, it’s hard to be wrong about an earthquake, but I wouldn’t write an article based solely on a tweet that says “Yay! Mugabe is dead” without verifying it first.

Nevertheless, it’s evident that the power and utility of social media has a huge impact on mainstream journalism. Unless journalists are arrogant and stupid enough to think that they’re the sole gatekeepers and producers of news, they need to join the online conversation.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how some South African news websites are doing just that, and how web 2.0 has changed conventional media-audience relationships.

One flocking cool web browser

I’ve got two questions and good news for you.

Which sites do you visit every time you’re online?
If it’s your blog, e-mail, Facebook and/or RSS Reader, then it’s safe to assume that you are a social media enthusiast.

What web browser do you use?
I’m guessing Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera. They’re all fine for surfing the net… but we social media fans don’t just surf. We facebook, we bookmark, we chat, we upload pics, watch videos and blog. And we often do this all at once, so it’s about time that a more integrative, social media-friendly browser comes along.

Well, it has. Flock is here, and it delivers.

The latest version of this open-source social web browser that’s based on Mozilla Firefox comes with many built-in and customisable social media tools. Here are some of them:

Social Networks
Flock has a People’s Sidebar that keeps track of all your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube contacts. This means you don’t need to keep visiting the Facebook site after you’ve logged on to it – Flock keeps track of your friends’ status updates, allows for instant messaging, and lets you check if you’ve got new messages, or if your friends have posted new pics or content. If you use Twitter, you can instantly interact with your Twitter friends, post a Twitter, and check your friends’ updates, all from Flock’s sidebar.

E-mail Services
Flock has integrated Gmail and Yahoo! mail in its browser. It automatically checks your email for new messages and lets you send e-mail directly from Flock, without you having to be on the Gmail or Yahoo! site.

Blogging Clients
The browser comes with a built in blog editor that allows you to post and publish text or images directly to your blog (as I’m doing right now). This service supports Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, Blogsome, Xanga and TypePad blogging platforms.

RSS Feeds
With Flock’s built-in Feed Reader, you can track, organise and read the latest content from the sites you subscribe to. The browser also automatically detects RSS feeds on every site that you visit, and has a handy RSS button on the toolbar that glows orange every time a feed is detected. You can then click on the button to subscribe to the feed of your choice. Easy as pie.

Bookmarking
You can instantly bookmark a site by clicking on the blue star button on the navigation toolbar. If you click on it twice, you can add tags to your bookmarks and organise them however you wish. Flock also lets you search among your bookmarks and your web history.

The browser conveniently supports online bookmarking with del.icio.us and ma.gnolia. You can bookmark sites to Flock and your del.iciou.us or ma.gnolia account simultaneously.

Media Bar
Flock’s Media Bar lets you do amazing things. Firstly, you can search for YouTube videos or Flickr photos using the Media Bar Search Tool. Again, no need to visit the actual site! If you come across content that you like, you can instantly bookmark it to your Media Stream. Secondly, once you’ve activated your online video or photo account in Flock, you can view your own public photos/videos in the photostream on the Media Bar. Thirdly, you can share, e-mail or blog any image in your Media Stream simply by clicking on the white arrow on each thumbnail. Alternatively, Flock lets you drag and drop a pic from your own or any Media Stream directly into your e-mail message or your message to a Facebook friend. No more searching your computer for the right photo to upload; no need to go to the YouTube website to search for stand up comedy. You can do all this directly from Flock.

Verdict
I’ve been using Flock for a few weeks now, and can’t stop raving about it. It’s definitely enhanced my browsing experience since I can surf the net, Facebook, read my e-mail and blog from one convenient space. That’s what I call a unified social media experience.

However, more serious web users may think of it as an overdose. If you’re surfing the Net for a term essay or a work assignment, it’s probably more productive to use the conventional browsers because Flock can be quite distracting.

In every other context though, it’s the ultimate browser for social media fans.

Download it now, and say goodbye to boring browsing.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: flock, social media browser, web browser, social media, built in social media

The green web

While I’m typing and while you’re reading this, we’re indirectly contributing to global warming. Just by using a computer, which runs on electricity that is in turn is produced by fossil fuels, we emit 60 grams of CO2 per hour.

I’m loathe to preach about how we should conserve energy to save the world from exploding (and South Africa from intermittent darkness), especially when I’ve got my heater on, cell phone on charge, and a casserole in the oven. My “wrongdoings” probably warrant an entry on True Green Confessions, a website that’s the equivalent of a church’s confessional booth for “sins” against the earth. It’s strange, but addictive.

It may be too little too late, but the new web is making significant attempts to become environmentally friendly, just as food, fashion and business has. Here are some web 2.0 attempts at going green.

Save-the-earth Search Engines

Eco-friendly search engines were the brainchild of Mark Ontkush, who wrote this post on the amount of energy Google could save if it changed its home page from white to black. This is his basic argument:

“Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the computers are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that’s $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.”

Heap Media launched Blackle last year, a “black” search engine that uses Google search. Unfortunately, the site lacks many of its features like iGoogle, advanced search, and images. A better alternative is Earthle – known as the Black Google -, which is powered by Google, uses less energy and has the exact same features that you’d find on the original search engine. (It looks much sexier too!).

Then there’s the Yahoo! owned GreenBackSearch, which returns the same results as an original Yahoo! search, but the site gives back to the environment by using 50% of its revenue to purchase carbon offsets/credits. Yahoo! also powers a search engine called Ecocho, which grows 2 trees for every 1000 searches conducted on the site.

Eco-friendly social media

Care2Make a Difference is the biggest green social network on the web, with more than eight million users. The network provides a great connection and a wealth of information and services for eco-enthusiasts ranging from healthy living to saving a rainforest with a donation or a signature. Similar green social networks like RiverWired are also on the increase.

The green equivalent of YouTube is Empivot, which aggregates all green- related video content and allows users to upload their own. The site hosts a large amount of audio-visual content from both individuals and companies.

Hugg is the eco-friendly alternative to social bookmarking communities like Digg or del.icio.us. The site is popular and active, and is a useful source of information for anything green related.

Internet users in the US are using Gigoit to donate or get rid of unwanted items instead of dumping them in landfills. The site is like Craigslist, where other users can call dibs on – or as South Africans would say, shotgun – items that they want. The giver then chooses who he wants to donate his stuff to, and the two make arrangements for the exchange. It’s a philanthropic and eco-friendly way to get rid of old cellphones, kids’ toys and dad’s tools that have been collecting dust in our storage room since the 1960s.

Green online shopping has also taken off, with sites like Iallergy and Green Deals Daily offering a variety of environmentally-friendly products to consumers.

For environmental offenders (like me, you and let’s face it, everybody else), EcoGeek and Green Marketing 2.0 provide the latest news on technology and inventions that will help reduce our impact on the environment.

Making a difference

Eco-friendly web 2.0 strategies have taken a lot of flack for their perceived lack of effectiveness. Critics dismiss green social media as mere fluff, and snort in derision at the “black web”, seeing it as regressing towards the ancient MS DOS interface.

But these initiatives, however small their impact may be, are noble and a step in the right direction. Web users should realise that the Internet, for all its wonder and uses, does have a tangible and negative impact on the earth. Given the millions of users and hours spent online, and consequently the amount of CO2 emitted, attempts to create a greener web should be supported.

With that said, I’ve changed my home page to Earthle. Now that I’ve gone black – or should I say green? – there’s no going back.

Learning the Web 2.0 way (2/2)

Technology is not always a student’s best friend. It’s more like a moody, unreliable and can’t-be-trusted ex with whom you have a love/hate relationship. Everyone’s got a few tragic tales about lost essays, blue screens of death, and MS Word suddenly shutting down on them before they could save their work.

But thanks to Ward Cunningham‘s invention of the wonder that is Wiki, there is one less problem we have stress about. Gone are the days of e-mailing a document/project/essay back and forth between group members, bickering over who has edited or deleted crucial information, and freaking out when the most updated version can’t be found in anyone’s e-mail account.

A wiki is a combination of a website and a Word document that allows multiple users to access and edit the document collaboratively from a single location. (Hence, no need for feverish e-mailing). More importantly, it keeps track of all the changes made to the document, stores older versions of the document and allows users to compare the older and new version.

Wikis in education

Wikis have great educational value and are being used widely by universities and some schools. Students can use it to work on a group report, compile results or analyse data (Google Spreadsheets), and teachers can use it to collaboratively structure their courses and interact with their students. Because a wiki is a “wide open space” in which everyone has equal power and access, it allows students to “own [their] education experience”. See Wiki evangelist, Stuart Mader’s post on ways to use wikis in education.

Mader has argued in his book that “today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach”. Students have grown up surrounded by technology and are comfortable with it; and it’s up to teachers to revise their teaching methods to incorporate tools and resources that could help them build a better, more engaging rapport with their learners.

Teachers at a middle school in the States are doing just that: they are using this wiki to teach their French classes, and provide notes, videos and assignments to their students. Brown University has also set up a course advisor wiki that allows students to edit and review the courses that their professors teach. A lecturer at Bowdoin College has been quite successful in using a more scholarly wiki to engage with students in his Romantic Literature Course. There are also countless number of wikis set up by students to facilitate their own learning, like this one.

Wikis seem to be most commonly used to teach students writing skills. Not only do they encourage engaging writing, close reading and careful editing, they also teach students “network literacy”. According to Jill Walker, a prominent blogger and web 2.0 theorist, this involves preparing students to write collaboratively and for public consumption. It means, “jolting students out of the conventional individualistic, closed writing of essays only ever seen by [their] professor”.

Challenges

When used in the context of educational instruction, wikis have encountered various criticisms. Because it allows anyone to chop and change content, it’s difficult to keep track of who has edited what. Linked to this is the issue of security and how much of “control” should be given to students to edit course content or review papers, etc.

Brian Lamb importantly notes that control is only an issue if teachers/lecturers try to impose it on the medium. The aim of a wiki is ultimately to facilitate learning among students, and with their teachers, in a setting that doesn’t mimic that of a classroom. A teacher’s role on a wiki should be to engage students, not pull rank on them. Lamb argues that teachers must relinquish some of their authority in order for students to engage meaningfully on a wiki. Otherwise, wikis will have no real use or effectiveness for students, and we may as well just be content with PowerPoint.

Wikis present a huge departure from the conventional teacher-student relationship, so it’s understandable why those who are still devoted to the chalk-on-blackboard method of teaching frown upon it. The value that students and teachers accrue from wikis will depend on the extent to which both parties are able to handle the power issue – teachers have to give up some of theirs, and students need to use theirs responsibly.

Sources:

Brian Lamb. “Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not“.

Stuart Mader. “Using Wiki in Education“.

Learning the Web 2.0 way (1/2)

When I was in primary school, the most intolerable subject I had to endure was something called Needlework. Only girls had to take this class while the boys did woodwork. The hour-long weekly lessons involved learning how to stitch buttons, knit with those two chop-stick-type objects, and sew little cushions – skills that were apparently necessary to our education. Apart from the fact that my school perpetuated the sexual division of labour and tried to socialise girls into being “good housewives” one day, my point is that this type of education was archaic and boring. The teacher sat at her desk in the front and tried to demonstrate a backstitch, while the rest of us tried to stay awake and not prick ourselves to death.

Thanks to the new OBE system, Needlework no longer features on the list of skills that students need.

And thanks to Bill Gates and the rest of the techno geeks for new educational tools like Showslides and Moodle that have moved into the mainstream. E-learning is becoming increasingly acceptable and popular among students and teachers, and so too is the use of social media in education. In this post, I review a few (almost brand new) e-learning resources, and in the next, I’ll discuss the use of wikis in education.

LearnHub, which launched last month, is a social network for students and teachers/lecturers. It’s made up of a range of user-created communities around a specific topic, like Mathematics or Photography. Students can interact with other students and with educators. They can join a community created by a “lecturer” who teaches a course by posting lessons (including powerpoint presentations) and tutorials, and initiating debates. The “lecturer” can also set tests and track students’ progress. What’s most impressive is the site offers real-time tutoring through live video, voice and document sharing. All of this is free, but teachers can charge a fee for their courses and for tutoring in the LearnHub marketplace.

The more I use LearnHub, the more I’m impressed by it. While the line between student and teacher is blurred through this mode of learning since anyone can teach a course or offer a solution to an equation, what makes LearnHub an effective educational resource is that many professional teachers and experts have joined the network and are offering courses. The information on the site then is, for the most part, trustworthy. LearnHub also has a reputation system for users to rank other users’ answers/courses. The higher your ranking, the higher your authority on the network. It’s a great way for students to find credible sources, and for teachers to market their expertise or offer it freely.

In the words of its developers, Socrato is a “web-based test preparation and assessment platform”. Professional teachers can use the application to post multiple-choice tests, which their students then take online. Socrato boasts analytical tools that tracks students’ progress and helps them identify their strengths and weaknesses. Students can also create study groups and share content with their peers. The application is currently in its beta phase and freely available to the public, but will become a pay-to-use service soon.

Unlike LearnHub and Socrato, this social network is aimed exclusively at students. While professionals can sign up, skoogO automatically links all students to each other. Based on the profile information you provide, it connects you to other students at your university/school, or those from around the world who are doing a similar course, or even using the same textbook as you are. Students can then ask and answer questions relating to their course, and engage in online peer-to-peer learning this way. Although skoogO aims to be an educational resource for students, they seem to be using it more as an alternative to Yahoo!Answers or the local Answerit, rather than for purely educational purposes. (Questions range from “Is it better to be feared or loved?” to “What shampoo and conditioner is best for naturally curly hair?”).

I’ve e-mailed my younger siblings the links to these sites because I think they really can be valuable and useful to them (and me). While e-learning resources are not a substitute for face-to-face education, they can augment students’ learning and provide them with a variety of knowledge that they otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to. I’m not saying do away with classroom-based education, I’m saying that if a teacher wants to engage with his/her students, he/she should use the technological medium that most appeals to them. This way, they’re less likely to doze off in the middle of a lesson – or prick each other with needles, they way my friends and I did in Needlework class.

The underdogs of social networking

Despite bandwidth issues and warnings from their bosses (in my case, the Rhodes IT department), South Africans have gone gaga over social networking. Justin Hartman’s nifty stats show that there are over 730 000 of us on Facebook, making SA the country with the 10^th highest number of Facebook users in the world.

What’s equally interesting is that many local social networks have emerged in the past year or two, some aimed at connecting the general SA online population, and others at forming interest-based communities.

Home grown

There’s Blueworld, where users can network, share pics and videos, and set up a blog. It also has a free SMS service, and a feature that’s similar to Thunda.com: Blueworld “photographers” cover various clubbing scenes, and then upload the pics to the site. Vrinne is another social network aimed at connecting South Africans from around the world. It’s still a work in progress though, and offers only basic features at the moment.

MyGenius and BizJam are geared towards young entrepreneurs. It seems like a good way for freelancers and small businesses to market themselves.

GayPeers is another network aimed at connecting the South African LGBT community. It has the usual features: blogging, chats, polls, and video and photo sharing. Judging by the number of blog posts, this social network seems to be quite popular.

Then there’s Digspot and StudentVillage, geared towards connecting university students across campuses. One can catch up on the recent events across universities in the form of news bulletins. StudentVillage seems to be more interactive though, due to its live chat option and classifieds section.

My personal favourite is ZoopedUp, a social network for car lovers. Members can create their own “cyber garages”, share pics and videos, and chat about everything automotive on blogs or forums.

Local vs. Global

Despite the variety of local social networks available, South Africans don’t seem to be using them that much. I had a look at South Africa’s Alexa ratings this morning, and Facebook and MySpace featured in the top 20 of the most popular sites in the country. None of the local social networking sites above made the list.

A possible reason for this could be that users simply prefer the “global original” rather than the local equivalent. I’ve joined the BlueWorld and StudentVillage networks, but their novelty has already off for me because none of my friends are members. What’s great about Facebook though is that because its so popular, you’re most likely to find people you know on it, and you can then network with them in a single, convenient space.

While I think social networks like ZoopedUp and BizJam are useful and innovative, those aimed only at South Africans can’t compete with their global counterparts. Partly because of the latter’s colossal appeal, and partly because a South African – or Canadian or Spanish – social network restricts users’ scope of communication. We’re in the age of globalisation, not nationalism, after all.

Blog Debut

Having just completed an academic essay on social media, I could regurgitate the wonder of Web 2.0 and how it has turned users into producers; how social media use blurs the boundaries between media/audience and reception/production; how the new web allows for a reconstitution of… I’ve started to lose you already, right?

The purpose of this blog is to unpack social media for the average web user (that’s me included).  I’m an avid Facebook user and blog reader, but I haven’t given much thought to the medium, and if and how the incalculable hours I’ve spent online have changed anything about me.   

There’s so much that’s already been said about social media, but also quite a bit that hasn’t.  Through a blog series that begins next week, I’ll be looking at a range of social media forms – blogs, social networks, wikis and the rest – and reviewing some of them.  I’ll also consider social media’s general impact, its influence on users’ identity, its utility for businesses and traditional media, and its democratic potential.  All this, I promise, without causing you to keel over your keyboard from boredom.

As I’m proudly South African (except when the electricity cuts off), I’ll also be covering our flourishing social media scene and finding out what the “experts” have to say.

Now excuse me while I go change my Facebook status to, “Qudsiya is now a blogger!”