Reference:

• Jenkins, Henry. (2006). Introduction: “Worship at the Altar of Convergence” in Jenkins, Henry, Convergence culture: When new and old media collide, New York: New York University, pp.1-24

• Bruns, Axel. 2008. Open Source Software Development: Probabilistic Eyeballs. In Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage, ed. A. Bruns, 37-68. New York: Peter Lang.

• Bruns A. 2008b. Wikipedia: Representations of Knowledge. In Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From production to produsage. A. Bruns. 101-136.

How do Wikipedia from consensus?

wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that covers just about any content you can think of.

Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.

• you browse
• you discover
• you research
• you realise
• you criticise
• you edit
• you change
• you publish

Bruns (2008) explains the three characteristics that have helped make Wikipedia a success. These are:

1. Neutral Point of View: Articles are as neutral as possible, without bias
2. Verifiability: Readers should be able to check articles are published by a reliable source No
3. original research: Wikipedia does not publish original though and it is not the place for personal opinion.

How is open source production different from commerical production?

open source software has provided an entirely new and open platform, allowing users to collaborate, share and remix content to produce new or alterted content in an online environment. Axel Bruns (2008, 37) comments that "open source software development provides one of the earliest present-day examples for produsage in action". Open source software gives users the freedom and power to collaborate, alter and build on the work of others.

Open Source work is another good example of representing Web 2.0. Take for example Firefox, it is a free program which allows the user to browse the internet, where as Internet Explorer is a Microsoft Program (Prepriority) to use this program its included from Windows Software which is pay-off program.(Web1.0).

Bruns further comments on open source software as produsage, identifiying four key principles:

• open participation, communal evaluation
  
• fluid heterarchy, ad hoc meritocracy
  
• unfinished artefacts, continuing process
  
• common property, individual rewards

From this we can see that open source production as an example of community produsage is social and holds little structure, with all content being open for interpretation, editing, or completely altering.

Alternatively, commercial production holds very different principles. Production often complies to a rigid, closed structure with defined goals, coming to a very final conclusion. Participation in commercial production is only from those directly involved in the project, and owned solely by a certain group of people. Quite simply, as open source software and community produsage are very 'open' in nature, commercial production is very 'closed'.
My two previous posts expand on this thought, and discuss the ways in which the community produsage and commercial production are becoming interlinked with open source software and Web 2.0.

How do communities evaluate quality?

Communities evaluate quality by voting on websites on whether they like or don’t like the news stories published. Sites such as digg.com and current.com allow users to post newsworthy content. Viewers can then watch videos or read stories and decide on whether they like them or not. They almost instantaneously get feedback from their posts and this determines the quality of the news story.Most of this content is created on the previously mentioned sites are created by an average audience, not necessary journalists meaning that content may not always be accurate. However, this is where the evaluating comes which determines the quality of the posts.

The quality of content that is published can be reviewed and commented upon by fellow users and participants. There are many similarities between open source software and citizen journalism namely:

• The production process is open to all participants
  
• Through the “power of the eyeballs”, the cream of ideas and articles will rise to the top – peer assessment and review enables users to spot errors, misinterpretations, new ideas, views and opinions. I.e. an article that receives a lot of hits will automatically rise to the spotlight
  
• Content is always unfinished, there is always new information emerging that can be used to update the information

Web1.0 and Web2.0

web2.0 come after web1.0 and it is the new and improved version. web1.0 can be considerd a delivery medium,something to be passively consumed, web2.0 on the other hand is an interactive environment inviting its viewers to interact, rather than being user-read information. it has progressed into " user-led content creation"(Burns,2008).


web2.0 is more beneficial to the user because it is programs seem more developed, are more orientated the consumers and overall are more interactive.


The difference between the two is that web1.0 relied on webmasters or the creators of popular websites to keep them updated,so that users could view information. on the other hand,web 2.0 enables users to become co-creators and websites are a place for people for collaborate and interact, instead of simply being a place to store information.

List of web1.0 and web2.0

Web 1.0 was about reading
Web2.0 is about writing

Web1.0 about companies
Web2.0 is about communities

Web1.0 was about client-server
Web2.0 is about peer to peer

Web1.0 was about HTML
Web2.0 is about XML

Web1.0 was about home page
Web2.0 is about Blogs

Web1.0 was about portal
Web2.0 is about RSS

Web1.0 was about taxonomy
Web2.0 is about tags

Web1.0 was about wires
Web2.0 is about wireless

Web1.0 was about owning
Web2.0 is about sharing

Web1.0 was about IPOs
Web2.0 is about trade sales

Web1.0 was about Netscape
Web2.0 is about Google

Web1.0 was about web form
Web2.0 is about web applications

Web1.0 was about screen scraping
Web2.0 is about APIs

Web1.0 was about dialup
Web2.0 is about broadband

Web1.0 was about hardware costs
Web2.0 is about bandwidth coast

How does convergence change culture?

convergence is not just restricted to the integration of old and new media technology. Proven in engendering great technological, industrial, cultural and social change, convergence refers to the "flow of content across multiple media platforms,cooperation between multiple media industries(Jenkins,2006:2) and the changing relationship and interaction between media producers and media consumers.

More recently, this changing relationship between producers and consumers has given rise to a convergence culture, “where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways” (Jenkins, 2006:2). By lowering production and distribution costs, expanding the range of available delivery platforms, enabling consumers to annotate, appropriate, recirculate and archive media content, new media technology has given consumers a greater ability to participate in an emerging convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006:18).

As individual media consumer becomes more involved and empowered, it will be interesting to see how media companies, governments, mass media empires and businesses react to the convergence culture. Without doubt laws will need to change, governments will need to deregulate and businesses will have to alter the way they function. Furthermore, producers will certainly need to embrace this new participatory culture and change their perception of “what it means to consume media” (Jenkins, 2006:18).


Reference:
Jenkins, Henry. (2006). Introduction: “Worship at the Altar of Convergence” in Jenkins, Henry, Convergence culture: When new and old media collide, New York: New York University, pp.1-24.

The Audience

Who is/are the audience of blogs? I was thinking this question few weeks ago. The reason is that I read one of my friend’s blogs about economics. Suddenly there is a big question mark in my mind and one sentence came out. MY BLOG MIGHT NEVER APPEAR THIS TOPIC! After barnstorming, I divided blogs as two different contents.

Write blogs for yourself, as a diary.

Write blogs for everybody, as journalism.

In my case, I am the one who write blogs for myself. Most of time, I talk to my self in my blogs. Just like writing diary. However, most of the audience of my blogs are my friends. Even through my blogs are for myself, my friend can know my feeling and my experience through my writing. My blogs are like an open diary, which is okay to be seen. But of course they won't understand all the time, sometimes they don't even understand one sentence in an entry. I feel free to write anything in my blog, usually only express my feeling in few sentences. As a result, it's a bit strange for me to write those entries here honestly.

In my little personal survey, most people write blogs for everybody. Even some of them are not really write for everybody, the way they write in blogs is like a journalist. Some of them already considered themselves as a journalist. Those people's blogs are usually longer and more readable then mine. Jane B. Singer (2005) in Use of Blogs indicated that respected blogger is someone who regularly and passionately posts to provide further insight into current news issues to an extended network. [Now I know the reason of why are my blogs is not popular. Certainly, blog has become a new media. However, blog has some features which are different from other media.

So what are the differences between blog and other media? My answer is: the respondence of audience. Through the World Wide Web, once a blog is posted, it can be viewed all over the world. And audience from everywhere give comments immediately through few clicks on a mouse and typing on a keyboard. Blog is a fast interactive media. Audience don't need to post a mail or use phone call. Author might possibly get respondence within few second. Blog, comparing to other media, save a lot of time and money to spread news, information, or point of view.

Networked People: Blogging My world

Here are the other 2 blog systems which I’m using now.

Wretch:

It's the top visited blog site and the second popular site (Yahoo is the first) in Taiwan. There are around 2.8 million users in the Wretch. It provides four languages which includes English as well. Wretch provides free photo albums and guestbook services, and extensive VIP version. Non-members can see those contents as long as the users allow it. The Wretch was found by several students in a university as a testing site originally, therefore it was firstly popular within students.

• Home page of Wretch
  

• My Weblog in Wretch
  
  

Mixi:

It’s the most popular SNS (social networking service) site in Japan now. There are more then 5.7 million members and 490,000 communities in this site. You can only be a member as being invited by mixi member. The word mixi is a combination of mix and I, referring to the idea that the user, "I", "mixes" with other users through the service.

• Log in page of Mixi
  

• My main page in Mixi
  
  
  

According to Shenton and McNeely (1997), the reasons of why people participate in online discussion group can be the capacity to circulate new ideas among a group of like-minded people; the chance to find people who share the same interests; and the opportunity to form friendships and relationships that may people perceived as being more difficult to develop in the ‘off-line’ community…etc.

I agree with that people participate in online discussion group because of they want to find people who share the same interests or join a group of like-minded people. However, in my opinion, not only people who have difficulties to develop relationships in real life can participate in online communities. Some communities are made for connecting users with each other, including friends and families, which is the basic and original idea in communicating online. The mixi is a good example of this point. People only can join their member when they knew someone there. And in my experience, many of online communities’ users have a lot of friends, and they use those communities to make up the relationship between them and their friends even they can see each other very often.