Facebook Makeover Leaves Some Devotees Fuming

Friday, October 23, 2009 at 8:35 PM | Posted by jkzlin

I shall start with the brief history of Facebook:

In the beginning, it was Harvard and only Harvard. Mark Zuckenberg created Facebook, which was then known as thefacebook.com to get to know the other students at Harvard back in 2004.

Facebook grew so tremendously that it was soon opened to other colleges as well. By the end of 2004, it was also opened to high schools, and later on, to the general internet public, as long as you were 13 and older.

Overtime, Facebook grew by adding more features such as news feed, more privacy features, Facebook notes, the ability to add images to your page/blog and comments, importing other blogs into Facebook, instant messaging and much, much more.

Recently, Facebook has decided to give themselves a new look. A makeover, so to speak. This, was not accepted well with some of the devotees of Facebook even if it was done with good intentions.

Vice President of Facebook's Marketing said that one of the purposes to the changes made is to ensure that it is easier for people to push and pull information in the form of bite-size content rather than quickly.

Various groups and fan pages were created to oppose this change. I personally joined a group opposing this change, because I felt that the old Facebook layout was good enough, and that the new one, along with all it's new features might cause the page to load even slower than it already is.

But they went ahead and implemented the new changes with some of the viewpoints from the devotees taken into consideration. In my opinion, the new Facebook looks even better than the old one. Either that, or I have just gotten used to it. Either way, I feel that they made the right choice by going ahead with the makeover.

References:
  1. Linda Roender, Where Did Facebook Come From?, online, retrieved on 23 October 2009 from http://personalweb.about.com/od/makefriendsonfacebook/a/whatisfacebook_5.htm
  2. Facebook Makeover Leaves Devotees Fuming, online, retrieved on 23 October 2009, from http://www.australiananit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24328928-15318,00.html

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New Forms of Media Publishing?

Friday, October 16, 2009 at 11:56 AM | Posted by jkzlin
New media are emerging and vastly expanding in the World Wide Web era. While it may be good that media are now evolving, conventional media are faced with the possibility of becoming extinct.

Social networks such as YouTube, Facebook, Blogger and Twitter have the potential to fully replace papered journals and diaries. However, there are readers who still prefer to read and interact the conventional way. Naughton (2006) states that traditional media are considered to be the push media, whilst the web is the pull media, which further proves the supremacy of the new media.


Naughton (2006) also agrees that the newest trend in the blogosphere is the combination of digital convergence, personal computing and global networking such as Twitter and Facebook is increasing the pace of development and is giving fundamental shifts in the World Wide Web environment.

With this said, it may be possible for the existing media, be it conventional journalism or blogging to co-exists with the new media to come.

References:
  1. Naughton, J, 2006, Blogging And The Emerging Media Ecosystem, online, retrieved on 16 October 2009, from http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf

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Designing: Online vs Print

Friday, October 9, 2009 at 11:30 AM | Posted by jkzlin
How a reader reads and interprets a document differs from the print and online documents.

For example, according to Nielson (1997), reading from computer screens is 25% slower than reading from paper. Therefore, different design principles have to be applied to both documents.
The Star online article

The Star printed newspaper


There are a few designing principles that a writer/designer should follow when creating a document:

Balance – balance should be maintained between the amount of text and images in a document

Sequence – Jakob Nielson (1997) states that readers generally scan the pages online. Therefore, the sequence of the images and text is very important. The same can be applied with the printed document.

Consistency – Indentations, margins and typeface should be consistent in both documents so as to avoid it looking messy and unorganized.

The movement of the eyes play a large role in designing a good document. Nielson (2006) explained these movements with the F-shaped pattern theory for reading online content.

With these points taken into consideration, designers and even YOU will be able to design a good online and print document.

References:
  1. Nielson, J. 2006, F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content, online, retrieved on 9 October 2009, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html
  2. Nielson, J. 1999, Print Design vs Web Design, online, retrieved on 9 October 2009, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html
  3. Nielson, J. 1997, Reading On The Web, online, retrieved on 9 October 2009, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

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The Blogging Community and Methods on Building One

Friday, October 2, 2009 at 10:58 AM | Posted by jkzlin
According to Anthony from www.thetravelart.com, a blogging community is exactly that – a community. Basically, a few people with similar interests, views and passion would gather together for an occasional meet-up. Having a blogging community can increase your readership, and therefore your credibility as well, because you are no longer writing for yourself, but for other people as well.

How to build a community on your blog on your own? (Darren Rowse, 2008)
  • Take the lead and be the community that you want your readers to be – readers follow the lead of bloggers in how they’ll interact with each other.
  • Ask questions to increase interaction in your blog.
  • Give readers something to do on your blog, like trying out a new restaurant. You could even have a column where readers can be a guest blogger, giving advices to each other.
  • Link your reader’s blogs. Readers actually appreciate you taking an interest in their blogs too.
  • Answer reader questions – avoid ignoring questions. Readers actually appreciate it when you take notice of them.
  • Get your readers noticed. Celebrate your readers publicly on the blog. This will also help increase more readership.
  • Create projects where readers can participate in. The more active they are on your blog, the more loyal they’ll be.


References:

  1. Darren Rowse, 2008, How To Build Community On Your Blog, online, retrieved on 2 October 2009, from http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/04/26/how-to-build-community-on-your-blog/
  2. Blogs and Community – Launching A New Paradigm For Online Community, online, retrieved on 2 October 2009, from http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community
  3. Anthony, 2009, What Is A Blogging Community, online, retrieved on2 October 2009, from http://www.thetraveltart.com/what-is-a-blogging-community/


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