Wiggio: Streamlined Group Management

Wiggio showed up on my RSS feed of the del.icio.us Hotlist today, so I thought I’d give it a go. Billed as “a totally free, online toolkit that makes it easy to work in groups”, Wiggio’s yet another web 2.0 site that makes you wonder how you managed life before it existed.

Similar to Google Groups, Wiggio facilitates sharing and storing information in a user-friendly way. While Google Groups offers tools for publishing and design, Wiggio focuses more on communication. For example, live chat and live poll results give group members the opportunity to meet without ever physically meeting. I can see this being extremely useful for college students stuck in groups for core classes, where members may be scattered across campus at any point in time.

For those people who still communicate via voice, Wiggio offers conference calls through Rondee. Having not heard of Rondee until now, this aspect really stood out to me. It just seems really handy to have this feature built in.

Other than the weird Halloween color scheme, I really like what Wiggio has to offer. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any use I could have for it in the near future. I’m out of school, not in a band, and I don’t organize dance troops. Looks like I’ll just have to hyper-organize my friends…

Flickr Introduces Video Sharing

I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but I just read that Flickr is now allowing video uploads. They’re limiting it to 90-second videos, but for the Flickr model, this sounds just about right.

From what I can tell, the quality is ok, and the sharing is super-easy: it even helps you embed video on your own site (not WordPress, though).

YouTube is great, but its structure and organization are awful. I already love Flickr, and I think the integration of video is a logical step.

For examples of what people have already put up, check out their video beta group.

Folia

The other day I received an invite in my Flickr inbox to join Folia, a gardening organizer/social site. So I checked it out and turns out it’s pretty cool.

You can enter information about the plants in your garden, so you can track growth and set reminders.

Each plant then belongs to one of your gardens.

You can keep journals about specific plants or whole gardens, integrating photos from Flickr. Gardens and plants are public, so comments and tips can be shared among users.

So far I like it, but we’ll see how long I can be disciplined enough to update it every time I garden.

“Facebook Not Just for Students Anymore”

Week 8 Reading

This short article from the Chronicle of Higher Education surprised me with its date: it was only published a few months ago! Maybe it’s because I worked at an academic library for 2 years, but I was under the impression that professors/staff/employers/general “adults” being on Facebook hasn’t been news for over a year or so. As commenter, “Samantha” said,

“Librarians have been using Facebook since the start to reach patrons and have developed a number of applications and widgets to help students with research.”

This has certainly been true at Oregon State University. I’ve been playing Scrabulous with reference librarians since the app came into existence! But more importantly, for freshman orientation week this year, the library used a Facebook group to publicize events and services, drawing in an unusually high number of new patrons.

Even my mom is on Facebook. She only has 6 friends, but as an elementary school reading teacher, she’s ahead of the curve. Right now she only uses it for personal contacts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someday she uses a limited profile for students.

“What if There Were an eBay for News?”

Week 6 Reading

Reporterist.com co-founder Sindya Bhanoo has created something wonderful– if it’s all it says it is. In this interview, Bhanoo describes Reporterist as a “news exchange where freelancers and editors can connect”, meaning a device for reporters to sell their stories via the Internet. This sounds great to me, except for one thing: how do editors know that reporters are reliable? I understand that eventually freelancers have reputations, but if this service is opened up to the public (like Bhanoo said it would eventually), then how can sources be trusted? Who’s doing the fact-checking?

In the Society of Professional Journalists freelance directory, freelancers provide samples of work and state previous experience.  I assume Reporterist does something similar (I tried to register, but have yet to receive a confirmation e-mail). This is fine for people who have worked as journalists in professional settings, but what about the budding citizen journalist? How seriously will publications take these people?

Bhanoo hopes Reporterist will someday be a sort of wire service– the Reuters for freelancers, if you will. This seems like a brilliant idea, but for the service to be trusted and used, there must be strict criteria for writers, implemented in a user-friendly submission interface. Bhanoo has great ideas. Let’s just hope she’s able to practically implement them.

“Generation Me vs. You Revisited”

Week 4 Reading

This article discusses the rise of narcissistic behavior in today’s young adults, attributing some of it to new media websites such as Facebook and YouTube. While I do agree that young people today seem to have narcissistic traits, I wouldn’t go so far as to call them narcissists.

Having a narcissistic father has taught me much about the disorder– mainly that it is something that is clinically diagnosed and is an often misused term. True narcissists are self-deluded individuals who aren’t aware that there’s anything wrong with believing they’re more important than the rest of the world. This is not an accurate description of those of “Generation Me”.

The current generation of young people may seem narcissistic, but I believe they’re more ignorant. As the article describes, baby boomer parents tended to pump self-esteem into their children, now resulting in a generation of ignorance. If a person grows up hearing from their parents how great they are, why wouldn’t he believe it? If no one else of significance (a teacher or coach, perhaps) ever told him that he had to earn recognition and praise, of course he might seem narcissistic. However, I believe that as this “Generation Me” ages and matures, people will figure out that their relatively sheltered upbringing isn’t an accurate depiction of the “real world”.

There will always be selfish people, and there will always be narcissists. This generation may have a few more, but I have faith that the intelligent ones will rise above the stereotype.

As for sites like Facebook and YouTube contributing to the trend, I think it’s possible. MySpace is by far more egocentric than Facebook, though, and all three sites are propagated by their social networking and sharing attributes– not simply being platforms for self-indulgence.

If any new media concept should be blamed for an increase in narcissistic behavior, I would say it’s blogging. Journalism blogs may be relevant to a wide span of people, but what about the 14,971,514 LiveJournals in existence? When someone writes about what their cat did that day and expects people to read it, isn’t that more narcissistic than having a Facebook profile?