Applications and PTA: Craig’s List

Applications and PTA: Craig’s List

I decided to evaluate Craig’s List because I actually used the website for the first time this year. My suitemates and I were looking for some furniture, specifically a couch, and we ended up finding an estate sale near by through Craig’s List. I found the myself unimpressed by the majority of the posts, however, and though I eventually found what I was looking for I was not inspired to look at it again after the estate sale failed to result in us finding a couch (we did however, get a shelf and a few records, it was not a particularly unsuccessful trip). I found the layout, which is extremely primitive, both uninviting and uninteresting. The homepage was well organized, and I liked that all of the different cities are listed on the side (as apposed to having to go to a different page to change your location), but once I clicked on any of the categories the organization seemed to only consist of breaking the posts up by the day they were posted. Also, while I did eventually find what I was looking for, the categories were not broken down enough and the one-line titles of each post were not consistent enough if, so that I usually had to click on the post to find out if it was remotely what I was looking for. Also, in the back of my mind I kept thinking about Craig’s List murderers that I had read about in a couple of magazines. Luckily, the estate sale was legitimate.

Despite all of this, when I was told that Craig’s list was a good place to look for summer internship, I decided to give it a second shot. I was not expecting to find anything particularly promising, but then I realized I really did not have any other leads besides my parents and their friends. If I wanted to work anywhere outside of their field, I would have to do research so where, and I figured that it would be easier to find places that where looking for interns on a website where … people posted things that they were looking for. Still, with Craig’s List murderers in the back of my mind, I was a little nervous about sending my contact information out to strangers. Taking somewhat of a leap of faith, I looked through the posts from the last two days and found several positions that seemed promising. Though there were quite a few more that pertained to my general interests, I decided that air on the side of caution and not send my resume to the ones that asked for pictures, or seemed unprofessional (for example – asked for “real people – no Hollywood snotty types”). Even though I have used the site twice and found some useful information, I cannot say that I like it, or even find it that helpful. Craig’s List really has done the minimum, and for some reason, as far as I know, no one has made a more user-friendly version of the site. While newspapers still offer things like personal advertisements, Craig’s List has taken that format, copied it to make the homepage look like that section of the newspaper, and added links to each city so that the users at the very least, do not have to look at advertisements for places hundreds of miles away.

Facebook attempted to create something similar to Craig’s List with their “Marketplace” application, it never took off the same way that Craig’s List has. When Marketplace began in 2007, it was met by anger from hundreds of thousands of Facebook users who had the application forced into their bookmarks. Unlike Craig’s List, which asks for as little personal information as possible, and will even create a new email address specifically for your advertisement, each time you click on a Facebook application, you are allowing the makers of the application to gain access to any personal information you currently have on the website, and even information that you used to have on your Facebook page and later deleted. While Craig’s List anonymity might pave the way for the occasional murderer, the majority of the users just do not feel the need to sell their couch through a program that is going to sell the list of their favorite movies to advertisers if they can do the same thing without their 542 Facebook Friends knowing about it. I cannot remember the last time I saw a newsfeed update about someone posting something on Marketplace, but when it first started I would automatically get an update when someone I knew posted something for sale. Why Facebook thought that I would care, is really beyond me. If I had been looking for a new lamp, I would have looked for it myself somewhere like Craig’s List, but Marketplace attempted to get tap into impulsive buying by posting new products directly onto new feeds without waiting for people to search for things that they actually wanted.

Craig’s List is not just a list of things for sale; however, it includes six sections, plus one to post resumes and one to find your location, including a “discussion forum” section. When I had perused the site before, I assumed that the discussion forums were conversations between users about the topics listed under the heading. I just clicked on the link, however, and found that that is not exactly right. The left side of each of the categories under “discussion forum” is a list of links posted on after another, and the right side is used to search for either a keyword or a person’s handle or username. Beyond this, I am still pretty confused about what this section is used for. It appears to be some sort of discussion (which makes sense considering the section title), but I could not tell what people were replying to. Also, a lot of the posts seemed to be aimed at specific other users, and almost all of them were only a sentence long, and none seemed to be referring to the sentence posted directly above it from another user. What I learned from this is that I would not be returning to Craig’s List to use their chat room-like section, but clearly, there are hundreds of people who were able to understand it better than myself, and use them.

Before doing any research, I decided on my own that I would consider this technology successful, but since I had never posted any thing on the site myself, nor had I ever seen any advertisements (for things outside of the Craig’s List realm), I was not sure if it was financially successful, or even how many people actually use the site, so I clicked on “Craigslist Factsheet”. There I learned that the site has over twenty billion page viewers a month, fifty million users in the United States alone, and is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (spelled Portugese on the website), and Spanish, and is offered in seven hundred cities in seventy countries. As for the discussion forums, more than 120 million users have posted on the one hundred forums. In terms of finances, Craig’s List has been connected to eBay since 2004, when eBay bought twenty-five percent of the site. It has been a for-profit site since 1999, when a small percentage of the postings came with a fee (which I was unable to find). The site also has thirty employees; all based out of San Francisco, where it began in 1995 when a man named Craig Newmark started an email list of San Francisco events as a hobby.

Since it was a little difficult to find information about Craig’s List, from its own site, I decided to turn to Wikipedia. Apparently, since 2004, it has cost twenty-five dollars to post job openings in some major cities, but the “gigs” section (where people like myself look for internship) do not have a posting fee, and posting in “Adult services” cost ten dollars, and must be reviewed by a Craigslist employee. I also learned that the founder (Craig Newmark) was quoted as saying that the site works “because it gives people a voice, a sense of community trust and even intimacy…[as well as] down-to-earth values, customer service and simplicity.” I also learned from Wikipedia that the only time Craig’s List has ever had advertisements was on April Fools Day 2002, when the staff posted mock-banner ads. I was surprised that considering anyone can edit Wikipedia, there was nothing about Craig’s List murders, which took place just last year, but I guess it is possible that someone who works for Craig’s List could be editing their Wikipedia page to avoid murder being synonymous with Craig’s List.

In Free Culture, Lessig says “People post when they want to post, and people read when they want to read … technologies that enable asynchronous communication, such as email, increase the opportunity for communication (Lessig, 42).” Though he was referring to blogs, I think that this argument works for Craig’s List as well. In particular, it refers to the way that people use it when they want to – something that Facebook’s Marketplace application did not consider. This use of technology might just be online classified advertisements and forums, but they are, as the Craig’s list factsheet states, “community moderated”, with the small exception of the adult section. Craig’s list may not be as high-tech as many other Web 2.0 applications, but by sticking the basics they have attracted billions to their site. Also, by avoiding advertisements, they keep people happy with the basics that they are being offered because they feel that the site is not just making money off of them (like Facebook), and are willing to look through a few pages before finding what they are looking for, or even paying the small fee to post the few things that require them.

Building a Social Network/Collaboration

The only social networking site that I use is Facebook, with the exception of the twitter account that I created for this class. I did not have a Facebook until well after the majority of my friends, but I created it after I attended a summer program in between tenth and eleventh grade, and when I came home I decided it was the best way to keep in touch with all of the people I met there. Since that summer, my time on Facebook has increased rapidly. Considering I was so ambivalent about creating one if the first place, it is some what ironic that I am on Facebook the majority of the time that I am on my computer, and there really is no reason for me to be on it quite so often. Yes, I do use it to keep in touch with friends, arrange meetings with people for group projects, and the messages have taken the place of my email for telling people notable things that are happening in my life, but for the amount that I am not Facebook, I do not do these things very often. Sometimes I use it to play tetris, instant message (even though this feature has lots of problems and works much better through aim), but really a lot of my time on it is spent doing nothing. I'll refresh my home page every so often and see pictures of people from middle school who I really don't care about any more and things like that, and I certainly use it for procrastinating (this is when I look at those pictures of people I don't care about), but I really could not explain why exactly I use Facebook quite so often.

I would say that I find the most useful thing about Facebook is that it helps with keeping in touch, and the most useless thing are the "suggestions" that are constantly showing up in the corner. Facebook does not seem to understand that the reason I havent written on my second grade friend from ballet's wall in a while, is because I don't have anything to say to her.

My electronic interactions with my classmates would include Twitter, and blogs, because I was unable to find anyone through Second Life (interesting side note - the blog says that "Twitter" is spelled correctly, but thinks that "Facebook" is a typo). I guess blogs can be useful if people think that what they have to say can be useful to other people, but I still do not see any reason to use Twitter as apposed to the status updates on Facebook.

My social networking is useful in some ways, but without it I would probably get more homework done. On the other hand, I would talk to some people less, and my cell phone bill would probably be higher.

Mom's wikipedia page, part 2

So I just checked back on my mom's wikipedia page. No one has changed the formatting that I messed up, or the entry, but someone did go through and create links to the other things with wikipedia pages mentioned within the text.

eBay Giving Works

I vaguely remember when I started hearing about ebay. One of my friend's moms had started spending hours selling things on the site, and I recall seeing the room that she had devoted to their house in New Jersey to collecting things that she or her friends no longer wanted, as well as things that she bought for the sole purpose of selling on ebay. I did not think very much of this, and the few things that I have looked for things on ebay I have always signed off without success, usually because I could not figure out how to filter things enough to find what I was looking for, rather than a list of thousands of things that were half of what I was looking for. I think I might be in the minority here though, because I know a lot of people look to ebay first when they are looking for a new purchase. In particular, I have noticed that people often turn to ebay for vintage boots, though, as per usual, when I tried to look on ebay for boots, I could not figure out how to find exactly what I want.

While most of the things found on ebay are shallow things like boots and ipods, ebay has been doing more and more projects through "Giving Works", which are online charitable auctions. While some of the things auctioned off are vacations etc, as far as I can tell, the majority of the auctions are built around celebrity paraphernalia. I think that this is a really great way to use the ebay, because I would think that it is probably one of the first places that people look when they are looking for things like celebrity paraphernalia, and then they can get what they wanted while helping out a charity. Some of the things offered right now are "Shop, dine & be styled with model and actress Molly Sims" (sponsored by Youth Aids), "Miley Cyrus: Get UR Good on, Bid on clothing & accessories straight from the closet of Miley Cyrus", DJ AM Shoe Auction which benefits the DJ Am Memorial Fund, A Walk on role on How I Met Your Mother to benefit Food on Foot, and many more. The site features a tract of how much money they have raised for charity that is constantly changing as people buy things. Right now, its at $143,540,997 but it has gone up $6 since I wrote that. Here's the site: http://givingworks.ebay.com/

Editing my mom's wikipedia page.

Since we learned in class how to edit a wikipedia page, I thought I would put my knew knowledge to good use and edit my mother's very limiting wikipedia page. I guess I waited a little too long, because when I clicked on edit, I realized that I didnt remember quite as much about editing a wikipedia page as I had hoped. While I was able to add some of the things that I had wanted to, I completely messed up the formating of the page, so I hope that someone is actually checking on this page who knows that they are doing, and they reformat it so that it looks the way it should. I added her exact birthday (it used to just say the year), her place of birth, spouse, children, location, and awards. I also added a final paragraph that says "Jill's more recent work has emphasis has been on the wet plat collodion process, originally used by Matthew Brady during the Civil War. This work was featured in tandem with the annual Black Tie Gala for the charity organization Upwardly Global, at a 2009 exhibition on Ellis Island, New York."

Her wikipedia page can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Enfield

Building/Editing a Wiki

I edited the class wiki about Shuen, which had already been started by other people in the class. I thought that the summery was pretty good, but I made a few changes to the way it was written without changing the meaning, and added a few sentences. I also added a list of contents, because I saw that some other people had added lists of contents to some of the other class wikis. It wasn't hard to make an entry, though if I had wanted to make a new entry that hadnt already been started I would not have known how to begin it. I'm not sure I would call it an opportunity for social interaction, but I would absolutely find this to be a useful way to use cicada. We had something like this for one of my high school classes, except that people would use it to define key words in the reading. I found it very useful when I did not feel like I had a full grasp on the assignments, and I think that the class wiki could be very similar. I like that they offer short summaries of each of the books.

Attending a Virtual Event

I stayed in class today and tried to figure out twitter with about 8 other people, though I plan on deleting it as soon as the semester ends. I don't really see any need for twitter, especially since its connected to facebook. If your status is going to be reported on your facebook as well, then why cant you just update your facebook status? Nothing particularly unexpected happened when we were all trying to be added to the class list, but I did notice that no one showed up when they were searched until after they had made a "tweet".

I wouldn't recommend twitter to others because I do not see any reason for it. I am now following three of my suitemates, who had to make their twitter accounts for an environmental campaign that they are a part of, Professor Broderick, and postsecret. Even though I like being able to see the post secrets that do not go on the website, I do not care enough to keep my twitter account past the end of the semester.

Building "Something"

Seeing as I had no desire to go anywhere near second life again, I created a survey about religious tattoos on the clark survey forum which benefitted this classes, as well as my social research processes class. The survey questions had already been developed, but I discussed it with my group and we decided to post in online, and then make a facebook event telling people how to take the survey, in the hopes that we would receive more response than we would if we handed it out. All three of us invited all of our facebook friends and asked the people we invited to do the same, though most of them did not. Of the thousand our so people invited to the event, 107 responded that they were "attending" (which actually didnt really mean anything), and 172 people decided to take the survey, which only applied to people between the ages of 17 and 23 with tattoos anyway. I quickly learned that the clark survey website was not very user friendly, especially for people like me who need step-by-step instructions. The website also made it so that you could post instructions, and I could not figure out how to make a free response sections for certain questions without making the free response a separate question. In order to fix this, I posted the instructions on the facebook event page, but I had to get rid of the free response sections of certain questions that we meant for expansion on some of the multiple choice questions.

It ended up taking about an hour, but probably would have taken much less time for someone who had a better idea about what they were doing. I'm also not sure that I would say that I like what I've made, I do not dislike it, but it is kind of the bare minimum because the website is not very complex.

Here is the survey: http://surveys.clarku.edu/Survey.aspx?s=4bf72b0e5a934066a45d2499c016c36e

Playing Well with Others

1. How many of your comments turned out to be the only comments attached to a particular post?

Only one of my posts was the first, everything else was commenting after other people. However, I only responded to the other comment on the first blog, and the rest were just responding to the post.

2. How many different blogs did you comment only? (Remember: 3 is a minimum number, you are not limited to only three people)

I commented on four blogs, it was interesting to see what people decided to post on their blogs other than our assignments.

3. Did you tend to respond to people you already from outside the class?

No, at first I was just looking for people with blogspot addresses because I thought they would be the easiest to comment on since I have a blogspot blog. However, I ended up commenting on a wordpress blog basically by accident because I didn’t realize that the blog I was looking at was on wordpress, but then I found something that I wanted to comment on and decided it couldn’t be that hard. I found it a lot easier to think of things to say about posts that were about things other than class assignments, so that also narrowed down the blogs that I considered commenting on. However, I also commented on someone’s post about second life, because they seemed to have the same problem that I did when I created my avatar, which was that the original outfit kept showing up every time my avatar turns around.

4. Do you think this is a useful way to communicate in a class setting?

I guess it is useful, but I do not know if it is really necessary. It does force people who do not normally participate in class to voice their opinions about the different assignments though, so that I probably a good thing.

5. What are the advantages/disadvantages of this method of communication?

Advantages are that when someone sees something outside of class that has to do with our class work, we can post about it right away without having to try to remember it for the next class time. I am not sure if there are really any disadvantages, I think it is a good way to communicate. That being said, I am pretty sure I wont continue posting on my blog after the class ends, at the very least because it appears no one is actually reading it.

Macro Assignment 1

As I sit and watch my suitemates Google the answers to their astronomy homework, I think about how people blindly trust what they find on the Internet. I recall of countless times that I wanted to fill a sentence with facts or dates, or did not feel like reading for a class, and relied on the Internet for help. Almost every time I do this, I just assume that the information is correct. t is hard for me to imagine people wasting their time creating or updating pages with made-up facts or wrong information. In my opinion, unless a person knows what they are talking about, what good could possibly come from posting false facts? Why not skip over that information that you only have vague ideas about, and only update Wikipedia pages for things that you are sure about? While I might be able to understand why someone with an agenda to push would update certain pages, it is hard for me to contemplate why millions of people would feel that the best way to spend their time is to make information that they are not so sure about, public. Shuen characterizes the concept of anyone being able to post any information as “mass collaboration”, which is synonymous with the term “peering” in her book Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide. Tapscott and Williams do not use a label for it, but they discuss the concept in Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. The authors of both books raise some problems with peering and Wikipedia, but argue that the positives out-weight the negatives. While I would not disagree, I believe that there is room for growth.

As societies progress, things move from new to necessary to outdated very quickly. This is because new and more useful things constantly replace current ideas. Early on, Shuen exemplifies this phenomenon: “The upheaval occurring right now in media and entertainment provides an early example of how mass collaboration is turning the economy upside down (Shuen 11).” The upheaval that she refers to is a part of the economic recession that is currently pledging our country. This affects both advertisers and consumers, because people choose Internet sources over magazine-like alternative, thus harming advertisers whose ads are overlooked. This might is a good thing for many people who now can spend less time on things like their favorite television show, and less money on magazine-like websites, thousands of people are being fired because of it, and are left jobless. This may be more efficient to be able to turn to a user generated entertainment website, like those that gain all of their celebrity information from user tips, these jobs of the people who used to do this professionally are not being replaced. While people like to blame our economy on the government, I feel that the Internet is the cause of these economic problems, not our commonly-blamed government. This does not mean that I am still spending the four dollars on a magazine instead of finding the information for free online, and that is probably not the most proactive way to help people keep their jobs.

Tapscott and Williams have acknowledged that the Internet is taking over, and provide a guide on how you can use this to your business advantage. This is somewhat different than Shuen, who provides business advice without taking into account the Internet’s impact on our changing approach to business. While some people might be losing business because of the Internet, Wikinomics tries to show people how, “online web social networks make it easy for a relatively small number of users … to trigger network effects (William and Tapscott 82).” Many advertisers have already begun to take advantage of social networking sites. The idea of network effects applies to basically any business that requires the customers from the general public to run. This idea is related to peering because before buying a product or participating in a program, people can join Facebook groups about them, or research peer reviews with a few clicks to gain information. When I backpacked through Europe two years ago, I did not just go to the hostel nearest to the airport. I spent time on my computer researching each city's hostels, and then I looked up other travelers' reviews before I decided where to stay. This was very different from when my mother backpacked through Europe almost forty years ago, relying only on a professional guidebook.

Peer reviews, which are available for almost everything. From hotels to professors, seem helpful only when researching products. Such reviews are far from flawless. Usually there are two types of people who will go out of their way to post a review: those who loved it, and those who hated it. Even if it is made very simple to review something, most people who have neutral feelings toward something beyond that it did it’s job, will not waste their time posting a review about. What good is it, if you go to ratemyprofessor.com, and find that while two people wrote positive reviews, if the only other two reviewers said that they cried over the torture this professor put them through? Who are you to believe? If there is no in-between, that what constitutes as a constructive review?

This problem with peer reviews is very similar to the problems with Wikipedia, where anyone can edit a page without having to prove that they have any expertise on the topic. Shuen briefly mentions “the incident [of Internet character assassination which] exposed the most obvious weakness of the Wikipedia model: Anybody can claim to be an expert on any subject (Shuen 74)”, while Wikinomics glosses over this, as well as many other negatives of the Internet. Tapscott and Williams claim that “Collaborations can produce more robust, user-defined, fault-tolerant products in less time and for less money than the conventional closed approach (Tapscott and Williams 117)”, Shuen acknowledges this Wikipedia loophole, while stating “Profiting from peer production communities … [is] a new skill that requires companies to recognize and seize opportunities to build new products and service on top of vibrant open ecosystems -- ecosystems where new value is always being created for a variety of ends and motivations (Shuen 93).”

I like that there are things like peer reviews and mass collaboration are readily available, but I think a third party, to regulate productivity is needed. It might mean charging a small fee for currently free services, but editors would ensure accurate information. Or maybe people who are experts on certain subjects could be approached about keeping certain pages in-check, thus creating jobs in our economic crisis. Overall, I feel that Shuen, Tapscott and Williams are all overly positive about the Internet so far. I do not know what I would do without it anymore, but at the same time, it is still very new in terms of consumer products and each added convenience should be taken with same stipulation.

"What Happens to Facebook accounts after death?" from OK Gazette

I was on stumbleupon yesterday, and I found this article about ... exactly what the title suggests, what happens to facebook accounts after death. I thought the article was interesting, because I actually have a facebook friend who died in a car accident last year, and he often shows up on my home page. While I find it a little creepy whenever I see that he was tagged in an album, or someone wrote on his wall, I thought it was a little harsh to unfriend him. Over time, I have just gotten used to these occasional reminders of his untimely death. Being only 19, I know very few people my age who have passed away, but if I continue to use facebook as I get older, this number will inevitably grow.

Anyway, back to the article. I have never heard of the Oklahoma Gazette, so I am therefore making the assumption that it is not very widely read outside of Oklahoma. While I am sure that this article could have been written from several different points of view, this author took the legal standpoint - while there are laws for what happens to almost all other types of property when you die, most states have not yet reached any sort of conclusions about what to do with someone's emails, facebook, twitter, or anything else considered an "online asset". Heather Spencer (the author), interviewed a lawyer who said that "social media accounts essentially have no value except the need to keep privacy", and then went on to say that she has actually had a few cases where family members have had to access online accounts and were prohibited from doing so.

Though it is not particularly easy to access someone who works at one of these websites, it is actually possible to memorialize a person's account. This involves removing more "sensitive information like status updates and restricts profile access to confirm friends only" , while still allowing people to write on the persons wall, look at pictures, etc. It is also possible to close the account if close family members feel the need to do so. Facebook has also recently added some new principles that have to do with topic in particular, though they also add that the easiest way to express what you wish to happen to your social networking site is actually to add it to your will, just as your would any other property, intellectual or otherwise.

Spencer also included excerpts from an interview with a patent and copyright lawer, who is now considering working with a company called "Legacy Locker", which he describes as "the equivalent to an online safety deposit box". To expand, it is a service that stores user names etc, as well as a practical way for a family member to access everything if need be.

I guess I do not think about death often enough to consider this necessary for myself, though I guess that is kind of silly. On the other hand, I do not really know what harm having social networking accounts that belong to dead people could possibly do. Its not like they are taking up space that alive people are not getting.

The original article can be found here: http://www.okgazette.com/p/12776/a/3900/Default.aspx?ReturnUrl=LwBEAGUAZgBhAHUAbAB0AC4AYQBzAHAAeAAslashAHAAPQAxADIANwAyADkA

Assignment 2: Creating an Avatar

My avatar is named Aurora Pottzen, and so far I have had a lot of difficulties with Second Life. Creating the account was fine, but as soon as I tried to personalize my avatar, things started going down hill. As of right now, she is wearing two sets of clothing, the original of which you can see whenever she turns around. This happens often, as I have absolutely no idea how to view her from the front. Also, sometimes when I am trying to move her forward, I all of a sudden zoom way out, or end up (what I am assuming is) underground. I also have not been able to figure out how to get off the beginners island, see other people's profiles, or basically do anything beyond walk, which does not even work out every time.

I am not really sure what is good about this technology, or what it could be useful for. I suppose it might be good for socially awkward people who need a way to reach out and meet other socially awkward people, but other than that I cannot think of any other reason to use it. I was never into video games, the sims, or anything else where you might be communicating with people who you have never met, so I am probably not the targeted user.

So far, I have two "friends" on second life, one of whom is Professor Broderick. I have no idea who the other person is, but he/she instant messaged me and asked "What is map?". I responded "what?", and that was the end of our conversation.

As for drawbacks, I do not know if there really are any beyond stopping people from communicating in person, which I would think is a healthier method of communication. Before I made a second life account, the only things I knew about it were from The Office and Law and Order SVU. Since neither of these shows showed second life in a positive light, I may have been biased before beginning this project. Seeing as I had zero desire to ever make an avatar before, this, I understand its lack of popularity. Most people that I know would rather use the internet to communicate with people who they already know (like through facebook), and to meet new people in person. This is probably because of the stigma attached to meeting people on the internet, especially through programs like second life, where you are not even looking at a picture of a real person (who might not be the person they claim to be anyway).

I really do not see myself using this program in the future, especially since I have been removing it from my computer each time I use it, incase some else borrows my computer and sees it on the dock.

Creating a Blog

I chose to use blogger because I had to use wordpress for several of my classes in high school, and even after three classes where I had to post on it a few times a month, I still found it slightly confusing. I think I made the right choice by deciding against the cicada blog because as I write this response on blogger, and I currently having problems with cicada. Blogger also seemed easy enough, and I thought I would try something new. I was right, and I did not find it hard to set up a blog. While I did not have any difficulties yet, I would not be that surprised if I encounter one at some point this semester because I am not very technologically savvy. My mother still has to fix all of my computer problems, even though in most families its usually the other way around.

While I did notice the opportunities for social interaction, I do not think that many people will be reading this blog. I have never commented on other people blogs, with the exception of when it has been required for other classes, so I do not think that I will continue to use blog once the class is over. I do not know what I would have to share with the world that would be worth posting on a website once the class has ended, though my parents would probably enjoy it.