Bulletin Boards and Conferences

A Bulletin Board( BBS)

 An electronic forum that hosts posted messages and articles related to a common subject.


They have been around since 1978. Basically it is a replica of a board found in schools, offices etc which display notices, adverts and messages to be posted. They have changed a lot since the first BBS which looks like the picture below.

Now you can add in pictures and videos.
Yahoo groups are an example of a bulletin board where a user logs in and posts a questions they want to be answered. Other users can view this and answer it.

Conferences

Traditional conferences mean participants have to travel and stay in a particular place. This takes time and is expensive. But an online conference uses the Internet as a conference venue. This means that participants can access the conference from anywhere in the world and can do this at any time, using standard browser software.


Advantages

• cheap- no accomadation or travel costs to pay for
• you can have a conference from anywhere as long as you have internet connection
• people can be hired from anywhere as they can work from anywhere with online conferences.
• time saving

Disadvantages

• It may take time to learn and get used to these new technologies
• you may find yourself playing solitaire in another browser.
  
  
  
• If your web meeting provider doesn't have a good security system, you could be allowing access to your most important files to anyone with an internet connection.

Example of a conference group is 'GoToMeeting'

                             

                                       

Features of Myspace and Facebook

Features 

                                   

 

These are the chat features of Facebook and Myspace. The blue one is Myspace.

 

Here is the Myspace Music Feature, which is a player. Everytime someone goes onto your profile the song or songs will play.

Here is the facebook 'status update' box. It is the feature of Facebook which is much like a blog where you can tell people 'What's on your mind?'

To these posts you can add pictures, videos and links to other websites. Above will take you to information about the person whos profile you are on and the photos they have uploaded or been tagged in by another user. The myspace one below is very similar.

Here are the icons which take you to new friend requests being the icon of the people, your inbox being the icon of the speech bubbles and notifications which include people writing on your profile wall and commenting on your posts, videos and pictures. It is the icon of the world.

The myspace one is very similar but the facebook one is situated at the top of the page so it is the first thing you see when you first log on rather than the myspace one being on the right side of the page, further down.

Unfortunatly Facebook posts and Myspce posts are considered to be a lot more useless than proper blogs. Most people are said to post status updates because they are more not because they want to inform everybody about a topic they are interested in.

 

News Stories

Facebook bully jailed: Death threat girl, 18, is first person put behind bars for vicious internet campaign

A teenager who posted a death threat on Facebook, yesterday became the first person in Britain to be jailed for bullying on a social networking site.

Keeley Houghton, 18, said she would kill Emily Moore, whom she had bullied for four years since they were at school together.
On her personal page, Houghton wrote of her victim: 'Keeley is going to murder the bitch. She is an actress. What a ******* liberty. Emily ****head Moore.'

Two days before she made the threat, Houghton had intimidated Emily, who is also 18, after spotting her in a pub.

The Megan Meier MySpace Incident

Megan Meier was a 13 year old from Missouri who struck up an online friendship on the popular social networking site MySpace with a person she believed was a new boy in her hometown. In actuality, the “friend” was a group of individuals, including adults, who were intent on humiliating the poor girl because of a friendship with another child that had gone awry. Megan was very upset when she found out the truth, then later committed suicide once the friendship had terminated. The horrifying case stunned the community and caused state government officials to pass some of the harshest cyber bullying laws in the country.

Unfortunately Facebook and Myspace have made bullying a lot easier as they can intimidate people over the computer rather than face to face for everyone to see. There are 'block' icons which can stop people from contacting you and viewing your profile and the 'report abuse' icon which means facebook can ban certain people from having an account but all of this doesn't help.

You can now load apps onto iphones and itouches so you can access myspace and facebook on your phone. Also most mobile phones now come with access to the internet where you can access these social networking sites at any time.

Facebook vs Myspace

Facebook

Facebook was launched in February 2004 and now in 2010 there are now around 500 million users all over the world. It was originally started for students whereas Myspace was made for teenagers.

As as user you can:

• you can add other users as friends
• send them messages
• chat to them in real time
• update your 'status' which is like a mini blog to tell people what you are up to
• add a profile picture
• upload videos and pictures
• edit your information section to where you work, live or where you go to school. Add your interests, favourite music, favourite films and favourite books.
• You can join groups with people who have similar interests to you and talk to them such as sports.

Myspace

Myspace is also another example of a social networking site which is a close rival of Facebook although now Facebook is much more popular since about 2008.

Myspace was launched in 2003 although what you can do on Myspace has been updated with a new design since then.

Before you could update status', leave messages called 'comments' on your friends profile pages which contain information such as your interests.

Today though Myspace now has a chat feature much like Facebook where you can talk in real time as well as messaging to an inbox system.

Although the main feature of Myspace today is music. There is a myspace music player where you can add music which you like to your profile, you can download music to put on your ipod or mp3 (which are hand held music devices which allow you to listen to all your music on the go) or just listen to the full song on your PC. 

You can also add your favourite bands as friends on your page so you can receive regular updates from them about new songs or new tour dates.

Unlike facebook you can add themes to your profile to make them more unique.

Conclusion

From this i believe that Facebook is better for communication with friends as it is easier to navigate around and send posts but Myspace seems more personal and is much better for music than Facebook. Myspace is now considered to be more of a rival to a program called 'Spotify' which also allows you to listen to music and download rather than it being a rival to facebook as facebook has now clearly taken the lead over the last 3 years proven by the amount of users. I now believe that Facebook has over 100,000,000 more users than Myspace. 


In 2008 member totals on myspace were a lot higher than facebook but this have now changed a sugnificent amount

Social Networks

What is Social Networking

When it comes to online social networking, websites are commonly used. These websites are known as social sites. Social networking websites function like an online community of Internet users. Depending on the website in question, many of these online community members share common interests in hobbies, religion, or politics. Once you are granted access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize. This socialization may include reading the profile pages of other members and possibly even contacting them by an inbox message much like an email or in real time by a 'chat' which displays online friends (friends who are on the social networking site the same time as you.)

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• cheap, quick and easy communication between friends, family and colleagues
• virtual communities are also formed so you can talk to people with your similar interest on a feature called newsgroups.
• people all over the world can talk with just a few clicks
• its free
• you can post short updates to tell people what you are doing
• you can share pictures and videos
• you can talk in real time
• use them for promotion

Cons:

• new place for identity theft and fraud.
• lack of communication in real life.
• new way of bullying
• meeting the wrong people in groups.
• it is said that grades suffer due to excessive use of social networking sites.
• stalking

http://www.squidoo.com/pros-and-cons-of-social-networking-sites#module10351501

http://hubpages.com/hub/Pros-and-Cons-of-Social-Networking-Sites