What I've been up to lately

[morsla]

Too much reading for one day. Apparently I've already forgotten what it was like last time I tried to read the whole internet, and now my head hurts. I'm attempting to write an overview of social media in Australia - starting with a basic timeline of the major players, and it's driving me nuts.

What's happened since 2006, when Facebook went public-access and Twitter appeared? I'm having trouble finding "new" social media to write about after that point, and I suspect it's because many of them have integrated themselves into the existing entities. Other than Dreamwidth (2008), Foursquare (March 2009) and Google Wave (May 2009), I'm having trouble spotting the others. Can you think of anything to add?


Lately, I've been writing more over at lineofthought than I have in this journal, because my PhD is (predictably) consuming most of my waking life. I'm enjoying it, but it means that I'm finding less and less to write about over here. I've just managed to get xjournal working through the RMIT wireless network, though, which means I can switch back and forth between accounts a bit more easily. This bodes well for the future of both journals :)

I've also been using Twitter a lot more often, posting via @morsla. It's been handy for meeting new people in the city, via many good conversations at the #socialmelb meetups every Friday. I use Tweetie to sift through the deluge of posts - unlike LJ, I can't read everything that comes past in a day. Hell, even on LJ I've been steadily filtering things down over the years, courtesy of friends groups and the wondrous Default View list.

The real trick seems to be finding a balance: cutting down on noise (if you post dozens of times every day, I'm unlikely to read it all) while still paying enough attention to find the people who only speak up occasionally.

So, for the lurkers out there: How are you? There are a lot of people I haven't seen much of this year, and I often wonder what you're all doing these days. How's life?

Comments

[sylver-spiders.livejournal.com]

Hmm... there's Tumblr, and possibly Formspring?

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I forgot all about Formspring. That's a good example of one that's designed to link in with other social networking sites from the outset, instead of building in the capability later on.

Tumblr was the only other one on my list for 2007. I'm amazed at just how many things launched in 2006 or earlier... the most apt quote about social media that I've seen so far was "an overnight revolution ten years in the making." It's been creeping up slowly for quite a while now.

Actually, now that I think about it, the GFC would also have slowed down the growth of risky new startup ventures.

[sylver-spiders.livejournal.com]

I also just ran across a reference to UStream, which I think is a fairly recent thing.

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

LinkedIn has a different purpose than what you've mentioned there, but it is still Social Media of a form, not sure if it helps.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

LinkedIn is absolutely a social media platform (and technically a social networking service, too) - unfortunately, it was launched in 2003 so it's already on the timeline :)

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

It makes sense it was one of the first technologies of the form to develop, but I'm surprised it's that old.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

I keep getting surprised at how old some of them are. YouTube was launched in 2005, Flickr in 2004, Last.FM in 2003. LJ, Wordpress and Blogger all launched within months of each other in 1999.

SixApart.com looks like it's the earliest of the social network services commonly seen these days, and it launched back in 1997.

[musosian.livejournal.com]

I've been using Yammer at work... basically a kind of work-facebook thing. Also, Google Buzz and Reader kind of function as social networking, in that you can easily share and comment on things that you find interesting in your feeds, and have a bit of a conversation in the comments...
Course, World of Warcraft was a large part of my online socialising, and the new Real ID thing might make it even more of a social network, but DRAMA and getting-a-job happened, so it's not really anymore...

[morsla.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard of Yammer before - I'll have a look at it now.

Google has lots of bits of social media in its collection. There's a nice infographic here, and a text timeline here. I'm not sure quite where to put RSS readers, but I want to squeeze them in somewhere... there's a blurry line between the point where they stopped just being reading/aggregation tools, and started letting people share their own comments.

MMO games are something I'd like to fit in if possible, but it's hard knowing where to start (and how relevant they would be to the rest of the chapter). I guess it's less a part of the games themselves, and more a part of the communities that form around them - using out-of-game things like forums and YouTube.

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

Going from Wikipedia through the major MMOS, they start with Ultima Online (1997) - realistic economy and social structure)

and increase disproportionately through:
Everquest (1999) - Establishment of team play, requiring multiple characters to meet expected challenges causing a need for socialisation
Establishment of Guilds as linked groups after the game is turned off for that session, need for reputation as a good player as death was harshly punished
Establishment of PvP as part of a server, instead of a toggled option

Everquest II (2004) - Decreased penalties and decreased ability to "grief" other players by pulling creatures they are unable to fight to them and waiting for the creature to detect the weaker target.
Decreased ability to "kill steal" taking an important timed encounter off another group.
Introduced area-wide "yell" command.

World of Warcraft (2005) - Large-scale socialisation due to established franchise
Adjusted difficulty of all but "cutting edge" content lowered over time.
Encouragement of community building outside the game and not only using game media through avenues such as art and comic contests. Deliberate attention to forum initially with specialised Mods for specific purposes such as one for each class, several for raids and other general ones for gameplay.
Tacitly supported addons and other sites to help build gameplay and have integrated some highly influential addons into the game itself while deliberately blocking others which led to increased automation of certain tasks.
Made Chinese "gold farmers" famous, but undoubtedly was not the first game in which real-world currency was exchanged for virtual currency.
Need to organise up to 40 people for a single purpose leading to large-scale management politics and eventual fracturing of almost every large, successful guild due to arguments over loot, approaches or goals.
Used for real-world epidemiological modelling after a "Corrupted Blood" plague escaped from inside a raid instance through a pet and infected major cities, as it was spread through proximity to others, cities were unable to entirely get rid of the plague and players were forced into country outposts. Blizzard eventually had to write new code to remove this effect from the plague.

Other important titles include:
Original MUDs, which MMOS are derived from in some senses (Mazewar, MUD1),
Maple Story (Asian 2D platformer with many, many microtransactions, but free to play and download),
Final Fantasy XI (Distinctly Japanese design, very challenging solo play, difficult to raise trade skills, play only one character as default, but can change classes at will, must level again as each new class),
Phantasy Star Online (First Console-based MMO for the Dreamcast, credited with widespread development of need for Consoles to access internet and social networks),
Neverwinter Nights (First fully Graphical multi-user RPG)
Runescape (Restricted free content, subscription required to access full game)
EVE Online (Focussed on complex economy and alliance-building, deliberate removal of most social rule structures governing behaviour, very few safe spaces and no way to advance past a certain point without being open to PvP)

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

All those games have massive followings and communities which formed around them at the height of their popularity. WoW is one of the only ones I can think of which has deliberately held contests, conventions, charity drives using in game merchandise and acknowledged memes such as http://www.wowwiki.com/Leeroy or http://www.wowwiki.com/Alamo by inclusion in the official website, TCG or in game itself, as there is now an achievement for attempting to reenact Leeroy's craziness. There is also the site www.warcraftmovies.com which is entirely dedicated to video footage of various things from in game, such as boss fights or tricky quests.

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

gah, I forgot how to HTML, just copy and paste those links if you're curious about the particular memes.

[harkon.livejournal.com]

Here's my list of suggested events:

- Pownce.com launched 27/5/2007 and died 15/12/2008. I thought it was a better version of twitter. The rest of the internet did not agree.

- vimeo.com launched in 2004 (before youTube!) but in 2007 it started allowing hi-def video, something youTUbe wouldn't catch up on for about 6 months I think.

- kongregate.com was October 2006 according to wiki. I'm not a big player myself, but it was pretty popular amongst the indy games developers that I spoke to at Freeplay last year and I know a bunch of people that spend way too much time (but at least not a lot of money) there.

[harkon.livejournal.com]

Oh, are you still Pressganging for Privateer? I logged onto wargamerau for the first time in years the other day and couldn't find any other details. I'm thinking of getting back into the game these days.