Typhoon Usagi

Typhoon has come and passed.

Leaves me with the starry sky.

1st Blog for Social Networking

Before the serious topic,let me talk about the weather. After all, it's a blog, not a paper~

It is said that the Typhoon Usagi would landed in HK today. Since I was born and grew up in the north of China, I never seen a really typhoon. So Usagi made me fell excited and expected.

In my imagination, in the typhoon weather, it will be dark outside and so many things are rolled up into the sky by the storm, like the shirts, the umbrellas,the furniture or even small cars.The window may be crushed by the wind and accompanied with the scared cream. But later on I found that maybe I watched too much Hollywood movies. In fact, it was peaceful last night and it is extreeeeeeeemely peaceful today morning. No wind, no rain. It Seem like a good day for fishing or swimming... And the key point is ---- no holiday! :(



OK, now let's move to the lecture, talking something about the social network. I will write this homework in the form of Q&A.


Q1: What is Social Networking (from an Information Engineering perspective)?

A1: The first thing I thought when I saw this question is that 'what is the information engineering perspective'? It seemed like that I need to describe the common things in a more professional and technical way. I need to find something more than 'Facebook is social networking'. In fact, I guess the point is that as an IE student, I should know what had happened behind 'login the Facebook'. That is something more fundamental or something we could call it principle.

To describe it in this way, personally, I think there are three main elements in social networking -- users, information and relation. Users build relation with others by creating, spreading, exchanging, changing the information, and in contrast, the relation also impact the way the users use information. More than other information subject, social networking not only focus on the mathematics or computer science, but also involves the sociology, psychology, ethology or other subjects. it's a composite subject.

With its influence increasing, now social networking is far more than a 'virtual community'. And I extremely look forward how it will change the way we live in the future.



Q2: What do you know about social networking?

A2: It reminds me a picture I've just seen. (click to open)

This picture shows how people use humanity weakness to provide networking services. In this picture, the mentioned networking services are more than social networking. But it still reveal a fact that psychology plays a very important role in the social networking.

Why Facebook is so popular? Because people want to share and gossip (I don't know if this word is appropriate) to raise their own presence. Twitter meet people's demand of expression. Online games become more and more hot because it can satisfy people's vanity. From my own perspective, most of networking products are doing the same thing -- find people's desire, and meet their demand to attract users, then transform users to money.



Q3: What do you want to know about social networking?

A3: I'm interested in how this virtual world influence the real world. First of all, it is true that in this information age, we cannot clearly distinguish the online world from the real world. They are bang together. But there are still some obvious difference between them.
I interested in two particular cases. One is Wikipedia and the other is microblog in China.

Wikipedia provide a new way for people to get knowledge. But with the cost of getting knowledge decreasing, will the the value of knowledge itself decrease too? The online information is free, but sometimes it uncertain. Whether the knowledge provided by network users is reliable or it just a personal opinion? It undoubtedly will change the way we learn and read, but how?

The second one is the microblog. Today, microblog in China plays multiple roles. Firstly, it works as it original purpose -- let people talk and communicate with others. Secondly, it has his unique use in China -- let people talk and participate government and policy in public place. It involves a sensitive topic in mainland China -- freedom of speech and restricting freedom of speech. The question is that whether the microblog can change the environment of speech? We should expect it more or expect it less?