Web 2.0 technologies and tools have enabled us to not only view the web, but to also participate in it. I have attempted to create an online presence incorporating many of these tools and in this exegesis I will attempt to explain the choices I have made. I will explain why I chose the Web 2.0 tools I did as well explain why I picked my theme. In making these choices I kept in mind what sort of digital footprint I may be creating and whether I was providing a consistent identity across the various social media tools I have utilised.
The theme I choose for my online presence was books and reading; I am an avid reader and enjoy sharing my reading choices with my friends and associates so this blog is just an extension of my offline presence and was an obvious choice.
I choose a blog as my central node partly because of the ease in setting up, but primarily because of what Jill Rettberg (2008) describes as the persistent nature of blog posts and that conversations don’t have to take place immediately, that readers can go back and comment on past posts as well as current ones. I like the fact that blogs “are archives, specific accountings of the passage of time that can be explored, returned to, dug up” (Dean, 2006) . The blog allows me to add hypertext links to my posts to link to other websites that may be of interest to my readers. I can also create my own keywords and tag and categorise my posts, making it easy to search for specific topics. The tags will also help to establish my online identity, as it will enable readers of my blog and contributing nodes to see what specific topics I am interested in.
As I didn’t have any experience in creating a blog, I decided to use an online blogging service and after experimenting with both Wordpress & Blogger I decided on the latter as it seemed easier to achieve the look and feel I was after. I used the “Picture Window” template as it allowed me to customise the background and had a flexible layout and allowed me to add customised widgets (or gadgets) which was important because as Helmond explains “the sidebar of the blog is a place for self-definition through the use of widgets” (2010) . I choose to have only three widgets displayed on the side bar to avoid what Helmond describes as “the cluttered sidebar syndrome” (Helmond, 2010) , where more does not necessarily equate to better understanding of what the blogs about. The three widgets I choose all utilise one of the most important technologies of the Web 2.0, the RSS feed; not only do the widgets provide a link to my contributing nodes, they also allow the reader to see the latest content from these sites without leaving the blog.
I chose a photo of a bookcase as my background image as it conveyed the theme of my blog immediately to anyone stumbling across it. The image was sourced from the photo sharing site Flickr (Southhall, 2009) and is classified as “some rights reserved” under a Creative Commons license (2010) . I have also used this image, as well as a similar colour palette where possible, to consolidate my theme across my web presence.
The first of my contributing nodes is Shelfari, a social networking/cataloguing site for book lovers, it “is a gathering place for authors, aspiring authors, publishers, and readers, and has many tools and features to help these groups connect with each other in a fun and engaging way” (Shelfari, 2006-2010) . It helps book lovers connect and have conversations about their favourite books and authors. Shelfari also utilises wiki capabilities by allowing users to edit book and author pages. I can also tag my books using keywords I have chosen, these keywords will be consistent with those chosen for my blog. The widget, in the form of a virtual bookcase, also compliments my book theme and being able to roll over the books to get more information and a link to that books page adds to the interactivity of the blog. Unfortunately, there is no provision to actually link my Shelfari profile back to my blog, but I have included the web address in my introduction.
My second contributing node is the micro-blogging tool twitter which “in a nutshell, is mobile social software that lets you broadcast and receive short messages with your social network” (Mayfield, 2007) , users can update their current status by email, mobile phone or the web” By using Twitter as one of my contributing nodes I am able to achieve what Ross Mayfield (2007) describes as a “Continuous Partial Presence” on the web. With the Twitter widget I’ve effectively embedded a micro blog into my blog. I’m able to display my twitter updates in real-time, and by doing so keep my blog current without actually posting. I have also provided a link from my twitter page back to my blog as well as utilising the same background image and colour scheme as my blog.
The third contributing node is Delicious, a social bookmarking site. “Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public web site and tagging them with keywords, thereby making them accessible from anywhere, to anyone” (Maharana, Majhi, & Bhue, 2010) . Here I will add bookmarks to websites that are relevant to my theme, books and reading. Once again I will also tag these bookmarks with the same keywords I am using on both my blog and Shelfari profile and by doing so maintain a consistent identity across my web presence.
In creating my web presence for this unit I have incorporated many of the tools now available through the creation of what we know as Web 2.0. My central and contributing nodes represent the many tools, technologies and defining features of Web 2.0. These include, but are not limited to, blogging, micro-blogging, social bookmarking, social networking, wiki capabilities and RSS feeds -all allowing social interaction among online users.
Bibliography
Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic. (2010). Retrieved November 2010, from Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en
Dean, J. (2006). Blogging Theory. Retrieved October 14, 2010, from Bad Subjects: http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2006/75/dean.htm
Helmond, A. (2010). Identity 2.0: Contructing identity with cultural software. Amsterdam: Univeristy of Amsterdam. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from http://www.annehelmond.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads//2010/01/helmond_identity20_dmiconference.pdf
Maharana, B., Majhi, S., & Bhue, S. (2010). Social Bookmarking: Web2.0 Tool for Content Sharing and Learning. 7th Convention Blanner - 2010. Tezpur: INFLIBNET Centre. Retrieved November 4, 2010, from http://ir.inflibnet.ac.in/dxml/handle/1944/964
Mayfield, R. (2007, March 10). Twitter Tips the Tuna. Retrieved November 14, 2010, from Ross Mayfield's Weblog: http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/twitter_tips_th.html
Rettberg, J. W. (2008). Blogging. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Shelfari. (2006-2010). Retrieved November 15, 2010, from Shelfari: http://www.shelfari.com/Shelfari/AboutUs.aspx
Southhall, N. (2009). Bedroom Book Rainbow. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32224133@N07/3294168025/
