Thesis

Just an example of some of the sites I have tested or explored (the obvious and the obscure):

The Interesting/Best Ones (one * if they support mobile posting, ** if I like the site design):

http://www.clipsync.com/
Allows you to watch videos with friends and chat while the video is in progress. Also allows you to invite friends to video showings and rate videos.

*http://www.mozes.com/
**www.gumspots.com
Mobile phone based websites that allow you to share mobile content with friends. Mozes is more developed. Gumspots is a project by a former ITP student and potentially more interesting.

www.grouper.com
Allows you to comment a specific frame of video with your web camera. Flash player is very similar to one we were trying to develop. Its a little buggy though.

*www.eyespot.com
**www.jumpcut.com
www.motionbox.com
Online Video editing sites. Eyespot is probably the most interesting, although I like the Jumpcut website design better. Eyespot has a specific group for mobile video that is linked to CurrentTV. The best videos get selected to be voted on by current tv members for possible broadcast on actual television.

*www.blip.tv
Supports video bloggers. They've become considerably more commercial over the last six months.

www.dabble.com
del.icio.us for video

**www.radar.net
Supports photo and video uploads exclusively from mobile phones. Very private and unsearchable. You can only view the media of friends you have invited or who have invited you via email.

**www.flickr.com
My favorite media sharing site. We all know who they are.

The obvious:
www.myspace.com
www.facebook.com
www.youtube.com

And all the rest:
www.revver.com
www.clipshack.com
videos.google.com
www.bolt.com
www.dropshots.com
www.veoh.com
www.vimeo.com
www.vsocial.com
www.sharkle.com
www.streamload.com
vi.jebba.com
www.evideoshare.com
www.my5minutes.com
www.zippyvideos.com
www.vidilife.com
www.youare.tv
www.eatmail.tv
www.buzznet.com
www.videoegg.com
www.Ourmedia.org
www.Break.com
www.Tagworld.com
www.Metacafe.com
www.ebaumsworld.com
www.gorillamask.net
www.Dailymotion.com
www.blinkx.tv
www.firefoxflicks.com
www.phanfare.com
www.beedeo.com
www.ifilm.com
www.three.co.uk
www.putfile.com
www.4shared.com
www.badongo.com
video.yahoo.com
video.msn.com
www.joga.com
www.videobomb.com
www.snapfish.com
www.photobucket.com
www.pictureal.com

There are more.....

Posted by Cat at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For Clay Shrky's Social Facts class this week, we had to a selection from Small Groups as Complex Systems. For the most part, the selection talked about the formation of different kinds of groups in a non-technological context but I found the reading to have some interesting points that I wanted to reiterate here.

One point that I thought was particularly relevant when thinking of online social networks was this:

"Dyadic contacts among people who are linked in a social network will not generate a bounded, functionally coordinated group if context provides no opportunities or rewards for doing so. Instead interpersonal contact will simply lead to mor interpersonal contact."

Not only does this make logical sense but we can see it to be true in the analysis of large social networks that are visible, such as myspace, for instance. There is no reward or opportunity created by forming groups. However, there is a reward for identity production, namely self-promotion. One can do this in several ways, and these ways can be observed by viewing the profiles of different kinds of individuals. One can either friend request large numbers of people with limited and varied actual connections to those people outside the virtual realm, thus increasing the number of friends they possess to appear more popular. Or one can limit their friend list considerably to only those people they actually know so as to appear perhaps more 'real'. Both of these are functionally the same thing, developing, publishing and promoting one's own sense of identity.

In here essay, Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites, Danah Boyd states that egocentric networks replace groups. "Social network sites provide a new organizing mechanism for developing context. Instead of slicing interest first and people second, the Friending process allows people to choose people first and interests second. People define their community egocentrically. Their list of Friends defines the context and this, in turn, defines the audience that they believe they are addressing whenever they modify their Profile or post a bulletin. Combined with Profile content, Friends serve as a signal to all visitors about the relevant context."

Here is my perceived problem. If their are no groups, no rewards or opportunities to be gained by prolonged participation in such egocentric networks, short of reconnecting with old friends and perhaps having another way to maintain contact, how long will one's interest ultimately be sustained?

Posted by Cat at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“To find out and elucidate the truth only through the tonalities existing between black and white”
- G.I. Gurdjieff All and Everything

“I have to stay with THAT until its done, and everything I have been taught my whole life is against doing that. To simply see what something looks like: the light, the space, the relationship between distances, the air, the tones, the rhythms, the texture, the constrasts, the shape of movement….the things themselves….not what they might mean later, not socially, not politically, not psychologically, not sexually (a cigar is not even a cigar). Not to name label, evaluate, like, hate; no memory or desire. Just to see. This is the hardest thing to do, but that’s all that can be photographed….A photograph is an idea manifested outside of time. It is an insight made visible”
- Philip Perkis Teaching Photography

“People are connecting one-on-one - they have their online social network or their cell phone with 250 people on speed dial - but do they feel part of a community? Do they feel responsibility to a set of shared political commitments? Do they feel a need to take responsibility for issues that would require that they act in concert rather than just connect? Recently, connectivity and statements of identity on places such as Facebook or MySpace have themselves become values. It is a concern when self-expression becomes more important than social action.”
- Excerpt from “Living online: I'll have to ask my friends”
September 20, 2006, from New Scientist Print Edition
by Liz Else and Sherry Turkle

Posted by Cat at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)