Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds can be used for a number of things. Specifically, they can be used for office meetings and hospital crisis simulations. For example, in the article "Going to the virtual office in Second Life", one is able to have meeting outside the office. In the virtual community, Second life, one is able to go to the " virtual office" to discuss marketing ideas and have meetings in 3-D. The pros are that it saves travel time and helps people convey ideas without feeling embarrassed. The cons are there is no face to face interaction. In addition, in the article "Avatar II: The Hospital", nurses are able to play a simulation of what to do in a crisis. The pro is that this actually helps the nurses tremendously when the actual crisis occurs. The cons is that sometimes patients do not follow specific criteria in the simulations. 
Virtual worlds foster creativity because people are not embarrassed or afraid to express themselves without face to face judgement. In some worlds, one can simply be anonymous. In the future, it seems that because people are able to do so many things with virtual worlds, maybe it will come to a point where people will not leave their houses.  

Social Networking Sites

The three main social networking sites are Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. The difference between these three sites are the original target market. Originally, Facebook targeted college students, while Myspace targeted teenagers and Twitter targets those who are in their 20's. To add, LinkedIn is another social networking site where professional men and women can look for jobs and interact with one another. So, their target audience is older men and women over the age of 25.
The actual layout of each shows who they are targeting. Myspace has high customization so a young boy or girl would like it more. You can have your own back round and music on your page. However, as of recently Myspace is beginning to look just like Facebook. As opposed to a few years ago, where it looked a lot more "kid friendly". Twitter is a little confusing to use at first, but once you get used to the "#"'s and the "@"'s, it is actually pretty fun. LinkedIn is more professional and a little drab.

Blog about Twitter

In comparison to Blackboard discussions, Twitter makes it much easier to communicate with one another. The posts are instant and a student can post immediately after someone posts. Also, the # sign makes it easier to find posts. In comparison to an in-class discussion, a Twitter discussion is very similar. The only difference being that Twitter is online, and the in-class discussion is in-person. However, in my opinion, I feel more comfortable having an in-class discussion because it is more personal.

Social Networking

There are many ways where social networking can be used by different people from ordinary individual to corporations. Corporation can use these social media sites for free advertisement on their product. For example, in the video "Social Media in Plain English",  social media allowed "new ways for real people to play a role in providing feedback, organization, and promotion". The benefits to society is that information is so readily available. With this new information, Customers will be able to see product reviews, while corporations and businesses improve their product. The dark side of social networking can be that businesses will will harass their customers in order to prevent them from cancelling their services, like in the AOL video, the AOL employee refused to allow the customer to leave AOL instead of cancelling it like he wanted. He said" I don't understand what the problem is". Social Networking in the future will allow customers to diagnose the problem themselves.