Des de aquí felicitem al company Francesc i l’encoratgem a continuar, el mon TIC de Tarragona no seria el mateix sense El Maky.

Aprofitant aquesta fita, hem fet deu preguntes, i les respostes les il·lustrarem amb deu imatges històriques del blog ElMaky.com:

1.- Francesc, primer de tot moltes felicitats, no deuen ser gaires els blocs de les nostres comarques que arribin tan lluny, coneixes algun mes antic?

Gràcies, cada cop que hi penso, trec la mateixa conclusió, són una pila d’anys en un món on el que es va fer ahir ja és antic. La veritat no ho sé si hi han més blocs com el meu, suposo que si. Vaig començar en una època que no havien blocs, tot eren webs estàtiques, i suposo que moltes han continuat sent webs en l’actualitat, en aquest aspecte no crec que sigui la única, el que passa que la meva web va anar evolucionant transformant-se d’una web amb seccions molt fixes on no hi havia una relació entre elles, a un bloc on les categories han deixat de ser seccions, i s’intenten enllaçar entre elles, i en aquest cas no crec que hi hagin masses.

19/04/2000

2.- Com va ser que vas començar?

Com he començat sempre en això d’Internet, per inèrcia. Des de la universitat era usuari de la xarxa, però aprofitant que mon germà  va treure una web i tenia un sistema d’hospedatge, vaig dir perquè no fer jo també una. Sense l’ajuda d’ell suposo que ara no compliria 10 anys.
Ara es molt normal, però fa 10 anys una web personal no acostumava a tenir domini propi, els dominis eren més reservats a les empreses, o a la gent que volia fer coses serioses, no pas a un noi que penjava acudits i fotos d’actrius. Suposo que si la meva web hagués estat allotjada en llocs gratuïts de l’època no hagués arribat ni a 2 anys, per aquells temps el tema gratuït no es ni de bon tros el que es ara.

Octubre del 2000

3.- Quins van ser els teus propòsits?

Els mateixos que ara, en això no he canviat, fer el que m’agrada i sobretot passar-m’ho bé. Crec que es la base de tot projecte personal, gaudir del que fas sense pensar si agradarà o no a la gent, si algú li agrada el mateix que jo, perfecte, i sinó doncs també perfecte. Suposo que el dia que no m’agradi fer-ho, plegaré, però he de dir que no es el cas, a dia d’avui i malgrat haver complit 10 anys continuo amb la mateixa o inclús més il·lusió que el primer dia. El Maky no deixa de ser un reflex de les meves aficions, per tant es podria dir que mentre tingui aficions, i una d’elles sigui la xarxa, la web mai acabarà, anirà evolucionant paral·lelament amb la xarxa com ha passat fins ara.

Finals de 2001

4.- Que diries que es el mes important que ha canviat al llarg d’aquests 10 anys?

Internet ha evolucionat molt en aquests 10 anys, i això s’ha reflectit en la forma que ha anat variant la web. Suposo que el canvi més evident, va ser transformar la web que seguia el patró de la Web 1.0, en un bloc al més pur estil Web 2.0. He de dir que era bastant reticent (o gandul) de fer-ho en un inici, inclús ho vaig fer tard, quan ja havia sorgit el fenomen dels blocs feia uns anys. Com en tot en aquesta vida, la inèrcia sempre m’ha portat tard als llocs, m’ha faltat esperit emprenedor, es diu així no?. Fins al 2007 no vaig obrir una secció (Bloc del Maky) on anava fent entrades més o menys periòdiques que estava en un subdomini de la web principal i realitzat amb Blogger. Fins aquell any les actualitzacions eren molt contades, no arribaven a 10 per any. El gruix de la web actual ha estat escrit, o gravat ja que ara tinc una categoria de Videoblog en els darrers anys. El 2009 vaig unificar tot el contingut en el domini principal, obviant els subdominis, convertint tota la web en un bloc convencional tal com està ara, gestionat tot ell amb WordPress. Si, fins al 2009 la pàgina d’entrada la feia jo mitjançant codificació HTML pura i dura, i era una pàgina d’enllaç a les seccions tradicionals de El Maky que vaig iniciar a l’any 2000, i les noves categories que havia creat amb el boom de la Web 2.0, com eren el Bloc, Fotolog i Vlog, les quals avui en dia dominen els continguts de la web. Si em permets fer una mica d’autobombo, en la següent adreça www.elmaky.com/version es pot veure com ha anat canviant El Maky durant tots aquests anys.

Tardor de 2002

5.- Creus que ha canviat l’importància dels blogs amb l’explosió de llocs i sistemes 2.0 (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter,…)?

La web 2.0 ho ha revolucionat tot, i per tant ha afectat els blocs. Ha portat més difusió i més formes de promocionar els continguts, però també ha fet que la febre per tindre un bloc personal com el meu hagi disminuït. Hi han més eines a l’abast de la gent, i per tant el temps que les persones  dediquen a la xarxa, s’ha de repartir. Jo al fer un bloc personal, sempre m’ha interessat més els blocs d’aquest tipus, i no tant els blocs corporatius o empresarials, i en els darrers anys he vist una disminució en les actualitzacions de blocs que seguia des de feia temps. Havia gent anònima que escrivia veritables joies, gent capaç d’explicar histories personals que en molts casos m’arribava a emocionar, Van començar aparèixer els sistemes que has mencionat i el temps entre les actualitzacions en aquestos blocs va  començar a augmentar, inclús en molts casos feien un post anunciant el tancament del bloc, mentre el mateix usuari paral·lelament obria comptes a Twitter, Facebook, etc… Suposo que la immediatesa i la simplicitat d’aquestes noves eines tenen la batalla guanyada al assentar-te davant d’una cadira, pensar i escriure un post. Jo a vegades m’he estat tota una tarda sencera per fer una actualització que m’acabes agradant, i per tant publicar-la. Els blocs corporatius o empresarials es diferent, cada dia apareixen de nous, però en aquest cas trobo que hi ha massa copy&paste. Per exemple, el dia que va sortir Google Wave, al dia següent havien més de 10 llocs espanyols parlant del tema, i el curiós de tot, es que la majoria eren una traducció d’un post en anglès, i l’altre meitat eren copies directes de les traduccions. Va haver molts pocs que donessin una nova visió sobre aquella nova plataforma, i per tant que aportes el quelcom que no s’hagués dit abans.

2004

6.- Sabem que ets molt twittero, però… Facebook o Twitter?

Es cert, sóc bastant assidu de Twitter, però he de dir que Facebook em té totalment fascinat. De la mateixa manera que Google ha revolucionat la xarxa durant aquests anys, crec que Facebook ho farà en el propers.
La gent a vegades es queda amb el que més es parla a la xarxa, en si es privat o no, que es important evidentment, i en obrir galetes de la fortuna, que no deixa de tenir la seva gràcia, però no se n’adonen de l’enorme potencial que se li pot treure si li dediques 5 minuts al dia, i no ho dic solament per les persones, sinó fins i tot per les marques. Tot i aquestes paraules, no crec que s’hagi de debatre sobre Facebook o Twitter, sota el meu parer son dos coses diferents. Podria comparar Facebook amb Tuenti que segueixen el mateix o similar patró de les xarxes socials, o Twitter amb Identica que són dos webs dedicades al microblogging, però se’m fa difícil a mi comparar Facebook i Twitter, son dos eines diferents d’entendre la Web 2.0, i es podria dir que el perfil mitjà de l’usuari de Facebook, és molt diferent a l’usuari mig de Twitter. Jo mateix, segons si entro en una web o una altre, la meva forma de comunicar es diferent. El perfil de Facebook jo el tinc privat pels meus contactes, mentre que el perfil de Twitter no el contemplo d’una altre forma que no sigui obert, amb aquest plantejament ja et pots fer una idea que penso que les dues coses no són el mateix. No tan sols crec que difereixen en el seu plantejament, i per tant no són competència, sinó que en molts casos poden ser eines complementàries, com es el cas de sincronitzar les actualitzacions de Twitter amb l’estat de Facebook, o actualitzar Twitter mitjançant les novetats de la teva pàgina d’admiradors.

2006

7.- El domini està registrat el 17/3/2000… Te’n recordes de la primera entrada?

La filosofia durant aquella època era diferent, no era com ara que obres un bloc en 5 minuts i comences a bloguejar de seguida. Abans feies la web, en el meu cas vaig tenir d’aprendre HTML ja que no en sabia, i planificaves els continguts abans de pujar. Es cert que el 17 de març de 2000 vaig adquirir el domini, però fins el 19 de abril d’aquell mateix any no va estar disponible la web a la xarxa, ja que no vaig pujar-la fins que no vaig tenir la pàgina inicial feta, i unes quantes seccions desenvolupades. El que si que recordo es que la primera secció en que vaig treballar va ser la de “Frases celebres”, sempre m’ha agradat aquest tema, i tenia un recull de cites, per tant només vaig tenir de posar-ho bonic i codificar la secció en HTML. La segona secció va ser la d’Enginyeria química, era lògic que fes una secció a aquesta branca, ja que l’estava estudiant per aquella època. I així vaig anar fent seccions fins completar la primera versió de El Maky que va veure el llum com he dit abans el 19 d’abril de 2000, data que agafo com inici d’aquest petit projecte personal. Després amb el temps, al anar transformant la web en bloc, les actualitzacions eren més habituals, i ja no seguien el patró de seccions desenvolupades en la seva totalitat abans de ser publicades, sinó que a mesura que anava fent petites actualitzacions les anava pujant a la xarxa.

Novembre de 2007

8.- Quin es el truc per mantenir l’inspiració per saber que posar?

Quan fas el que t’agrada, la inspiració la trobes fàcilment, només es qüestió de mostrar el que t’envolta. A vegades llegint alguna cosa per Internet em dona la idea per fer un post, o d’una conversa amb amics surt la idea de desenvolupar un tema per deixar la meva visió plasmada en paraules. Tot i que a vegades no planejo res, com es el cas de la categoria del Videoblog. Molts vídeos que es mostren en aquest apartat son resultats de sortir al carrer amb la càmera i veure que puc fer. Això si, en totes les entrades intento donar una visió molt peculiar de com veig jo les coses, que es la gracia de qualsevol projecte personal, reflectir la meva realitat no pas la dels altres. Com a resum, es podria dir que no sóc molt metòdic a l’hora d’escriure i de generar nous temes per la web, d’aquí que el meu bloc sigui difícil de catalogar, ja que parlo de moltes coses i de res en concret. D’aquest poti poti d’informació surt el lema que li vaig posar l’any 2000 i que sempre m’acompanyat durant tots aquests anys, “Un pequeño mundo en Internet”.

23/03/2008

9.- Quines creus que son les qualitats per ser blogger de llarga distancia?

Fer el que t’agrada i sobretot quan vols fer-ho. Si t’ho agafes com una passió, no pas com un treball sacrificat amb l’obligatorietat d’escriure cada X dies, no et saturaràs mai, o al menys a mi no m’ha passat. Una altre qualitat es  l’experimentació i evolució amb la pròpia xarxa. Per molt que t’agradi un tema, si sempre dones la mateixa visió o la mateixa forma de mostrar-ho als teus usuaris, al final et canses. Jo he passat per èpoques que escriuria cada dia, i d’altres que he estat mesos sense actualitzar la web, i tot i això continuo amb el bloc amb molta il·lusió després de 10 anys. Mai m’he posat metes per aconseguir, crec que per un bloc personal, l’única meta possible es gaudir, i si gaudeixes seràs un blogger de llarga distància.

08/07/2009

10.- Quines son les teves recomanacions pels que s’estan plantejar començar un blog?

Soc molt dolent per les recomanacions, a més tampoc crec que faci res massa extraordinari com per recomanar res a ningú. Com ja he dit, el fonamental es fer allò que et bé d’agust fer. Però tot i això recomanaria que la gent reflexiones al menys 5 minuts abans de crear un bloc, del que significar tenir-ne un. Conec alguns casos de gent que l’han obert amb molta il·lusió, però desprès de dos posts els han abandonat. Els van obrir perquè estava de moda, no pas perquè els agrades de debò fer-ho. Escriure un bloc pot sembla molt banal, però no deixa de ser un petit sacrifici de assentar-te davant la pantalla i mostrar les teves idees en paraules, o al menys es com ho veig jo. Un bloc ha d’aportar alguna cosa al que l’escriu, sigui satisfacció personal cap a un mateix en els casos com el meu, o reconeixement professional en vers a una comunitat si es tracta d’un bloc corporatiu, i això, no s’aconsegueix amb un post escrit en 2 minuts.

Si no s’esta del tot convençut, recomanaria que obrissin un compte a Twitter, o es fessin un miniblog a Tumblr o Posterous, on segurament no existeixen masses exigències alhora de publicar, degut a la seva immediatesa.

04/01/2010

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Social media has become an integral part of modern society.

There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries.

There are niche sites for virtually every special interest out there.

There are sites to share photos, videos, status updates, sites for meeting new people and sites to connect with old friends.

It seems there are social solutions to just about every need.

In this article, we’ll review the history and evolution of social media from its humble beginnings to the present day.

Precursors to Social Media

BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems)

The first BBSs came online in the late 70s. Originally these were primarily hosted on personal computers and users had to dial in through the host computer’s modem. Only one person at a time could gain access to the BBS.

While there were legitimate BBSs, most were at least somewhat involved in illicit, illegal, or other shady practices. Adult material, virus code, information and instructions for hacking and phreaking (phone hacking), and materials like The Anarchist’s Cookbook were commonly hosted on BBSs.

But BBSs were the first type of sites that allowed users to log on and interact with one another, albeit in a much slower fashion than we currently do.

Online Services

After BBSs came “online services” like CompuServe and Prodigy. These were the first real “corporate” attempts at accessing the Internet.

CompuServe was the first company to incorporate a chat program into their service. Prodigy was responsible for making online service more affordable (CompuServe had been prohibitively expensive for many, with charges of $6/hour plug long-distance fees that often made the service run $30/hour or more).

AOL started as an online service too and made great strides at making the Internet more universally accessible in the U.S.

IRC, ICQ, and Instant Messaging

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was developed in 1988 and used for file sharing, link sharing and otherwise keeping in touch.

It was really the father of instant messaging as we know it today. IRC was mostly UNIX-based though, limiting access to most people.

ICQ was developed in the mid-90s and was the first instant messaging program for PCs. It was at least partly responsible for the adoption of avatars, abbreviations (LOL, BRB) and emoticons. Other IM clients soon followed.

Dating Sites

Dating sites are sometimes considered the first social networks. The first dating sites started cropping up almost as soon as people started going online. They allowed users to create profiles (usually with photos) and to contact other users.

Early Social Networks

While many people consider dating sites or sites like Classmates.com to be the first social networks, they don’t really fit the definition.

Dating sites rarely allowed you to keep a friends list, neither did Classmates in its early years (and profiles were severely limited). The following sites were the first true social networks.

Six Degrees

Six Degrees was launched in 1997 and was the first modern social network. It allowed users to create a profile and to become friends with other users.

While the site is no longer functional, at one time it was actually quite popular and had around a million members at its peak.

In 2000 it was purchased for $125 million and in 2001 it was shut down.

AsianAvenue, MiGente, BlackPlanet

These sites cropped up in the years following SixDegrees’ launch, between 1997 and 2001.

They allowed users to create profiles and add friends (generally without needing approval to add people). Users could create professional, personal and dating profiles on these sites.

While they were some of the earliest social networks, there were few innovations among them.

LiveJournal

LiveJournal started in 1999 and took a different approach to social networking.

While Six Degrees allowed users to create a basically-static profile, LiveJournal was a social network built around constantly-updated blogs.

LiveJournal encouraged its users to follow one another and to create groups and otherwise interact. It was really the precursor to the live updates we see in social networks currently.

Major Advances in Social Networking

The early 2000s brought some huge developments in social networking and social media.

Friendster

Friendster was really the first modern, general social network. Founded in 2002, Friendster is still a very active social network, with over 90 million registered users and 60+ million unique visitors each month. Most of Friendster’s traffic comes from Asia (90% of it).

Friendster operated by allowing people to discover their friends and then friends-of-friends, and so on to expand their networks.

Its goal was to be a safer place to meet new people than in real-life, as well as being faster. Friendster was, in part, a new kind of dating site.

Instead of matching complete strangers based on shared interests, it operated on the assumption that people with shared friends and acquaintances would have a better chance than those who had no shared connection.

Friendster was most popular with three different groups: gay men, attendess of Burning Man and bloggers.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn was founded in 2003 and was one of the first mainstream social networks devoted to business.

Originally, LinkedIn allowed users to post a profile (basically a resume) and to interact through private messaging. They also work on the assumption that you should personally know the people you connect with on the site.

Gradually, other features have been added, including groups, question and answer forums, and advanced profile features, including real-time updates.

MySpace

MySpace was founded in 2003 and by 2006 had grown to be the most popular social network in the world.

MySpace differentiated itself from competitors by allowing users to completely customize the look of their profiles. Users could also post music from artists on MySpace and embed videos from other sites on their profiles.

Originally MySpace allowed communication through private messages, public comments posted to a user’s profile, and bulletins sent out to all of your friends. Blogs are also a big part of MySpace profiles, with each member automatically getting a blog.

In 2006 MySpace introduced MySpace IM, an instant messaging client that lets users chat with their friends.

Other recent additions to MySpace’s functionality include the addition of real-time status updates and a news feed showing friend activity.

Facebook

While Facebook started out as a Harvard-only social network back in 2004, it quickly expanded to other schools, then to high schools, businesses and eventually everyone (by 2006).

In 2008 Facebook became the most popular social networking site, surpassing MySpace, and continues to grow.

Facebook doesn’t allow the same kind of customization that MySpace does. Facebook does, however, allow users to post photos, videos and otherwise customize their profile content, if not the design.

Facebook has added a number of features over the past few years, including instant messaging/chat and apps (and their developer platform).

Users have a few different methods of communicating with one another. Private messaging is available as well as writing on another user’s wall. Wall posts are visible to that user’s friends, but usually not to the general public. Users can easily change their privacy settings to allow different users to see different parts of their profile, based on any existing relationships (the basic privacy settings are “only friends”, “friends of friends”, and “everyone”).

Users can post notes that are visible to all of their friends. Users can also comment on or, more recently, “like” the posts of their friends, and conversations often occur within the comment sections among multiple people.

Niche Social Networks

As social networking grew, niche sites began cropping up for specific interest groups. There are now social networks for virtually every hobby, passion, interest, industry and group that you could imagine.

Ning

Ning is a platform for creating niche social networks. Networks are hosted by Ning but can take on their own personality and can even pay to have their own branding instead of the Ning brand.

New users can either create social networks for any niche they choose or join any of more than 1.5 million existing networks.

Ning was the first widely-used social networking platform. It’s biggest advantage in the market was that it made it incredibly simple for even non-technical users to set up their own social network.

While most other social networking platforms required coding and programming knowledge, Ning required neither of those.

Company-Sponsored Social Networks

A number of niche social networking sites have been developed by corporations in all sorts of industries.

Authonomy is one example; it’s a writers’ network hosted by the UK division of Harper Collins that has attracted thousands of hopeful writers from all over the globe, but plenty of other companies have created their own networks.

While some of these have active groups, many do not, and end up being shut down due to a lack of activity.

Media Sharing

Social media isn’t just limited to social networking sites. Sharing photos, videos, and other multimedia content is also a popular social media activity.

Photobucket

Photobucket was the first major photo sharing site, launched in 2003.

Photobucket allows users to share photos publically or in password-protected albums. They allow users 500MB of storage (lowered from 1GB in August of 2009).

Pro accounts get 10GB of storage (lowered from 100GB to 25GB in July of ‘08 and then to 10GB in August of ‘09). Photobucket also hosts video content.

In 2007, Photobucket was purchased by Fox Interactive Media (a News Corporation subsidiary). It was rumored to have sold for as much as $250 million, though terms of the sale were never disclosed.

Flickr

Flickr has become a social network in its own right in recent years. They claim to host more than 3.6 billion images as of June 2009.

Flickr also has groups, photo pools, and allows users to create profiles, add friends, and organize images and video into photo sets/albums.

One of Flickr’s major advantages is that they allow users to license their photos through Creative Commons, as well as retaining all copyrights.

Flickr has also recently launched a collection called “The Commons”, which features archived photos and images from a variety of museums and other institutions under a “no known restrictions” license (basically meaning the photos are believed to be in the public domain).

YouTube

YouTube was the first major video hosting and sharing site, launched in 2005.

Users can upload videos up to 10 minutes long and share them through YouTube or by embedding them on other websites (social networks, blogs, forums, etc.).

YouTube now allows users to upload HD videos and recently launched a service to provide TV shows and movies under license from their copyright holders.

YouTube’s major social features include ratings, comments, and the option to subscribe to the channels of a user’s favorite video creators.

Revver

Revver took a slightly different approach to video hosting and sharing.

While YouTube, Metacafe, and most other video sharing sites let you post videos for free and didn’t pay content creators for any advertising revenues their videos generated, Revver has been sharing revenue from the start.

Revver splits the revenue generated by a video 50/50 with that video’s creator. Some other video sharing and hosting sites are moving in the direction of revenue sharing, but Revver still remains the primary one that does it with all content on the site.

Social News and Bookmarking

Sharing photos and videos wasn’t isn’t the only kind of information sharing happening with social media.

The advent of social news and bookmarking sites in the mid-2000’s brought about a whole new way of see what’s going on in the world and discovering interesting content.

News became more widely available thanks to sites like Delicious, Digg, and Reddit, who allowed users to share any news or other content they found interesting with a much wider audience than they might have otherwise had.

Delicious

Delicious (aka, Del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site founded in 2003. It allows its users to bookmark any content they find online, tag that content, and then share it with other users.

Users can search for bookmarks or browse for them via tags. Delicious also allows users to view the most popular content among other users, as well as up-and-coming content, not unlike most social news sites.

Digg

Digg was founded in 2004 by Kevin Rose, Ron Gorodetzky, Jay Adelson, and Owen Byrne.

Digg users can share links to anything online and other users can vote that content up (”dig”) or down (”bury”). Users can also comment on content posted by others and keep a friends list.

Digg has undergone a lot of controversy in its day, including criticism about the power the top 100 Digg users have over what becomes popular on the site.

The “Digg Effect”—when content makes it to the front page, thereby sending a huge influx of traffic to that site, often overloading its servers—is also well-known and often frustrating to those unprepared for the sudden popularity.

Reddit

Reddit is another social news site founded in 2005. Reddit operates in a similar fashion to Digg, allowing users to vote content up or down.

Users can view popular items, new items, and “controversial” items (presumably those items that have received a lot of both up and down votes). Reddit, like Digg, also allows users to comment on posted items.

Real Time Updates

Real-time updates have become the new norm in social media. With the advent of Twitter in 2006, status updates have become the new norm in social networking. Virtually all major social networks now allow real-time updates.

Twitter

Twitter was founded in 2006 and gained a lot of popularity during the 2007 SxSW (South by Southwest) conference.

Tweets trippled during the conference, from 20k per day to 60k. Twitter has developed a cult-like following and has a number of famous users (Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Soleil Moon Frye, MC Hammer, Oprah, Martha Stewart, and many, many more).

Twitter has also spawned a number of third-party sites and apps, turning it into more of a platform than a single service. There are Twitter clients for updating and managing followers; services that track Twitter trends; and services for posting photos and videos directly to Twitter.

Other Services Adopt Real-Time Updates

As mentioned before, virtually every social networking site now allows for status updates. Facebook has incorporated status updates into their interface for years. MySpace adopted the practice more than a year ago. And most recently, LinkedIn has started to allow users to update their status.

Real-time updates allow users to stay connected to their friends and family on a constant basis and often improve relationships between people.

When you constantly know what’s going on with friends and family, it’s easier to discover shared interests, activities, and other information that might never have come out in real-life conversations. This can lead to stronger relationships offline.

The iPhone’s Role in Real-Time Updates

The iPhone can be largely credited for the rise in popularity of real-time updates. Prior to the iPhone’s launch, mobile browsers were clunky at best, and virtually unusable at worst.

But the iPhone made it easy and even fun to browse the web from a mobile device. Add apps for virtually every social network to the mix and it became possible for users to update anytime, from anywhere.

Other phones have followed suit and there are now mutliple devices available that let users easily update their status on the go (including posting photos and video updates).

The iPhone has taken such a huge role in social media that there are now social networks only available on the iPhone. iRovr is a social networking app specifically for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

It allows users to post photos, updates, links (including to YouTube videos), create polls, subscribe to RSS feeds and more. It was launched in 2007 and is still going strong two years later.

Lifestreaming and Lifecasting

Real-time updates have led to an increase in the number of people who are now lifecasting or lifestreaming virtually everything they do. While some opt to lifestream by aggregating their online activities in a single place (such as with FriendFeed).

Ustream.tv

Ustream was founded in the summer of 2006 and has become the streaming video host of choice for celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Soleil Moon Frye.

While most Ustream users only go live occasionally, there are channels that are live around the clock (mostly security cameras, animal cameras, traffic cameras, and other stationary feeds).

Ustream allows viewers to post comments and ask questions directly to the feed host during live broadcasts, and this interactivity often engages users to a greater extent than other video sites where videos are posted after they’ve been filmed instead of being streamed live.

Justin.tv

Justin.tv is a streaming video host founded in October 2006 that lets lifecasters and live show creators to broadcast to hundreds or thousands of Internet users.

iJustine is probably Justin.tv’s most public user, lifecasting practically her entire life on the site at one time (she appears to be lifecasting a bit less recently, though she’s still very active on the site).

There are more than 400,000 channels on Justin.tv, and they get more than 41 million unique visitors each month.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed, which launched in 2007 and was recently purchased by Facebook, allows you to integrate most of your online activities in one place (Twitter, RSS feeds, and Flickr, among others).

It’s also a social network in its own right, with the ability to create friends lists, post updates, and otherwise communicate.

Other Lifestreaming Sites

There are a number of other lifestreaming sites out there that people are using. Most can be integrated into your blog or website to show your visitors all of your activities around the web.

There are even some dedicated blog plugins for lifestreaming. WP Lifestream is one such plugin, specifically for WordPress. It lets you integrate your profiles from Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm and Wordie right out of the box, and you can add additional modules for integrating more feeds.

Profilactic.com is another lifestreaming application that lets you integrate feeds from 190 different websites, including Blippr, Delicious, Digg, deviantART, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, LiveJournal, MySpace, Pandora, Revver, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Tumblr, and more. Sweetcron is a similar app, though it’s opensource and you host it on your own servers.

Social Everything

It seems that nowadays there are social and user-generated sites for just about every activity you can imagine. There are social shopping sites. Social financial planning sites. Sites for getting book, movie, app, and other reviews. Sites to share your goals and meet like-minded people. Sites to plan your travels and share them with others. And sites to help you make decisions on just about anything.

Social media has become a huge part of the lives of millions of people worldwide. Whether it’s something as simple as looking up reviews of movies from real, live people (instead of professional movie reviewers) or getting advice on major life decisions, there are social sites out there to provide you with the information you seek.

Even on general-purpose social networks and social media sites like Twitter there are thousands of ways to get input on just about anything.

Instead of using Google the next time you have a question about something, try asking on Twitter. A lot of the time you get better information from the crowd there in less time than pouring over pages of search results.

Social Media Concerns and Criticism

As social media has grown in popularity and become mainstream, it has been faced with growing controversy and criticism.

The main criticisms seem to fall along a few lines: Social media can be used by stalkers; Social media can be used by child predators; and, Social media sites open up privacy and security concerns.

While there is only so much social media sites can do about the first two, there is a growing trend among many sites to bolster the privacy policies and make users feel more secure.

Social Media Used by Stalkers

Facebook and other social media sites have come under attack for making it easier for stalkers to track their victims or even to find new ones. This kind of accusation is not entirely unfounded.

Many social media users don’t take advantage of privacy settings and leave their entire profiles public. While this is often a good idea for professional profiles where you want to make connections with people you don’t necessarily know, personal profiles can benefit from hiding some information from public display.

Social networks make these privacy settings available to users to help prevent stalkers and predators from being able to see their updates.

But they can’t force users to use them, so in the end much of the responsibility falls to the individual users, not the networks themselves.

Social Media Used by Child Predators

MySpace is the most publically attacked social networks accused of being a haven for child molesters and pornographers, but the site, and other social networks, have made great strides in protecting the identities and information of minors using their sites.

Again, this is one of those situations where much of the problem came from users not making their profiles private.

MySpace took a major step to prevent predators from friending underage teens by requiring friend requesters to know the email address or another personal identifier in order to send a friend request to a minor.

They also require the profiles of teens under the age of 16 to be private, not allowing non-friend users to view them. Other sites have taken similar steps.

Privacy Concerns

Facebook recently came under attack for changes to its privacy policy that were worded ambiguously enough to effectively grant rights to Facebook to use any of your content, private or public, for their own purposes (such as advertising) even after you’d delected your profile.

While the company maintains that was never their intent and it was simply unfortunate wording, the backlash was severe enough that Facebook changed their privacy policy back to its previous version and then solicited user input for revisions. It was a harsh lesson in how concerned many users are about the information they provide online.

When you consider that many people post information about all aspects of their lives online, mostly on social media sites, it’s no wonder many are concerned about what companies can do with that information.

Social networks and other sites have to rapidly respond to user concerns over privacy and security. With the information in an average social media profile, it would not be inconceivable for a hacker to illegally gain enough information about a person to steal their identity or otherwise cause problems.

Security concerns have also cropped up as average people have found their profiles hacked and embarrassing information posted about them.

While this type of thing was once relatively confined to celebrities and well-known people (or people who had a personal vendetta against them), it has become more widespread and it’s not unheard of for regular people to be targeted (such as this woman on Facebook recently).

The Role of Social Media in Pop Culture

Social media has, in the past year or two, become a mainstream online activity. In 2007, social media activities overtook pornography as the most popular online activity in the U.S. (the two industries continue to battle it out, alternately gaining or losing ground on a monthly basis).

Celebrities now use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks on a regular basis. And it’s not just their publicists—stars are updating their status themselves and interacting with fans on a daily basis.

It’s not uncommon to see Twitter-inspired t-shirts, and there has been at least one “fail-whale” tattoo (I’m sure there are more out there).

When Twitter and Facebook both suffered a DDOS attack in early August ‘09, there was a real sense of loss among many users until the sites were back up.

Social media has become an integral part of how people communicate, stay in touch, keep on top of new developments, and otherwise connect with the world around them.

The Evolution of Social Media

Social media has come a long way since the days of BBSs and IRC chats. And social media continues to evolve on a daily basis.

With major social networks and social media sites making changes and improvements on an almost daily basis, it’s sure to keep evolving in coming years.

The one thing we can be pretty sure of at this point is that social media is not just a phase, and likely won’t go away any time soon…at least until something better comes along.

Further Resources:

• A Brief History of Social Media
• The history of social media in a blink
• Mashable: The Social Media Blog
• Wikipedia’s Social Media article
• 6 of the Best Lifestreaming Solutions
• Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

Where do you think social media is heading and how do you use it? How much influence does social media have in your life?

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El excelente vídeo de Michael Wesch, profesor de la Universidad de Kansas, EE.UU., que explica el potencial impacto del movimiento Web 2.0 en la interacción social como parte del proyecto sobre culturas mediadas: http://www.mediatedcultures.net/media…

La traducción corresponde a Mario Nel Villamizar Ochoa, Comunicador social, Blogger y profesor de nuevas tecnologías en Colombia de la comunidad dotSUB, donde se puede ver este video en otros idiomas: http://www.dotsub.com/films/20themach…

El fondo musical corresponde a Deus de Costa de Marfil y su tema “There’s nothing impossible”: http://www.myspace.com/deusking

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