Animation Demoreel

(b10) Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles

The research study paper "Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles" conducted by A.Fiore, L.Taylor, G.A.Mendelsohn and M. Hearst was a very interesting paper.
The group of researchers tried to unterdant how people tend to judge one's attractiveness when involved in an online environment. As the text stated, "40 million unique users visited online dating website"(Fiore, Taylor, Mendelsohn and Hearst). This truly shows that today people really believe in finding there soulmate through the wires. Thus the question, how are you so sure about someone's physical and personality features by checking and online page.
As discussed in the study, a certain degree of exageration was observed on weight, size and age of dating website users. Thus it is accepted that others commonly lie about themselve in order to give themselves a better chance to attract others.
If the relationship stays purely virtual then there is no issue but if users really want to go further and meet each other face to face this kind of deceiving information can give rise to problems.
On the other hand the people who share info on these websites all share the same goal, meeting a compatible person, thus they accept taking the risk to be deceived. The sudy also compared the importance of profile pictures and Textual self description. Apparently some users would rather concentrate on the textual info shared by the user rather than with his pictures.
This is a point that is explained in the study by the fact that people are looking for more than just physical attributes, and through text description they hope discovering the personnality traits of the person.
However too mouch textual elements can reduce attractiveness, because "it helps to better assess incompatibility" (Fiore, Taylor, Mendelsohn and Hearst). In some cases though, a lot of self description might help find the very compatible one!
In conclusion what i think atracts the most people online, is the control they have over there own image and the way they can sell themselves more easily than if they were involved in face to face meeting where many unintentional cues might be revealed. I have never had an online dating experience but I can see how it works with facebook. Everyone tries to convey the image of themselves, as they would like others to see them.
The online world is a tricky place where we realise how complex human self-image and identity are.

(B9)Muds

I first logged in as a female, I used the name Pamela, after tryin multiple other names that weren't accepted. After a few minuts someone said to me that I needed to change my name for a more unique one. But no one talked to me other than that.

I then signed up as a male, and used the name Rodolf, I described myself, I tried to say things, I looked at the list of users by typing "who" there were about 200, I called out some names but nobody ever came to me.

This experience was pretty boring as a whole, cause I really did not get how the thing worked, I followed all the instruction, but I never saw anyone say something, all I could see were the name of the people when they connect to the MUD.

In the end I did not really observe a difference between login in as a male or female...

(b8)Second Life

Second Life, wow! I am flabergasted by what I just saw. I was not aware of the existence of this new SNS, that is in reality a virtual world. The virtual world that I had been thinking of for while, and that I had read of in most of the articles that we had to read for the class. Well I guess now it really exists! I don't know if this is exciting or if it is the beginning of a virtual society that will engage a real revolution and transformation in Human communication, behaviors and LIFE!
Still I signed up for Second Life. I can't lie it is so well done that it is attractive. First of all they ask you to choose a name! That basically means choose a new identity, they ask you to write 1st name then you can choose for last name in premade list of name that the site proposes to you. I honnestly felt like creating a Fake identity, but I have to say that there is something exciting about it. Then they ask you to choose the character that you want amoung a few prototypes, to start your second life. Then you fill up a few personal information nd thats it you are ready to leave for your new existence.
In parallele i was reading the article " Influence on the nature and functionning of online Group" by Katelyn Y.A.Mckenna. I thought it was a great article that explained really well how the personality of each member of a group, on or offline, influence greatly the groups charateristic. Also how one member appears to be a the leader or a follower. Of course the article stressed the fact that personality expresses itself differently online and offline. A follower in the offline group might be a lot more engaged and extroverted once he gets online.
It is true that communicating online breaks all kinds of barriers that are hard to break in offline communication. I think deshinibation is the one that primes. The lack of physical presence helps the shy one express himself more openly behind his screen. He can finally show a new face, that he was per haps afraid to show, or because he lacked confidence in face to face communication.
I think this is extremely obvious on Facebook for example, you can see how shyer people express a lot on there wall certainly to compensate there lack of involvement in offline situation.
Internet has brought us the possibility to do things and act like we would have liked too offline. But is it a good thing? I don't know, I say, becareful we might forget who we really are. How would this affect our First Life?!

(B7) Blogline

I chose to subscribe to blogline, I checked out google reader too but I prefered the design and the looks of blog line, I don't like to have google do everything. Blogline seems to be very practical and easy to use. I already subcribed to a few websites with blogline, Facebook, Espn, Usa today politics and Blogger. I don't entirely get how i am going to get my Facebook notification, do I only receive a Notification when something is sent to me or do i receive notes also when anything goes on my FB friens walls...
Its seems to be very practical although I don't think it will stop me from going to the actual webpages of my favorite website. I think there is something about the atmosphere of the site that I would miss. Blogline would be a lot more pleasant if it could present the notification of each site with its usual design. A Facebook notification would be written in blue with a Fb in the background for example, and Blogger would display yellow colors. Thats just an idea, I think its nice to receive notification but people enjoy also the design of there favorite site and they like surfing on it.
Nevertheless Blgline is a very useful tools especially for people like me who tend to never read the news, i subcribed to USA today and ESPN so that I get everyday the big news on currents affairs end events.

(B6) Familiarize yourself with the research tools in & on the Net

Learnthenet.com is a great ressource to get a better understanding of how to conduct researches on internet. I learned about smart ways to narrow or broaden my researches, I already knew about the Boolean logic of research with AND OR NOT, but i was pleased to learn about the truncation trick, used to broaden the research by just keeping the root of the word you were searching and adding an asterix, for example instead of entering "Gardening" in the index its possible to enter "garden" + *.

I also didn't know it was allowed to use the + sign and the - sign to refine the search. For example if you search for nike accesories you can enter "Nike + accessories" in the same way you can exclude terms from your search with the - sign, for example you're looking for Nike products except for accessories, you can type "nike - accessories".

Also a pretty logical and simple trick to use when refining your search are the quotation marks, they allow you to search for a group of words all together instead of searching individually for each word.

Example 1: SEARCH: SAND SHARK >result> documents with the words SAND or SHARK

Example 2: SEARCH: "SAND SHARK" >Result> Documents with the word "Sand shark".

Parentheses can also be use to refine the search, there are use the same way than in math equation, to distribute the keywords. Example: SEARCH: Tennis(shoes or socks), the search engine will search for both Tennis shoes and Tennis socks.

Also I learned about surface web vs Deep web, there would be two layers of data in the web, the surface one being the one we use the most with google and other known search engines such as google. The Deep web would be a more disguised part of the web where a bunch of very reliable data are residing, OSTI is a government website on which you can access t the deep web.

Through my readings i realised how huge is the web, how it contains and how little we use or at least I do.

Blog 5 Reflection on Identity in Cyberspace

CMC has created more than just an easy way to communicate from anywhere in the world. CMC has created a virtual space in which people leave there physical bodies and identities to enter a new world in which they are free to create a new self image.


Identity and deception in the virtual community, a research conducted by Judith S Donath, analyzes the issues linked to identity on SNS. It is true that once we are communicating through CMC we do not obey to the same cues that in the real world. We are disembodied and we are free to create a new identity, our web identity. SNS make it easy for us to create accounts in which we can choose our name, choose the picture we want to display and the information on ourself we desire to expose. Thus SNS's and other internet Forums give the users the choice to stay anonymous, of course from one site to an other anonymity is more or less provided. In educational or business mail accounts we often have to use a login providing our name and last name, like with colleges' e mail account, in which we most of the time use the first letter of our first name followed by our family name @school.edu. The whole issue that is caused by the freedom of anonymity is that it often leads to deception, people use fake accounts to deceive people without being recognized. Thus a man could be using the identity of a woman! It is not hard to understand how this could quickly escalade to very big issues like pedophilia, rape etc... Current events occuring through Social Networking site. The web is a new world in which people obey to new rules very different from the one we know in the real world.
It is thus important to try understanding how human communication and psychology is involved in CMC. In the second research paper written by Azy Barack and John Suler, Reflection on the psychology and Social Science of Cyberspace, we are introduced to a new field called cyberpsychology, this field isn't anything else than the psychological approach of human behavior when involved in CMC. Cyberpsychology explain that even though we talk about cyberspace, the space we are talking about is real, it is a place in which we go that is nothing like the real world but nevertheless is still a place. That is maybe why we use terms like world wide web, domains,windows, forums etc to call thoses places. In this place we communicate differently, we may eventually communicate with more disclosure and less inhibition, we behave in a very different way that we would have in a face to face meeting. This change in behavior is very important because it affects our real world identity, if you disclose your feelings on facebook, you still disclose your feelings to the world, and people you know will know things you would have never told them in the real world. I think facebook should be, if its not already, a field for a new research based on Cyberpsychology. This field of psychology is today evolving a lot, since humans communicate, or could I say "live" more and more in this cyberspace. Perhaps we can ask ourselves where is this new trend of communication and behavior going to lead us, could we reach a point to which someone basically creates himself split personalities and identities. The question "who are we"? was already mindblowing, hard to concieve and grasp today it is becoming even more complex.

(B4) Social Media Tools

Social Media Tools are very important today, as I am growing in our modern society I realise How benefic it is for someone to have some knowledge about SMT. As a matter of fact a great amount of people alredy use SMT without maybe even knowing what SMT means. SMT's includes all ineternet application allowing you to interact with others via the web.

Those tools can be very useful professionnally, for example if you are trying to promote your business, using a Social Networking Site like facebook or Twitter can be very efficient. You can reach a huge amount of people just with a few clicks.

Personnally SMT's are also very helpful and can be fun, podcasts give you the oportunity to host your own show, on which you can discuss issues and interests with others. Wiki's are fun there are sites on which people interact by adding content correcting correcting, the best exampe is Wikipedia. On those sites you can learn and teach through interaction.

SMT's can also be extremely practical for personnal or professionnal motivations, with for example RSS, I had never heard of this kind of site before reading the SMT webpage. RSS basically offers you the service to receive notification from all the blogs or Websites you use on your RSS. That means that you don't need to go check facebook, then Twitter then hotmail etc, to know if your have messages, all your notifications are tranfered on your RSS. Since more and more people are using one to several Social Networking Sites, I think RSS might even become a needed tool for many in not so long.

SMT's are extremely useful and helpful, and it is important to get familiar with them.

(B3) Social Networking Site Project paper

It is interesting to observe the way people communicate on an SNS. I am going to use the example of Facebook. I use Facebook everyday and I am a pretty involved user.

I think one on the major elements that FB offers to people, Communication wise, is a very powerful freedom of self expression. As I surf on my FB homepage, I can see all the new updates of what my FB friends have been doing on there page. Adding friends, joining groups, posting pictures, videos and also if they have edited there status. I think the status area is a very powerful tool on FB. People use it a lot to express how they feel, to share a quote or even to give there opinon on current affairs and events. Among all those users some stay very suttle and don't put out much on there wall.

The basic principle of Facebook is to interact with other users, and in order to do that users use several different ways, of course they can interact with the chat, but in that case they are only interacting with one precise friend and the conversation is private. FB also offers a private messaging option, but this not what is interesting. What is I think the most interesting way users interact is there wall posting. When a user throws out something on his wall, he is basically starting a discussion with any user being potencially able to comment on the post.

The potential responder has two interaction options, he can either comment on the wall post or click the button "I Like", appearing after every post on FB. This to me the most inetesting way people communicate on FB, it gives life to the site and thats why people get so addicted to it.

To me this all lead by a strong need of recognition that we all have more or less. To explain my theory i am going to use a simple example. If a FB user posts a quote that means a lot to him on his status, that means he is sharing that feeling or thought with the other users, and if his quote get a lot of comments or a lot of "i ike" clicks, the user will feel recognized and interesting, on the other hand if no one reacts to his quote he might feel hurt or rejected. I truly think this real.

When a user writes something on his wall or shares anything he is calling for interaction or for action. He is seeking for recognition from other users.

This type of interaction has develloped so much on FB, that now with some very expressive users, you could tell how the person is truly feeling under his skin.

To conclude I'd say that FB really created a virtual world, in which people's profiles stand for there identity. And I'd even go futher by saying that by getting involved on Facebook you create a new identity. Your web identity.

COM 459 = SNS research Summary

The study on Social Network Site conducted by Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison, was a very interesting document. It was interesting to really learn more about the nature of those SNS and there History. I don't know most of the SNS that are disussed in the text except for the most popular one's like facebook, Myspace and Twitter. SNS really grew up and devellop through the years, from the first SNS "six degrees" launched in 1997 till today's Facebook interface. Through its development SNS's had to face failures. Six degrees attracted millions of people in 1997 but soon closed out, the developpers of the SNS think that Six degrees was simply ahead of its time.

From 97 to 01 multiple other SNS started appearing, among them we could count : AsianAvenue, Black planet, Cyworld and lunar storm. I did not know any of those website before, but what is interesting about them is that most of them failed to become popular at some places of the world but skyrocked in other locations. Some of those were first instant messaging platform that were refashioned as SNS's. In 2002 SNS take a step forward with Friendster, at first the SNS platform popularity surged but the site didn't handle the fast growth of users and pretty soon

Frienster was running towards a chaotic failure. Friendster was able to offer good privacy settings to its user and quickly Bosses, old classmate and close friend were all mixed together in the same network. Which eventually became problematic for users.

Just as Friendster was falling apart in the US, its popularity Skyrocked in some asian countries and Friendster stayed up in the rankings, untill Myspace came along.

What basically happened through the years is that SNS's developpers continually learned from the mistakes made in the previous SNS's to create better interfaces.

Myspace opened new Horizons after friendster, by allowing more freedom to the user in the design of there page. Instead of forbidding stuff Myspace modified there policies to innovate. For example they opened the door to a new public, highschool and college kids.

Developpers started to listen more to the User, and built upon there desires. SNS's started to look more and like websites where people could meet with there actual friends rather than meet new people.

In 2004 appeared Facebook, the original SNS was created in Harvard and was only accessible to people with Harvard logins. But soon Facebook opened its doors to other Universities and highschools untill Facebook finnally gave access to everyone. While alongside other SNS specialised themselves in certains areas or interests, or restricted there access to keep more privacy, like a Small World and Beautiful People.

Today Facebook dominates the Web pretty evidently and SNS's have become a very broad field of research, since everyone lifes in "stuck on the web". How much influence and effects will this new trend of communication have to our human lives, jobs relationships? that is the question.