IRAN ON TWITTER

Micro-blogging a Revolution

For those of you who don’t regularly tweet their everyday lives. It may surprise you that the network, Twitter, where your friends frequently tell you of their trips to the grocery store, is now one of the greatest sources of communication in Iran to send messages quickly to many people. The conflict involving the election has spun out of hand to the point of violent clashes between riot police and protesters are resulting in many people being injured or killed. Iran, a country that is infamous for it’s censorship of the internet has been cutting phone lines as well as filtering the internet of the whole country, They have attempted to continue their censorship throughout the current Iranian conflict, but people continue to find ways onto the internet and access twitter to communicate.

LaraABCnews tweets, “source: they are beating people severely. helicopters all over the city finding protesters & telling guards so they go attack #iranelection.” #iranelection is an identifying tag that lets anyone looking for any information on the conflict search for it. The technique of using the number symbol in from of an important word is common among twitter users in order to group together tweets on the same subject.

Via @dougjohnston006 ”RT from Iran:Secret Service destroying archives, accounting papers showing money sent to outside of Iran (4 hrs ago) #iranelection TRU?” This is a tweet from a twitter.com user who frequently writes specific tweets of information about how to not get caught using the internet in Iran, and on other issues deep within the conflict. I was able to find this, not hugely followed twitter account specifically from the search engines used to help link people up with information that they want on twitter. This is a prime example of how important this site can be to people in many different ways.

Twitter is used for more than just communication in Iran. People can use twitter to direct people to other information and movements throughout the internet. Via @Twitteriran”Washington Times claims Obama sent letter to Khamenei before the election http://bit.ly/S6iGN #Iranelection.” This tweet by user “twitteriran” shows a common method of tweeting links to other information on the net.

There are webiste completly devoted to following this conflict within twitter. One such site is cnnfail.com This site was created after many people felt that CNN had failed to do its job on covering the conflict. This resulted in Twitterers creating another grouping of tweets under #cnnfail. Fail is often used as word to signify complaints on a company.

With this conflict, twitter has found a niche in online communication that other, “social networking” websites have failed to do. Twitter has become a tool for a movement. The internet has become enough of a network of ordinary people for the whole world to easily watch a revolution going on through the eyes of other ordinary people. Many new inventions like this often find uses other than their original intentions.

BLOG 2Tim O’Reilly: “Obscurity is a far greater threat...than Piracy"

According to Tim O’Reilly, in 2002, there are many things that publishers have to fear, but piracy is not one of them. Piracy, he says, is more like promotion and often leads to readers purchasing more material, as well turning consumers on to more obscure interests in music, film, and literature. Even Tim O’Reilly himself, an author and publisher, has found this true when purchasing music that he otherwise would not have known. He found he new interests when his daughter had stumbled across music he liked when she was downloading illegally. I agree with this view as well as others of his, which state that piracy is a “progressive taxation.” This means that as artists become more well known and wealthy, their piracy rates may go up, but the piracy itself is almost a form of free marketing leading to more consumer interest in whatever art form it may be.

On TorrentFreak.com, blogger “Smaran”,writes about Paulo Coelho, Author of “The Alchemist.” “Smaran” talks about how Coelho created his own site leading to a boost in the sales of his own novels. By letting people download, and preview the books, he has become wore well known by having more readers leading to more direct word of mouth buzz. This directly proves O’Reilly’s belief in than piracy can be a way to invite more people to view whatever is being pirated.

Mr O’Reilly also finds that in many situations consumers in his industry are some of the main enforcers of anti-piracy. He receives multiple emails a day reporting people pirating on file sharing networks but truly believes that a single stolen copy in a retail environment can cause more issues. What might happen from single stolen copy may be a retailer not ordering more copies of a book due to their systems still showing stock. This could be a single ghost book in their store that was actually stolen at one point.

I personally have seen this happen in the retail environment. Stealing is a far larger problem in most retail environments than most people realize and can lead to many inventory issues including being under-stocked, or not stocked at all with certain products.

The last points made by O’Reilly state that eventually most “free” services are replaced by better, pay services, and that there are many new ways to display the products and information we have on the internet. The more ways that we give out information and products at a fair price, the more choices people can make about what is best for them. His examples or better non pay services include: paying for cable television services when there are free channels over the air, or how peer-to-peer UUCP internet can be obtained for free instead of over ISP networks.

Most people would have a hard time disagreeing with these last two points in the fact that there are very few people who even know how to get free peer-to-peer networks over the phone lines, and almost as few people who still use antennas for their televisions.

Seth Weintraub, who writes for computerworld.com, agrees that if companies are using fair prices,then people will pay for the music they have available on the web. He makes a point that the largest retailer for music right now, iTunes, is actually charging more than other online retailers like Amazon for the same music. He believes that if people dont like the pricing then they will either walk away and not buy it, or steal the music they want.

I agree with Tim O’Reilly when he says that obscurity is worse than the piracy that is happening right now. There are so many ways to effectively reach people and piracy itself has proved to be one of them. However, if a retailer wants to sell things electronically, it can also be agreed that people are far more likely to spend money when they think the prices are reasonable.

Works Cited

O’Reilly, Tim. “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution.” openp2p.com. 12/11/2002, 6/17/2009. <http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/3015

Smaran, “Alchemist Austhor Pirates HIs Own Books.” torentfreak.com. 1/24/2008, 6/17/2009. http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124)_

Weintraub, Seth. “Is all fair in Apple’s iTunes $1.29 variable pricing?” blogs.computerworld.com. 4/7/2009. 6/17/2009. <(http://blogs.computerworld.com/itunes_amazon_apple_variable_pricing_store_99_cents)

Facebook is bad for you

James Clarke

Sean Fitzroy

CSI 110

June 10, 2009

Facebook

Facebook, as far as everyone is concerned is currently the ultimate online personal networking application. I use it, everyone I know uses it, and it is considered odd if you don't. My mother's friends talk about it at dinner parties, and joke how they have contacted their good old, long lost friends. I know many people, including myself who use it for personal use as well as promotions use for either a business, or a band or something else. I don't know how many people will admit this, but every-time I get on Facebook, I cringe with hatred. There is something about impersonal communication that is so useful yet so impersonal that having enough free time to sit in front of a computer, looking up your friend's pictures from their beach trip seems unhealthy. There are multiple interesting issues and all around problems with using this extremely popular service, which can result in a total addiction to the service, or for me, force you to despise it.

If you are to type ,”Facebook disorders,” into google, you can find multiple articles written about FAD, or, Facebook Addiction disorder. Last year, Idris Mootee wrote about Facebook in a blog about internet addiction. Her article, while mostly satirical, had some very interesting comments written at the bottom. A girl who commented on this specific blog, posted about her addiction to Facebook openly. She even wrote about creating a Facebook group about being addicted to Facebook. The purpose of the group she says is to try to focus on other things in their life other than Facebook. This to me seems crazy to me on many levels.

Addiction to the internet is not something that is undocumented. Dr. Dannon, a doctor well known worldwide for his work in gambling and addiction has studied addictions to the internet believes that we need to look at it differently. Many proffesionals look at the issue as a type of obsesive compulsive disorder.

According to Dr. Dannon these addictions are just like anyones addiction, “to coffee, exercise, or talking on their cell phone. As times change, so do our addictions.”

Something crazy to me is that I have found myself excited when someone who I haven't spoken to in a while, comments on a photo or posts something on my Facebook “wall.” It would seem that the excitement comes from the thought of a friend thinking about me. It would also seem that they were by themselves at one point on their computer looking at pictures of me. This creeps me out a little bit and may be where the term “Facebook-creeper” came from. I have encountered this term in multiple situations. One situation was when a girl who I was interested in at the time commented on a picture of mine on Facebook. She said that she hoped I didn't think she was a Facebook-creeper. Well, obviously she seemed like one to me, but what other point does Facebook exist for. Creeping on some band, some fans, some friend, an ex-friend, a future girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend, a cheating girlfriend, these are the ultimate purpose of this application. It would seem to me that an addiction to Facebook is different from any other addiction on the internet. FAD, in my eyes, an addiction to creeping or stalking.

If I must use it there are a few things that I wish could be changed. I feel that there are a few features that I ultimately have to go to another web application to find. I greatly dislike how there is no music streaming on Facebook. They promote band pages and groups but to network and find music and then listen to it, you must leave Facebook and either go to Purevolume.com or venture over to the good old myspace.com. I feel that that is the only reason I still, as well others, use myspace. Myspace.com is full of fake accounts and spam that seems to only want to steal my information. Facebook, I am sure has its fair share of malware but seems to be less malicious. I also wish facebook looked better. Its hard to figure out what is going on on all the different pages and is often way to cluttered. The simpler everything looks, in my opinion, the better.

While it may seem that Facebook is the end-all and best social networking application on the internet, I still feel there is room for competition and growth. There are problems with the usability, along with the addictions to Facebook as well. I predict that while the user experience will get “better,” more and more people will find themselves attached to the site along with others on the internet and our society will find addiction to the web more and more of a problem.

Work Cited

Futurelab Blog. May 31, 2008. “Are you suffering from Facebook addiction disorder?” By Idris Mootee. Accessed June 10, 2008

Blog.futurelab.net/2008/05/are_you_suffering_from_faceboo.html

Psych Central. August 20,2007. “Internet Obsession or Addiction.” By Rick Nauert

Accessed June 10, 2008

http://psychcentral.com/news/2007/08/18/internet-obsession-or-addiction/1152.html

Blogs

This is a blog that will be used when I see fit.....most likely only when I have to write something for class and never else. I think and talk to fast to take the time to write/type it for others to read.

-chillin