Task 1b- Professional communication technologies.

I thought I should crack on with the tasks, so my Saturday evening consists of reader 1, my I-pad and some maltesers:)

Before I read reader 1 I went through the task objective in the module handbook and tried to understand the main outline of this task. I had to read it a further two times to get a slight understanding of the objectives. I have been reading my fellow students blogs and picking up on some useful tips they have carried out whilst blogging. I decided to take the advice of one fellow student to explore and research other BAPP students blogs and their take on the tasks. After looking at some really good pieces of writing I started to gain more of and understanding about the task at hand. I then braced myself, and sat to read through the reader 1.


Personal experience with Web 2.0
Without realising it and after seeing what web 2.0 was I have been using it for a number of years now. Those of you in my generation should remember the good old Bebo social networking site. I used to be fixed on this, uploading photos, comments, a description about yourself, your likes dislikes, sharing funny videos etc. This was my first experience with social networking, it took no time at all to understand the technology of this site, anyone could use it for a number of different reasons, to publicise a business, to expand within contacts, to chat to friends, upload pictures, anything you wanted. It gave people the chance to reach out and express themselves, it was able create business opportunities for entrepreneurs and keep hold of contact with friends and families. However it started to fade out of fashion for me and my friends and everyone was talking about Facebook, a new social networking site, more sophisticated and popular. Within a few minutes I set up a profile with a picture, description and I went live. There's me expecting something new and out of this world but, I couldn't find any differences. The sharing of photos was still possibly, the commenting to each other, businesses were still able to set up pages and network, the concept and idea was the same, just a different format. 

Nowadays facebook has seemed to take over the world, the site has evolved into this enterprise where people want to be a part of, social networking is growing so faster day after day. After reading 'reader1' (a few times) I have gained knowledge and understanding of this every growing social networking world, and didn't even realise that I'm a Web 2.0 fan!


Web 2.0-Blogging
There are so many different areas of web 2.0, social networking, photo streams, youtube, Blogs, wiki. So many routes to use for individual and groups of people. Tim O'Reilly explains in more detail about Blogs. I found this part of web 2.0 very interesting as blogging is rather new to me and is a fantastic opportunity for so many people-

'One of the most highly touted features of the Web 2.0 era is the rise of blogging. Personal home pages have been around since the early days of the web, and the personal diary and daily opinion column around much longer than that.' - O’Reilly, T., 2006, What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228 [Last accessed 16/7/12]. 


O'Reilly goes on to explain one of the most significant software to making blogging such a phenomenon is RSS. -

'RSS allows someone to link not just to a page, but to subscribe to it, with notification every time that page changes.'-  O’Reilly, T., 2006, What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228 [Last accessed 16/7/12]. 

I had no idea it was possible to subscribe to blog, when you hear of subscribing you think of newsletters, magazine or papers through the post not blogs. You can imagine the success this has for small business looking for a breakthrough, to build up their customers and create a base to climb from. 



Ever growing web 2.0
We can see how fast and rapid the social networking sites are progressing, everyone is blogging, tweeting, facbooking, instagramming, flickering or whatever you call it. It's a higher port of communication that has taken over our lives. Ever advert I see whether its to for pringles, or ford, or iceland there is always a hashtag or a site to follow, or a page to like, it's taken over the world. The average statistics I researched just show you how much of a craze web 2.0 has become-


'1.15 billion monthly active users as of June 2013' Source- https://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts

'Total number of active registered Twitter users, 554,750,000'- source- http://www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics/

'150 Million monthly Instagram users' Source http://instagram.com/press/