In this blog, I’ll be journaling my way through my Web 2.0 6-week summer class. I’ll be posting my thoughts about the readings and my reflections about my experiences in the Web 2.0 world. In some ways, I feel like I’m a bit behind the times. There are new buzzwords that haven’t quite become part of my lexicon, like “mash-ups.”
So, here’s a bit of my background in this new world.
My first job out of college was working as a Web designer and then a technical writer. I’m all about Web 1.0 technologies and paper. Moving into the Web 2.0 world has been a slow journey, one that I’m a bit unsure of at times.
I have two blogs, although I haven’t written in my first blog in quite some time. It’s an anonymous blog, because I’m very cautious about my privacy out in the Internet world. It was mostly about my life as a single 30-something professional who was trying to figure out how to maneuveur through the world of online dating and applying for grad school. I started keeping a mommy blog a few months ago, after being inspired by my husband who kept a daddy blog throughout my pregnancy. The mommy blog is just a centralized place where friends and family can go to see pictures of the baby and read up on how she is doing.
I have a Shutterfly account, which is protected by a password (can you tell I’m paranoid about weirdos out there), of pictures of my daughter. It took me a long time to find the “right” kind of a site to upload various pictures and stories. I considered using Flickr or Picasa, but the interfaces weren’t exactly what I was looking for in an online picture storage site. Oh…I left out that I have a background in human factors/usability engineering as well, so usability is VERY key to me.
I have a Facebook account, which I’ve had for quite sometime now. The majority of my “friends” are from my high school. There were 551 people in my graduating class and a little more than half are on Facebook. Honestly, I didn’t talk to many of my these people when I was back in high school and really don’t care what they are doing now. However, Facebook has put me back in touch with a lot of people. I had a serious falling out with one girl about a week before her wedding (I was her maid of honour and she decided to un-invite me from her wedding). Facebook has reconnected us, which I’m happy about. I find that Facebook is also an easy way to collect and disseminate information. For example, my husband, daughter, dog, and I just went to the beach for the weekend. We didn’t really go with a plan (or a hotel) in mind. So, I posted the question about where to stay or what to see/do on Facebook and several people responded. It definitely comes in handy sometimes.
I just signed up for a Twitter account about a week ago. I kept hearing about people “tweeting” and never really understood what it meant. I still don’t understand the purpose of it. Frankly, I don’t have a lot of time to post everything that I’m doing all the time. I find Facebook to offer a lot more features than Twitter does, so I’ll stick to that.
On the professional side of my life, I was really introduced to Web 2.0 technologies last year when I worked on a project about portals for Cisco. I didn’t even know what “Web 2.0″ meant, so I had to go do some research! 
Little did I know, I had already been using a lot of the technologies associated with it.
The biggest issues about Web 2.0 technologies on a personal side are: Privacy (obviously, which is why I had an anonymous blog and now a password on my Shutterfly site) and WHO CARES?!
I’m going to address privacy in a separate entry, because I think it’s a big deal and needs its own post.
WHO CARES? I see friends updating their status messages all the time about the most random stuff. Do I need to know that you’re showering now? No. Somehow we’ve moved into this “always available” notion of life. Let me call it “On Demand.” (Thanks to the 2 1/2 years I spent at Big Blue for that one.) I’m not sure when social boundaries went out the window. I don’t need to know every detail about people’s lives. This is probably why I don’t get the point of Twitter.
I’m sure I’ll have more to add on this topic later. For now, I think I need to put this one to rest.