Getting paid to blog

Over the holidays I spent two weeks interning at ITWeb in Johannesburg. On the first day I arrived I sat down at my desk, logged on to my computer and clicked straight away to Facebook. To my shock and horror ITWeb, like most other companies, had the site blocked. The whole office heard me wail out loud. So, just as I thought I would have to go cold turkey for two weeks, a kind ITWeb journo offered me an alternative. She introduced me to the site My Digital Life which she and all the other journos thought was the new crack.

My Digital Life is a social networking site that pays you to blog. My Digital Life works like any other social networking site, you sign up, create a profile and add friends to your list of contacts. Then all you have to do is start blogging away. Once you’ve posted a certain number of blog posts you attain author status. The My Digital Life community decides whether or not you worthy of earning some cash. Each time someone clicks on your blog you earn 10c and the cash becomes redeemable in blocks of R50. This is great news for struggling students to earn a bit of drinking money.

My Digital Life is not a bad idea for up and coming journalists. For those of us stuck in small towns like Grahamstown we have less access to getting our stories published than those who are in the cities. My Digital Life at least allows us to get our stuff out there. And because it’s a social network a like minded community can judge whether you write like, and excuse my language, shit or not. So instead of just putting up your thoughts, stories or whatever on a random blog that might never see any traffic (like this one) publishing on My Digital Life allows for feedback. And at least you know you’re bound to get some traffic as Amatomu lists (as of the 25 July 2007) My Digital Life as the 15th most popular blog site in South Africa.

Myspace, Facebook, Second Life agh please doll! Sooo last season!

It seems to me that virtual communities like Facebook , Myspace and Second Life are just fashion accessories that are this season’s must haves. Is there a point when these social utility networks become old and outdated and ‘so last week’?
For myself, last year was the year of Myspace. Only the cool kids had Myspace accounts. But the particularly ultra cool kids had personalised backgrounds and made friends with Zach Braff. Then this year the Facebook craze hit hard. And all of a sudden Myspace didn’t seem that new or cool anymore.

But how long will the Facebook craze go on for? Surely there has to be a point when the amount of friends you know reaches a maximum. And then what? When the site has nothing new to offer people will get bored and stop logging on. I know this happened to me with Myspace because it got to the point where only random people were asking to be my friend. I got bored with the site and stopped logging on.

The reason I started thinking of this topic is because I started thinking about the people who have left their jobs to start solely producing their income by selling virtual products on Second Life. Surely this is a major risk, because like Nelly Furtado says all good things must come to an end. The virtual world Second Life can’t go on forever because it is a fad, just like how the Friendster fad died. Fashion trends whether they are virtual or not follow the same life line. The trend emerges with the underground people who are in with the know, it hits the mainstream and explodes commercially and then as soon as the nine year olds start sporting the trend then you know it has died and has lost all sense of ‘coolness’.

Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but I don’t think that virtual communities are here to stay. Maybe the concept will stick around for sometime but I don’t think you’ll catch me logging in Facebook or Myspace in 3 years time. What do you think?

Interested in this argument? Check out this site that also talk more on the subject as well as here .

My second life is madness

Until a few hours ago I my understanding of the term second life is when you die and go to heaven (or hell if you a bad ass). Second Life is also however a 3-D virtual community where people create avatars and interact with other avatars, create homes, businesses, go to clubs, go shopping, have sex -basically have a normal real life in a virtual space. Basically its the human form of the tamagotchi and every socially inept computer nerd’s dream.

In Second Life you build your own avatars and pretty much anything else you want to like cars, clothes, disco balls, lamps etc. out of building tools. Because you control the IP rights to the things you build, you can sell them to other users with the Second Life currency of the Linden Dollar ($L). But here is where things get a little absurd. Once you have accumulated enough Linden Dollars you can exchange them into real life American Dollars, the exchange rate at the moment is 300 $L to 1 U.S $.

The initial basic membership is free on Second Life, however every additional alternative account is a once off $9.95. But having a basic membership doesn’t let your avatar (or virtual self) to have much of a lifestyle because it means you can’t own land and therefore your avatar (or virtual self) will be homeless. So by signing up for the premium account for $9.95 a month you can buy land and build on it.

So as a South African I would fork out R71.69 (at the current exchange rate) a month to have a premium virtual lifestyle. Plus I would have to spend even more to buy things that I would be too lazy or incapable of building myself. It just seems crazy to me that people are willing to spend hard earn cash on something that isn’t even real. Business savvy people have jumped on the Second Life bandwagon by creating real life businesses that specialise in selling virtual products for characters. It’s mind boggling that people have created a living selling nothing for something. For more of this topic check out Business Week's My Virtual Life.

For another intersting blog see My so-called Second Life
Also check out Second Life's creators blog

Identities and virtual communities

In my last post I touched a bit on identity in virtual communities. Well I found this interesting article online called Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. The article makes some interesting points, some of which I’d like to highlight.

In the real world, the body is a ‘compelling and convenient definition of identity’. This is true because we often base assumptions and generalisations on people on how they look. How we dress is most often an indication of our personality and who were are. However in virtual communities we don’t have the advantage or luxury of being able to judge people on their body, or physical appearance.

Identity is an important element in communication as ‘knowing the identity of the people you communicate with is essential for understanding and evaluating an interaction.” When I go on Facebook and I sent messages and interact with my ‘friends’ I assume that they have the same identity online as they do in the real world.

The thing about online identities is that people are able to create a multitude of personalities and identities. A recent example of this is my lecturer Jude and the editor of Grocott’s Mail created false identities on the Grocott’s website. They posted comments under articles using their false identities in order to generate more comments and discussion on the site.

I think what this article is trying to make people aware of is that identities in virtual communities are not fixed and that they are not necessarily a true representation of the person sitting behind the computer screen.

Dancing as Mussolini's Mistress

My first vlog!

Are virtual communites really the same as real life communites?

In the reading by Nathan Vivian and Fay Sudweeks called Social networks in Transnational and Virtual Communities they state that virtual communities are like any other real communities. They also say that people bring the same values to virtual communities as they do in real life communities. I think that it is a large generalisation and assumption that all people carry the same values to both types of communities. Virtual communities like Facebook do allow people to interact in a virtual landscape as they would in real life. Although in my opinion virtual communities allow people to create idealised versions of themselves. Virtual communities have people set up profiles about themselves, therefore have power and control over how they are seen and perceived as on their profile. Members of virtual communities often have profile pictures of themselves and written "about me" sections, this is so that other members can see what you look like and learn more about your personalities and likes. However this means that members have the power and control over how they are seen and perceived. Members have the power to decide what pictures of them of used and what exactly is going to be written to describe them. I often look at the profile pictures on Facebook and try read into what that person is trying to say about themselves, and how they want others to read them through the image. I feel that people try to embellish themselves in virtual communities; they create idealised versions of themselves. Often I will find people with model posed profile pictures as if to prove to the world that they are beautiful, or I will find people doing weird poses or drinking alcohol, as if to try show themselves as "weird, crazy, totally out there" types. Meantime half these people are just average Joes who are not anything special to look at nor are they crazy, witty, funny or whatever else they trying desperately become. So I don’t think that virtual communities and real life communities are exactly the same, because in virtual communities you have more power in the way that you want people to perceive you.

With regards to bringing the same values, I also don’t fully agree. The persona’s and identities that people adopt in the internet and virtual communities are not necessarily the same as real life. The amount of porn on the internet shows that people are into voyeurism, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that these are the same people are going to try watch their mates having shag. Let's be honest here, we've all seen porn on the internet, I have. But I certainly wouldn’t go into say Adult World and go sit in the viewing booth! This may not be a perfect example of the point I’m trying to make, and I will try think of better examples in coming posts.

Otherwise I'm, going to stick to my guns about people using the internet to create hyper-realities about themselves especially in the realms of virtual communities.

I had to rush this post...

Over the next while I am going to be discussing social media, virtual communities and networks in my blog. Basically I want to look at sites like Youtube, facebook and myspace and how people use these sites to create virtual communities.

At the moment the facebook craze has hit Rhodes University hard. I for one am completely addicted to the site. Majority of the people I network with on facebook I see in person nearly everyday or have the opportunity to see them everyday, yet most of the time I’d rather communicate with them over facebook than in real life. This is is disturbing when I actually think about. This is one aspect that I would like to focus on, are people more comfortable in communicating virtually than in real life? Is this is first step towards living in virtual reality?

I think that virtual communities and networks allow people to feel that they belong to something, a special group. It is part of human nature to feel the need to belong to something, to know where one fits in the greater scheme of things. Virtual communities play into this idea and is something I would like to explore.

I am unsure where exactly my research into the topic is going to take me, but I am hoping to find some social and maybe even psychological impacts that virtual communities and networks have on users.