I'd explored instant messaging and blogging so where did my Internet expedition take me next? Forums...well, one forum anyway.
Offline life sort of set me off down this avenue as I got engaged and began planning for my two wedding days. Looking back it is obvious that this was probably the point at which I really began to reap the value of communicating on the Internet rather than just using it for the sake of using
it.
Wedding magazines are incredibly pricey and shows are sometimes hard to get to and don't necessarily cater for those looking to stray from the traditional path. And I didn't have any real life friends to ask for advice or recommendations being among the first of my circle of friends to tie the knot.So, online I went.
I tried all the (now) well established websites from offline wedding brands. Then I found what was to be my online home for the best part of four years (two and a half wedding planning then moving to the baby talk board).
At the time I was slightly in awe of the way you could get an answer to any question at all from the collective knowledge available through the forum. Now of course that seems almost run of the mill given the way social media is evolving but for my first experience of it there was a danger of being overwhelmed.
I shared many wedding days through that board as people revealed their plans, counted down to their big day and then posted their experience and top tips for future brides.It was easy to get recommendations and many smaller, independent retailers were members giving a greater depth to the knowledge available.
How these suppliers were allowed to use the boards led to member debate and self-policing when rules were broken.
The bad side of boards were here also. I loved using the boards and the people I spoke to regularly on there but never really stopped feeling like the new girl in class. There were definite cliques on each of the boards which sometimes verged on snobbery or rudeness.
Most of the time if you weren't in the clique or you were a newer member you just got fewer replies to your threads.
Maybe some of this was down to the sheer volume of posts going through the boards. Possibly some of it down to repetition within those threads.Possibly some of it was just pure flaming.
It was a definite community though with some boards being tidal (as weddings passed people tailed off, sometimes to reappear on the off topic or baby boards) others being a more stable forum.
And the communities supported each other...when women were scared or confused on the baby boards there were people there to offer comfort and try to advise (this could have been a real benefit in situations where a woman hadn't revealed a pregnancy in her real world).
When the 7/7 London bombings happened the off topic community set up an informal and impromptu check in for known London members. They also supported each other in the days after posting about why they thought London was great and shouldn't be abandoned because of what had happened. A milder but never-the-less modern version of Blitz-spirit.
Much of the etiquette being bandied about today for newer platforms stood back then especially the 'I'll scratch your back, if you scratch mine' way of community building. If you were an active poster who took time to share and post quality replies you were more likely to get more / higher quality / faster replies when you posted a query.
And the things people wanted to communicate about on the off topic boards haven't vastly changed either...what they're wearing, where they've been, what they're eating. All still popping up consistently and frequently on today's social media landscape.
I learnt a lot even from just lurking on those boards (I can name the designer of a dress at twenty paces and I know more about the signs from your body that baby-making is go than I care to list). I also had a lot of good conversations and genuinely cared about what happened to some of the people I shared offline life journeys with through that forum.
But, like many, I drifted away on the tide. I returned to work after having my son and my daily visits turned to weekly turned to ad hoc. Now (just two year's after my son's birth) I can't even recall which email address I used to register in order to go back and visit those boards.
Just like ICQ and Open Diary before, it seems that the boards of Hitched had served their purpose in my life and I'd once again hit the road in search of a new online space.
Showing posts with label social psychological theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social psychological theory. Show all posts
Monday, 16 March 2009
Friday, 6 March 2009
Coming together
I'm surprised and pleased by how this week has gone. Especially givent he sense of dread I felt on Monday with Batter Connected 2009 out and a trip to the dentist scheduled.
But we managed to raise ourselves a little in BC09 and the dental work has been put off for another time. Black Monday turned out to be merely a pale grey.
And the sun shone through the rest of the week with the green light being given to several ideas / projects the team had been putting forward for a while.
A happy ending to the week as @Derbyshirecc was launched into the Twittersphere as our first social media endeavour. Next week move two is on the cards and even though these are baby steps they feel like they have been so long coming it's hard not to feel elated!
I'm almost allowing myself to believe that we're turning a corner and all the stuff that was holding us back last year may get resolved.
Add to that the smugness I am still feeling over a marvellous result on my ' Social Psychological Theory in Computer-Mediated Communication' piece and yes, I think this week can be chalked up as a good one.
But we managed to raise ourselves a little in BC09 and the dental work has been put off for another time. Black Monday turned out to be merely a pale grey.
And the sun shone through the rest of the week with the green light being given to several ideas / projects the team had been putting forward for a while.
A happy ending to the week as @Derbyshirecc was launched into the Twittersphere as our first social media endeavour. Next week move two is on the cards and even though these are baby steps they feel like they have been so long coming it's hard not to feel elated!
I'm almost allowing myself to believe that we're turning a corner and all the stuff that was holding us back last year may get resolved.
Add to that the smugness I am still feeling over a marvellous result on my ' Social Psychological Theory in Computer-Mediated Communication' piece and yes, I think this week can be chalked up as a good one.
Monday, 16 February 2009
History: Part two: Or private thoughts in public spaces.
As I left university and entered the workplace in my first ‘proper’ job (Internet journalist) I moved my offline diary-keeping into the online space. I was an active member of Open Diary (OD) from the start of 1999 until sometime in 2001, just before they launched the paid-for version.
I don’t recall what initially spurred me to start publishing my thoughts online (although, clearly, it still appeals!), perhaps the standard attraction of vanity publishing, perhaps because I was online so much of the time it seemed easier to keep writing from the desktop than go back to pen and paper.
It was quite an eventful time in my life so perhaps I just thought I had lots to say and liked having a record I could easily flip back through as I completed university and left full-time education, entered the workplace, moved back to my hometown and transformed a friendship into a relationship (with my now husband).
Whatever made me start with OD it was the community that kept me coming back. I was soon in a circle of seemingly like-minded diarists and we would regularly (in some cases more like religiously) read and comment on each other’s entries. For me it was the best of both worlds – a place to pour out private thoughts, feelings and worries while also getting feedback from people who wouldn't know me in real life. My feelings and experiences were out there in public and yet still remained intensly private.
I valued those comments from diarists I respected as much, sometimes more, than my real life peers. Some of their words still stay with me although I have no complete record of my online entries. Certainly when events in my life were hard to talk about with those who knew me in real life I was able to honestly and openly catalogue them online and receive support from those who read me – it gave me access to people who had experienced what I had (or something similar) when offline there was no such person around.
I know over the time I was with OD I made more than 100 entries and that my usage was tailing off by the time they announced it would split into two sister sites – one paid for and one not. Many of my ‘circle’ went with the paid for service but I lost my diary before I made a decision.
Losing that diary marked the start of a quieter period for me in online life as I moved to my first flat and had no Internet connection. I was spending all of my working day online and exploring possibilities for the space in my everyday job so for a while I didn’t feel I was losing anything by not using the Internet in my personal life.
The value I got from being part of an online community stayed with me though. Not only did it give me the skills I needed for my next job (online community coordinator) but it was there at the back of my mind when once again I found myself in a different position to my real-life peers (more of that in part three).
It’s interesting as well that of the two people from my circle who have stuck in my memory for their unfailing advice and support back on OD a Google search shows that one of them is still with OD (and still looks to be on a similar life path to me) and the other one has an ongoing blog / personal website. We’re all still out in the online space just not tethered together under one banner anymore. I wonder if I should give them a wave?
I don’t recall what initially spurred me to start publishing my thoughts online (although, clearly, it still appeals!), perhaps the standard attraction of vanity publishing, perhaps because I was online so much of the time it seemed easier to keep writing from the desktop than go back to pen and paper.
It was quite an eventful time in my life so perhaps I just thought I had lots to say and liked having a record I could easily flip back through as I completed university and left full-time education, entered the workplace, moved back to my hometown and transformed a friendship into a relationship (with my now husband).
Whatever made me start with OD it was the community that kept me coming back. I was soon in a circle of seemingly like-minded diarists and we would regularly (in some cases more like religiously) read and comment on each other’s entries. For me it was the best of both worlds – a place to pour out private thoughts, feelings and worries while also getting feedback from people who wouldn't know me in real life. My feelings and experiences were out there in public and yet still remained intensly private.
I valued those comments from diarists I respected as much, sometimes more, than my real life peers. Some of their words still stay with me although I have no complete record of my online entries. Certainly when events in my life were hard to talk about with those who knew me in real life I was able to honestly and openly catalogue them online and receive support from those who read me – it gave me access to people who had experienced what I had (or something similar) when offline there was no such person around.
I know over the time I was with OD I made more than 100 entries and that my usage was tailing off by the time they announced it would split into two sister sites – one paid for and one not. Many of my ‘circle’ went with the paid for service but I lost my diary before I made a decision.
Losing that diary marked the start of a quieter period for me in online life as I moved to my first flat and had no Internet connection. I was spending all of my working day online and exploring possibilities for the space in my everyday job so for a while I didn’t feel I was losing anything by not using the Internet in my personal life.
The value I got from being part of an online community stayed with me though. Not only did it give me the skills I needed for my next job (online community coordinator) but it was there at the back of my mind when once again I found myself in a different position to my real-life peers (more of that in part three).
It’s interesting as well that of the two people from my circle who have stuck in my memory for their unfailing advice and support back on OD a Google search shows that one of them is still with OD (and still looks to be on a similar life path to me) and the other one has an ongoing blog / personal website. We’re all still out in the online space just not tethered together under one banner anymore. I wonder if I should give them a wave?
Friday, 13 February 2009
History: Part One
‘eh-oh’ ‘eh-oh’
I hear this noise and instantly smile at the thought of a new message from an ICQ buddy while the petals of a daisy rotate on my mind’s monitor.
One of the first internet-wide instant messaging systems (see Wikipedia for more) ICQ was probably my first real experience on the internet. Or, at least, the first one I remember. And so, I guess, I could say that not only was it the first hook but what set me on this path to the online communications world I inhabit now.
So…when did it all begin for me??? I would guess sometime around mid-1997 or toward 1998. And who introduced me? Well, my then boyfriend of course. He was already using ICQ and playing with MP3 downloads and stuff...he got me interested and then enthused about what lay out there in the online space.
I remember me taking a while to get it and not really seeing the point. And then I found a few people all over the world with similar interests to me. At first the novelty and then the sheer amazement of being able to have a pretty much real-time conversation with someone on the other side of the world that I didn’t even know existed before was overwhelming for a while.
I don’t think it took very long for it (or rather the online me, IndiaBlue) to be a part of everyday 'real' life though. Certainly from September 1999 it was everyday as I had my own computer and own dial-up internet connection (clickety-click, hummmmmm, buzz, bing, bing, click) and from my dank uni room I explored other bits of the internet while ICQ buddies chatted with me.
I explored the possibilities of ICQ as well. The idea of being anonymous and revealing only parts of your identity was there and had a novelty value but no real worth in developing conversations and online relationships (and I’m not talking romantically). It was interesting though to play in such a place and develop my online needs from what I discovered about myself and the medium.
On reflection, I am much more excited and satisfied with the social media I use now as a means of enhancing existing relationships by complimenting other channels of communication than as a way of being someone else with someone you don’t know.
There are few people I remember from the ICQ-era although I do recall having several intense but ultimately short-lived friendships strike up across the messages. There are a couple though with whom ICQ was just the introduction to a friendship which has spread and survived other social media and even crossed over to become face-to-face friendships on occasion.
I don’t even know what ICQ looks like now…I know it still exists. Does it do only what it did back them (instant message and a pretty crude – but fun – real-time chat where you could watch people try and delete something as they went along)? I doubt it. I would guess it must have evolved to survive.
As time went on I followed buddies onto other systems while keeping true to ICQ. I sampled AOL chat with the guy from BJ and the Bear (now there’s a concept I can’t get enough of) and used Messenger as well, which now vies with Skype as my IM of choice.
But by the tail-end of 2000 I was moving away from ICQ toward the raggedy edge of the Blogosphere. And perhaps it says something about the online me that I don’t feel the curiosity to go back to ICQ and see what has become of it but would rather look back on it fondly as the beginning of things…
(Note to self: there are a few ideas I would like to look at further here around the difference between old style / new style social media.)
I hear this noise and instantly smile at the thought of a new message from an ICQ buddy while the petals of a daisy rotate on my mind’s monitor.
One of the first internet-wide instant messaging systems (see Wikipedia for more) ICQ was probably my first real experience on the internet. Or, at least, the first one I remember. And so, I guess, I could say that not only was it the first hook but what set me on this path to the online communications world I inhabit now.
So…when did it all begin for me??? I would guess sometime around mid-1997 or toward 1998. And who introduced me? Well, my then boyfriend of course. He was already using ICQ and playing with MP3 downloads and stuff...he got me interested and then enthused about what lay out there in the online space.
I remember me taking a while to get it and not really seeing the point. And then I found a few people all over the world with similar interests to me. At first the novelty and then the sheer amazement of being able to have a pretty much real-time conversation with someone on the other side of the world that I didn’t even know existed before was overwhelming for a while.
I don’t think it took very long for it (or rather the online me, IndiaBlue) to be a part of everyday 'real' life though. Certainly from September 1999 it was everyday as I had my own computer and own dial-up internet connection (clickety-click, hummmmmm, buzz, bing, bing, click) and from my dank uni room I explored other bits of the internet while ICQ buddies chatted with me.
I explored the possibilities of ICQ as well. The idea of being anonymous and revealing only parts of your identity was there and had a novelty value but no real worth in developing conversations and online relationships (and I’m not talking romantically). It was interesting though to play in such a place and develop my online needs from what I discovered about myself and the medium.
On reflection, I am much more excited and satisfied with the social media I use now as a means of enhancing existing relationships by complimenting other channels of communication than as a way of being someone else with someone you don’t know.
There are few people I remember from the ICQ-era although I do recall having several intense but ultimately short-lived friendships strike up across the messages. There are a couple though with whom ICQ was just the introduction to a friendship which has spread and survived other social media and even crossed over to become face-to-face friendships on occasion.
I don’t even know what ICQ looks like now…I know it still exists. Does it do only what it did back them (instant message and a pretty crude – but fun – real-time chat where you could watch people try and delete something as they went along)? I doubt it. I would guess it must have evolved to survive.
As time went on I followed buddies onto other systems while keeping true to ICQ. I sampled AOL chat with the guy from BJ and the Bear (now there’s a concept I can’t get enough of) and used Messenger as well, which now vies with Skype as my IM of choice.
But by the tail-end of 2000 I was moving away from ICQ toward the raggedy edge of the Blogosphere. And perhaps it says something about the online me that I don’t feel the curiosity to go back to ICQ and see what has become of it but would rather look back on it fondly as the beginning of things…
(Note to self: there are a few ideas I would like to look at further here around the difference between old style / new style social media.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
