Chris Loft - mapping my social networks
As a media research project for uni, I am trying to understand my own presence on the internet and to map this presence into some visual and graphic format.
I am going to try and retrace my steps and trace my internet network from its first, faltering stages to the disorganised state that it is in today - and try to make some sense out of it all. Once I have assembled a map of internet services that I have used and a historical context of their use and discovery, I propose to take out my own data and replace it with some generic data, and then try to quantify this new content, by measuring traffic flow, interaction, number and locations of friends, and other demographic data.
This will entail mapping my outward online resence, particularly on video-sharing and social networks - but this will also be an attempt to graphically represent links between friends, subscribers, listeners and fans that I encounter on these networks.
In the beginning . . .
First I had one computer. Then another; and then one more. For many years I had about six computers running on a network, mainly Macs, which were used for desktop publishing and design. In the past few years I have been embracing a much smaller, Mac and PC network, connected through a slow ethernet connection.
This is my network, my intranet - not as yet connected to the internet. I have a number of peripherals and accessories, such as some printers, an audio/MIDI devices and MIDI keyboards; as well as USB connections to MP3 players, mobile phones and memory sticks. After being away from the internet for several years, I finally obtained a broadband connection about two years ago. [Find out date of our first emails]:
What is your internet presence?
My first contact with the net was through my internet service provider (ISP) - this allowed me to connect to the internet and also provided a very small amount of space that I could use for a home page. One of my first actions was to sign up for an email account with Google, and to sign up to some of Google's other internet services.
One solitary computer - a small intranet - and connection to the internet through an ISP
Our first domains . . .
My prime reason to get onto the net was to promote music and video clips that I produce on behalf of the Radio Curly Collective, a diverse bunch of artists and musicians from the northern suburbs of Adelaide, sunny South Australia. We registered our first domain radiocurly.com in August 2006 and found some 'really cheap' hosting and began uploading mp3 files and video clips. [check this date]
After a few months our site was hacked by some nasty hackers and radiocurly.com disappeared from sight. We quickly arranged a new hosting package and put up another site, chrisloft.com and moved radiocurly there - now we had two domains and a growing bunch of web pages. We added a WordPress blog, and a Blogger (Google) blog. We began to create some MySpace pages for some of our artists and uploaded some videos to YouTube. They were lost amongst the hundreds of thousdands of clips uploaded to YouTube each day.
Now we have two domains (radiocurly.com and chrisloft.com) as well as a web page through our ISP. Additionally we have a video channel at YouTube (YT) a half-dozen MySpace (MS) pages and a blog at WordPress (WP). We have signed up for a PayPal account (PP) in order to send and receive funds and signed up for some Google (G) services; particularly GMail, Analytics, Adsense, iGoogle, Blogger. Similarly we have signed up for some of the Yahoo services (Y) including Geocities.
Free web sites and sub.domains
After losing our first website we became a little concerned about keeping all of our data in only one place. We investigated 'free' web hosting services and began to construct a network of web sites on hosted sub.domains -
A great number of services can be found on the internet for 'free' - however 'free' often comes at a price. Different hosting sites offered different plans with a range of services, and limitations.
In no time at all we had signed up to about 100 different hosting plans. Some were much better than others, some were terrible; we learnt a lot about designing, writing and publishing web pages using html and css code. We were also introduced to an intimidating swathe of other programing languages and formats such as shtml, javascript, XLM, xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx.
We signed up for free hosting sites at: (Click here for a link or get code to put this into an iFrame)
We seemed to be getting further and further away from our prime directive - to make music and video clips - but slowly we were establishing a tiny presence on the internet. We created some more MySpace pages for some of our artists and concentrated on putting some content into the new sites that we had published.
Soon, as well as our own domains and other pages, we had a network of 'free' sub.domains spread throughout the internet.
More web services
Around this time we were coming into contact with more and more web sites offering a diverse range of services, for activities. This is just a small selection of some of the services that are available; most of these are free, some offer premium services.
What do we do on the internet?
Initially, our first activities on the internet were looking at web pages: surfing, browsing, googling, researching and looking at some of the content available. Gradually our activities developed from browsing and searching to bookmarking (favouriting), linking, commenting, sharing, recommending, aggregating, blogging, publishing and eventually to lifestreaming.
There is a proliferation of web sites offering a very broad selection of resources that can enrich your interaction on the internet: social networking sites, photo-sharing, video-sharing and music-sharing sites as well as sites for blogging, micro-blogging, bookmarking, sharing, recommending, voting, commenting, aggregating, tracking, analysing, tagging, geotagging . . . and much more.
In fact, there are so many sites it is barely possible to keep up with them all; let alone work out what does what, and why they do whatever it is that they do. And whether you need it or not? In addition to every thing else that you need to sign up for?
Many web services offer hosting of web pages that will allow you to publish your own pages or blogs. Often there are limitations and restrictions on what you can put on your page. We soon set up our own hosting company so that we can now host our own web pages - and to offer hosting services to our friends and clients. We also began to assemble a collection of domain names; currently we are hosting six of our own domains.
TubeMogul is a video distribution service that will upload your videos to twenty different video-sharing sites. Additionally, TubeMogul provides tracking and analysis of traffic and tools to promote your videos.
Video online - the viral effect
Now that we had replicated ourselves around the internet in a distributed, random fashion, perhaps now it was time to bring everything back into some sort of order and try to analyse what sort of sites had worked, why they did. We also needed to boost the traffic that we were receiving at our sites.
One significant step was made with the discovery of a video-upload and distribution service called TubeMogul. Initially TubeMogul allowed you to upload to a dozen video-hosting sites, such as YouTube, MySpace Video, Google Video, Yahoo Video, MetaCafe, Revver, Crackle, Blip.tv, AOL, StupidVideos - recently TubeMogul have added Vimeo, xxxxxxxxxxxxxx bringing the number of distribution sites to twenty.
There are sites that accept videos that you have already uploaded to a video host. For example, World-TV - as well as Mogulus, Qik and other hosts - accept clips from YouTube, Google, MySpace and others - but now you can 'string' your clips together and program your own video channels.
Once you have uploaded your video to TubeMogul, and then to your chosen distribution platforms, you can further increase your audience reach. You can now add your uploaded videos to services such as worldtv.com mogulus.com qik.com (and other sites) where you can build video channels or programs.
A further viral feature comes into play when third parties take your video content, (especially from YouTube, Google and MySpace) and then add your videos to third-party, video-hosting sites. In particular, this will give your videos international distribution. TubeMogul still records this traffic, as long as the clips are contained in 'aauthorised' video players.
From TubeMogul to YouTube - and then to video-sharing sites such as xxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxx in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
TubeMogul video Distribution
| Site | Features | Description |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | Subscribers, comments, stats, sharing, favourites, | The most popular video sharing site. |
| Google Video | Purus in eget odio in sapien | |
| Yahoo Video | Adipiscing blandit quisque eros | |
| MySpace-TV | Cras lobortis commodo metus lorem | |
| MetaCafe | Lobortis commodo metus vestibulum | |
| Revver | Purus in eget odio in sapien | |
| Crackle | Adipiscing blandit quisque eros | |
| DailyMotion | Cras lobortis commodo metus lorem | |
| AOL | Lobortis commodo metus vestibulum | |
| Veoh | Purus in eget odio in sapien | |
| Blip.tv | Adipiscing blandit quisque eros | |
| StupidVideos | Cras lobortis commodo metus lorem | |
| Vimeo | Lobortis commodo metus vestibulum | |
| 5min | Purus in eget odio in sapien | |
| xxx | Adipiscing blandit quisque eros | |
| xxx | Cras lobortis commodo metus lorem | |
| xxx | Lobortis commodo metus vestibulum | |
| xxx | Purus in eget odio in sapien | |
| xxx | Adipiscing blandit quisque eros | |
| xxx | Cras lobortis commodo metus lorem | |
Spreading through social networks -
Until recently I had avoided using some services, such as FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc, as I had quite enough sites, serives, profiles, passwords etc to keep up with. However, eventually I succumbed to the allure of these 'social networking' sites. I had underestimated the power of FaceBook as I established networks of 'friends' - locally, nationally and internationally, with different groups of people with similar interests to my own.
Although many of these new friends were previously unknown to me, I was very pleased to re-establish contact with old friends that I have known for ten, twenty, even thirty years but lost contact with. FaceBook and other social networking sites are remarkable for this ability. On one site I found a bunch of sound engineers I had known and worked with during the seventies and eighties - this was like a family or a school reunion.
Similarly, I was able to establish contact with family and people sharing my surname in an attempt to research and trace some of my family history. It is an enjoyable feeling to make contact with someone from your past and to catch up with each other's lives and fortunes.
Twitter is a micro-blogging site that has been around for a couple of years. I had heard the 'buzz' about twitter and tweats - but I had not experienced the rich conversation, links and breaking stories that are streamed in a constant river of information. Twitter allows you to send short, 140-character messages (similar to SMS messages); you can 'follow' people you find interesting and share their conversation stream. Twitter is a great way to find new, up-to-date information on just about any subject - and to join a community of people that share your own interests.
Services such as, FriendFeed, PlaxoPulse, MyBlogLog, allow you to aggregate your streams from different social networking sites, and to share this aggregation with others. It was while looking at a map that someone had shared on FriendFeed that I realised that this 'map' was similar to my own, and this project had its genesis.
Social media -
Graphic representations of social networks incorporating, youtube, facebook, myspace, and many other sites.
This is where I am up to at the moment . . . add some more text as soon as I take a breath. Standing by . . .
Other maps -
Graphic representations of social networks incorporating, youtube, facebook, myspace, and many other sites.
This is where I am up to at the moment . . . add some more text as soon as I take a breath. Standing by . . .
Who are our friends? -
Graphic representations of social networks incorporating, youtube, facebook, myspace, and many other sites.
This is where I am up to at the moment . . . add some more text as soon as I take a breath. Standing by . . .
Some references -
PRwarrior
Life under electronic conditions
orgnet.org
mindmeister.com
theory.isthereaseon
valleywag.com
Pajek: A Program for Large Network Analysis
Relationships are complicated - Factoryjoe.com
FLUX on FILM
FluxTV at WorldTV.com FLUX ON FILM - http://worldtv.com/fluxtv
LoftFeed from FriendFeed
- XXX end of FriendFeed XXX
Feed from MyBlogLog
- XXX end of MyBlogLog XXX
Live video Feed from liveVideo or live.yahoo
- XXX end of Video feed XXX
Doh doh doh! http://ping.fm/ref/?method=microblog&link=http://ping.fm/&title=Check out Ping.fm!&body=Check out Ping.fm! It's killer! ; - ah I can see where the code has suddenly ended here - maybe I can fix it up. Que!!
Ping . . . it's just not pinging . . . ping pong pong diddly eye di . . . This is a test - this page is under construction and undergoing a live update - still got a few little glitches and bugs to work out . . . standing by . . .
Ouch! Lost our internet connection at home. So I have been updating this page offline. See what happens when I upload in a day or so . . . standing by ;-]