Tomorrow we celebrate christmas, today I celebrate the 10 years anniversary of blogging.
So come on bloggers; sing with me…..

Yesterday I decided to do something, I had never tried before in the social media: I made an account on twitter. The reason behind this decision is that I’m attending this course called giicod at the Institute of Advertising and PR at Stockholm University. The mainidea about giicod is that to really understand the social media and to be able to study the individuals taking part of this, you have to be an active participant in the social media yourself. That is the reason behind this blog and the reason behind my wiki and now also the reason of my twitter account.

Twitter is a service, where I can keep my friends updated about my actions – from the web, or the phone or IM ..

Twitter seems a bit borring to me and not so usefull; like an online, public SMS – only oneway!! Probably also the reason why I only know one other person in my whole mailinglist, who has a Twitter profile : Tom Andersson. But I can’t communicate with Tom, because he hasn’t updated his profile for a while… hmmm…. It seems like the service is a bit past, also since Facebook already has the same “this-is-what-I’m-doing-feature” + a lot of other usefull features.

December 20th 07:
It turns out that I invited my whole mailbox to join Twitter – by an accident!! So today I have two more friends – also called ‘following’ or ‘followers’ on twitter.Wonder if this accident will start a new Twitter-wave among my friends??! But I guess not; I have tried to communicate with my two new twitter followers, but I guess they already noticed, that you can’t use the service for anything really and logged out before they even updated their profile.

But I’m glad I tried out twitter, because now I can share my experience with you and use it in my communicative work. Now I know what twitter is, and I shared my knowledge with you, and maybe you will share it with others and the whole Word Of Mouth effect will start to role.. That’s an unique idea about giicod – that you have to try it out yourself to really know, what it’s all about!! – I know so much more now about social media, than I did for some months ago, and that’s great!

The media ocean is overfloaded with information, social relations, communities, art, politics, marketing, networks, fashion, games, commercials, communication etc. It’s difficult to choose between the ‘fishes’ and the only way to really learn – is by doing.

So take a big dive and enjoy the fun – but don’t forget to breath ; )

The year is soon over and the christmas dinners are getting prepared.. This fact deserves a special dance….. from me 2 you

Merry Christmas and happy new year : )

Yesterday at giicod we had a small conversation about form and content in the social media. It’s important for some people that form and content balance to make the message complete, and for others the form is irrelevant – it’s all about the message.

I’m in the group of people that likes when the form supports the content in a message, and that’s probably also why I’m interested in Graphic Design. When I surf around on the internet, my eyes automatically get interested in the graphic elements on websites, and make me interested in the content. But for some reason it seems like the form is less important on the web, than in the real world. Why is that?

Yesterday we also had a seminar about podcasting, so here is a small form & content interview with the graphic designer Paul Rand (1914-1996)….

Peace from a student at the Institute of Advertising and PR – Stockholm University

Yesterday – at giicod - we talked about social networking and the automatic market segmentation made in the social media. You have probably experienced to go to a website – like f.ex. last.fm. A site that tracks what music you prefere, which books you like to read or your favorite movies etc. The site automatically locate your interest in the chosen subject and provide you with further examples of music, books or movies that you probably would be interested in, based on your preferences. On last.fm they put it like this :

“Last.fm tracks what you listen to, learns what you like, and gives you better music”

I think it’s amazing how clever these sites are, and how precise they define my taste and interests, but I’m at the same time a bit sceptical about this kind of service. What if sites like this will be more and more common in social media – Will you ever be aware of music, books or movies outside your usual preferences?

I enjoy very much traveling to different countries and like going out listening to concerts or in the theater etc. I get inspired by that and this inspiration influates on my music and make it evolve into a new sound. Sometimes I listen to concerts that’s outside my usual preferences and this is usual a big eye – or ear opener for me, and makes me move on to a new way of creative thinking. I wouldn’t be without this inspiration and evolution, and that’s why I’m a bit sceptical about the automatic market segmentation. If everything is based on the users interests and preferences, will the user ever be aware of the interests and preferences from other market segmentations? If the business marketing will go more and more in this direction, isn’t there a risk to make the segmentations too homogenic and non-evolving?

Do you like getting recomendations about what music you should hear, which books you should read or what movies you should see, or are you like me – a bit sceptical?

From a blogger that likes to get inpired.

Today we had a conversation at the course I’m attending at Stockholms University called giicod. We talked about the definition of a friend in reality vs a friend in social networking like Facebook, Myspace etc.. We also talked about the posibility, that the way we define friends in social networking will change our world and the way we think of relations in general.

In real life we make a distinction between friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues etc. In social networks there is just one single definition : Friends.

I got this comment from ‘LOmiG’on my first blogpost about virtual relations :

”I think the virtual relation is not a virtual relation : you meet people on blogs that are interested in the same matter than you, and you do just the same as in real life. You exchange thoughts, feelings, and time. To my mind, it’s like beeing in a sport club…without leaving your home.”

I think ‘LomiG’ has a point in his way of seeing virtual relations as a kind of reflection to relations in reality, but I also think there are differences.

I think that the way we meet in our virtual life has other patterns than the way we meet in reality. The impression of a person I meet for the first time in reality would often have more to do with personal appearance and social behaviour and less about the persons thoughts and feelings. A deeper insight of a person would often come in another face of the relation – when you’ve become ’real’ friends. In the virtual reality the relation is build up by another pattern and has other definitions. An example of this can be that if I’m at a concert with f.ex. Tom Waits, I wouldn’t consider him as my friend, but at the same time you can go to my myspace-site and see Tom Waits figure in my topfriend-list. That is because i like Tom Waits’music and use his music as an inspiration to my own music. But does that make Tom Waits my friend?

Another example is the way we relate to eachother on blogs and exchange our thoughts and feelings to anyone who reads the blog. Would we be ready to exchange our thoughts and feelings with a person on the street who accidentally passed by?

A little music pause…………..

I googled on the theme ‘relations on internet’ and found this blog. The writer of the blog is dealing with the same kind of questions and themes like we do at giicod. Among other things she’s writing about a thing called Anti-social networking that is some kind of a reaction to the ‘friendly’ social networking.

In physics and philosophy, a relational theory is a framework to understand reality or a physical system in such a way that the position and other properties of the objects are only meaningful relative to other objects.

Does it work in the same way in the blogospere? Are blogs only meaningful relative to other blogs. When we read someone’s blog, do we relate to the writer of the blog in the same way, than when we read a book or an article in a paper – or is it different?

Now that you’ve read this long post in my blog (if you’ve made it this far!) … in what way do you relate to me? If you should be inspired of my thoughts and even leave a comment, how would you define our relation:

Are we friends? – What do you think??

This blog is based on a course I’m attending at Stockholms University called giicod. The idea of giicod is to study the individual taking part in the social media, and part of the course is to have your own blog. Something like; You have to be in it, to be able to observe….

So I have been blogging lately, and felt a bit lostinspace , but now I feel more curious than lost. I’m curious about the blogosphere and the people taking part of it. On Technorati you can read that about 120,000 new webblogs is being created worldwide each day. The number is from April 2007, so today it’s probably even more. – That’s a lot of blogs! Why are all these blogs created and what makes people spent hours after hours writing them?

Walter J. Ong is writing about how writing restructures consciousness, in his book Orality and Literacy:

“Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but normally even when it is composing its thoughts in oral form. More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness.”

Is the structure of consciousness one of the reasons that people write blogs? Or is blogging about leaving a tracemark of your identity? Will the social media transform the human consciousness just like Mr. Ong says writing does? Sometimes I feel like it transforms mine and put me in a virtureality state of mind, and that can be quite weird; One life in reality and another life through the computer…

• Have you had the same experience?
• How is your virtual life?
• If you’re a blogger: What motivates you to write?
• Where do you think the blogosphere and social media will bring us?
• Is it easier to connect with people in the virtual world than in reality – if so – why?
  That’s just a few questions of my mind and I want you to help me with the answers, so please leave a comment…

Thanks for your time and interest!