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Me in a fruit hat

Me in a fruit hat
on an OT day out

Dunedins OT campus

Dunedins OT campus
photo outside G block

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Tutorial 6

Provide the web address and the name of the community you are investigating

http://www.bebo.com/

What is the brief or focus of this community?

Bebo is an backronym for blog early, blog often. It is an online media social network for people of all ages and all over the world. Bebo enables interaction through publicly or privately displaying messages on the users page. You can keep your page public where anyone can view your page or privately where only your direct friends who you choose to accept can have access to your page.

What services are provided? How interactive is this site? How can people contribute?

Each profile must include two specific modules, a comment section where other users can leave a message, and a list of the user's friends. Users can select from many more modules to add such as adding clips from you tube, photos and pictures on the white board, you can make on line polls, quizzes, and blogs which can be quite useful. When I was in America I used to write on my blog so my friends and family can see what I have been up to.

People can contribute by leaving comments, taking your quiz, drawing pictures on your ‘white board,’ joining groups to connect you with others who have joined the group e.g bring back chicken mccheese, that guy fan club, etc.

The user can choose how interactive they would like there site to be by either keeping there profile private so only direct friends can interact or by making there blog public where others can contact them but you do not have to choose to accept there friendship.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment on why people choose to contribute to this community? What is it they are seeking?

The personal reason I chose to contribute in this community is to be able to stay in touch with my friends who are in a different part of the country. I am able to communicate with them or simply check out there page and view there photos they have posted and see what fun they have been up to. I think a lot of people use bebo for this reason.

Other people may be seeking friendship from other people and wanting to get to know other people in there own area. Relationships may also be formed over bebo but it isn’t something I would recommend to do due to the fact you never know how safe and truthful it may be and it is not uncommon for people to form fake profile pages and build friendships to young teenagers who are vulnerable.

Cut and paste an example of the type of topics being discussed (you may have to provide a context to your excerpt).

http://www.bebo.com/thegapyear this page is based on 6 people each from a different country (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, UK, Canada and USA). You can see videos on there travels and what they have been up to so take a look and see what it is all about.

Here is an example of one of the comments that has been left on my page-

“just sitting here wasting precious study time on the procrastination tool of death: bebo, when i realised i haven't talked to you in YONKERS!
how the heck are ya? and whats been happening?”

Considering material presented during the course and make comment on the potential ethical issues that may arise in this community e.g. lack of identity and accountability.

Just recently there has been a lot of speculation over the safety of young teenagers who have been accessing bebo and meeting up in public. For example, the young girl from Christchurch who went missing

There are policies in place to try and prevent these events from happening, http://www.bebo.com/Safety.jsp is a short animated clip explaining how to be safe on bebo and if your under 13 you must have a parent or guardian who is responsible for you. If you are being bullied there is a report abuse link to notify the people who run bebo.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment on the benefits this community holds over traditional notions of community e.g. communities reliant on geographic proximity.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment what this community lacks or can not provide which traditional communities can.

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