Flickr! Web 2.0 photo sharing

Flickr is a photo sharing site and services suite fueled by an online community. It was one of the earliest Web 2.0 applications. It is a very popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, and bloggers use it extensively as a photo repository. It has been made popular by an innovative online community with tools that allow photos to be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means. It hosts over two billion images. The article below was published by the Educause group.

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Flickr is a photo-sharing website where anyone can upload and tag photos, browse others' photos, and add comments and annotations. Users can create photo sets and collections to manage content and participate in topical groups to cultivate a sense of community. Although Flickr is ostensibly for photos, the site might more aptly be described as a venue for sharing experiences and building relationships. The site provides the tools, but the value derives from the contributions of the user community -- photos, comments, ratings, and organization -- and the connections that the site facilitates between individuals. In this way, Flickr embodies what has come to be known as Web 2.0 technology.

The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.
In addition to the "7 Things You Should Know About..." briefs, you may find other ELI resources useful in addressing teaching, learning, and technology issues at your institution.

Extended Article in Acrobat format.

Social Networks: Where are they going?

As educational institutions continue to debate what technologies they will deploy next, and in some cases trying to catch up with developments on the net that seem to entice and attract their students, trends continue to develop and evolve. Universities have been examining social networks for some time now, but the article cited below, published online in TechDirt,
raises the question, "Should those who have not jumped in the social network pool look elsewhere?"

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Bill Gates Joins The Growing Social Network Exodus
from the nothing-lasts-forever dept

Extrapolation of what's happening "now" is one of the most dangerous things in trying to predict the future. If something is growing quickly today, it doesn't mean that will last. Take social networks for example. Historically, they have a pretty standard pattern. There's a huge rush of growth, as people think it's new and neat, and they sign up all their friends. Then there's a flat period where people are still using it, but some begin to question why. Then people start to realize that, beyond reconnecting with some old friends and acquaintances, there really isn't that much to do there -- and that realization may come even sooner if they're getting bombarded with advertisements. It happened way back in the '90s with Six Degrees. It happened with Friendster in the first half of the decade. Yet, some people and companies believed that MySpace and Facebook would be different. Certainly, both companies recognized this problem to some extent, and have worked to add more things that you can "do" on their sites. Both still get a ton of traffic and usage and aren't going anywhere soon. However, there are some worrying signs. Google recently noted that the ads it's put on MySpace don't perform very well (which is something of a problem, since Google has guaranteed at least $900 million in ad revenue to MySpace). And, now, reports are coming out that users are, on average, spending noticeably less time on both MySpace and Facebook, with some leaving it behind. And, what better way to amusingly drive that point home, than to point out that even Bill Gates has killed his Facebook page just a few months after Microsoft dumped $240 million into the company?
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