Next New Thing

The new media I would suggest is practically interactive and transparent in terms of being able to see, hear and talk to the person your communicating with.  This network will be called 3monkeys.com - the site will have the image/logo of three monkeys with the first one sitting with his eyes wide open (eyes almost jumping out of the sockets), the second one with his ears blowing up like a balloon, and the third monkey with his mouth wide open and words just gushing out of his mouth.

Anyone who wants to join network, will have to sign up and agree to have information checked by company. This is to ensure that everyone on the site is who they say they are, and to minimize any potential problem that may arise. Some people may look at this practice as an invasion of privacy; however, we have learned from past experiences about people who use the internet to mask their identity as they pose as someone who doesn't exist. For instance, a 13-year-old  committed suicide after her online lover dumped her. The problem with this is the boy was a fictitious character created by the mother of a former friend of Megan. She did it to find out what Megan had to say about her daughter. This irresponsible behavior of the mom led to the death of a young teenager. So, this network will eliminate this issue because members will have to chat live with each other. Anyone under 18 will have to get parents permission to join, and the network will enforce this by sending confirmation to both parents or a parent and a teacher in their school. Again this is to ensure the safety of everyone on the site. Members will have the capability of holding conferences with other members while the speak on issues that they care about. The person talking will be seen by participants and anyone who has anything to say will also be seen. Also, it will be a great site to share one's experiences and to get feed back from members. Teenagers can talk to one another to organize events that will benefit the needy, and if the plan gains the support of a significant number of people, then 3monkeys.com will sponsor the event.

It will be a great site to have conversations just like you would in person; and to network with prospective employers, or just people in general.

The site will encourage members to debate on issues that affect society, share ideas or inventions on the site; if their idea or invention is loved by a lot of people on the site, 3monkeys.com will reward them monetarily and team up with other companies to help the inventor take his skills to the next level. It will be a site to showcase one's talent.

Because of the site's transparency, cyber-bullying will not be a problem on the site; besides, the site will install a software in the system that will detect and report derogatory words, actions and behavior. Upon detection, the staff will investigate and then proceed to alert whoever needs to alerted and the people involved in bullying or harrassing will have their membership revoked. Basically, it will have all the capabilities that the other social networks have, the main difference will be that one will have to video conference or chat live with members in order to benefit from the site.

Our Class Wiki - so far

So far its been a great experience doing minor editorial changes. My research is basically on how businesses strategically use new media to boost sales and to promote their service and goods to people. The companies understand that a lot of people now rely on social networks for news, entertainment, etc., and are smart enough to know that the traditional way of doing business is obselete and to survive in a highly wired society, they have to be in sync with the customers and connect with them through networks like Twitter, My Space, Facebook, etc.

About my Term Paper

Doing research on how the internet deprives people of their privacy made me realize that we spend too much time surfing the net and in essence bare our all to the world at large. I don't think people realize that the more time they spend on the internet, the more information they give about themselves and the more they risk losing their privacy. Because the more people know about you, the more vulnerable you become to con-artists and scammers and even companies that use your information for marketing purposes. I decided to research this topic because I wanted to know the extent at which we expose ourselves to strangers, and i also wanted to know ways to protect my identity and privacy online.  One of the things I learned is that scammers target children and high school students in terms of getting sensitive information about their parents; I also learned ways to protect the children from scammers and this is important to me because I have an 8-year-old child.