An explanation of the choices I've made in creating my web presence.
By using Web 2.0 tools, anyone can easily craft an online identity by creating, sharing and publishing content. Furthermore, this sharing and publication can then be used to facilitate the formation of valuable social networks (Lin et al, 2006). In designing my online presence I took into account several key conceptual ideas and utilised a variety of Web 2.0 tools. My web presence is the documentation on the processes and my thoughts on becoming a father for the first time. Aside from simply creating a web presence, I have taken into account and reflected on the internet footprint and digital shadow caused by this web presence and how the content may affect others (such as my wife and future child) in the future.
One of the key conceptual ideas of my web presence was the visual design of the central node, as the central node would determine many of the visual design aspects of the contributing nodes. During pregnancy the only images of the child available to the outside world are those created by the ultrasound method. With that in mind, and due to the colour limitations of this material, I have applied a black, white, gray and orange colour scheme to the central node so that these ultrasound images blend nicely into the surrounding material on the web pages. In addition I have ensured that the same colour scheme and graphical elements have been carried over to my three contributing nodes where possible. This consistency is a well respected method of user-friendliness as also provides a means to help the audience to recognise one of my nodes as belonging to my web presence as a whole (Joergensen and Blythe, 2003).
The Web 2.0 tools I have used for each of my nodes are picked based on the core functionality they provide. These tools are, Blogger, Twitter, Flickr and Essential Baby. A blog functions as my central node, this ‘central identity hub’ aggregates and facilitates the exchange of my distributed online presence (Helmond, 2010). This blog was created using the tool Blogger. I decided to use Blogger due to its ease of use, system uptime reliability, customisation, amount of ready to use gadgets and site management tools. At the top of the main page of the blog, I have embedded noticeable links to help provide users with quick and easy access to my contributing nodes. Further to these links and in an effort to add a real-time element into the central node blog I have embedded both Twitter and Flickr gadgets that instantaneous display the latest updates from my Twitter account and the latest images added to my Flickr photostream. Also on the central node, the About Me page gives a detailed description of who I am, what is occurring in my life and why I am publishing this content. The tool Twitter was chosen as a contributing node based on its ease of use, mobility and simplicity. The small, text based content of Twitter posts allow me to broadcast to my followers small snippets of information relating to the fatherhood theme. My choice to use the tool Flicker as a contributing node was as a result of my requirement to store and display images. Flickr was chosen after reviewing several other Web 2.0 photo tools and was selected based on its ability to allow users not to just add comments, but also notes and tags. Further to this, Flickr also importantly allows me to quickly and easily move stored images from the public domain back into the private arena and by doing so affords me the ability to, in part, control my(and others such as my wife and future child) internet footprint and digital shadow. The node Essential Baby, on the other hand, is a forum that is less dynamic then other Web 2.0 tools, but directly relevant to the theme of my web presence. Essential Baby is the largest online parenting community in Australia, providing information, resources and access to the experience of almost 200,000 Australian parents (Essential Baby, 2011). By being present on a website that is constructed specifically for the "Australian parenting community" I am able interact, provide and receive friendship, support and advice with an appropriate community of likeminded people as they travel through the same journey. As part of each contributing node, I have included a link back to my central node and a short description of myself appropriate to each tool.
All of the design choices I made while constructing my web presence were completed with my identity in mind and how I could form a consistent and clear web presence. By utilising the capabilities and advantages of multiple Web 2.0 tools, I have created a meaningful web presence containing purposeful content that in part begins to show the potential of a well crafted web presence. Web presences such as this one not only have the ability to help people to form connections that may not have been normally formed offline but they also allow a person to control their online identity and hence internet footprint, in a world where we constantly live in our own digital shadow.
References
Essential Baby. (2011). "About Us". Retrieved from http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/about_us.html
Helmond, A. (2010). Identity 2.0: Constructing identity with cultural software.University of Amsterdam. New Media Research Blog. Retrieved from http://www.annehelmond.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads//2010/01/helmond_identity20_dmiconference.pdf
Joergensen,J. and Blythe, J. (2003). A guide to a more effective World Wide Web presence. Retrieved from https://www.jyu.fi/econ/oppiaineet/yma/arkistoyma/vanhatmateriaalityma/YMAS350/Exam%20article%203.pdf
Lin, Y., Sundaram, H., Chi, Y., Tatemura, J. and Tseng, B. (2006). Discovery of Blog Communities based on Mutual Awareness. In Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Workshop on Weblogging cosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics, 15th World Wide Web Conference, May 2006.
