This website is focused around two web 2.0 concepts. Anybody can easily publish content online and user participation (Curtin BlackBoard) . The main goals for “how to piss off…” is to entertain and form a community of readers who will contribute their own thoughts and content to the website. The blog is designed to be updated bi or tri-weekly and aims to make full use of what blogs can do as well as what web 2.0 can do with the help of the contributing nodes. Although it states in the welcome post the blog is aiming to ultimately have a completed database we all know it’s the journey that counts, not the destination and so the aim isn’t to ever finish but to form a narrative and have fun collaborating with other readers. This is something that I believe is the true essence of web 2.0.
I chose the central node to be a blogs as they can be seen as a narrative form due to the chronological way posts are displayed. However they are an open-ended narrative with which the reader can interact through commenting (Curtin BlackBoard) . The idea is to post two or three times a week, one post stating which job or group of people I’m investigating, the next will be a short video interview of one or two people from that group and the third will be what I have concluded from my investigations for the week. As the blog grows readers can see how it progresses over time and get caught up in the narrative I create.
Besides the ease of publishing there are a few other reasons it was an attractive choice. The ability for readers to comment was a big plus due to the participatory nature of this web presence. Another reason was because the blog does claim to be creating a database I needed to have a way for people to easily access older posts in a database-like way. I used the blogs ability to tag the older blog posts under whichever person/job they were about so when someone wanted to know how to piss off dentists for example all they would have to do is click on the dentists tag on the right hand side of the screen. The third reason was for the RSS feed feature. Although it is quite common for other web tools to include these too, they are a main feature of blogs (Curtin BlackBoard) . It was these features that made a blog an obvious choice for the type of web presence I wanted.
The design for all of the nodes was kept fairly similar. Every node uses the same colour scheme of grey and white as a nice clear background and reds and blacks that are aggressive, powerful and contrasting colours that reinforce the idea of anger and fit with the theme. All nodes also feature the logo to easily identify my web presence. Everything is kept simple to allow the project to be as accessible as it can be. The default layouts were not ideal so I did a search and found the layout named Indexer made by introblogger. This design works due to its simplicity and large font. I made a few modifications such as removing the ads and adding links to contributing nodes but the layout was left alone. The colours that came with the layout was what actually inspired me to have the rest of my web presence in the same colour due to their powerful appearance. It also came with pretty and useful web 2.0 tool links that allow you to share the content in different ways. These were perfect for a web presence that is heavily focused around web 2.0 concepts, as content sharing is a big part of web 2.0. I found the buttons that are linked to my contributing nodes from milkaddict and used them rather than the ones the actual websites use as they match and keep my page neat and simple.
The contributing nodes were chosen specifically to encourage the viewers to participate. YouTube was chosen because my blog posts sometimes contain video interviews. It easily allows people to find the interviews, which can also increase the number of blog readers, and encourages viewers to reply to me in video form as well, which can then be favourited on my YouTube channel. Flickr was included to be a side project to create another database about what people actually look like when they’re angry which would increase user participation and collaboration. It encourages users to send close ups of their angry faces with a caption explaining why they are angry. This gives readers an incredibly easy way to participate. It also allows me to use tagging where someone can click on a tag and they will see what people look like when they think of things related to the tag. Twitter was the third node and was chosen as a way to keep readers up to date with the blog as well as providing micro-blogs discussing the theme. Although it doesn’t provide a chance to participate much itself, I believe that as a simple broadcast tool it will easily let dedicated readers and contributors know what is going on in the “how to piss off…” community. The forum on the blog was included with the idea that it would encourage readers to jump on there and discuss blog posts and other “pissed off” related topics and also give the web presence a sense of community.
Ultimately this web presence was created to demonstrate the way web 2.0 has changed how we used the Internet. It emphasises communication through the blog itself, twitter and the forums. It emphasises collaboration mostly through Flickr and YouTube. While user participation and content sharing is apparent throughout the whole project. In the video lecture “Here comes Everybody” (Clay Shirky) Clay Shirky quotes “I can do that too.” That is what I believe web 2.0 is about. I can publish my ideas just like anybody else and hopefully viewers of my blog will read mine and want to participate too.
Bibliography
Curtin BlackBoard. (n.d.). Module 2 Introduction - What is Web 2.0? Retrieved 23 May, 2010, from Web Communications 101: Communication and Collaboration Online: http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_33050_1%26url%3d
Curtin BlackBoard. (n.d.). Topic 2.1 - Blogging. Retrieved 23 May, 2010, from Web Communications 101: Communication and Collaboration Online: http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_33050_1%26url%3d
Shirky, C. (n.d.). Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008: Clay Shirky. Retrieved 23 May, 2010, from blip.tv: http://web2expo.blip.tv/file/855937/
