Curation and Web Presence - Literature review Example

Heading: Curation and Web Presence Your name: Course name: Professors’ name: Date Introduction With the advancement of information technology, people and organization are striving to their presence known to the public. Businesses and individuals value this presence because it gives them an opportunity to promote and market their products, seek information and meet friends and business prospects. This essay seeks to examine roles that curation plays in the creation and maintenance of web presence. Some of these ways include the use of blogs, homepages, micro-blogs, and social networking sites and lifestreams. Definitions Web presence is the appearance of an organization or a person on a World Wide Web. This is, at times, referred to as online presence or internet presence. Individuals and organization can measure their online presence by the number of sites that they have that include social network profiles, website, and their site’s engine traffic, ranking, backlines and popularity (Bedord, 2008, pp. 34-45). Bedord (2008, pp. 34-45) says that curation refers to the selection, maintenance, preservation, gathering and archiving of digital assets. It is a process of developing and establishing digital long term repositories for present and future reference by scientists, historians, researchers and scholars. Most of the businesses are beginning to employ digital curation in order to enhance the quality of data and information in their strategic and operational processes. Digital curation involves provision of digital retrieval and search; collection of verifiable digit assets; ontological and semantic continuation and comparison of collection of content; and certification of integrity and trustworthiness of content collection (Bedord, 2008, pp. 34-45). Information ecology is referred to as full information environment, which handles all organizations or individual’s beliefs and values on information or culture; how individuals really imply information and for what reasons do they use it; disadvantages of information sharing; and the already available information systems. Information ecology has recognized individuals endow information with purpose and relevance, and acknowledges that people’s involvement is increasing with the growth of information technology. What roles played by curation in creation and maintenance of web presence? Curation has become a highly popular in most of the fields, such as, journalism, branding, marketing, reporting, and social media. It entails a selective and a highly proactive way in which finding, collection, presentation, and display of digital assets around predetermined sets of subject matter and criteria. This can take place in a variety of ways, such as, channel like YouTube; feeds; social sites like Facebook; blogs; twitter, and a collection of RSS feeds (Bedord, 2008, pp. 34-45). Whatever a form that curation takes, it revolves around a subject, a topic, a sensibility speaking to the expertise, knowledge, refinement, taste, brand message or person’s persona, a company or brand that established the specific source or channel of content. Curation has been influential in the creation and maintenance of online presence by individuals or firms. There are many platforms in which individuals and firms can announce their identity online or create and maintain web presence. To start with, firms and individuals can create their web identities by the use of personal homepage. This is a platform that was highly popular between 1995 and 1996, a period when internet availability became more accessible to the general public (Gamse, 2011, p. 20-30). Then, portals, such as Geocities provided users with a free space to establish their own sites. The initial personal homepages had pages that were manually coded with HTML knowledge (Alemán & Wartman, 2009, pp. 4-20). These were self-referential areas whereby most connections pointed inwards to other pages in the sites, and not the external pages. This platform is influential in the establishment and maintenance of web presence because it just concerns an individual, or a firm. The platform’s information is kept in one place, which is on the website’s server. This is also significant in that it is static and that changes made on it are shown with new or animated image, but later with JavaScript code of ‘last updated’ (Bedord, 2008, pp. 34-45). Therefore, this is one way in which curation enhances the creation and continuation of enterprises’ web presence. Warner (2010, pp. 306-320) says that the blog is another way in curation helps organizations and individuals to create and uphold their presence online. This was invented when the HTML knowledge became unnecessary. Upon hitting the publish button, this software updates its latest entry on top automatically. In fact, the platform uses a reversed-chronological order that instantly demonstrates the latest update, the blog post as the blog’s primary unit. Moreover, Gamse (2011, p. 20-30) points out that the blog is often viewed as the homepage’s successor, and it copies the classic way to identity that is under construction. Nonetheless, the blog is not a confined environment and its success is based on the exchange of connections. The information in this platform is kept through the use of photos and external services that are stored on Flickr and the videos that are kept on YouTube may be implanted in the blog. The process of sharing and embedding information via embed widgets and codes is instrumental in making content disperse. Moreover, everything that was expressed and stored in the homepage on one server is now dispatched on the website (Alemán & Wartman, 2009, pp. 4-20). On the blog’s sidebar, Gamse (2011, p. 20-30 says that there is a place for self-definition by utilization of widgets. In case involving popular WordPress blog platform, a drag-and-drop identity is consistently changed and tweaked via widgets (Warner, 2010, pp. 306-320). In this case, widgets are employed in the embedment of the spread web self into a single place, which as the blog (the widgetized self). Notably, the blog as a central force of the scattered identity is start page on steroids. Here, a centralized identity on the blog’s sidebar does not essentially cause more clarity or overview as blogs always experience the scattered sidebar syndrome (Warner, 2010, pp. 306-320). Curation also enhances the establishment and upholding of internet presence through social sites profiles. Social networking sites arose with the introduction of Friendster in 2003. Some of these social networking sites include Facebook, MySpace, and Hyves, a most preferred social site profile in Netherlands that is the same as Facebook, and has 8.7 million subscribers. These social sites were deconstructed by Digital Methods Initiatives (DMI), which discovered that database field could no longer diminish the self, but provide more flexible space and fields for identity performance (Gamse, 2011, p. 20-30). Warner (2010, pp. 306-320) asserts that with the introduction of Facebook wall, the social site profile changed. This is because Facebook offers a space for private profile on which individuals can add content and update their statuses; on which friends can meet and leave messages; and on which network activity is shown with a time-stamp. This is a platform that shows only the information that the users fill, but also contains pictures and notes that other friends or users leave on the user’s Facebook wall (Bedord, 2008, pp. 34-45). Moreover, this profile has other options such as notifications of friend requests, photo tags, user’s marital status, and that a user wrote on a particular user’s wall. These notifications and activities can be read or seen by anybody who has access to a particular user’s profile; hence, they have participated in his or her identity performance. Upon logging into Facebook, Alemán and Wartman (2009, pp. 4-20) maintain that one does not access another user’s personal profile, but their home page with a news feed that consists of an actual-time flow of all persons’ activities and notes on the user’s network. Here, the news feed comprises every activity of a particular user’s friends that could be updates of their statuses, joining groups, post of links or photos, and these are shown immediately they are take place. The Newsfeed entails an activity stream that has actual-time friends’ data and social actions. Furthermore, Gamse (2011, p. 20-30) notes that everything that a user does on Facebook, whether unconscious or conscious, are collected and gathered onto his or her profile wall page and channeled to their friends’ newsfeed stream of activities. One of the most significant features of a Facebook homepage is the update of status that is shown on top part of the page. This update of statuses can be displayed the Instant Messaging Systems and Bulletin Board System (Warner, 2010, pp. 306-320). Besides, the status update on Facebook was introduced in 2006, at time when Facebook Mobile was launched. This platform has facilitated the creation and maintenance of internet presence among businesses and individuals. Through this, businesses can promote their services and products, enhance their branding, announce their events, and advertise their new products and services to potential clients. What is more, curation is instrumental in the development and continuation of internet presence through the use of the micro-blog (Schneider, 2010, pp. 140-155). In this platform, status update got famous with Twitter. Twitter allows its users to post updated statuses within 140 characters from a mobile phone, website and third party applications. Here, the updates are referred to as tweets, and are displayed in reverse-chronological order on the users’ personal profile pages, and their followers’ pages. Just like the blog, Twitter has formal features like reverse-chronological order of entries, and that the tweets are primary units of the micro-blog and consists of permalinks (Gamse, 2011, p. 20-30). The permalink is a URL that leads to a particular forum or blog entry upon passing to the archives’ front pages (Schneider, 2010, pp. 140-155). When the tweets are no longer on the front pages, they can be referenced while marked with the status identification number. Micro-blogs differ from the blogs because of the 140 character limit. Initially, this platform was designed to contain up to 160 characters, but later modified to 140 characters because of the need for the username’s sufficient space. Schneider (2010, pp. 140-155) says that this platform also allows the users to post their videos and pictures for the intended audience. This is vital, especially for business firms that want to carry out marketing and branding of their services and products. This is possible through putting the items on external links and website to the items through the users Twitter pages. As a result, there is a large growth in the URL shorteners due to single connection in a tweet will instantly fill up the small character space. Moreover, Gamse (2011, p. 20-30) argues that micro-blog contains no static pages, unlike the blog. Its sidebar contains fixed statistics of the number of followers and tweets and primary information on the user. Therefore, twitter is influential in the maintenance of internet presence through the construction of private profile via a name or picture, web, bio, and location. It also does this through displaying a list f links through lists and following (Alemán & Wartman, 2009, pp. 4-20). Additionally, it displays and follows a list of links that are made by the users with followers, following, listed and lists. Micro-blogging services are also described as social networking software instances, which hinge on location and time specificity (Schneider, 2010, pp. 140-155). Another way in which curation promotes internet presence through a platform called the lifestream. This is a modern, popular performance identity type that occurs on various social networking sites and platforms (Warner, 2010, pp. 306-320). It refers to a collection of an individual’s activity on different services, for instance online life, always organized by time, into a single central location. The concept of lifestream led to the creation of lifestreams system by David Gelernter and Freeman as a network-centric substitute for desktop metaphor. There is a difference between actual lifestream (2009) and conceptual lifestream (1994) is in their streams’ networked. This was developed in the fast increasing fame of the internet between 1994 and 1995 (Alemán & Wartman, 2009, pp. 4-20). This caused a change in the software usage and personal activity from desktop to website. Presently, the streamline is about a time-arranged stream of documents, but it is about a time-ordered online activity that shows one’s life diary. What is more, large numbers of lifestreaming blog teams and plugins are available for the users to develop a lifestream on the already existing private platforms. Moreover, these platforms and software platforms committed to the aggregation of social media activities are launched. Conclusion Curation is playing a great role in the development and maintenance of internet presence. Curation is a process of collecting, selection, maintenance, preservation, and archiving of digital assets. On the other hand, web presence or internet presence is the appearance of an organization or a person on a World Wide Web. Curation has facilitated internet presence through the introduction of blogs, micro-blogs, social networking sites, homepages, and lifestreams. Through these platforms, organizations and individuals can meet other people online in order to advertise or promote their products and services; announce their events and meet new business prospects. References Alemán, A.M.M. & Wartman, L.K. (2009). Online Social Networking on Campus. New York, NY: Routledge. p. 4-20. Bedord, J. (2008). I've Got a Domain Name--Now What???. Cupertino, Calif, CA: Happy About. pp. 34-45. Gamse, P. (2011). 42 rules for a Web presence that wins essential business strategy for website and social media success. Cupertino, Calif, CA: Super Star Press. pp. 20-30. Schneider, G. (2010). Electronic Commerce. Cambridge, CA: Course Technology. pp. 140-155. Warner, J. (2010). Web Sites. Hoboken: For Dummies Imprint. pp. 306-320. Read More