Social Media

What is Social Media?

I’m pretty sure everyone knows the answer to this, but to be safe here’s the definition. Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. It has become huge and is all the rage in the marketing world these days.

History of Social Media

The first site resembling Social Media as we know it today was SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997. Named after the concept “six degrees of separation”, it was the first site to combine features of AIM, dating services, and classmate sites – allowing users to create profiles and list their “friends.” Users could send messages and post bulletins to people in their “degrees”. The site lasted until 2000, when YouthStream Media Networks purchased it for $125 million.

Following SixDegrees.com we saw the launch of many Social Media sites. Most notable were LiveJournal, Fotolog, Friendster, Linkedin, and, of course, MySpace. MySpace was launched in 2003 and can be credited for launching social media into the mainstream. The service grew rapidly because of Friendster alienation and in 2004 the younger generation began joining in masses. MySpace began allowing minors to join the service, with lawsuits involving sexual predators quick to follow. In 2005, MySpace was bought for $580 million. While MySpace has lost some popularity in the past years, we are now seeing a surge of users on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

Business Implications

Social media is no passing fad - it is the way of the future. Here are some facts to consider, as well as a really cool video that has undoubtedly been shown at every marketing event in the past year (socialnomics.net - The video gets a little cut off on the blog, so visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8 to watch):

• By 2010 Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers, and 96% of them have already joined a social network.
• In a comparison of how long it took to gain 50 million users, we see that radio took 38 years, TV 13 years, Internet 4 years, and yet Facebook was able to add 100 million users in just 9 months.
• Facebook is now reportedly hosting 300 million users on its site.
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary source of recruiting
• There are over 200,000,000 blogs
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines
• Hulu grew from 63 million total streams April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendation, while only 14% trust advertisements

So what does this mean for business? Social media cannot be ignored. There are millions of blogs, and while most are probably unrelated to you and your company, there are still 40,000 new ones popping up everyday that could be talking about your business. Take for example an employee at Google, a well-known, yet secretive company. This employee was blogging about Google’s health care plan being less generous than former employer Microsoft. Within two weeks, he was fired. He became an overnight celebrity when Google was accused of overreacting and received job offers from Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, finally settling on Plaxo. He is now in charge of coordinating the company’s blogging efforts.

Social media is the new marketing endeavor. With numbers of users in the hundreds of millions, businesses simply cannot afford to not be Tweeting about their brand. Social network users are 3 times more likely to trust peer opinions over advertising when making purchasing decisions and one word of mouth conversation has the same impact of 200 TV ads. Businesses must get into the conversation.

Facebook vs. Twitter: Who is the Better Marketing Tool?

Recently, Ibtrax, a SEO Social Media optimization firm, compared the marketing benefits of Facebook vs. Twitter for business. The goal was to determine which of these social media platforms provide the best results for online businesses. The results were based on user feedback and experience, monitoring trends, researching 3^rd party platforms that support both services, and using several different accounts of each. Depending on what type of benefits your company is looking for, the results were as follows:

Category		Result (Winner)
Traffic and User Metrics		Facebook has advantage due to its large size and traffic volume.
Viral Marketing Benefits		Twitter has slight advantage because it must have a large amount of followers to gain significant viral marketing results.
Social Media interactivity		Facebook had the advantage because the “wall” feature makes it naturally interactive.
Website Traffic Driving Platform		Facebook declared winner because the internal characteristics of the site act as a standalone website (i.e. users can post videos, links, etc)
Means of Market Research	Twitter has the advantage of allowing people to more efficiently search for information related to industry specific trends.
Direct Internet Communication from human resources, client contact, and a sales management perspective	Facebook has the advantage of Facebook chat, allowing instant messaging between users
Business to Business Marketing	Twitter has the advantage because it allows more viral marketing flexibility, which is core to B2B branding
Business to Consumer	Facebook facilitates the building of a large network of followers in a relatively short amount of time to help market a product or service.

The Future of Social Media

The Millennial Generation has become immune to traditional means of advertising. We don’t regard radio, print or banner ads, and are able to fast-forward through commercials on TV. This implies that future social media advertising will have to become part of the online experience, rather than distracting from it. Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer, has outlined several trends to look for in the future. She believes that the strongest business models will begin to incorporate analytics, and that TV and search will become more social. She states that:

“The voice of the consumer is only going to get louder and stronger. It will shape what social media is and what it will become. Not too long ago, a company might have made major changes to its products or services based on a few focus groups, some financial planning and a degree of gut instinct. Social media has already changed all that. And more changes will come.”

There are also new technologies being developed that will surely shape social media as we know it. For example, Arduino is a small circuit board that is low cost and easily implemented. It is capable of connecting real life to social media, allowing for automatic tweets when things happen in your everyday life. One man has used it to create a device that tweets when someone passes gas and a small bakery in London has created a system that tweets what is fresh out of the oven. While these seem rather irrelevant, the fact is that people are able to create these things in their spare rooms and garages, the systems aren’t being developed in R&D labs.

Another interesting innovation is Optical Pattern Recognition & Augmented Reality. 3 years ago, Google acquired NevenVision, a company that provides Biometric Face Recognition technology. It is now using that technology in Picasa in hopes of aiding users in organizing their photos without doing any work. Basically, it would be like posting an album on Facebook and having the computer go through recognize the faces of your friends and automatically tag everything for you.

Perhaps the most far-fetched concept in the workings is that of mind reading. It would be like instant tweeting, your thoughts straight to the computer, or being able to think “Facebook” and in your head you can see all of your friends updates. This technology is in an extremely experimental stage, but there are proofs-of-concept.

Sources:

http://www.slideshare.net/DigitalInfluence/business-impact-of-social-media

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db20080219_908252_page_5.htm

http://www.jazzou.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=451

http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/

http://mashable.com/2009/06/01/social-media-future-tech/

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007513

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixDegrees.com

http://www.thedailyanchor.com/2009/02/24/the-future-of-social-media-advertising/

Internet Dating

What is Internet Dating?

Internet dating, often referred to as online dating, is a matchmaking system which allows people to interact with others over the internet. The main objective of this system is to form either a romantic or sexual relationship. The matchmaking that takes place over the internet is unmoderated, meaning it is done through personal computers and cell phones. In most cases, any prospective internet dater must provide personal information before he can search the databases of others. Once a person has provided personal information, they usually go on to upload pictures and browse the photos and provided information of others. Some internet dating sites include features such as webcasts, online chatting, telephone chatting, and message boards.

The History of Internet Dating

Internet dating has been around since the internet became accessible. From the start, companies like Prodigy and America Online offered chat rooms and forums for single individuals. These features were advertised a lot and became very popular. Therefore, as the world wide web became more and more popular, so did the internet dating culture.

The first significant dating website is thought to be kiss.com, followed by match.com. Both sites were registered by the same person in 1994 and 1995 respectively. Of course there were many other sites, but most of those websites focused on international dating and communication. After the rise in popularity of kiss.com and match.com, the market for internet dating exploded. By 1996, there were about 16 internet dating websites listed in Yahoo! Big companies like ticketmaster began to acquire websites like the previously mentioned, match.com, which caused important internet participants like AOL to focus more on their personal dating section. Those big names were starting to see just how popular and frequently used internet dating was becoming.

In 2002 when the world experienced a dot com crash, dating sites surprisingly did not suffer. This is because the change that hit internet dating instead came from the launch of sites like friendster and myspace. Social networking was taking over the internet, therefore making online dating a byproduct of its success. At the end f November 2004, there were 844 lifestyle and dating sites established. Furthermore, in 2007, Americans spent over $500 million on internet dating, making its industry the second highest industry for "paid content"on the web, behind pornography.

The Present State of Internet Dating

Currently, there are online dating sites made for practically every major city, religion, race, interest, sexual orientation, and relationship preference. As a result, nearly 20 million people visit at least one internet dating site every month and over 120,000 marriages every year take place due to online dating.

Problems With Internet Dating

Despite its obvious benefits, there have been quite a few problems with Internet dating. The most apparent problem with internet dating is that people lie, and the internet often makes it difficult to unmask the truth. There is no way to force someone to put a picture of what they really look like on their profile. This also goes for their interests, hobbies, and details of their personal life. In this respect, internet dating can be somewhat dangerous because of internet predators and internet fraud.

Another problem that is less daunting, is that certain sites expect members to submit payment before they get a chance to see what they are paying for. There have also been complaints about billing practices and confusion about trial periods.

The Future of Internet Dating

The stigma of internet dating is starting to disappear as it becomes increasingly more common for individuals to use an internet dating site. The sites that are thriving, and who are speculated to continue to succeed, are those that focus on a very specific concentration. For example, a site that specifically allows people of a certain sexual orientation might be more likely to thrive because it makes it easier for people to understand what they are looking for, rather than having them weed out so many possibilities before getting results. With this said, general interest dating sites such as eharmony or match.com are still continuing to do well. They however, run the risk of being replaced by social networking sites like facebook. Despite the risks and few problems with online dating, it is here to stay. Finding one's significant other through the internet is no longer the rare, frowned upon, occurance that it once was.

sources

http://brainz.org/history-online-dating/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_dating

Google Earth

You can go anywhere...virtually.

It’s interesting to see how we are now able to capture the globe in a single browser. I must say, traveling has never been easier as I am able to view roads and buildings as I plan my way around various cities. Google Earth is a program that allows people to visualize the Earth virtually, where maps have become enhanced to show 3D models of landscapes. As well, there are other special features including the sky, Mars, and moon that allow us to zoom in to capture these unique settings –capturing constellations and surfaces useful for research and the curious eye.

What is it?

Aerial View of Bowdoin College

Originating from a company Autometric (now owned by Boeing), President Dan Gordon had the vision to “capture the Earth’s place within the viewer’s face.” Deeming itself as Google Earth (from originially known as Earth Viewer 3D), it was released in 2005, utilizing “satellite imagery, aerial photography, and geographic information systems” that offers complete cities and buildings in various countries such as Australia and United States (Wikipedia).

Now, many people use it on a day-to-day basis, whether they want to see updates on disaster-struck areas (like the earthquake in Haiti), plan trips, or “visit” places like Mount Everest. People who are interested in tracking star patterns and whatnot can use the Google Sky feature that allows them to look at constellations, Mars, and the moon. Personally, I think it's really cool that you can have the constellation right above you shown via Google Sky from where you are.

As well, there are ocean bottoms also featured to zoom below the waves. In fact, because of the great amount of information available, it has become important and useful for scientists and researchers as well. Allowing people to travel to places without setting foot in the area has made it convenient for people to obtain information, mapping terrains at various resolutions (depending on which feature and level of detail necessary). The Google Flight is extra cool in the sense that it allows pilots to map out their routes and to have a simulation to see where they are going.

Google Sky of the Constellation

Flight Simulation feature

It is being implemented on many operating systems, supporting Windows and Mac OS machines. As well, it has been integrating on to mobile devices such as the iPhone. Though Google Chrome may be what they (the Google developers) would want to intend its users to use this program on, it is also available through Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari as well. Developers are continuously trying to improve upon the resolutions of the images as well as the level of detail that can be used to feature buildings, road maps, and more; not only are they trying to expand throughout the globe successfully with its major landmarks but also to provide the level of detail needed to benefit researchers and scientists with information that they can use to compare past data and forecast future developments.

In order to maintain 3D views, there are layers applied on to the interface, where borders, points of interests, roads, panoramio, and buildings are combined together in order to offer services such as maps. It allows for users to utilize various features within the site in order to gain specific information, depending on what the user wants to do.

Effects on the Web
In the context of the WWW, because Google Earth has become a very useful application for many people, as people are able to better communicate globally and to be more aware of what can be accessed from their computers globally. Because Google Earth is still a developing program, it is continuing to develop better resolutions and images for its users. However, it has also arisen some issues concerning privacy. Because of the images captured by satellites for the development of a real-life experience, people have been concerned that these pictures intrude on privacy –whether it may be posting privates homes online or capturing images of the people themselves. As well, it has become a concern of national security, as these images are able to publicize countries’ projects and boundaries that they are keeping secrets (as cited from Wikipedia, "Former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam expressed concern over the availability of high-resolution pictures of sensitive locations in India. Google subsequently agreed to censor such sites").

What now?
Thus, in the future, Google Earth may be useful for the average society, where people take leisure in it as a means of having a virtual vacation or to explore around the world from their homes, though it may also be a threat to nations if things were to get publicized too quickly. People have the ability to gain valuable information, helping scientists, researchers, and students alike. Though the development of having every bit of the world with exact specifications is far from completion, it is not an idea that is too aloof. Obviously, developers of Google Earth are continuing to gather information and data in order to get exact specifications of buildings around the world and have yet to complete it. However, we can see that developments through cities such Las Vegas, Nevada are examples of what Google Earth could potentially offer.

Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth
http://earth.google.com/
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/08/future_directio.html

Adobe Flash

By: Dave Lash

If you've ever seen an animated splash screen or played games online, chances are you have seen Adobe's Flash engine in action. With its animation, video, and sound integration, Flash is a great way to add interactivity to a web page. The powerful tool set that comes standard with Flash make it relatively easy to create these video animations and other Flash components. This blog post is about the history of Flash as a multimedia platform, the uses of Flash today, and some of the future possibilities for the platform.

A History of Flash

Surprisingly enough, the product now known as Adobe Flash was not created by Adobe, but was originally the intellectual property of Macromedia, who acquired the framework for Flash from FutureWave Studios. In 1996, FutureWave released what was to become Flash under the moniker FutureSplash Animator. Shortly after the release of FutureSplash, Macromedia acquired the studio and re-branded the software as Macromedia Flash. Macromedia continued to develop the software through version 8, at which point, Adobe acquired Macromedia and all of their products, which included Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. Adobe has continued development of the software, releasing Flash as part of Creative Suites 3 and 4, with Creative Suite 5 under current development.

Prominent Features

Flash boasts a full set of animating, video, and sound editing tools that work together to create Flash animations, banners, advertisements, games, and a host of other objects that can be used on a webpage. One of the biggest features of Flash is its own coding language for creating the interactions or animations of the Flash component, ActionScript. ActionScript is used to control 2D vector animations and gives more control to the designer over elements in the Flash animation. ActionScript has been developed into a language allowing for game creation and video and audio streaming in addition to 2D animations. The language continues to evolve and improve the animating capabilities and other functional aspects of Flash as a multimedia platform.

Flash is able to detect input from the mouse, keyboard, microphone, and webcam, which makes it highly efficient for creation of Flash modules with user interactive components. Flash provides many options to web developers for adding functionality to a webpage, and it continues to improve upon an already robust set of tools.

While Flash is capable of animating, it is important to note that it is not so much the high-profile 3D animations that some other animating tools can provide. Flash can support moving text and moving still images, which differs from video where each frame is a new image. Despite this fact, Flash has become a popular web animating platform and continues to gain popularity today, and has even garnered competition from products such as Microsoft's Silverlight and open source alternatives SVG and SMIL from the W3C.

Current Flash Uses

Flash is currently applied all over the web in a variety of different ways. As I mentioned earlier, one of the most common uses of Flash today is for flash-based games. Sites such as AddictingGames.com and OneMoreLevel.com provide users with a variety of such games. There are an endless number of games for people to browse and play over a number of different genres. While games are a great application of Flash and display a number of the capabilities that Flash can provide, some other sites use Flash in much different ways. NHL.com is a great example of a Flash interface. The NHL has implemented a Flash module for their news on the homepage, as well as for audio and video highlight playback for users. Video and audio streaming are an important part of the application of ActionScript and demonstrates the powerful tool that Flash can be. These techniques are applied all over the web on multiple sites in a variety of different ways. There are many possibilities, and I have tried to provide a few great examples. Many sites that must deal with multimedia such as audio and video streaming turn to Flash, but it is a market with growing competition.

Future of Flash

Currently, Adobe is in the process of working on Creative Suite 5, which will feature a new version of Flash. Adobe is looking to improve upon the audio and video streaming, animating and game creation capabilities of Flash, and are looking to add support for iPhone game creation. It is important for Adobe to continue to improve Flash, as competition from Microsoft's Silverlight is increasing. Silverlight was used to stream live coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics and 2010 Winter Olympics. While Adobe says that they have an installed user base of around 98% of all internet users who have downloaded their Flash player, Microsoft is gaining credibility with its video streaming. As Adobe takes Flash into the future, they must continue to innovate and build upon their features to keep pace and even outperform the competition in order to remain number one. If history is any indicator, Adobe will definitely be able to provide that cutting edge multimedia suite and will continue to keep Flash the number one multimedia web software.

Sources

1. http://academic.lozbo.org/articles/2008/09/brief-history-of-adobe-flash/

2. http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/the_flash_history/

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FutureSplash_Animator

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash

6. Aggregated knowledge from my brain

The Allure of Wikipedia

What's the Allure?

Wikipedia, named after the "Wiki" software that allows easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages, is one of the most frequented websites in the world. Why? Because there are over three million published articles and these articles are usually the first thing that come up in a google search. People click on the Wikipedia link because it feels reputable, a site that millions use everyday multiple times a day. There aren't any banners or flashing ads. "The interface in unemotional and clean of advertising."

The Shiny Title

One of Wikipedia's strengths is how they are able to get people to contribute to the articles. Without this contribution Wikipedia would fail to be the overwhelming success it is today. They achieved this by giving the contributors the shiny title of editor.

"When people contributed they were given the flattering title of "editor." It worked and grew because it tapped into the unmarchaled energies of the uncredentialed. This wasn't like writing a review on amazon where you were just one of a million people urging a tiny opinion. This was an effort to build something that made sense apart from one's own opinion."

It's Addictive

For researchers it’s a place to look information up, but for editors it’s “like an online game”, a place where it's editors "hang out." Wikipedia has a more or less addictive component it hooks you because it's a solitary way to be social. You keep checking back to your edits, the edits of others, and by visiting and participating on Wikipedia you are instantly part of a social group. Like facebook, youtube, second life, it's addictive. Jim Wales the co founder of wikipedia realized the reason for it's rapid growth within the first year of its life.

"The main thing about wikipdia is that it is fun and addictive." -Jim Wales co- Founder

Openly Editable Model

Wikipedia's greatest asset is also it's greatest downfall. Because it is written collaboratively by an international group of volunteers, it's accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Even if a collaborator was to purposely edit knowingly false information, their privacy is protected unless they choose to reveal their identity. Our teachers have always told us to take everything on wikipedia with a grain of salt, for the information may be false, but false information in a high school science report is not the worst case scenario.

Character Assassination

"Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960’s. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." –Wikipedia

At age 78, John Seigenthaler was beyond surprised when he ran across a Wikipedia entry that accused him of being directly involved with the Kennedy assassinations of both John and Bobby Kennedy. This same information was also posted on Reference.com and Answers.com. At his request, the administrators of all three sites removed the information. After searching the web for this "biographer", Seigenthaler found his registered ip address 65-81-97-208. He traced it back and after three weeks of help from the Bell South Phone Company Abuse Team, the only way Seigenthaler could obtain the name of the biographer was to file an anonymous lawsuit. He did not file a suit.

A Solution?

"In 2006 Wikipedia co-Founder Larry Sanger launched Citizendium, the citizens compendium. The project addressed questions about the accuracy and neutrality of content brought up with wikipedia. "Citizendium) was designed to improve on the Wikipedia model by adding gentle expert oversight and requiring contributers to use their real names."

-Citizendium

The intention of Citizendium is good, but it's user interface is one of the most confusing on the internet, not to mention, ugly. Why would anyone go to a website for information that appears this outdated? At first glance the design of the site will hinder it from becoming as ubiquitous as wikipedia.

Content Management Systems

A Content Management System (CMS) or Web Content Management System (WCMS) is a system built to create and control HTML content. Content Management Systems on the Web allow users to easily create, manage, organize and update content on their website without extensive knowledge of HTML, CSS, FTP, or a number of other languages. This is because most Content Management Systems create a user interface often with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors built in, so the user only minimally deals with actual code. The system also usually links directly to a database giving the user the ability to update their database content and even their user permissions with no knowledge of SQL or database structure. Further, most Content Management Systems allow for different users to have different access rights, so a site could easily distinguish between anonymous browsers and site members and display content accordingly.

Content Management Systems are used in virtually every type of website today including blogs, social networking sites, e-commerce sites as well as standard static personal pages or portfolios. But there are many different types of Content Management Systems, and it is important to choose the right CMS for what you are trying to accomplish. A relatively complete list can be found at cmsmatrix.org. Here you can not only view the capabilities of the chosen CMS, but directly compare it to another CMS on the site. Some of the more popular CMSs are Drupal, Joomla and MODx, all of which are written in PHP. Most Content Management Systems also allow for some visual customization without ever opening the CSS. Many have a series of templates that the builder can choose from as the default “look” of their site and there are many additional downloadable templates available online. In addition to those, there are entire companies that specialize in creating and selling templates that can be easily added to a CMS. However with even basic knowledge of CSS, a user can customize these templates further through FTP access and even create their own template from scratch.

An additional advantage of using Content Management Systems is their powerful modules. Modules are pieces of code that are added to the core functionality of the CMS to give the CMS additional functionality, ie search functionality. Most Content Management Systems are open-source so they are constantly being improved and new modules are added regularly (depending on the CMS, of course). While a website can easily be created with minimal coding knowledge, a CMS really achieves its full potential when PHP or other coding languages are added to the CMS’s already existing code. When a user can edit an existing module or create their own module, the site’s customization and functionality are greatly increased. Also because of this, communities form around specific Content Management Systems with the intention of sharing knowledge and exchanging code to improve the CMS itself.

While all of the above are great reasons to use a CMS whether you’re a novice or an expert, the biggest benefit of using a CMS is that it can easily be built for and given to users with no knowledge of HTML. Once a site is built and customized for a user, it is very simple to just give them access to the site allowing them to edit and update their own content. The site’s new owner will not need to contact the builder to simply update their content, greatly reducing the site’s maintenance. Also, the builder can give the new owner access while still restricting them from certain elements of the code, therefore ensuring that the new owner does not inadvertently damage the site. While the use of a CMS is always a choice related to the needs of the user, there are certain negative aspects to using a CMS depending on the user’s expertise. With just basic knowledge of HTML and CSS, customizing your website through a CMS can be very difficult, and it can end up looking like every other site built in that CMS (of course with basic knowledge of HTML and CSS, coming up with an original looking site would be difficult to begin with). Also, these systems are not perfect and can sometimes become frustrating when they do not behave as we expect them to (or they just crash for no reason), even when we are capable of providing a workable solution in straight HTML. Content Management Systems can be excellent organizers though and with a good community of users behind a CMS, there are few things that they cannot capably convey. While easy for non-coders to pick up, in the hands of a user with coding knowledge, Content Management Systems become very powerful tools to create, manage, organize and update new and dynamic content on a very regular basis. Further, because of the existing code structure and modules in place, putting up an elaborate and extensive website can be completed in a fraction of the time it would take to build a website from scratch, and it can be done with relative ease.

MMORPGs

What are MMORPGs?

MMORPGs stand for massively multiplayer online role playing games played mainly on the computer. They involve someone playing a character and controlling that character's actions. MMORPGs are played throughout the world.

Examples

Some examples of MMORPGs are World of Warcraft (WoW), EverQuest (EQ), Guild Wars (GW), and RuneScape. Almost everyone, if not everyone, has heard of World of Warcraft and I'm sure knows someone who plays it or knows someone who knows someone who plays it. It is a very popular game and one of the biggest examples out there. It's an amazing game, and yes, I played WoW for approximately 5 years. (Not anymore though) Smaller examples include games such as EverQuest, which was a very popular MMORPG during it's time. Guild Wars is also popular.

History

The history of MMORPGs is a little more complex. While MMORPGs date back as far as the mid 70s, what qualified as an MMORPG then, and what qualifies as one now has changed. Games that were massive then would not be so massive now. With that said, the first "MMORPG" was Island of Kesmai. It was the first commercial MMORPG and was launched in 1985. MMORPGs continued to develop, originally being developed for a proprietary network provider, they eventually migrated to the internet. It was this migration to the internet that would be considered the first generation of MMORPGs. The second generation was marked by the turn of the century with MMOGs (massive multiplayer online games) expanding into the different genres of video games. Finally, the current generation of MMORPGs is believed to have been started at the end of 2004, when games such as EverQuest II and World of Warcraft were released.

Characteristics

Some characteristics of MMORPGs (according to wikipedia) are progression, social interaction, game culture, economies, and character customization.

Progression:

The idea behind progression is that players start playing the game and have very basic items and as they progress their characters become more advanced and they also progress through some sort of story line. Progression focuses on the development of a player's character. As players complete quests and other events within the game they are given "experience points" which allow them to reach levels. As a character progresses they become better at their specific role.

To give an example, in the game World of Warcraft as players complete quests or reach new areas they are given experience points. Players start at level 1 and can level to 80. Each level provides access to new moves and abilities and allows the character to go different places in the game. It should be said that progression does not stop with level in WoW though. After a player has leveled a character to 80, they are given the opportunity to visit various dungeons and kill bosses and receive special items which allows the to further develop their character.

Social Interaction:

All of the popular MMORPGs allow for users to come together and form clans or guilds. While it is not required to join a clan or guild, certain parts of the game are only accessible with groups of people working together. That is, parts of the game require teamwork, where players use the role of their character to contribute something to a group or guild.

In WoW, there are a lot of dungeons that you can visit and different levels and often times you can use your guild or clan to find groups and complete these dungeons. A typical group would involve a tank (a character who protects others), three dps (characters who are able to deal a lot of damage), and a healer (who keeps everyone alive). It is roles like these that players can develop their characters in, and often times, guilds or clans will recruit people according to their role.

On aside note from social interaction, their is a great web series about MMORPGs and the lives of these people who play these games. It’s called “The Guild" and it really is a funny web series about the lives of these gamers who happen to play an MMORPG.

http://www.watchtheguild.com/

Culture:

Along with MMORPGs also comes game culture. In this sense, their are a lot of slang words that refer to various events within these games. These words have become popular. Some examples include words such as "buffing", "nerfing", and "camping"/"grinding". These words come to mean specific things within the game. Specifically, "buffing" refers to two things, it can mean the strengthening of a character or it can refer to the abilities that a player can cast to protect other players.

Economies:

Again, in many of the popular MMORPGs their exists some sort of virtual economy. Where players are able to trade, sell, or buy virtual items using virtual currency. Their many more aspects to this, but the basic idea behind it is that by providing an in-game economy and allowing the trading, selling, and buying of items, interaction between players is increased.

People also believe that virtual economies within MMORPGs has some value / relationship to real economies, and some studies have suggested crossover between the two.

Character Customization:

Finally, the last characteristic that I’m going to talk about is character customization. Players often create a character of a specific class, and race of their choice. Players are also given the option of changing small features on their character such as eye color, skin color, hair color, type of hair, and other various attributes. However, character customization in some games is also taken a step further. To provide an example, I’ll use WoW (like I’ve done throughout this entire blog. WoW gives characters of each class to specialize in 1 of 3 trees, in each tree, a player has access to different abilities. In addition to that, the items that a player obtains for their character further adds to the customization of characters. It is in this sense that we refer to character customization.

There are tons of other characteristics of MMORPGs, I listed just a few of the main ones from my experience. If your interested, feel free to look up more.

Problems

While I’ve talked about the characteristics of MMORPGs in a positive light, there are some things negatively associated with it.

Particularly, though, I wanted to focus on addiction. MMORPGs are often times credited with ruining peoples’ lives and taking over it. From my experience, particularly with World of Warcraft, these games can really affect your life. But it should be said that the person chooses how much they play. I thought something of note was an article written in 2008 about a person who played 36 wow accounts at one time. He was spending approximately $5711 on the game subscription alone. That is absolutely an addiction.

http://www.ripten.com/2008/10/10/wow-whore-has-36-accounts-raids-by-himself/

If you’re interested.

The Future

MMORPGs really have changed the way games are played online. While, I don’t think I can conclusively say what will happen in the future, I think it is safe to say that as technology continues to develop and things become prettier and prettier, MMORPGs will continue to redefine itself and the way that we play games online. Using the example, that I’ve been using the whole time, World of Warcraft is one of the most popular MMORPGS and the worlds Most Subscribed MMORPG. It continues to grow, and with games like this at the forefront, it is hard to believe that MMORPGs will fade anytime soon.

Sources

"Massively multiplayer online role-playing game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2010. .

century, the turn of the. "History of massively multiplayer online games - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2010. .