Tag: Bebo

On Tuesday I join the Bebo Generation at BlogTalk

Post author By Donncha
Post date March 2, 2008
7 Comments on On Tuesday I join the Bebo Generation at BlogTalk

Sigh. The local free newspaper, The Cork Independent, covered BlogTalk 2008 here in Cork and lead with the headline, “Bebo Generation descend on Cork”. Bebo? *mutter* *mutter*

Anyway, I’ll be sitting on a panel titled, From blog-style commentary to conversational social media which pretty much spans the entire blogging and social media experiences. On the panel with me will be Stephanie Booth who I have conversed with a few times on IRC but never met, Bernie Goldbach who I have met a number of times and always has something interesting to say, and finally, Jan Schmidt who I had never heard of but his bio suggests someone who will know a lot about the topic of social media!

How do I feel about the current crop of social media sites? I quit Facebook! Well, no I didn’t, but I will, soon!

Tags Automattic, Bebo, blogtalk, cork, facebook, Ireland, irishblogs, Social Media, WordPress

When-in-Ireland WordPress

UCC students blogging

Damien Mulley has the scoop about the latest development at University College Cork. All students will be given blogs!

While that’s great news for blogging in Ireland, I’m disappointed that they didn’t choose WordPress Mu. I had a quick look around a few blogs and noticed a few things:

They do have permanent links, but links to articles are only in the sidebar “Recent Posts” block. The title of each post is not linked, and neither is the timestamp.
Permanent links aren’t very descriptive being of the form “/blogs/Username/item_x.htm” where x is a number.
It looks like trackbacks and pings aren’t supported so it will be just a little harder for blog owners to participate in blog conversations with others.
What will happen when a student finishes college? Will they be able to export their work? On another level, who owns the work? Student or College?

I have to disagree with Bernie’s comment about what value for money colleges get from hosting blogs. Bebo and MySpace are only two of the many companies offering their own proprietary website platforms. A college weblog has an unbreakable link to that institution. Colleges are places for learning which is quite different from the profit motive of any and every commercial company out there. The more exposure students get to blogging the better they will be at dealing with this phenomenon in the future. Not to mention the older students who are not in the demographic targeted by commercial interests.