Exegesis


Scoopydoo! One scoop or two? communicates and collaborates with ice cream lovers of the world. Having neither blogged nor having made ice cream before beginning this assignment, I had much to learn. Online, I have an existing internet footprint, this blog adds to this by allowing, my "identity performance" (Helmond, 2010 p.3) to be distributed around the web, maintained by using a central node, a Blogger blog; linked to three secondary nodes, Twitter, Flickr and Delicious. It is important to me to give due consideration to the identity I wish to display online and how I feel that this identity would be received. Reputation is "one of our most cherished assets" according to Solove (2007 p.30), this particularly resonates with me as not only am I creating my own web presence but through images and mentions I am including my children's future internet footprint and indeed attributing to their digital shadows.

The web today has many different, and easy-to-use tools,"all of them are designed to enable individuals to publish…quickly and easily” (Blood, 2000). This has empowered many individuals to be able to create an online presence. The ability to touch the world through the web needs to be managed to ensure that a positive identity is created and maintained while remaining aware, that, a negative digital shadow can exist. A digital shadow is a by-product of being represented on the web through a digital footprint - Web 2.0 social networking sites (SNS) create both. "We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to create a profile within a bounded system, display a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view their list of connections and those made by others within the system" (boyd and Ellison, 2000). When creating my web presence I have used a variety of SNS, taking into account how I would like my identity to be presented, and which tools can be utilised to create my desired outcome. My web presence is a representation of myself, and of my adventures as an ice cream creator. My title and tag line clearly establish what the web presence is about. Along with this, my choice of using this as a central node and incorporating the supporting secondary nodes, gives a roundness of my identity through the aesthetic design and the social aspects of the Web 2.0 tools that I have chosen. Helmond (2010) defines a term called identity 2.0, this suggests that one’s online persona boils down to the amalgamation of three things; a web platform, a web search engine and a web user. A web user creates content, uploads the content to a web 2.0 platform and uses a search engine to spit out their identity; in turn creating a digital footprint. Further to this, Helmond (2010) discussed that this type of identity "is always under construction, never finished, networked, user-generated, distributed and persistent". 

"Blogs…may exist primarily for sharing ideas, trends and information"(Retteberg, 2008). My decision to use a blog as my central node was carefully considered, as I wanted to be able to give my readers and collaborators a solid base to my identity. The blog as the centre of my distributed identity is like a "start page on steroids" (Baym as cited in Helmond, 2010, p.8). My choice of Blogger was primarily based on ease-of-use and the availability of pre-made themes, I selected Watermark to create my presence. Rebecca Blood states that, “Blogger itself places no restrictions on the form of content being posted.” (Blood, 2000). Once committing to blogger and my identity as an ice cream maker, I set about determining how to visually portray the feeling of my presence. I wanted the tone of the blog to be light and friendly and a colour scheme to represent ice cream making with a slight vintage feel. The vintage feel is further portrayed within the effects used on the images that are posted on the blog. For the purpose of this web presence, I have worked to ensure that the same colour scheme is reflected across the three contributing Web 2.0 nodes Twitter, Flickr and Delicious. This was achieved through utilising the colours available within each node and primarily through using the same profile picture across all four nodes.
Delicious does not give too much room for alteration; however, through the use of a main image the same aesthetic identity was kept.  Through the information tagged and saved, a continuous theme remains. Mathes (2004) points out that Delicious' strength lies with the compulsion to share, “The very act of user self-selecting what to tag is important: this is not material that users want to find themselves later, but also material they are sharing with others”.  Another Web 2.0 tool that uses tagging is Flickr. Flickr is a “photo management and sharing application” (Flickr, 2011) that adds an additional visual element to my blog. Flickr assisted in bringing my “scattered web self into one place” (Helmond, 2010).  I have strategically chosen several photo groups including an ice cream van image group to ensure that my theme remains clear. To link my Flickr account to my blog main node, I created a flash widget that revolves from the Flickr node. By doing this, it should encourage further engagement and readership. In designing the layout of the blog and contributing node’s widgets, I have also been able to avoid having a “cluttered sidebar syndrome” (Helmond, 2010)
The final secondary node that needed to be incorporated into my web presence was Twitter. "Twitter is a real-time information network" (Twitter, 2011) that added this aspect to the identity. Thus, giving readers the chance to view a live snapshot of my life and the lives of people I follow. danah boyd states that “Retweeting brings new people into a particular thread, inviting them to engage without directly addressing them” (boyd et al, 2010). The widget I selected allows the reader to follow me on twitter and to also see a snapshot of my favourite tweets. This lends another level of disclosure. By including Twitter I hope to make people feel comfortable to share and discuss my blog topics. Interestingly, given their interest in more social uses of blogs (Pedersen & Macaffee, 2007), “it is not surprising that women were more disclosive in this media use [blogging] than men”(Hollenbaugh, 2010)
Through this exegesis I have explained my informed choices on the creation of my web presence and, appropriate supporting nodes that both, integrate with, and support the style and content of my presence. This assignment has brought the concept of my "identity 2.0" (Helmond, 2010) to the foreground and concreted the need to make conscious decisions in regards to my digital footprint.

References
Blood, R. (2000). Weblogs: a history and perspective. Rebecca’s Pocket. Retrieved from http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html
boyd, d., Golder, S. & Lotan, G. (2010), Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter. HICSS-43. IEEE: Kauai, HI, January 6.  Retrieved 12 February 2012, from http://www.danah.org/papers/TweetTweetRetweet.pdf
boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11.Retrieved 15 February 2012 from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html
Helmond, A. (2010). Identity 2.0: Constructing identity with cultural software. Retrieved from http://www.annehelmond.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads//2010/01/helmond_identity20_dmiconference.pdf
Hollenbaugh, E.,(2010). Personal journal bloggers: Profiles of disclosiveness. Retrieved February 13 2012, from http://faculty.kent.edu/ehollen2/reappointment/Hollenbaugh2010_blogprofiles.pdf

Mathes, A. (2004). Folksonomies – Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata. Retrieved February 13 2012, from: http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html

Rettberg, J., (2008), Blogs, Communities and Networks in Blogging. Polity Press; Cambridge. Retrieved February 11 2012 from Curtin University of Technology Library E-Reserve
Solove, D., (2007). How the Free Flow of Information Liberates and Constrains Us. The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet. Retrieved February 2012, from http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text/futureofreputation-ch2.pdf
For Inspiration
For About Me page inspiration - http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/about-page-guidelines/

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