In this modern connected society, it is extremely hard to not leave a virtual breadcrumb trail of your life online. This is aided by a series of online tools designed to document and distribute knowledge to the most minutiae level. This knowledge is even more prevalent than was once found in traditional blogs and other website. Microblogging is the basis of this “nano-broadcasting” stream. Now some of this information would be considered mundane (“no one cares what you had for lunch”), however some information would fit the category of “clever observations.” This leads to a discussion regarding creating your realm of knowledge with social media and social networking sites.
Communication, publishing & knowledge-building all factor into this new microblogging stream. However, the different networks have different expectations from their audiences. For example, a service like Twitter represents a stream of status & short form communication. For the most part, the form has broken down to oversharing aspects of everyday life. What seems to make Twitter a format of sharing knowledge is maintaining a balance between the causal interactions that fuels engagement on Twitter and using the hypertextuality of the channel. By using links and point to content that is relevant to your realm of knowledge will lend credibility to yourself within your local network.
An online social network (like Facebook) represents a stream of community & culture. If an account’s stream become filled with post that are nothing more than self-publicity and oversharing without understand audience, then the information is treated as useless spam. Chatting with friends is one of the most important aspects of the network. The ability to share pictures and video helps create a virtual space. Mastering the format means balancing between understand how you fit into the overall structure of the network and finding out how your knowledge base helps your network.
The final stream that aids in the creation of a realm of knowledge are those social network that focus around user-generated content creation. These content creations represent the “voice of the tribe.” Services like YouTube allow individuals to educate and inform others. Flickr becomes a stream of artifacts that can relates to your knowledge. So, building a audience around a realm of knowledge means focusing on one member of the audience versus focusing on the tribe as a whole. “The ideal audience member” becomes the goal of those concerned with nanocelebrity.’
