WhatsApp vs. Viber – Is there really competition?

For my blog this week I am going to talk about WhatsApp messenger and Viber. I have used these before and I have to admit I absolutely love them! I don’t know what I would have done without either of these while I was away on Erasmus. I couldn’t use them in Africa because well we barely had phones (ha-ha). These apps really help reduce geographical awareness about distance which really did suit me perfectly while travelling. I didn’t feel as detached from home compared to when I was in Africa.

These are instant messaging services available as apps only on your Smartphone’s or iPhones. These services enable you to instant message and to also send audio files, video files and pictures to people anywhere in the world. Viber also allows you to make phone calls but if this distance is very far the call quality is extremely poor and irritating. On the other hand, Viber is completely free so it is worth it for this service.

Example of Viber’s available tools and design:

Viber Display
Source: http://www.blogspot.com

In my personal opinion, I much prefer WhatsApp even though they charge an annual fee of €0.89c after a year’s free membership. The quality of service with regards to messages and media were sent is far superior (for me, personally).

Example of WhatsApp available tools and design:

WhatsApp Display
Source: http://www.androidappsforpcfree.com

The layouts of both of these instant messaging services are very clear and simple. WhatsApp uses green and white for their logo and colour scheme and Viber uses purple and white. The graphics used are very clean in design. In my Technical Writing lecture’s we learned about the aspects of good web design. Both of these apps follow the basis of good design because they are functional, efficient and well designed. These apps layout and content add to the functionality of the clean design. Such as, the colour choice which contrasts well against each other allows it to be legible. This allows each of these apps to be really easy to navigate about and use.

Unfortunately, there is a downside to both of these apps. Sadly it doesn’t allow you to have your number on multiple devices. Or even to have multiple numbers on one device. Being abroad I did have two numbers and I had to decide which one I wanted to use which was a bit of a nuisance since some people only had one or the other number.

Facebook has taken over WhatsApp recently so I’m hoping they will make some interesting changes for the better that I can blog about in the future! At the moment, there is competition between the two apps but what keeps Viber competitive is the fact that it offers calling services. If Facebook add this feature and more to WhatsApp I believe it could easily take the lead in this battle of instant messaging.

Twitter – The Land of the Tweets

Twitter logo blue
Source: http://www.twimg.com

The logo is only ever displayed in blue and white. Never black.[/caption]

When I returned from Africa I noticed that Facebook wasn’t the be all and end all I thought it would always be. Many of my friends had practically disregarded Facebook for other messenger apps such as Whats App, Viber, Snapchat, Pinterest or Twitter. Some of my friends were even using two or more of these messenger apps.

I brushed this off in the first place because Facebook is well Facebook. It was as I said the be all and end all of communication for my generation! If you weren’t on Facebook you were considered a bit strange let’s be honest. People my age couldn’t understand why someone wasn’t on Facebook. Like, how were they meant to know what everyone was doing?

           

For this blog post I am going to talk about Twitter. Twitter has really grabbed my attention in the past few months. So much so that I even signed up during the summer to see what it was all about. It has been recently though that I’ve actually started to use it. I went on it initially because as us Irish put it

‘’to have an oul’ look’’

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I will give you my candid opinion; I didn’t think much of it at all. But when I actually began to use it and follow people I thought it was brilliant. I believe it has surpassed Facebook in many of the tools it uses. Twitter has many tools that Facebook doesn’t offer. Such tools like hashtagging, trending topics, the @ sign, followers and verified accounts.

Twitter allows you to send and receive tweets which are like micro blogs to your friends, companies, celebrities, etc. You are the decider of what appears on your page – no advertisements unlike Facebook. You may subscribe or follow who you choose and there tweets will appear in reverse chronological order on your newsfeed. These tweets and yours are available for anyone to read. You are notified on your Twitter account about what topics are trending at the moment so you can stay up to date.

You use a hashtag when you want to define what topic your post is or group it together with others.

The @ sign allows you to tag someone specific in your post using the format @username. Whether it is for them or about them you are guaranteed it will be read instead of just a general tweet.

Also verified accounts are specifically made for celebrities, businesses and other public figures page. When these pages receive the verified account label it shows that this is the person’s genuine account and not a fake one someone made up.

As mentioned on an ABC news piece we learn,

According to Piper Jaffray’s semi-annual teen market research report, Twitter overtook Facebook in terms of popularity with teens. Twenty six percent named Twitter as their “most important” social site, while only 23 percent said Facebook was most important, down from 42 percent the year before.

ABC news article, ”Teens Are Leaving Facebook And This is Where They Are Going.”

As a result of this, Facebook has taken on many of the tools Twitter originally created. For example, you can now tag people and use hashtags on your status updates on Facebook. But it still isn’t the same. Facebook now have verified accounts and hashtagging but it is seen as odd. Also your newsfeed is always still clogged with advertisements.  The effects of Twitter do rival Facebook. At the end of the day Twitter is just more sophisticated social networking.

As a consequence, Twitter has surpassed in popularity for communication for the modern day teenager. And yes. I am on the band wagon.

 

Flappy Bird – Are we all going a little bit ”flappy”?

Image

For my blog this week I am going to explore the topic of gaming apps. For me, playing a game means using your imagination, a board game or maybe something with props like Twister. For my friends that is not the case. They are always on their phones or online trying out the newest game to be released. The most popular games being Candy Crush, Temple Run and Farmville. They are such things that I have never tried before but I have heard that they are very addictive. I am still stuck in a time where The Sims 1 was (and still is for me) a technological masterpiece!

For a modern teenager in this technological age gaming is quite a huge thing. Basic games like Solitaire, Monopoly and Connect4 have all gone digital. Gaming is not just for fanatics also known as ‘’hardcore-gamers’’ anymore but also every other regular Joe. You don’t have to be up to date with the latest PlayStation or Xbox available to stay on trend. This is due to games being so accessible now. All you merely have to do is download the game which is usually free from the app stores on your android or iPhones.  Everything is just a click away.

Visuals of Flappy Birds
Source: http://www.todaysiphone.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com

I decided to focus on just one game to write about on my blog this week which has been trending – Flappy Birds. I downloaded it out of curiosity because it was all over my Facebook and my friends wouldn’t stop talking about it. But I just couldn’t get into it. I merely accepted I was awful at the game and that I couldn’t get a higher score than two. It had nothing to do with lacking perseverance or just giving up (as some people said to me) – honestly, I just don’t find these kind of things interesting. I thought others would be like me but oh no! I was very wrong. Everyone I knew seemed to be swept up in the craze. It was trending all over Twitter and it was even on national news. People became obsessed with playing and trying to out-do each other.

From the way people go on about how frustrating and difficult it is one would think it is a very complicated game but it’s not. Flappy Bird has 80’s like retro gaming graphics – think old-school Mario. It consists of a small bird that you must tap for it to flap its wings so it can fly. The aim of the game is to manoeuvre this bird through series of pipes without touching them to get a high score but if you touch a pipe you die.

Researching about gaming has shown me it has affected the modern technological teenager in a far more negative light than positive. Even though studies have shown that ‘’hardcore-gamers’’ have fantastic cognitive abilities compared to others, the negatives have completely overshadowed this fact. Deaths, violent outbursts and obsession are some just to name a few examples. Studies have also shown that violent games like Gears of War have had extreme negative outbursts among teenagers. Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman from Iowa State University have conducted a study on the effects of video games on children and adolescents. The study contains findings that,

Research on exposure to television and movie violence suggests that playing violent video games will increase aggressive behavior. A meta-analytic review of the video game research literature reveals that violent video games increase aggressive behavior in children and young adults. Experimental and nonexperimnetal studies with males and females in laboratory and field settings support this conclusion. Analyses also reveal that exposure to violent video games increases physiological arousal and aggression-related thoughts and feelings. Playing violent video games also decreases pro-social behavior.

Flappy Birds alone in 2 weeks has resulted in many deaths. As result, it has been shut down and removed from the app store. I thought this would be the end of the Flappy Birds craze but I was wrong yet again. People are selling their phones with the Flappy Birds app still installed up on eBay, Amazon.com and other similar websites for large sums of money. And people are buying them.

Being sold for £1’000.00
Source: ebay.com

From simple research on the internet on the effects of gaming on my generation it does nothing but raise worries about how technology affects us. I believe the teenagers of today are too technologically saturated. The main influences in our lives no longer come from our family or peer groups but online media trends. Sometimes people are too focused about what is going on in the digital world and seem to forget about the effect it can have on the real world. I, for one am not one of the converted to the realm of gaming.

From the beginning – this is me.

My life without media – look at how happy I am!

I am 19 years of age and I am not the typical teenage stereotype. I act like my grandparents when faced with the task of doing things online. Technology and I have never mixed.

Yes, I do text and I am on Facebook but honestly it is to keep in contact with family and friends that I do not often see. I would not have a notion of how to use Twitter or Instagram; I barely even know what they are or why they are so popular.

I had to create a blog that was media based for a module in University. So, I decided that this blog should map my journey of exploration into the technological age – the life of a modern teenager. I am a bookworm at my core and would always choose a classic novel over the newest app available.

I spent six months in Ghana, West Africa at the start of 2013 and I grew very used to not having any technology available to me. There was no internet and I barely had any contact with home due to the terrible phone signal. And I was happy. I am only now using Facebook on a regular basis and I don’t text message like I used to. I much prefer face to face contact – instant message and texts are now extremely impersonal to me and not at all satisfying.

So this will be an interesting journey to see if I am swept up in the craze of the technological age!