Trepia is interesting and different from other popular IM such as AIM or MSN, in which it provides virtual face-to-face conversation with the buddies' pictures on the screen.
In terms of the fact that "personal contact and trust are intimately related" and "face time" is "an essential element in building trust with groups", Trepia may facilitate mutual trust and knowledge exchange via IM.
It will be also interesting to test Trust of IM byTrepia and to figure out the difference between Trepia and BuddyZoo.
Trepia and BuddyZoo seem to have somewhat similar intention, in light of showing the user a list of people who are currently in his or her area -- people who the user most likely didn't know before.
The Same Function to Cell
"Trepia tracks the movement of people through access points, and then notifies you of other users who are in your area".
With the cells, Korean housewives can track their husbands' location and vice versa. Usually, when husbands come back home late, womens would call to their men's cells.
As soon as the cells ring, womens can find out where their husbands are hanging around. If it is still his office, it will be O.K.,but if it is a bar or somewhere wierd, he will get naged with suspicous eyes by his wife on the full screen.
BuddyZoo does some basic Social Network Analysis on who you chat with and who they in turn chat with! I'll try it out - if anyone else does, post your responses.
Dr. Turnbull encouraged us to think about trust issue in IM.
According to Andy Oram (2001), "Information conveyed via a long chain", "trustworthy or not, is generally viewed to be less trustworthy", therefore, "essentially, we are able to increase trust by reducing the number of people that must be trusted". Most of all, "even if there is high risk, if the potential consequences are not that bad, we may sitll be willing to trust"(p. 243).
In light of his argument, IM may be regarded trustful, because IM transfers information directly, even almost same time, and even if IM has risk to divulge a credit card number, many people in the world use IM because of its fantastic benefits that we learned in IM class this week.
That IM has lots of users reflects IM has earned good reputation, which supports trust of IM as well.
Thank you to everyone who was able to participate in today's IM chat.
I think it turned out fairly well, and appreciate all the input.
I made a log of the discussion, it is available here.
Download file
Thanks again.
Please join the chat room discussion for Instant Messaging during today's class.
This experiment we are trying is very similar to how many companies are using IM to support meetings and collaborations (including sharing documents by email).
Not to add to the confusion, but to heighten the reality of the trial, I have updated the presentation file. The new powerpoint, 04-08 Messaging is available here Download file.
I will refer to these slides during today's discussion.
Finally, I hope some people are available to come to class and share in the discussion -
live and online.
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