Campus Communication Innovation with Advent of Facebook
Campus Communication Innovation with Advent of Facebook
  • Reporter Kim Sung-hwan
  • 승인 2011.11.02 22:39
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▲ Some people began to create accounts with names of certain commonly known places to invite school members. The three examples are 78-stair, Pos-cat and Jigok Pond.

We usually refer to the principle of dialectic in discussion of how things change and improve; it is a principle that the previous thesis is contradicted by antithesis. Then, there gets to be a synthesis of collusion.

The same applies to the communication methods trend. Telegrams replaced the manually delivered letters. The phones replaced the telegrams, and Facebook is replacing Cyworld and other online networks in Postechian background since Sep. 2010. In POSTECH, though the adoption has been little late, Facebook is overriding Cyworld, a social network service that once was the only online service, in the POSTECH campus students network. Here, what’s to be compared is Facebook and Cyworld which previously pervaded the campus daily social network.

The Postech Times had conversations with five average Postechians and made a conclusion about how Facebook swept the Postechian connections as that Facebook not only serves a role of better-designed substitute for Cyworld, but also provides other roles that make life comfortable and fun.

Simplicity
Woong-gi Chang (MECH `10) said that one of the biggest advantages of Facebook is its simplicity. Unlike Cyworld which has tens of functions and menus, though Facebook also has some menus such as photos or wall, Facebook congregates all posts on one personal thread.

Also, Ken Park, a Korean American professor, said that he tried to register for the Cyworld account, but he could not make it since it asked too much information such as passport number and others. Facebook just needs name and e-mail account. This easy account creation leads to an interesting usage of Facebook which is mentioned on the figure.

Organic Real-time Feedbacks
What makes Facebook more pervasive is the thread system which allows real-time feedbacks. Myunghwan Shin (MSE `10) said the simple interface of Facebook lets organic real-time feedbacks be realized. Along with the personal threads represented with ‘wall,’ there is a gigantic main thread called ‘newsfeed’ which collects all the updates of friends.

Collective Intelligence
The organic Real-time Feedbacks allow the activation of collective intelligence. Donghwan Kim (IME `08) said that when he gets life-wise questions, he writes and questions on Facebook. For instance, when he needs to choose which food delivery brand to order, he posts to ask which is good or bad. Then, friends who have experiences comment on the post which then forms the collective answer. This strategy is often used for idea collection for homework assignments or for finding places to hang out.

Easy Mobile Access
One advantage is that Facebook has the easy mobile access. Beomjin Ko(Life `10) said he frequently uses Facebook on his Galaxy S in class or spare time. Cyworld has heavy interface and pages to move through. Facebook’s newsfeed system renders the users access the Facebook just as simple. Woo-bin Jeong(IME `10) said, “I frequently move between Seoul and Pohang. Moving between, I ride a bus and Facebook’s easy smartphone access reduces the boredom.

No Pressures
Young-eun Kim (IME `10) commonly said Cyworld gave certain pressures even with just having the account because of Cyworld’s unique features such as visitors’ count and costly decorations. It is that the visitors counter invokes some kind of pressure to do something which leads to paying for background music and layouts of pages. Facebook has no such and lets the users just enjoy.