Maps and Journeys - Twitter, Hashtags, and QR Codes

Twitter

An online social networking service
Allows user to send 140 character messages
Users can post and read 'tweets'
Has an app for people to use on the go
'Tweets' can be uploaded via SMS
One of the largest social networks
Used by a lot of people, including well known people

"Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and by July 2006 the site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with more than 100 million users who in 2012 posted 340 million tweets per day. The service also handled 1.6 billion search queries per day. In 2013 Twitter was one of the ten most-visited websites, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet." As of July 2014, Twitter has more than 500 million users, out of which more than 271 million are active users." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

To me Twitter has a mixture of both good and bad uses/concepts within it; it's a great social networking platform that helps people express anything within 140 characters, but on the other hand it allows people to gain large egos for the amount of followers people has seems to control fame. However it's useful for gaining a large variety of posts under one subject, this is because you can search for hashtags of key words and any 'tweets' matching them appear. Our main reason for using Twitter is because it's easy to use and the majority of people have an account, also it has options to search hashtags which are very useful.

Hashtags

Type of metadata tag
Usually starts with the # key
Used on several different social networking sites
Mainly known for it's use on twitter
Grouping of similar tags and posts
Able to search and see the posts under the hashtag

"The hashtag began to pick up popularity through 2008 and 2009, slowly being adopted by Twitter users around the world. President Barrack Obama used the hashtag #askobama during his successful 2008 campaign, as well as in 2009 during the Iranian protests. With the hashtag clearly picking up steam, Twitter finally reacted, and in 2009, began to hyperlink hashtags from Tweets to search results for the hashtag text. Once Twitter users were able to search for specific hashtags, their use skyrocketed." - http://www.copypress.com/blog/the-hashtag-a-history-deeper-than-twitter/#sthash.tvU2dRGT.dpuf

Hashtags are also quite varied on use; sometimes people can use them to get people talking about important issues at the time, and sometimes people use them just to gain more followers or get opinions from their followers. A lot of advertisers and television programs also use hashtags to get people talking about their products/shows, this is because the more people who 'tweet' about them makes the hashtag trend meaning it reaches a wider audience. We however are using hashtags to keep track of the evidence; whether that be videos, pictures, or something else; so that we can see everything that's been done by each group and so can other participants.

QR Codes

Quick response code
Matrix barcode
First designed for automotive industry in Japan
Apps are used to read the codes
Consists of square dots arranged in a square grid on white background
Going out of use over time
Anything can be encoded into a QR code

"The QR code system was invented in 1994 by Denso Wave. Its purpose was to track vehicles during manufacture; it was designed to allow high-speed component scanning. Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR codes now are used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile-phone users (termed mobile tagging). QR codes may be used to display text to the user, to add a vCard contact to the user's device, to open a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), or to compose an e-mail or text message. Users can generate and print their own QR codes for others to scan and use by visiting one of several paid and free QR code generating sites or apps. The technology has since become one of the most-used types of two-dimensional barcode." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code

QR Codes aren't seen too much anymore, unfortunately they've become lost in the world of apps and transporting information. Personally I found they were around a lot in the year 2010; for example I would walk around and see giant QR Codes on billboards, and they'd even be displayed on trailers to provide the viewer with more information about the film and some extra bits. Although QR Codes aren't too big people will easily be able to spot one; this is because of the boost they had for a little while within the advertisement world, it also helps that the apps to read QR Codes are normally free. We are using QR Codes to provide people with the website on the go, this means they can go and sign up or check out what's going on in the groups at any time.