Social Technology Leads To New World

Background

Back to ten years ago, it was my first time to use computer as a communication tool. However, it was one-way communication with the computer. It was very exciting for me to control all the behaviors of computer such as copy, paste or move documents by entering particular commands which seemed like UNIX.

Nowadays, the fast pace development of IT has shifted the way of communication, working or studying to social network in our life, as millions of people joined online communities and started using online social platforms. 

Theories about social technologies

Refer to McKinsey Global Institute’s report (2013, p 7-8), social technologies have several characteristics that enable value creation activities.

• Involve interactions among people.
• Enable social behaviors to take place online which is a mean of getting rid of geographic or time zones constraints.
• Provide platforms for content creation, distribution, and consumption, also including value co-creation (e.g. Google Doc allows a group of people create and edit one document in the same platform instead of completing documents in traditional ways).

There are two social tools that we might feel useful when studying in university. Let’s have a look how these tools reflect the value creation of social technologies.

Evernote

Evernote is a suite of digital notebooking application supported by numerous operating systems such as iOS, Microsoft Windows, Android, and Blackberry.  The company also offers online synchronization and backup services, so all notes could be shared and saved among different devices and users. Furthermore, I found it is really helpful with the self-productivity as it has multiple functions:

1)    Organizing files

Evernote is a perfect “notebook” to store all the materials needed for any project and manage the ideas, deliverables and deadlines. By attaching different tags, it is easier to find notes. Also, search and discovery function is powerful enough to locate words, images and documents.

2)    File attachments

As a digital notebook, file attaching function allows users to insert webpages; photographs; PDFs; and voice memos.  This massive integrates all possible utilities into one which save me a lot of time in capturing ideas and save interesting information.

3)    Notes sharing and syncing

Whenever to work alone, or with a team, Evernote makes it easy to send important information to team members or friends with Shared Notebooks. It also allows peer editing and lets collaboration in capturing big ideas or finishing tasks more easily.

There are more amazing features of Evernote waiting for exploited. Check this video:

Dropbox

Dropbox is a file hosing service that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud and client software. It allows me to store any documents in their cloud drive and access these documents from most popular media such as computers, iPhone, iPad, and the web. However, the most appealing parts of this software provide sharing, links, events functions other than personal storage, which allows people to co-operate with each other in one platform and in real time.

1)   Sharing: I can create a folder in dropbox and invite my group members in this folder, the folder will appear inside their dropbox and syncs documents whenever or whoever takes actions on the doc. Compared with traditional file sharing methods such as USB, email or Bluetooth, dropbox is able to provide more efficient online file storing and sharing method. 

2) Links: I can create a link to any file or folder and send this link to anyone I want to share with no need to access dropbox. It is beneficial for some team members who want to view files but are not willing to install or sign up dropbox.

3) Events: Within Events, I can monitor any changes made on the dropbox folders by anyone linked. Most important, I am able to restore any documents or folders that someone deletes them without caution.

Reference 

McKinsey (2013). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies. Retrieved from https://about.yammer.com/assets/MGI_The_social_economy_Full_Report2.pdf 

Evernote. (2014, August 11).  5 Tips to Manage Your Freelance Career with Evernote [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.evernote.com/shard/s419/sh/b2983e0c-4eeb-4b39-8e0b-0ed523b1ba86/71a7f5250f3bd73fa35b269eff92bca8

Evernote Scott. (2012, April 12). Evernote Tips: The 11 Amazing Features That Make Using Evernote So Freaking Awesome [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce2_gWZHBIs