Second Life and e-learning communication class: what kind of comparison?

I think that we can find a lot of explainations about concepts we discussed in class. And more, the concept of this class is more deeply developped in Second Life. It's the occasion to come back on few notions.

Social networks and outsourcing to the customer
This new term describes the new way some parts of the web are designed. Contents of some pages on the web come only from users.

Linden Lab, the company behind the game, said, on its blog, it is making the software blueprint of its PC program available to developers to modify for their personal use and to share with others. It's the same model that's used to build the Linux operating system and the Firefox Web browser.
Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab's co-founder and chief executive officer, said he hopes the developer community will help his relatively small staff 50 programmers or so fix bugs in the code and optimize the software for use on older computers. He also expects some cool tools to emerge.
It's kind of social networks, a website where contents are produced by users.
However , I would say qualify this practice as outsourcing to the customer. Indeed, more than permitting a co-working, opening the source is a way for Linden Lab Not to work to hard for the futur.

Cybercrime
Cybercrime is a term used broadly to describe criminal activity in which computers or networks are a tool, a target, or a place of criminal activity. These categories are not exclusive and many activities can be characterized as falling in one or more categories.

Communicating without real contact
In this class we were asked to create a MSN account in order to participate to the virtual class. It supposed to invent a pseudo, adn to get used not to speak with a personn in front of us. We hadn't to be that creative with the creation of our name, and through the webcame we could discover real face of our interlocuter. Anyway it could be the first step of a virtual class, as Second Life offers a virtual world. By creating an avatar you create a new identity. Maybe classes of the futur will be that way. Could you imagine a teacher or a pupils with this look (picture below)?! Schools will provide rules of behaviour in the virtual class!

More over, Second Life shows what you want to be. Your avatar reflects what you would like to be. Your identity is on the web, as Loic Le Meur, famous French blogger says. In our e-communication class, Bob underlined the fact we should have an e-portfolio in order to show what who we are, and what are the competences we have. This is the same logic: demonstrate by the Internet tools who we are.

Advertising
We discussed about the fact Youtube has been bought by Google in order to sell ad spaces on the website. Indeed, brands use the sucess of some webtsites to reach their cusotmers. In Second Life brands are more and more present. Look at the video below to understand.