This is Travel Time!: Exegesis

People nowadays are live in World Wide Web. The development of web makes people starting to depend on the web to solve their problem. Haraway (as cited in Leaver, 2010) state, “Human are cyborg… We are deeply entwined with technology and would be fundamentally different people without it.” They spend a lot of time on the web just to find any information’s or be friends with other. Web gives easy way to live by providing tools that help people in their life. Start from sharing content, sharing thoughts and information, and one stop entertainment service on one click. Blogging is one of the ways to perform those activities. Blog is mixture of links, commentary, personal thoughts and essay (Blood, 2000). People are freely share their thoughts and actualizing their selves in the web. Ability to link blog to other website makes blog a perfect choice to contributes in the web.

The blog appearance are also become a representation of who you are. Because social network site, including blog, are structured as personal (or ‘egocentric’) network, creator become the center of the site (boyd, 2009). Readers need to know who you are or they will misinterpret your blog.

Furthermore, people use certain layout to communicate different message to audience. As central node, I use Blogger because I am a blogger in that site. So it makes me easier to construct and arrange the blog because I used to this site. I also feel that Blogger is more user-friendly application compare to other blogging platform. I choose a template that provided in this site and have advantage to customize the layout on my own. I chose the minimalist 3 columns layout and keep it simple. This layout is more convenient for reader to see the whole blog content without scrolling all the way down. As the background, I choose notes page’s image, which is feeling that this is my personal note about my travel experience. I also put photo of harbour scenery with my blog title to inform readers what is this blog about and what they can expect from my blog (good quality of photography, travel story). The photos also become the reason I choose natural warm color, I want my photos stand out because it gives picture of places that I write about in this blog.

The reason that I choose this theme is because I love to go traveling whenever the holiday time comes. I want to give people reference which place they can go and must visit if they go to same place I went before. I also have series of photograph that can show them exactly what they can get on those places. These photos prevent me from having problems with copyright material. I made my blog as an informational travel reference for readers before they go traveling.

Ability to combine other web platforms in blog, such as Flickr, Twitter, Youtube makes user easier to use and share links of their specific interest. That is why, as much as possible, the selection of contributing nodes needs to be related to the theme that I choose in this web presence. These nodes are reflection of me as a traveler and show what I have got during my travel time. My first contributing node is Travelpod. It is a specific blog for traveler to share places they visit before. The different between this blog with Travelpod is in Travelpod is more like personal traveling diary for me compares that this blog, which is more informational. This platform works as social networking sites too where you can create profile, follow other blogs, and share you thoughts. It is fits the social networking site characteristic that boyd (2009) mentioned. The next node that I use is Twitter. I choose to use this web platform because I can create my own travel community that give me useful information about place to visit and any travel offer that I can get. It is much easier than browsing through the web to look for the information. Twitter gives real time information (Twitter, 2010) and easy to access from computer or mobile phone. The third node that I choose is Flickr. As a free photos sharing service, this web platform allow me to share photos that I take during the travel time. Flickr give us choices of copyright that we can choose, which is an advantage this platform has compare to other content sharing tools.

These contributing nodes need to reflect the chosen theme. These nodes show how users create a set communication to support the preferred theme. It shows how I gather and sharing information about traveling and how I indentified myself as. These nodes support and describe me as traveler who wants to share information with others about what interesting things that I had before and give them proof of it, such as sets of photos in Flickr. These nodes also allow reader to follow my updates by following my Twitter account or get different sense of traveling in my Travelpod account. These applications linked back to my Blogger page as the central node. They can also subscribe this blog and get RSS feed every time I make new updates.

This web presence is an application of what I got throughout Web Communication 101. Starting from understanding what is web 2.0 and the development of it, until being able to participate in web 2.0 platform by applying it in this web presence. Web (1.0) changes from sees user as consumer of the content provide by content creator, to user being both creator and consumer in the web (2.0) (Cormode, 2008). All the contributing nodes I choose in for this web presence are types of web platform that being discussed in Web Communication 101 module: blog, social network, and content sharing. I found this platform is useful to share information about the travel sites that people have to visit based on the experience I had before.

In conclusion, blog ability to link up with other website makes this platform the perfect choice of contributing in the web. It is the main idea of the web that is about participation and collaboration. This web presence shows what I have learned about throughout the unit. It is proven by the central and contributing nodes that I used is the platforms that have been talk about in this unit. The development of web 2.0 gives us a medium to share our thought and communicate with the world. It also allow people actualize themselves on the way they want it to. World wide web become the new world to live in.

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