1) Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

I do not believe that the recent rise in popularity of professional "amateur" styled production will continue.  While some films have had interesting applications for this presentation, for example Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, it seems like more of a gimmick than a technique that will see frequent use.  While both of the aforementioned films were decent entertainment, I don't believe that there will ever be a great film made from this type of production.  Over time the quality of home-made productions will also improve due to advances in camera technology, narrowing the difference in quality between amateur production and the traditional level of professional production.  This will make the lower quality professional productions have less of the "personal" feel that they are aiming for, as home-made movies will not necessarily look much worse than the professional standard.

2) What social media sites do you find yourself using the most, and why? In your opinion why is Facebook so much more successful than MySpace, and do you think Facebook is "here to stay" for the long term.


I find myself making frequent use of Facebook and Youtube.  Facebook allows me to share things with a large amount of my friends simultaneously and can help to organize events.  Youtube is just a fun source of entertainment.  Often interesting videos will be passed around among my friends through Facebook.  I think that Facebook has become more successful than MySpace because it is better organized.  I haven't used MySpace for years, so I don't know how much has changed, but when I first started using Facebook it was far quicker to navigate around the site.  The customization allowed on MySpace often made the pages disorganized and slow.  Facebook also notified you of activity relating to your account from any area of the site you happened to be on.  On MySpace you had to go back to your main page to see if anyone had sent you a response, which slowed down conversations.  I believe that Facebook will continue its popularity unless a better social networking website is created, in which case there would likely be a shift from Facebook to the new site similar to the shift from MySpace to Facebook.  I think social networking websites as a whole will be here to stay, as they have become so ingrained in our culture that the lives of many people would be substantially affected by their removal.

3) Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?


Transparency is an important concept for social media because information given through social media will likely be biased by the author's opinions or motives.  Unlike traditional media, although there is certainly still bias in traditional media, in social media the authors are not held accountable by anyone. For example when someone creates a Facebook page and uses it to spread information, they do it for their own benefit.  There is no one to screen this information for accuracy before it is delivered to the public.  As a result, the recipients of this information need to take it with a degree of skepticism.