However, I found during my time in Second Life that some ideas of masculinity were still relevant. Though I felt sort of weird talking to random strangers at all, I became more likely to respond to women who approached me, because they were less likely to make uncomfortable sexual advances. Perhaps this is a way for male users (or female users trying to experience a role reversal) to assert masculinity, especially those who don’t feel particularly adept at asserting it in real life.

Turkle’s quote, “by enabling people to experience what it feels like to be the opposite gender or to have no gender at all, the practice encourages reflection on the way ideas about gender shape our expectations,” raises an interesting point. I didn’t attempt to assume a male identity, but if I had, how much of my interactions would I have to change to pass as a male?

I feel like it’s still pretty common to assume that the avatars we encounter are representing users of the same gender – though we always know in the back of our minds that’s not necessarily true, it’s not one of the first things that pops into our minds when someone approaches us. Generally, I think we start entertaining these questions more seriously when someone doesn’t act the way we’d expect a person of their gender to act; maybe they don’t talk like a guy, they don’t dress like a guy, or the topics they bring up don’t seem masculine. This brings us back to Turkle’s quote. What do we inherently expect from someone based on gender, and how does the ability for users to assume the opposite gender mess with those expectations?

What it is, Part Two also expanded the concept of an avatar. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t use that word to describe the YouTube videos and personas detailed in this section. I would normally think of them as characters or personas.  However, this broadened my ideas of what could be considered an avatar – not necessarily just a computer created, animated little character, but any identity that users choose to assign to represent them on the web, as opposed to their truer and simpler self.

What it is, Part Three was for me the least revolutionary. It seemed to mainly list the different points of view that could be represented through an avatar, and the progress that has been made in expanding avatars from simple 2D representations to 3D beings. I’m no afficianado on virtual worlds, but I’ve played enough video games that all the avatar types discussed were familar to me. This was sort of nice in that I didn’t feel over my head, but also didn’t really present much new information.

What it is, Part Four began to explore the ideas about avatars that are harder for me to easily grasp. Here, the avatar is described as an interactive character, a social representation of the user. While these concepts are logical, the practice of them is sort of foreign to me. I suppose it’s just never occured to me to enter a virtual world and create an online icon that serves as a social messenger for myself. Avatars are described as making friends, defining themself, and making decisions. As animated characters controlled by a user, this almost seems like too much personification given to something that isn’t actually real. However, maybe that’s just my inexperience with complex avatars talking – perhaps our experience with Second Life will help me to understand more about how people become so attached to their avatars, and stake so much of their own representation in them.

The Blogpulse homepage

Blogpulse is a site that allows users to search exclusively through blogs, without mixing other internet content. However, the site is far from merely a search engine. In addition to free keyword searches, blogpulse also charts major trends in the blogging world, ranging from politics to entertainment to the bizarre. The site then creates graphics to visually represent their popularity, and allows users to create their own “trend searches.” Blogpulse also provides statistics such as the current number of blogs included in their searches, top posts, stories, and videos, and most frequently mentioned people/”buzz” words. The “conversation tracker” allows users to find the original post from comments or feeds branched off of it. Bloggers can submit their blogs to be included in the site, and create profiles to give basic information about themselves to others using the site.

The Technorati homepage

A similar site, technorati.com also collects blog posts and information and allows users to search through them. The site also works as an advertiser for blogs and social networking sites. The site displays major blog posts and major news stories side by side, and allow users to view the top stories in specific categories. Technorati also displays photos and videos tagged that day, and a “most popular” list that includes blogs, movies, searches, and games, to name a few. The site also provides blogger support and allows bloggers to submit their blogs and have them advertised.

The goal of both sites seems to be highlighting the blogosphere and allowing users to access it exclusively, showing not only the popularity but the legitimacy of this relatively new source of information. Both sites strive to provide people with what’s happening in the blogosphere, and allow them to easily find issues that they are interested in. However, though technorati claims to have a larger search engine, I found blogpulse to be a more thorough site. The trend graphics were unique and instantly provided information. Additionally, this website seemed to be a bit more user-friendly, explaining all of their tools in detail, and linking everything easily from the home page.