Three points to consider

The You Tube channel I was talking about this morning is Veritasium. He makes lots of engaging, highly viewed science videos, interspersing himself talking with images of what he is talking about. Take a look at a few of them. Could our site have videos something like those? 

As you critique your websites, remember a point that Dallin, I believe, brought up. Not only should a site let us know what it is about, it should convey some idea of it being about something different and better than other sites. That sense of something different and better could be something, which Plato would like, that we grow in an understanding of. But right away we should have some sense of that. For Plato, his dialogues contrasted standard ways of covering a topic with better ways. Every dialogue was about a better way to consider a topic.

Also, remember that Plato wrote in forms that others could distribute for him. Does your website have content, in forms, that lends itself to being shared by viewers? 

Plato Second Draft

Plato's Theory of Forms states that non-material abstract Forms or Ideas, and not the material world that we can sense, possess the highest level of reality. He suggests that these Forms are the only objects of study that can provide us with genuine knowledge. However, they cannot be fully articulated. Plato did not believe that words could fully communicate ideas. He stated that words can deceive us into thinking we understand when we actually do not. On the other hand, Forms can give an artist a way to find organic unity, and therefore, beauty. A good social website would attract us not only to itself, but to the idea of beauty itself. It must have a unified theme towards which all of its parts strive.

Plato wrote in dialogues to facilitate discussion. In a similar manner, social media facilitates discussion in the modern age. It should make it easier for people of similar interests to meet and discuss ideas. A good form of social media should not posit itself as a final answer, as the be-all, end-all, but rather as a way to raise questions and open possibilities. Facebook is an excellent example of this. When it first came out, it was a simple way to connect with other people, but as different demands were raised, it added functions such as pages, games, groups, and other services to appease consumer demand. Facebook adapted because it had to in order to stay relevant. Today, it's behind the curve, and now is desperately trying to continue to adapt in order to attempt to stay relevant. I believe that its time has come and gone, however, there are still many lessons we can learn from it as to what makes an ideal social website.

A good social website, then, must have a unified theme. All its parts must work together towards a cohesive whole. It must include everyone. It must be easy to sign up for and should provide a user-friendly experience with detailed guides and an intuitive interface. And it should invite discussion, providing a forum where people can easily share ideas. Facebook satisfied all of these requirements, and thus, when it first came out, it was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Good social websites should also seek to fulfill these criteria if they desire similar success.

Plato: On Dialogue

Plato is convinced that the best way to create and better ideas is to discuss them.  In pursuit of the Web 3.0 experience, the challenge is how to include the world on this grand discussion.  Discussions, I think, develop from at least one of the following:

1. an idea, or
2. a question

Through one or both of these, it may be easier to fulfill the needs of the poetic questions and modern society.  For example, a page could be dedicated to a question where people may discuss (there is the social aspect).  If one reads the question, than the purpose is realized within seconds (a modern requirement).  The question inherently provides a unity, and can be bound to an overarching theme of, say, seeking for answers in the light of great thinkers.  I think the way to create this may depend on the idea or question, because a discussion about food may require different abilities then a Euclidean geometry discussion.

Social websites through Plato's lens

Plato enters the scene as a playwright unhappy with the two common extremes of thought: dogmatism and skepticism. He is intrigued when he encounters Socrates and begins to write about him. His background as a playwright will have a significant impact on the way he influences his world.

Plato was skeptical of whether words can really convey ideas. He believed they were inadequate and had the tendency to lead us to believe we understood. This explains why Socrates was never able to completely nail down some important ideas. Plato builds on his thoughts and takes them to dialogues to be read at dinner, leading to insightful discussions that clarified important ideas.

In analyzing social websites through the lens of Plato we will answer three questions:

What makes a social website?
An online community of users that engage in some kind of social interaction (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace are some of the big ones).

What makes a social website good?

• Unified theme
• Plato discusses the idea of unity and the importance of being organic (in the way that human bodies and plants are unified). This unity draws people in and makes them want to be one with the website as well.
• Inclusion of everyone
• Plato claimed all people were capable of knowledge (whether they practiced it or not). The website should have a broad enough reach that all who choose can join in the conversation.
• An enticing opportunity for open discussion
• Plato wrote dialogues to be read at parties because words themselves fall short of conveying the exact meaning of an idea. With a dialogue, he was able to get a group of people discussing, which takes the conclusions to the next level.
• Easy to understand
• One should be able to quickly understand what the purpose of the website is. While they are on the page, they should become more and more familiar with this purpose. Similar to the idea of a unified theme.

How does one create a good social website?

When creating a social website, one must have the theoretical knowledge (as discussed in this post) as well as the technical knowledge (the how-to). Plato encountered a battle between these two types of knowledge in his life, which we continue to see today, but both are essential when one wants to make something truly great.

Youtuber - Jeff Harmon

Today I had a very interesting opportunity.

I'm in a entrepreneur networking class and today our guest speaker was Jeff Harmon who is a marketing expert in YouTube.

Here is a quick overview of what he has done (written by my professor.)

Jeff Harmon and his brothers are the pioneers of YouTube marketing; it is safe to say that they invented it. In fact, many of the advertising features that you encounter every day are the inventions and concepts of Jeff Harmon.

Back when most were uploading family videos to YouTube, he launched a successful company through this platform generating millions in sales for his company, OraBrush.com. 

Jeff started his career launching OraBrush while he was a student at BYU. His first YouTube video has now generated more than 19.5+ million views for that video alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFeb6YBftHE 

Another phenomenal campaign that Jeff and his team launched for the company, PooPourri.com now has than 31+ million views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKLnhuzh9uY 

And most recently, he created a phenomenal Christmas video for the LDS Church that has produced more than 6.8+ million views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrLoWt2tfqg 

Currently, he and his brothers are launching VidAngel.com which cleans sex, profanity, and nudity out of online videos.

What I learned from him is that research is key onto discovering "virality." You can create videos, test them, make new versions, etc. Details are very important to if they are marketable. The content has to be very compelling - you cannot push virality onto people.

He also said that campaigns need to make more money than they consume. This sounds obvious, but many companies forget it. If you make $2 for every $1 you put into it, you can keep pushing the advertisement. 

Sometimes this can only be sustained for a certain amount of time. The second video also has to address the changes of users perception of your brand.

He also had interesting insights on yoking 'Content' with 'Distribution'. You have to have great campaigns of both of them.

Collaborative Plato Post: Adding my Two Cents

medium.com

    Going off of Lisa's last post and to add to it, to create a good social website one item or bullet point that I think could be included at the bottom of her summary is that a good social website: creates a space for people to dialog.
    Medium.com does a good job at this allowing users to insert comments at the line or paragraph of interest instead of a long drawn out comment section at the bottom of the article. This facilitates better discussion which according to Plato is the whole end of writing and reading.
https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-media-1df945c09ac6
    The structural design of a website can either promote or inhibit this type of social interaction and thus a good social website would promote it by making it easy to contribute to the conversation.

How to record screen capture on Quicktime Player

Record your screen

You can use QuickTime Player to make a video recording of your screen, or just a region of your screen to save as a movie file for later viewing. This can be helpful for showing others how to perform a task or workflow, or for training.

Choose File > New Screen Recording. To start recording what's occurring on your Mac's screen, click the round record button.

You can record some of all of the screen:

• If you want to record the entire screen, click anywhere on the screen to start recording.
• To record just a smaller portion of the of the screen, drag your pointer to select the region of the screen you want to record, then click the Start Recording button within the region.

To stop recording, click the stop button in the menu bar, or press the Command-Control-Escape key combination (all at once) on the keyboard.

Clicking the triangle in this window gives you additional options, such as letting you choose whether to use the built-in microphone on your Mac, or another connected microphone, or no microphone at all. This menu also lets you select whether or not your mouse clicks are shown during the recording (the pointer is highlighted when you click). You can also choose where to save your screen recording when finished.

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201066

Elements to add to the blog

Find a theme
add a tagline to the title


Make sure it's clear and user friendly 
change up the posts so that the posts are questions and the comments are the responses

Decide what it should help define
what makes a good social website



Find a way for it to attract people

Getting people involved:
Want to critique a website?
Want your website critiqued?

dialogues - 


Make it capable of adaptation




edit the blog conitnually

Figure out a way for people to get offline as well 
invitation to the conference

Blog Clean Up

The following are ideas of how to improve the quality of WebPhil:

• Include more pictures/videos in our posts
• Have a designed background to make it more appealing 
• Connect our posts with either the same title or filtering out the least relevant posts

Writing Posts on Philosophers

1. Start with a brief history of the philosopher.
2. Include a brief explanation of his ideas.
3. Then, in the light of his ideas, explain:

• what is a social website? - in one sentence
• what makes a social website good? - in one sentence, followed up by an explanation of all the parts of that sentence
• how do we make one?

About the Theme

Just a little comment about establishing a theme.  As far as altering the blog, is there a way to keep a post (not the right word) at the top?  Even when you scroll?  That way, a visitor may read that first and see what the blog is about.

Screen captures

Plato wrote dialogues to invite people into the conversation. For a website critiquing social websites, we could use screen captures. Is someone willing to post a screen-capture video? Here is an example on You Tube, explaining how to screen capture on a Mac: Quicktime Player X isight and screen recording, Mac. And here is a screen capture with text appearing over black: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8

Collaborative Plato Post

What makes a social website?

An website where a community of users can engage in some sort of social interaction.

What makes a social website good?

• All parts are unified by a theme. Cannot separate each part and still have the thing or theme imbedded in each part.  Kind of like Plato's example with parts of the body: cannot separate and say have two bodies.  
• Plato believed everyone could be taught knowledge.  Everyone should be able to get on a social website and understand its point/purpose.
• To Plato conversation helped define things better than words.  Social websites can be looked at as giant conversations, and if they are looked at as conversations, something should get defined or understood better through them.  The things being defined or understood better can be products (Amazon), an individual (Facebook), the church (Mormon.org), etc. Since every social website can be looked at as a giant conversation, every GOOD social website should help facilitate authentic conversations and therefore authentic definitions.
• Attracts people or draws them in so that lots of people participate. 
• Plato's writings never had final answers, because he wanted his readers to come up with answers and then come up with better ones, etc. etc.  A good social website should be capable of adaptation.  It is not an end, but a beginning of a platform that changes and grows as users push it to.  Not just for people to interact, but for people to dictate as well.
• Plato hoped his writings would facilitate face to face conversation at parties. A good social website should encourage people to get offline and have face to face interactions as well.

How does one create a good social website?

• Find a theme
• Make sure it's clear and user friendly
• Decide what it should help define
• Find a way for it to attract people
• Make it capable of adaptation
• Figure out a way for people to get offline as well

Unified Post Names

I think it would be really helpful if we all had to name our posts the same thing just so we understand as we glance through what each post's purpose was.  For example when we are talking about the philosophers and the insights they can provide for social media, we could call those posts by the philosophers name (i.e. "Plato Post").  Then, when we go to submit the collaborative version or second draft that should incorporate all of our posts on Plato we could all entitle it "Collaborative Plato Post".  I just feel like it would make everything easier to sift through on the blog. Maybe there is an even better way to organize, but I think something like this would be helpful.

Thoughts on the blog

Authenticity
In our class discussion we touched on the importance of authenticity in making a social website good. A reader of our blog posts would probably have a difficult time in feeling comfortable without a clear explanation of what we are trying to accomplish and why. By being up front with the reader we can help the reader understand  our sincerity.

Purpose
This relates to a second difficulty the reader may run into: understanding the purpose of our blog. Could they understand in 3 seconds what we are trying to accomplish? I don't think so. We should have a clear message that is easy to see that explains the unifying theme and motive for all content on the blog.

Unified Theme
This leads me to my final point: there should be a unifying theme among posts and content. Because the posts are coming from different people, we need to make a special effort to have some unifying factor other than the fact that we are all talking about philosophy.

In addition, I think a good way to structure the blog to teach readers about Plato's application to social websites would be the following:

1. VERY brief history on Plato
2. Brief discussion of Plato's theories
3. In depth application of Plato's theories to modern-day social websites

A comment about comments...

 

As I was thinking about what we could do to make the Blog better according to Plato and without knowing the many functions of Blogger as a platform, one simple thing we could do is start commenting on each other's posts. We do discuss these posts in class, which is better than if we only discussed them online, but maybe we can do both. Sometimes seeing other people comment online invites you to participate and encourages dialog. Plato was all about that. In fact, I'm going to go comment on someone right now!

Beloved by the Gods because it is Holy, or Holy because it is Beloved of the Gods.: The Euthyphro--a Good Example of a Platonic Dialogue

Euthyphro

By Plato

Commentary: Several comments have been posted about Euthyphro.

Download: A 35k text-only version is available for download.

---

Euthyphro 

By Plato 

Written 380 B.C.E

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Persons of the Dialogue
SOCRATES
EUTHYPHRO

Scene
The Porch of the King Archon.

---

Euthyphro. Why have you left the Lyceum, Socrates? and what are you doing in the Porch of the King Archon? Surely you cannot be concerned in a suit before the King, like myself? 

Socrates. Not in a suit, Euthyphro; impeachment is the word which the Athenians use. 

Euth. What! I suppose that some one has been prosecuting you, for I cannot believe that you are the prosecutor of another. 

Soc. Certainly not. 

Euth. Then some one else has been prosecuting you? 

Soc. Yes. 

Euth. And who is he? 

Soc. A young man who is little known, Euthyphro; and I hardly know him: his name is Meletus, and he is of the deme of Pitthis. Perhaps you may remember his appearance; he has a beak, and long straight hair, and a beard which is ill grown. 

Euth. No, I do not remember him, Socrates. But what is the charge which he brings against you? 

Plato on the Movement toward Knowledge and the Limitations of Writing: from The Seventh Letter

For everything that exists there are three instruments by which the knowledge of it is necessarily imparted; fourth, there is the knowledge itself, and, as fifth, we must count the thing itself which is known and truly exists. The first is the name, the, second the definition, the third. the image, and the fourth the knowledge. If you wish to learn what I mean, take these in the case of one instance, and so understand them in the case of all. A circle is a thing spoken of, and its name is that very word which we have just uttered. The second thing belonging to it is its definition, made up names and verbal forms. For that which has the name "round," "annular," or, "circle," might be defined as that which has the distance from its circumference to its centre everywhere equal. Third, comes that which is drawn and rubbed out again, or turned on a lathe and broken up-none of which things can happen to the circle itself-to which the other things, mentioned have reference; for it is something of a different order from them. Fourth, comes knowledge, intelligence and right opinion about these things. Under this one head we must group everything which has its existence, not in words nor in bodily shapes, but in souls-from which it is dear that it is something different from the nature of the circle itself and from the three things mentioned before. Of these things intelligence comes closest in kinship and likeness to the fifth, and the others are farther distant.