Ptt In Close Shot
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Showing posts with label Ptt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ptt. Show all posts
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
PTT in Close Shot (5)
So say that the conflicts between search engines and the privacy of BBS users are all solved. How to make the search results more useful? Even in YouSee now--the search engine that only covers some forums and couple BBS sites, the search results can be plenty if the key term is commonly used. Therefore, it is important to develop an efficient ranking mechanism that works for both telnet PTT and web PTT. With the operation of the ranking mechanism, YouSee would be able to sort out the results that have most visits or have been recommended most. The comment function has long been used in a different manner (chitchat mostly), as I said earlier, so it is not reliable to count the number of comments of each post to decide its value. Then how should the ranking system work? Concluding from the blogs I have been reading, one good way to do that is to make sure there is a correct URL in the web PTT for each post--or at least those in the public boards--in PTT. These URLs can be used as referral to track where does the post link to, where is the post linked from, and how the flow is directed between PTT and the web. To make the ranking base on the referral data should be workable if in the first place the corresponding URL is operating correctly. And, perhaps in this way the posts in the web PTT can be promoted to the preceding results in the usual search engine like Google or Yahoo.
Another suggestion that has been brought up many times is that to develop APIs for PTT. It is similar to how the APIs work for Twitter, Plurk, and other social media. Users might be able to navigate PTT with their cellphone, to receive latest posts or comments in the forum that they have been subscribed to on their cellphone, to send out comments, posts, even mails in PTT via cellphone, to use Skype, gtalk, or MSN to send messages to their PTT peers and vice versa, just to name a few. There are so many possibilities to look forward to if the connections can be really built by the means of APIs. With the help of properly designed APIs, the connectivity of PTT would be maximized and tightly woven into people's daily life, and consequently, the values inside the flow, the content, the networks PTT bears will also be utilized in a more convenient and efficient ways.
But before cheering for the brightly looking future of PTT, it is helpful and important to be aware of couple things. First, like what I mentioned in the very beginning, there is no standard formula for the development of the Internet or the interaction between the cyber world and the offline world. There could be some broad ground rules, but it is hardly possible to copy and follow the exact pattern of the successful precedents. Also, the developing tendencies can vary regionally, because of the traditions, languages, values the local society are carrying. Same methods might cause dramatic variation in different regions. It is rather crucial to inspect how the local society has affected its interactions with the Internet, and how the Internet has responded to that. Knowing the people who are using--or even not using--the media is another key point. Mankind is always the agent that makes the differences. In order not to fall into the similar embarrassment of YouSee, one needs to take the logic, assumptions, ideologies embedded within people's daily use of the Internet into consideration.
Nevertheless, even if all the homework is done beforehand, how the Internet would keep growing and altering people's life is in fact hidden in the mist. After all, our generation is in fact right IN the middle, or the beginning, of the digital era. The Internet has been exploding in different speeds, into various directions. It is always possible and intriguing to expect, to deduct, or to predict, but we could never be certain.
-references:
Michael Netzley, CommunicateAsia (blog)
Sam Flemming, China IWOM Blog (blog)
MOBINODE (blog)
Mr./Ms. Days (MMDays) - 網路, 資訊, 觀察, 生活 (blog)
http://mmdays.wordpress.com/ (old site)
For Immediate ReleaseL The Hobson and Holtz Report - Podcast #408
TWNIC, Internet Broadband Usage in Taiwan, 2007 (a summary report)
林芳志, "「大學生你上網都在做什麼? - 淺談大學生網路使用概況", 數位典藏國家型科技計畫
Wikipedia,
-"PTT Bulletin Board System"
-"注音文"
-"Martian language"
Mark Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited"
"'Martian language' banned in Taiwanese college entrance exam", Taiwan.com.au
"鄉民團結力量大 救回自殺女揪甘心",
"網友串連 隔空救回燒炭女", 自由電子報
"PTT網友愛心串連 救出受虐姐弟", Peggy隨手拍 (blog)
批踢踢實業坊 (web PTT)
"淺談 BBS 與 Blog", Blog.XDite.net (blog)
"【６號成功分析室】批踢踢 (PTT) 為何成功？", Mr. 6 - 趨勢．創業．網路．生活
"Can we open up PTT?", cjin's fantastique world (blog)
"Open Up PTT!!!", ::run, tempo, run:: (blog)
"[yousee] 再談柚子，柚子到底做錯了什麼？", 小ken思路不轉彎 (blog)
"專找BBS文章的搜尋引擎「YouSee!柚子」", 重灌狂人 (blog)
PTT in Close Shot (4)
To What Ends is PTT a Valuable Site?
Without much thinking, so far PTT seems to be rather welcoming and public, because of the false impression given by its overwhelming flow of information/popularity. In fact, PTT is more of a guarded office building, with thousands of semi-public, semi-private conference rooms and personal offices. Why is PTT guarded? Well, first of all, even though the threshold for registration is pretty low, one still needs a registered membership to participate the discussions/activities inside the giant building. Otherwise, holding a guest ID will only allow people to have accesses to those conference rooms--that is, the so-called "public boards" in PTT, and no participation is permitted as well. Thus I am more like to think of them as "semi-public, semi-private", in spite of the fact that they are labeled as "public". Second, even if one has a registered ID, the complicated layout of PTT's forums/boards (the conference rooms and personal offices) makes it rather hard to navigate unless the person knows exactly what he/she is looking for. That means, the enormous amount of boards somehow creates a veil which helps to make some of the forums/boards "invisible" (they are open forums, but one has to find/locate them). This kind of forums often belongs to the category of personal offices; by personal offices I refer to those forums that are opened up because of a more personal, or relatively minor purposes. Course boards, class boards, alumni boards, group boards (school teams, clubs) and family/friend boards are some examples of this kind of forums. Third, the navigating system of BBS is so different and seemingly old as well as difficult (compared to the web world), that many people are blocked out from the very beginning.
So, indeed PTT isn't all that public, and that is why when people talk about how to maximize the value and potential of PTT, the discussions are often surrounding a main idea: to open up PTT. That direction is not surprising at all; while the web world has reached a stage of wed 2.0, and reached the preview and imagination of 3.0 or even 5.0, PTT still stays in the building. It actually has tried to join the worldwide flow, by opening up some new accesses to its offices. The web PTT has been launched for couple years, but not all the contents inside PTT are instantly transited to the website, probably due to some concerns about PTT users' rights and privacy. What's more, the web PTT is at most a set of archives; it follows the "read logic" but not the "read/write logic" of the Internet nowadays. People cannot make posts or comments or any other similar services that are provided by the telnet PTT. In this sense, this web version of PTT doesn't really take the step to make meaningful connections with the web. It is also possible to gain timely update of the posts in certain boards via RSS, or Atom feed. However, for some technical reasons this function does not work very smoothly, according to the feedback I found on the web.
(By the way, there is a site: "gaaan.com" established for the purpose of copying the entire package of a BBS site onto the web. It looks a lot like a BBS site and it offers a dual way to navigate--either to use the mouse or the traditional way in a real BBS site. Type "guest" into the blank and take a look! It's quite fun!)
Obviously there is still quite some room for PTT to improve in terms of opening itself up. The most frequently mentioned issue is concerning the search function. Many people have been complaining that despite the abundance of quality articles in PTT, it is easily for good articles (in the form of posts) to disappear in the daily wave of new posts, if the forum manager doesn't put them into the edited dossier. Also, search engines cannot find the articles in PTT; they can find the ones in the web PTT, but those are almost invisible (after flipping through many pages of search results, and there they are! Voila!). It means that it requires one to narrow down the search domain (for example: add "site:PTT.cc") for the contents in PTT to jump out immediately. But, to think that way is walking backward. Not many people would make their search terms so strict to simple one site unless they know beforehand exactly what they are looking for.
Before I go into the topic of promoting PTT's articles in the search results I want to talk more about the search issue. Lots of voices are asking for a way to search the contents in BBS sites. Actually, a search engine for BBS sites is already out there: YouSee. This site is built up by a group of graduate students, aimed to search the posts, comments, or other traces ONLY in BBS sites. At first it stepped on the stage with confidence and lots of cheering, but within a week, it was forced to stop operating and modified the range its search engine could reach.
Why? Well, the biggest controversy in the whole YouSee event is the privacy issue. As I mentioned before, the number of forums in PTT and the special way of navigation in a way have woven a seeming veil that creates a false impression of being invisible for the PTT users. This illusion further helps to fertilize a prevailing assumption about PTT's "privateness" which is different from that about the world wide web. Under such assumption, many users forget about the possibility of being watched, especially in those "personal offices". Yes, they might be unnoticed, but in the digital age, everything leaves some traces. So soon lots of people found out that the launch of YouSee was not merely non-beneficial but might also be harmful. This search engine offered a strong service that enabled people to find articles that were hidden behind the enormous newer posts in the forum, to find posts in both public boards as well as the "personal offices" (class boards, friend boards, and so on), and to search for the same key term across several BBS sites. The overwhelming search function of YouSee suddenly exposed everything to the ground, and simplified the ways to access the data that might not be so easy to get before. That made lots of BBS users very uncomfortable and some old histories were dug out and led to some harm. In the end, YouSee was suspended for some time and now its search engine only covers the BBS sites or the forums that have agreed to be included into the index. Isn't that interesting to see how the assumptions vary with different social media, and that people are so prone to be trustful with the Internet? (Uh, including me.)
Saturday, May 23, 2009
PTT in Close Shot (3)
What Impacts Does It Have on the Local Society?
Looking into the impacts PTT has on the local society in Taiwan, here I present three case studies by which I hope to simplify as well as exemplify the complex interactions between this particular social medium and the society.
* Case study #1: the prohibition against "chu yin wen" v.s. the popularity of the PTT slang
"Chu yin wen" is a Chinese language slang that was once very popular--and nowadays it is still being used and circulated, but not so much--in the Internet sphere in Taiwan. It is similar to the SMS language in the English-speaking area; both are reducing words to the simplest letters/symbols that phonetically represent the original words. "Chu yin wen" was widely used once in the cyber world but was soon viewed as a sort of downgrading use of Chinese couple years ago. PTT was one of the first opponents that officially made the prohibition against "chu yin wen".
The interesting thing here is, even when PTT bans the use of such slang, there is actually another kind of informal language that has been popularly used within the site. That is, the PTT slang, or more generally, the Martian language. The PTT slang is not an original kind of Internet language, but is derived from the Martian language--a general term for different slang going around in the Internet. The Martian language was slowly formed, produced, and accepted with its circulation in the cyberspace, and it has sneaked in the world of Internet smoothly and thoroughly: daily conversation, blog entries, instant messages, emails, and so on. The PTT language can be called as a dialect of the Martian language. While "chu yin wen" chose to phonetically represent the Chinese characters in the simplest way, the PTT language is semantically playing with the original language. That means, the PTT slang adds new meanings, or twisted meanings to the old language; sometimes it also borrows icons or symbols to present novel expressions that are hard to convey through the Chinese language.
In 2006, the committee responsible for the National College Entrance Exam made one of the questions on the Chinese subject out of some Internet slang ("3Q", "::>_<::", "orz"). This caused lots of controversies at that time, with teachers, students, and parents questioning the orthodoxy of the Internet slang. And eventually the College Entrance Exam Center announced that Martian language would be banned in the future exams.
So what do all those above imply then? Well, as far as I am concerned, I find it very intriguing seeing how PTT works as both the tool to stop and to spread the use of informal languages in the cyberspace as well as the offline world. It once helped to correct the trend of "chu yin wen", but it also helped to carve out rooms for the slang to be circulated. PTT's impact on the use of language is, on the one hand, indeed remarkable, but on the other hand, the instrumental role of PTT as a non-fixed medium that can be worked in various ways is even more worth-noting.
* Case study #2: let's buy together!
"BuyTogether" is a popular board in PTT that brings up a nationwide trend of collective purchase. The advantages of doing collective purchase are having more bargaining terms, splitting up mailing costs, reducing the risk and total expanse of abroad purchase, and so on and so forth. That particular board in PTT is set up as a public space for initiating and joining such collective buying. The idea of group purchase is not at all new, of course. But the set-up of BuyTogether board amplifies the workability and efficiency of such deed with the different networks it brings in, and regulates basic rules for such affair to protect participants' rights and benefits. This trend of collective buying has become so popular that the web version of the PTT BuyTogether board is blooming one after another. For example, "ihergo" is one of the many attempts to transfer the business from the BBS region to a more open and accessible field of world wide web. Not merely that there are its counterparts in the web sphere, but this craze of collective purchase has also led to the publication of books introducing the must-buy "hergo" (the term sounds like the pronunciation of collective buying in Chinese) products [see here] and books teaching people how to make the popular hergo snacks [see here].
The prosperity of BuyTogether board changes how people buy things, how people sell things, and how people make money. It lifts an action that was traditionally limited within the circle of acquaintances/friends to a new level of endless players joining in from different directions. It helps people to think and act beyond old boundaries and further to find new possibilities in their everyday routine.
Yet the amazing potential of PTT in terms of profit making also attracts many hostile attempts to make money in various ways. Advertisements, promotion, or branding hidden within the posts are quite normal, and fake customer feedback sharing is also very common. There are even cases of national frauds cheating hundreds of participants of their money. So while the board itself is established for the good use, it at the same time unavoidably makes rooms for the bad deeds.
* Case study #3: help me, PTT!
The popularity of PTT has made it the alternative place to turn to when it comes to emergencies. By means of mobilizing the human resources and networks in PTT, there have been many cases of successful rescue. For example, just couple weeks ago, the "villagers" (a term of the PTT language, it generally refers to users of PTT) helped to find a female villager who left a post in PTT as a suicide note, and stopped her from committing suicide [see here]. Similar event happened several times before. In 2006, the villagers in Kaohsiung managed to locate where the suicidal girl was and save her with only few clues (her name and that she just checked in an anonymous hotel) [see here]. In 2007, the villagers in the Hate forum read about a post crying for help; it described the domestic violence in the family and the unstable state of mind of their mother. In the end, with the assistant of the police force, the sister who made the post and her younger brother were both rescued, and their mother was sent to the hospital [see here].
The examples above exemplify the powerful capacity of PTT to mobilize. Because of the networks gathered in PTT, this BBS site seems to be "the" place to initiate actions or schemes. However, the water that bears the boat is the same that swallows it up. The key factor of variations is always people; that is to say, how people are utilizing PTT's strength in having influences or making changes is in fact the critical point for the outcome. For instance, a scandalous post accusing his ex-girlfriend of being a two-timer was posted in February, 2005. That post attracted lots and lots of emotional discussion which led to the exposure of the real personal information of the "heroine" in this event, as well as many insulting, attacking posts. The whole thing made a dramatic turn while the man making the original post admitted that he made up the whole thing for revenge. Issues concerning the blind enthusiasm of crowds, individual privacy in the cyberspace, and the realization of Internet as the ultimate surveillance in the society were brought up and pushed into the spotlight.
What does it imply for human beings when the Internet becomes the ultimate surveillance in our society? Do people falsely think that they are heading toward a bright era of freedom but in fact are putting themselves in the self-built prison of information? With the watching-over of PTT, or the Internet, surely people can make good use of it. Nevertheless, it is also very likely that people can get tripped by the endless string of histories left behind their freely marching and surfing in the cyberspace.
PTT in Close Shot (2)
Why is PTT Distinctive from Other Social Media?
Followings are some significant special features of PTT that, in my opinion, make it stand out among other social media in Taiwan.
* 1. A abundant collaboration of different online activities
Even though the essential form for PTT to operate as a social medium is forum--a place where people exchange and discuss information as well as experience--the activities taken place there are rather versatile. As I mentioned above, the boards in PTT cover almost every part of one's life. What's more, human beings are creatures with amazing creativity; people are utilizing PTT very differently and creatively. They are making friends, organizing study groups, playing detective games, co-writing stories, selling/buying second-hand stuff, and so on and so forth. When there is a crucial baseball or basketball game, or even just a very popular TV show, people would go online and open up a "Live Post" for instant reporting and discussion. The things one can do in PTT is versatile beyond believe. Like I said earlier, it is really easy to find a comfortable spot in PTT; sometimes it is also fun to just observe things happening there.
In addition to the forums, PTT offers some different functions for its users. The most popular and beloved one should be the function of giving comments right below each post. Users give out their comments with one simple line (they have to give another comment code to write another line), and they can choose between "tuei" (I agree, I approve), "shi" (I disagree) and "-->" (not taking sides) to show their opinion before giving out the comment. Somehow it looks a little bit similar to Twitter, probably because the limit of the length of each comment. And as usual, people never use the tool only as what it is supposed to be used. It has become a common thing to chat in the "string of comments," either surrounding the topic of the post or not. People also use the comment function to sign up for activities (the first fifty people to give comments can get a spot), to play games (give out answers via comments), and sometimes even to make images with the string of comments. Besides the comment function, there are also chat rooms, instant messages, mailing function (even to other BBS sites, or to the email addresses that are set in the www region), recreation zone (virtual pets, poker games, chess games), just to name some.
* 2. A contradiction in being disguised and being crystal clear
In PTT, people seldom use their real name as their user ID, and they seldom fill in real personal information when they register. Unlike that of Facebook, MySpace or some serious blogs, the ruling logic in the world of BBS is to be disguised (not that every people put their real identity out there in the former social media, of course). People interact with one another behind the image they have created in the online world. They chat, they discuss, they argue, they share, and gradually, they become friends, or at least, acquaintances. They build up connections with each other behind their PTT ID. Broadly speaking, these connections can be viewed as a sort of "weak ties" that bridge different groups of people, thus bringing in networks that one might not otherwise have been able to reach. The values of weak ties are well-discussed in Mark Granovetter's "The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited", so here I won't go into that direction. But it is rather clear that PTT, because of the prevalence of the site itself and the generally accepted unspoken rule of having obscure identity, has helped to build up these weak ties.
However, there are also quite a lot of users have chosen to be crystal clear, under certain circumstances. By "crystal clear" I don't mean that they show everything to everyone, but that they bring a part of PTT into their real life, and let certain peers to know who they are in the offline world. A way to do this is to arrange offline meet-ups. The basic routine is to have a meal, or some coffee together. Of course, there are advanced versions. Meet-up participants can go to concerts, watch movies, have lessons, attend TV show programs, or go work out together. And the meet-ups can be anywhere, and have been held in many other countries, since the users in PTT don't necessarily only dwell in Taiwan. With frequent offline meet-ups and contacts outside PTT, people are bringing in the virtual world to their real life circle. It's likely that they can build up connections stronger enough to be the so-called "strong ties".
While weak ties are bridging different networks and carrying in various flows of information and resources, strong ties are working as the solid base for the stability for the survival of each forum, by building up powerful connections that link active participants tightly and firmly. This contradictory situation of being able to be disguised and to make overlap with the offline world in PTT for me is a key element that keeps it being so popular and prosperous in Taiwan, because that situation creates tons of weak ties but also gives space for strong ties to grow.
* 3. Absolutely noncommercial
Even since the very beginning, PTT has clearly stated itself as an always noncommercial BBS site for college/university students. Persistently it has kept its promise till now, despite the fact that there is enormous potential for profits in PTT. Any marketing, advertising, or profit-making activities are officially banned. With the technical as well as equipment support from school brothers and sisters in NTU, donation from certain companies, and money raised by concerts and other fundraisers, PTT has managed to survive and keep growing. Compared to the long commercialized BBS site KKCity, which has a more wild and sophisticated collection of forums, PTT appears to be more "school-like" and "naive". The absolutely noncommercial quality of PTT is a very important factor contributing to its popularity, because it is rather rare to find a spot without ads flying around in the cyberspace nowadays.
PTT's potential of making big profits is pretty well-noticed, and that has aroused many attempts to try it out: placement marketing, personal sales, disguised ads, and even frauds. Some of such examples will be discussed in the next section where I would like to talk about the impacts PTT has on the local society.
Monday, April 27, 2009
PTT in Close Shot (1)
PTT in Close Shot
--a primary survey of the Biggest BBS site in Taiwan
The scale of the impact of the Internet and its by-products on the world is, with no doubt, global. The Internet has brought a wide range of changes in people's ways of living; it brought a digitalized world that is interwoven into the physical world which human beings have long inhabited. The planet is fluctuating in the flood of the Internet. The waves sweep over the whole world and run in all kinds of direction. Each trend brings hardly the same result; there is no single default way of tracking and framing the development of a virtual society. Yet, while the majority of discussion and investigation of online activities is targeting phenomena in the West, the ecosystems of the Internet in Asia are often filtered out, or labeled as "weird" or "funny", because they don't fit in with the western ethnocentric logic (quoting and paraphrasing parts of Michael Netzley's blog entry #110).
As Michael Netzley points out in his blog entry #254 as well as FIR: The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #408, "the popularity of BBS sites in parts of Asia" is one of the features that indicate how different the landscape of Internet development in Asia is compared to that of the West. BBS (Bulletin Board System), as a rather old kind of way to connect and communicate, not only survives from the dominance of world wide web, but also transforms into an unique type of social media that stands out and keeps prospering in the Chinese-based areas. So, here I would like to look into one single BBS site--PTT, the largest site in Taiwan--and to sort out three major questions: Why is PTT distinctive from other social media? What impacts does it have on the local society? and, To what ends is PTT a valuable site that worth all the resources that have been pouring into it?
PTT, the largest BBS site in Taiwan, was founded in 1995, by a sophomore student in NTU (National Taiwan University). As many other BBS sites gave way to the web, PTT wasn't wiped out in this global flood, and nowadays it remains to be the leading force among the few survivors. The current number of PTT's registered members is circa 1,500,000, each day there are 400,000-600,000 attempts to connect/log in, and its average number of users each hour is around 40,000. The numbers might be relatively not impressive compared to sites on the global level like Facebook or Twitter. Yet being a local social media, in a country with a population of 23 millions, the records are indeed significant.
BBS can be described as a collection of many different forums. The public forums, or public boards--as the BBS users may call them, can be accessed by all users (even "guests", the non-registered ones), and are nearly all available for any registered members to open up new topics, to post replies, or simply make a comment or feedback. Now PTT gathered over 20,000 public boards which cover almost every single issue in a person's life. There are boards for left-handed people (Lefty), for cross culture couples (CCRomance), for people who are losing their hair (hair_loss), for people who want to let out their anger (Hate, HatePolitics), just to name a few. The great variety of themes covered by the boards in PTT is a major attraction for its users. One can easily find a comfortable spot--or many, of course--there to sit back and read the discussions, experience sharing, debates that appeal interesting to him/her. It is also very easy to jump in the conversation. One can either choose to give comments (just to test the water) or to jump right in and post.
BBS can be described as a collection of many different forums. The public forums, or public boards--as the BBS users may call them, can be accessed by all users (even "guests", the non-registered ones), and are nearly all available for any registered members to open up new topics, to post replies, or simply make a comment or feedback. Now PTT gathered over 20,000 public boards which cover almost every single issue in a person's life. There are boards for left-handed people (Lefty), for cross culture couples (CCRomance), for people who are losing their hair (hair_loss), for people who want to let out their anger (Hate, HatePolitics), just to name a few. The great variety of themes covered by the boards in PTT is a major attraction for its users. One can easily find a comfortable spot--or many, of course--there to sit back and read the discussions, experience sharing, debates that appeal interesting to him/her. It is also very easy to jump in the conversation. One can either choose to give comments (just to test the water) or to jump right in and post.
Most of PTT's members consists of university students, grad-students, and newly graduated (or the "freshmen in workplace", a term that coined by the local media). According to TWNIC's report on the usage of broadband Internet 2007, in the list of "Purposes of Broadband Usage", BBS cannot get into the top 10 at all. Nonetheless, in researches where the target group is college/university students, BBS is always rated as the top 5 purposes students using the Internet for. Also, in the user statistics that given by PTT itself, the number of registered users would reach the high peek between age 20-27 if analyzed and divided by age. This special feature of PTT indirectly makes it the place where a big part of pop culture among the younger generation in Taiwan is produced, circulated, and reproduced.
-Want to know more about PTT? See the entry of PTT in Wikipedia
-Want to experience PTT?
telnet://PTT.cc
(have to use specially designed browsers to navigate)
-Some browsers designed for BBS
PCMan X http://pcmanx.sourceforge.net/
PCMan plug-in for Mozilla/Firefox http://pcmanmoz.mozdev.org/index.html
PCMan plug-in for Mozilla/Firefox http://pcmanmoz.mozdev.org/index.html
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