In this Exegesis I will explore what choices I have made to put my web presence together about Greyhounds as Pets. I will explore what design options I have used and why I chose the connecting nodes of Twitter, Facebook, Fkickr and Delicious. I will show how they all have a consistent theme and design as well.
“Blogs are a social genre.”(Rettburg, 2008). People create blogs to have their say about a favourite topic. I have chosen to use WordPress to blog for my web presence and to also promote ex racing greyhounds that need homes after finishing racing.
I chose the theme of spectrum for WordPress because it is a colourful and fun theme, much like the greyhound itself. They come in many different colours and love to play with people, toys or other dogs. The greyhound picture I have used across my blog and nodes is a free photo of racing greyhounds.
As stated by Rettburg. 2008. “Blogs are a relatively free-form of social software, and are decentralized, often running on their author’s own domains and connecting haphazardly to other blogs.” So it seems anyone can write about almost any topic and publish it in a blog for anyone to read. They can be fun or serious; it is driven by the author.
I chose WordPress as my central bode because it allows you to have many pages such as this Exegesis page, an about page and other pages for blog posts. Photos can also be uploaded and you can link to other applications such as Twitter or Flickr. As I have not used a blog platform before I found it relatively easy to set up the site and link to my other nodes as well. as stated by Leggate (2012) “A blog can provide a focal point for additional resources and links.” I have found it ideal as a starting place and easy to set up links to other nodes.
You can write up your own blog posts and post them so other people with an interest in your chosen blog topic can find it and read it. Comments can be made and it is a suitable site to make a long post, such as this exegesis. I have carried the same theme about Greyhounds across all my nodes and I have used the same profile picture of myself and the same greyhound picture as well to give all nodes a consistent look.
One of the supporting nodes I chose was Twitter. You can make posts of up to 140 characters, so this would not make it suitable for my main page, but it is suitable for a supporting node. Any tweets made are instant and are able to be viewed instantly. It is a good site for small posts, but there is no room for long detailed posts, which is the major difference between writing a blog and posting on Twitter. You can make short posts and can also share photos and video. You can follow other Twitter accounts that interest you or have similar types of content to your own. For my Twitter node I have followed some other Greyhound and dog accounts. Any tweets or retweets I have made are linked back to my WordPress blog and they appear on my sidebar under the Twitter heading.
The next node I chose was Facebook. I chose this primarily because I wanted to see how Twitter posts were able to be shared on your Facebook page as well. I have previously used Twitter and Facebook, but I did not want to share my posts across these platforms in my personal accounts previously. This assignment was an ideal chance to see how it would work. I have a link to Facebook on this WordPress blog to show the cross posting from Twitter. I have also followed other greyhound related pages on this Facebook profile as well. You can do search in Facebook to see what types of pages exist on your chosen topic or interest. I looked up various greyhound Facebook pages and liked some of those pages. My Twitter tweets and Flickr photos also get posted automatically for me on my Facebook page as well.
Next I chose Flickr. This node is for posting photos and videos. I have posted some of my own photos and videos here and there is a link from my WordPress blog and they also link to my Facebook page as well. As stated by Cox, Clough & Siersdorfer.2011 “Flickr is a large site based on user generated photos and often cited as a “classic” example of Web2.0.” You can search for photos on many different subjects from a user’s personal collections.
The last node I chose was Delicious. This site is for bookmarking web pages or articles or videos or pictures you find interesting or useful. I searched out web pages relating to greyhounds and saved them to Delicious. You can tag these links with whatever suitable words you like and you can search on these tags. You can also connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts through your Delicious profile as well. You can also follow other people as well and what they bookmark will go into your news feed.
I created this web presence with a central theme of Greyhounds as Pets. In this exegesis I have shown my theme on this central node of WordPress, with links to and from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Delicious. I have also shown my choices in why I used all of these nodes and why I have used the design and pictures.
References
Cox,A, Clough,P, Siersdorfer, S. Developing metrics to characterize Flickr groups. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Volume 62, Issue 3, pages 493–506,
March 2011. retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/doi/10.1002/asi.21483/full
Leggate, M. Blogging. (2012). retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/doi/10.1111/j.1743-498X.2012.00615.x/full
Rettburg, J. W. (2008). Blogs, Communities and Networks. Blogging (pp. 57–83).
Cambridge: Polity Press. retrieved from: http://edocs.library.curtin.edu.au/eres_display.cgi?url=dc60263770.pdf©right=1
Greyhounds as Pets 
Leave a comment