Second Blog Assignment

1. The purpose of this site is to write a 50,000 word novel within 30 days. Anyone can participate and the writing of the novel begins November 1st and ends Nov 30th. It is meant to help and motivate those interested in writing novels but scared of how time consuming it is.

2. I would expect the community population to be made up of mostly aspiring writers of all ages. Maybe even some who just takes up writing as a hobby as well.

3. I think this site is definitely useful to the writing community. It allows anyone to sign up and participate in order to write their novel. They also connect with one another to offer encouragement and share ideas. It is a good gateway in to making connections with those who share the same interests.

4. Considering this website is a national community of writers, I would think the only way the members could meet up is if the person they want to connect with is from the same area as them. Otherwise they could always connect through Skype or other applications.

5.  Yes. This website probably helps aspiring writers make connections with other writers and also helps improve their writing abilities outside of this website.

6. The website I compared this to was Pinterest.com. I would rather design the Pinterest website because I enjoy the content on this website and I believe there is more to design rather than for National Novel Writing Month. Although Pinterest looks like a fun site to design, in a sense of a community it is totally different. There is not a support system like there is for the writer's site. Pinterest is a site meant for everyone and allows them to post and pin different interests such as fashion,recipes, tips, images, humorous pictures, etc. You do interact with others by "re-pinning" what they pinned, but there is not much direct conversation with others.

First Blog assignment

When I first heard of the website couchsurfing.com, my first thoughts were that it was probably another website with a bunch of random GIFS and other funny pictures. The name just reminds me of someone sitting and being lazy on a couch "surfing" the web for stupid things to laugh at. When I visited the cite, I realized how wrong I was. The site is for finding random strangers' places to stay temporarily when on a vacation away from home. This concept still seems odd to me because someone might not be who they say they are online. Whoever uses this site is very brave for trusting the internet to that extent.

OCA Proposal

1. The website I want to study is Polyvore.com
2. The site seems interesting to me because it is about other people's fashion advice and trends. It is valuable because members blog and gives tips on current fashion trends and also helps spark inspiration.
3. From the study I hope to find out what kind of members belong to this site and how the advice they give helps others. I also hope to gain more information about the site in general so I can become a member as well.
4. No I do not believe this site is a vulnerable population.
5. No I do not plan to further research this or publish this in the future.