Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text messages. An intermediary service can facilitate a text-to-voice conversion to be sent to landlines.
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and triggers a transmission to the recipient(s), who are all connected on a common network. It differs from email in that conversations over instant messaging happen in real-time. Most modern IM applications use push technology and also add other features such as emojis, file transfer, chatbots, voice over IP, or video chat capabilities.
In Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism, is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hacker culture and hacker ethics, its ends are often related to free speech, human rights, or freedom of information movements.
Technological convergence is the tendency for technologies that were originally unrelated to become more closely integrated and even unified as they develop and advance. For example, watches, telephones, television, computers, and social media platforms began as separate and mostly unrelated technologies, but have converged in many ways into an interrelated telecommunication, media, and technology industry.
A flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression. Flash mobs may be organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible computer. Text messages may be sent over a cellular network, or may also be sent via satellite or Internet connection.
The social web is a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web. The social web encompasses how websites and software are designed and developed in order to support and foster social interaction. These online social interactions form the basis of much online activity including online shopping, education, gaming and social networking services. The social aspect of Web 2.0 communication has been to facilitate interaction between people with similar tastes. These tastes vary depending on who the target audience is, and what they are looking for. For individuals working in the public relation department, the job is consistently changing and the impact is coming from the social web. The influence held by the social network is large and ever changing.
A pillow fight flash mob is a social phenomenon of flash mobbing and shares many characteristics of a culture jam.
Social peer-to-peer processes are interactions with a peer-to-peer dynamic. These peers can be humans or computers. Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a term that originated from the popular concept of the P2P distributed computer application architecture which partitions tasks or workloads between peers. This application structure was popularized by file sharing systems like Napster, the first of its kind in the late 1990s.
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution is a book by Howard Rheingold dealing with the social, economic and political changes implicated by developing technology. The book covers subjects from text-messaging culture to wireless Internet developments to the impact of the web on the marketplace. The author highlights the many ways in which technology alters and impacts the way in which people live and think.
Hardbass or hard bass is a subgenre of pumping house that originated in Saint Petersburg, Russia during the late 1990s, drawing inspiration from bouncy techno, hardstyle, as well as local Russian influences. Hardbass is characterized by its fast tempo, donks, distinctive basslines, distorted sounds, heavy kicks and occasional chants or rapping. In several European countries, so-called "hardbass scenes" have sprung up, which are events related to the genre that involve multiple people dancing in public while masked, sometimes with moshing involved.
The World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together en masse on human-powered transport, to "deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world." The first ride happened in Zaragoza (Spain) in 2001.
My Life Online (Mylo) was a device created and marketed by Sony for portable instant messaging and other Internet-based communications, browsing Internet web sites using the Opera web browser and playback and sharing of media files. The pocket-sized, tablet-shaped handheld device, which debuted in 2006, had a screen which slid up to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. The brand name 'Mylo' means My Life Online. Using Wi-Fi instead of cellular networks, the Mylo was targeted to the 18–24 age group.
Participatory culture, an opposing concept to consumer culture, is a culture in which private individuals do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers). The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media.
A cell phone novel, or mobile phone novel, were literary works originally written on a cellular phone via text messaging. This type of literature originated in Japan, where it became a popular literary genre. However, its popularity also spread to other countries internationally, especially to China, United States, Germany, Italy and South Africa. Chapters usually consist of about 70–100 words each due to character limitations on cell phones.
Short Message Service (SMS) language, textism, or textese is the abbreviated language and slang commonly used in the late 1990s and early 2000s with mobile phone text messaging, and occasionally through Internet-based communication such as email and instant messaging.
A mobile phone is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area, as opposed to a fixed-location phone. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and therefore mobile telephones are called cellphones in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messagIng, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications, satellite access, business applications, video games and digital photography. Mobile phones offering only basic capabilities are known as feature phones; mobile phones which offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.
Crowd manipulation is the intentional or unwitting use of techniques based on the principles of crowd psychology to engage, control, or influence the desires of a crowd in order to direct its behavior toward a specific action. This practice is common to religion, politics and business and can facilitate the approval or disapproval or indifference to a person, policy, or product. The ethicality of crowd manipulation is commonly questioned.
The Harlem Shake is an Internet meme in the form of a video in which a group of people dance to a short excerpt from the song "Harlem Shake". The meme became viral in early February 2013, with thousands of "Harlem Shake" videos being made and uploaded to YouTube every day at the height of its popularity.
Smartphone ad hoc networks are wireless ad hoc networks that use smartphones. Once embedded with ad hoc networking technology, a group of smartphones in close proximity can together create an ad hoc network. Smart phone ad hoc networks use the existing hardware in commercially available smartphones to create peer-to-peer networks without relying on cellular carrier networks, wireless access points, or traditional network infrastructure. Wi-Fi SPANs use the mechanism behind Wi-Fi ad-hoc mode, which allows phones to talk directly among each other, through a transparent neighbor and route discovery mechanism. SPANs differ from traditional hub and spoke networks, such as Wi-Fi Direct, in that they support multi-hop routing and relays and there is no notion of a group leader, so peers can join and leave at will without destroying the network.
