Topic 1: Digital visitors and residents
Technology as a whole and mainly Internet users cannot be categorised by age or generations, because people of any age use technology in different ways. However visitors and residents are indeed best for categorising the web users (David S).
As the name suggests visitors are people who come to visit, and every web visit have a purpose. Therefore I can say that visitors are using the web as an instrument for their every day life needs. Online chat room users, online shoppers and those who search the web for images or holiday offers are visitors on the web. They skip having a true identity of themselves on the web, and they not feeling confortable with having a digital profile on social networking sites such as Facebook or twitter that represent their life and personalities. Visitors are not interested on sharing ideas and delivering knowledge to others through commenting and writing blogs that others can see and learn from. They rather like to stay unnoticed and use the web as a bridge to get to their goals.
Residents on the other hand are those users who use the web as a projector to project their life to the world. A part of their life is on the web, and they live there. Residents get themselves involved on having social networks for having online profiles that represent their true identity, personality and experiences. They are opportunist for writing blogs and expressing their ideas professionally by commenting on a topic. It is easy to find information about them on the web as they have online presence and are connected to family, friends and colleagues. Whenever they come online they update adds and maintains information on their account, which affects others who have relation with.
Individual users not necessary fall only into one of these categories. Visitors and residents have joins and separations and should be understood as continuum rather than two separate boxes (David S).
Visitors Residents
Figure 1
Ref: http://www.presentation-process.com/powerpoint-continuum-video.html#.VNProXY8Dt8
I personally sometime act as a visitor on the web, for example I watch some video clips on YouTube without even having an account and profile with them, or I sometimes brows for cheapest train tickets to visit my friends in London. However I am more of a resident type than a visitor. I make use of social networking sites e.g Instagram, facebook, and twitter. I have online relation with people, which enables me to exchange huge amount of useful information though blogs commenting and feedbacks. Unlike me my father falls more into the category of visitors, although he has a Facebook account he don’t use it that often. He use the web most of the time as a tool for his personal needs, e.g ordering plants and gardening kits from eBay for his garden.
References
David, S. (2011). Visitors and Residents a new typology for online engagements
