Right the time has come to say goodbye, I really do hope some of this ranting and raving about the crazy and ever changing world of media convergence has sunk in somewhere.
I think the important thing to remember is;
If you cant beat them, rewrite it, remix it, remake it, and move ahead of them!
Thursday, 15 December 2011
When did an apple stop being a fruit?
With progress in the media words seem to be have invented, reinvented and completely changed meaning.
Just as has always been like the media language is always changing, and the new media revolution has been no exception bring us beautiful things such as l337 5p34k or leet speak for all the n00bs out there.
leet speak has had its own revolution through the past few years.
Originally it was a language used by hackers to communicate with each other, which slowly converged with gaming culture through their common interests. Slowly it filtered into common use through the internet and evolved. most popularly "owned" which was previously used by gamers to claim victory became "pwnd" as a result of a spelling mistake.
If you want to try your hand at converting your sentences into leet speak or other internet vocab just click here
Another thing that has appeared is the urban dictionary where people post explanations to phrases and create their own.
If the media can create and change and audiences are forced to keep up, why cant audiences change and keep the media companies on their toes?
Just as has always been like the media language is always changing, and the new media revolution has been no exception bring us beautiful things such as l337 5p34k or leet speak for all the n00bs out there.
leet speak has had its own revolution through the past few years.
Originally it was a language used by hackers to communicate with each other, which slowly converged with gaming culture through their common interests. Slowly it filtered into common use through the internet and evolved. most popularly "owned" which was previously used by gamers to claim victory became "pwnd" as a result of a spelling mistake.
If you want to try your hand at converting your sentences into leet speak or other internet vocab just click here
Another thing that has appeared is the urban dictionary where people post explanations to phrases and create their own.
If the media can create and change and audiences are forced to keep up, why cant audiences change and keep the media companies on their toes?
What ever happened to Myspace
Is it just me that remembers that there used to be some pretty popular social networking sites called Myspace and Bebo?
Jogged some memories has it? Myspace is widely credited with starting the whole social network revolution, possibly not the case as i can distinctly remember that before Myspace came along me and my friends were making simple websites using free domain hosting sites which is arguably the same thing. However Myspace is definitely what brought the idea to the main stream and laid the foundations and structure for modern social networking.
So if Myspace was so good and innovative what happened to it?
Myspace may have started the generation, the problem was it did not keep up. Suddenly hundreds of social networks were popping up here there and everywhere all offering a different angle.
Blogs offering the ability to share opinions, Micro blogs allowing you to update people on what is happening, flickr and YouTube allowing people to share photos and videos as well as countless social networks for different social groups and interests.
Although all these things were sprouting up here there and everywhere but Myspace was still on top!
Then along came Facebook, and everything changed. Facebook took the best ideas from Myspace and its other competitors and converged them together to make a social network accessible to all. complete with blogs, updates, pictures, videos and special interest groups.
Nothing ground breaking i know when you look back at it, so why is it so successful?
It's simple it has constantly adapted and evolved adding games, new groups, news and music. Finding what is being made successful everywhere else.
It also has been saved by its ability to be flexible, the biggest competitor for Facebook's crown has undoubtedly been twitter, so how has it not dethroned Facebook like Myspace before it. The answer to that is it has embraced twitter, getting its own twitter account allowing twitter feeds to be linked to your Facebook and your blog entries, links, news and events.
So if we established what causes "staying power" in the social network domain it is undoubtedly flexibility.
With that in mind what is the future for social networking? Well the answer is it has already progressed.
With the appearance of sites such as linkedin . a Professional social network, mixing the social network concept with Job sites. In a current economic climate where everybody is worried where there next job is coming from it is the perfect time to work on relationships and networking within your chosen profession.
I feel this trend will continue into the future and as long as social networks are happy to adapt to audience pull and market push
Jogged some memories has it? Myspace is widely credited with starting the whole social network revolution, possibly not the case as i can distinctly remember that before Myspace came along me and my friends were making simple websites using free domain hosting sites which is arguably the same thing. However Myspace is definitely what brought the idea to the main stream and laid the foundations and structure for modern social networking.
So if Myspace was so good and innovative what happened to it?
Myspace may have started the generation, the problem was it did not keep up. Suddenly hundreds of social networks were popping up here there and everywhere all offering a different angle.
Blogs offering the ability to share opinions, Micro blogs allowing you to update people on what is happening, flickr and YouTube allowing people to share photos and videos as well as countless social networks for different social groups and interests.
Although all these things were sprouting up here there and everywhere but Myspace was still on top!
Then along came Facebook, and everything changed. Facebook took the best ideas from Myspace and its other competitors and converged them together to make a social network accessible to all. complete with blogs, updates, pictures, videos and special interest groups.
Nothing ground breaking i know when you look back at it, so why is it so successful?
It's simple it has constantly adapted and evolved adding games, new groups, news and music. Finding what is being made successful everywhere else.
It also has been saved by its ability to be flexible, the biggest competitor for Facebook's crown has undoubtedly been twitter, so how has it not dethroned Facebook like Myspace before it. The answer to that is it has embraced twitter, getting its own twitter account allowing twitter feeds to be linked to your Facebook and your blog entries, links, news and events.
So if we established what causes "staying power" in the social network domain it is undoubtedly flexibility.
With that in mind what is the future for social networking? Well the answer is it has already progressed.
With the appearance of sites such as linkedin . a Professional social network, mixing the social network concept with Job sites. In a current economic climate where everybody is worried where there next job is coming from it is the perfect time to work on relationships and networking within your chosen profession.
I feel this trend will continue into the future and as long as social networks are happy to adapt to audience pull and market push
helping the amateur artist
So artists struggling to get recognition for their work? Not anymore!
There are loads of sites dedicated to helping distribute amateur artists, writers, musicians and directors materials. Here's just a quick run down;
You cant get away from it, YouTube is helping distribute content for everybody from Musicians, to amateur directors and film makers all the way up to the other end of the scale with Multi-National Media Corporations making use of it.
Another great tool for Photographers, Graphic Designers, Artists and even writers allowing them to upload their work and discuss and promote it with other users and the rest of the internet. It also allows them to create a form of profile page to describe their work and style and give out contact details.
Yet again another great site helpful to a variety of people enabling users to create and distribute a free podcast. Helpful for everyone from; Journalists to aspiring radio presenters, or even comedians
They do exactly what they say on the tin really, their tag line is "everything by everyone". You name it if it is a way of distributing art or media including flash animations and games they have it covered.
A site Specifically for musicians to share their creations to their audiences online for free and receive feedback, regularly artists will put on rough edits and demos and ask for feedback before completing the final track. Gone are the day of desperately sending out demo tapes trying to get noticed.
Is an interesting one, as it works much like a link between a social network and a distribution site, allowing users to create profiles, make updates, enter into forum discussions and competitions whilst allowing them to promote themselves as artists, actors, dancers, directors etc.
Now obviously this a very short, short list of the tools now available to amateur content creators and performers to promote themselves.
But it shows just how much things have changed
Just a Quicky?
This is just a quick one really. Well i say that, it might turn into a rant.
So one of the benefits of an increase in the media is new jobs, there are now job titles that never even existed before. Social media analyst? Search Engine optimization?
Now obviously in some areas theses jobs are needed, e.g. Search Engine Optimization is obviously very important to businesses as it is proven that 70% of people will pick the first result on google and by the time you are at the 4th result you have lost 95% of your audience.
But have we now gone too far, it is obviously important that companies do have a social media presence to promote themselves, but does every company need a facebook and twitter?
A perfect example of this was something i saw at Liverpool Airport earlier this year, they have a 20 foot sign on the side of the car park saying follow us on twitter and facebook. I logged on only to realise that it is not following the airport, but in fact the airport car parking you follow on twitter. Now i feel that it is possibly a waste of money. Someone has to be employed to monitor and post on the social networks, that will be there whole job.
But it is a convenience, they have a captive audience. Its not a city center car park, it doesn't have any competition, and the public know there will be a car park at an airport. But still someone is employed to update a twitter that has less than 4,000 followers. Is that really an economical advertising solution?
Yes, it is great that media convergence and progression is creating more jobs
Yes, it is important for companies to have a social media presence
Yes, every company needs to advertise
But i cant think that every company needs to advertise in such a way.
So one of the benefits of an increase in the media is new jobs, there are now job titles that never even existed before. Social media analyst? Search Engine optimization?
Now obviously in some areas theses jobs are needed, e.g. Search Engine Optimization is obviously very important to businesses as it is proven that 70% of people will pick the first result on google and by the time you are at the 4th result you have lost 95% of your audience.
But have we now gone too far, it is obviously important that companies do have a social media presence to promote themselves, but does every company need a facebook and twitter?
A perfect example of this was something i saw at Liverpool Airport earlier this year, they have a 20 foot sign on the side of the car park saying follow us on twitter and facebook. I logged on only to realise that it is not following the airport, but in fact the airport car parking you follow on twitter. Now i feel that it is possibly a waste of money. Someone has to be employed to monitor and post on the social networks, that will be there whole job.
But it is a convenience, they have a captive audience. Its not a city center car park, it doesn't have any competition, and the public know there will be a car park at an airport. But still someone is employed to update a twitter that has less than 4,000 followers. Is that really an economical advertising solution?
Yes, it is great that media convergence and progression is creating more jobs
Yes, it is important for companies to have a social media presence
Yes, every company needs to advertise
But i cant think that every company needs to advertise in such a way.
control?
So to return back with questioning vengeance, who is in control of the media we consume?
The obvious answer is the media creators and distributors such as the BBC, ITV etc.
But as i have already mentioned in this blog, with the wide choice of media we can consume from many different places now the audience is more active. Media producers and distributors are constantly talking about the ways in which they have to keep up with modern audiences and come up with innovative ways to attract them.
But is this really the case? After all it was the BBC who introduced iPlayer not the audience. Is this just another way of us as an audience being told how to consume the media.
If you look at the progression of media technology you can see that new media technologies are being introduced faster than users can make use of them. I think if you really gave media consumers the choices over the amount of media they consume you would get a range of many different answers across different sectors of the social spectrum and also people of different ages. However when we have spoken to people from the BBC's Research and Development department they have predicted that within the next few years we will no longer watch "telly" but rather watch the internet through a monitor instead. We will likely still call it TV but the distribution will be different.
Surely this will isolate people who are not as technically literate, but also increase spending as audience will now have to pay for new technology again to consume the media by purchasing SmartTV's, internet connections and their TV licence.
So are we really in control of what we watch? The answer is quite simply no. It could be argued that we have more control as there are more means of consuming that media and more channels but when you really look into it we are still being told how and what to watch, the only difference now is there is more variety in what we are told to do.
The obvious answer is the media creators and distributors such as the BBC, ITV etc.
But as i have already mentioned in this blog, with the wide choice of media we can consume from many different places now the audience is more active. Media producers and distributors are constantly talking about the ways in which they have to keep up with modern audiences and come up with innovative ways to attract them.
But is this really the case? After all it was the BBC who introduced iPlayer not the audience. Is this just another way of us as an audience being told how to consume the media.
If you look at the progression of media technology you can see that new media technologies are being introduced faster than users can make use of them. I think if you really gave media consumers the choices over the amount of media they consume you would get a range of many different answers across different sectors of the social spectrum and also people of different ages. However when we have spoken to people from the BBC's Research and Development department they have predicted that within the next few years we will no longer watch "telly" but rather watch the internet through a monitor instead. We will likely still call it TV but the distribution will be different.
Surely this will isolate people who are not as technically literate, but also increase spending as audience will now have to pay for new technology again to consume the media by purchasing SmartTV's, internet connections and their TV licence.
So are we really in control of what we watch? The answer is quite simply no. It could be argued that we have more control as there are more means of consuming that media and more channels but when you really look into it we are still being told how and what to watch, the only difference now is there is more variety in what we are told to do.
Friday, 11 November 2011
11/11/11
So although this blog is about media convergence theres no reason we cannot use it as a platform for other things that have a tedious link with it.
Theres a lot of chatter on twitter today and excitement about it being 11/11/11 and that's all well and good. However in such a society where we are all constantly changing and looking forward we sometimes forget to look back. what it has been good to see this year is that Armistice day is taking a for front in the social media platform and really giving respect to the soldiers past and present that it deserves. As im writing this blog entry #ArmisticeDay is the top trend on twitter and various groups i am a member of on facebook are sending out remembrance messages to masses of followers. This really shows the beauty of new media technologies and media convergence allowing something that began years ago at the end of the first world war and through the ability to produce the media as we have first by print, then radio, then tv and now across many different mobile and static platforms that are still growing people who may have seen the symbol of the poppy and may not have known quite what it was all about are now being educated through modern mediums.
Multi platform media institutions are also owed alot by the FA (football Association) earlier this week FIFA announced that it would not be allowing the English football team to wear a poppy on its shirt during the match against Spain tomorrow. As a result of the ability to have news so fast and on demand uproar spread across not only the sporting community but politicians and even royalty, because as a result of social media they could see how much it had angered the general public causing Prince William himself to write a letter to FIFA appealing against their decision, which has been subsequently over turned.
The final thing I would like to mention on this little rant links back to the lecture we had this Thursday with Yuwei on remixes, this is a great remix i have stumbled across today on a favourite site of mine on www.break.com
It is a monologue from a Charlie Chaplin film released in 1940 called The Great Dictator a film where a Jewish Barber (Chaplin) is mistaken for Adolf Hitler. Now your probably wondering why im even mentioning this apart from the tedious war based link to Armistice Day. The reason is i feel this remix shows that although there are many extremely funny remixes (which will undoubtedly be posted through future posts on this blog) this piece shows how even old pieces of writing, film and audio can still be relevant in the modern day (if not more relevant now) and if by keeping them alive by someone on the internet taking footage and audio and mixing it together can keep gems like this in the public memory and make people think, then our convergent media culture maybe isn't quite as bad as some would like to make it out to be.
http://www.break.com/index/one-of-the-greatest-speeches-ever-made-2218472
Theres a lot of chatter on twitter today and excitement about it being 11/11/11 and that's all well and good. However in such a society where we are all constantly changing and looking forward we sometimes forget to look back. what it has been good to see this year is that Armistice day is taking a for front in the social media platform and really giving respect to the soldiers past and present that it deserves. As im writing this blog entry #ArmisticeDay is the top trend on twitter and various groups i am a member of on facebook are sending out remembrance messages to masses of followers. This really shows the beauty of new media technologies and media convergence allowing something that began years ago at the end of the first world war and through the ability to produce the media as we have first by print, then radio, then tv and now across many different mobile and static platforms that are still growing people who may have seen the symbol of the poppy and may not have known quite what it was all about are now being educated through modern mediums.
Multi platform media institutions are also owed alot by the FA (football Association) earlier this week FIFA announced that it would not be allowing the English football team to wear a poppy on its shirt during the match against Spain tomorrow. As a result of the ability to have news so fast and on demand uproar spread across not only the sporting community but politicians and even royalty, because as a result of social media they could see how much it had angered the general public causing Prince William himself to write a letter to FIFA appealing against their decision, which has been subsequently over turned.
The final thing I would like to mention on this little rant links back to the lecture we had this Thursday with Yuwei on remixes, this is a great remix i have stumbled across today on a favourite site of mine on www.break.com
It is a monologue from a Charlie Chaplin film released in 1940 called The Great Dictator a film where a Jewish Barber (Chaplin) is mistaken for Adolf Hitler. Now your probably wondering why im even mentioning this apart from the tedious war based link to Armistice Day. The reason is i feel this remix shows that although there are many extremely funny remixes (which will undoubtedly be posted through future posts on this blog) this piece shows how even old pieces of writing, film and audio can still be relevant in the modern day (if not more relevant now) and if by keeping them alive by someone on the internet taking footage and audio and mixing it together can keep gems like this in the public memory and make people think, then our convergent media culture maybe isn't quite as bad as some would like to make it out to be.
http://www.break.com/index/one-of-the-greatest-speeches-ever-made-2218472
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)