3

Employees say they will “work” from home.

Videocast 3 – An Excercise in Quick Response

Here are some of my reactions to the vidcast:

• Lack of blog submission on the social news feed means that blogs may be overrated, or we don’t read blogs relevant to the class. Maybe a biased opinion on the amount of people reading blogs stems from the fact that people reporting these facts are avid net users. I personally only read my friends’ blogs. I am generally not interested in a random person’s thoughts and tend to read news sites.
• Editors on the net: The comments section on a blog have replaced editors. A person is kept honest either by being flamed or by the fact they will be corrected by everyone that sees their site in the comments section. People should take things on the net with a healthy dose of skepticism. They should do their own fact checking by reviewing other sources.
• Privacy is gone. People need to know Google has tracked every site they’ve been to in the past three years. Don’t believe me, check it out. Everyone is too trusting. How soon is it before people pay Google to see what someone else is doing on the net? It could be a form of background check for employers. Maybe if you visit certain sites you get flagged by homeland security as a terrorist threat. This already happens when you check out a combination of certain books at the library.
• I have to join Ad Age to read the articles, but I agree – Twitter is dumb and I can’t figure out a good use for it.
• Facebook=sellouts. We knew they would cave into searches for advertising purposes, it was just a matter of time. On the flipside of that, the site is estimated to be worth $10 billion now that they’ve opened up the network to all people on the internet.
• I have no interest in the Youtube debates. Good idea, executed poorly.
• Microsoft Office will be around for at least 10 more years without a dip in sales. Everyone is very slow to adapt to change and not everyone is willing to learn a new system. It will take a long time for IT staff to want to change file architectures and retrain staff.

The Internets are FAKE?!

Gillmor mentions a couple different hoaxes perpetuated by people pretending to be something they were not using the Internet and fake credientials.

This resonated with me as I was watching G4’s Attack of the Show. Kevin and Olivia are showing us the internet clips of the day. One video’s final frames display the Sony logo and another video briefly focuses on a UPS label on a box a kid shoots with a homemade potato gun. Kevin says, “Those have to be viral videos.”

Olivia responds, “You think everything is a viral video. Say it with me, not everything is a viral video.”

Kevin mimes, “Not everything is a viral video… most of them are, because everything on the internet is fake.”

And that is true. We don’t realize it yet, but we’ve been inundated with viral videos containing ninja-like placement of product. I’ve seen a couple videos that I’ve thought were product placements that I found extremely annoying. There is something about them that feels too produced to actually be real. See: Bride-Hair Freakout (some hair product placement).

I get upset when I find out the video I’m watching is an advertisement. I’m watching a video for entertainment, not to be sold something. When the video I’m watching that turns out to be a commercial in disguise, I get angry. I feel suckered into listening to someone’s message that I did not want to hear. I want ads to be upfront with what they are, not feel like someone has tried to quickly pass something off as credible entertainment.

On the flip side of these viral videos comes marketing. I do like viral marketing campaigns. Some people have come up with great viral games, where you have to solve the puzzle and look for clues. Halo 2 had a great viral internet campaign; the latest CD by Nine Inch Nails, Year Zero, had a wonderful little web story to help flesh out the idea behind their album concept; I still haven’t figured out everything at the Donnie Darko site. It is a great way to get information across if the audience is willing to take the time to figure out the little clues they are given. This method won’t work for a majority of campaigns because only the most diligent of consumers/fans will get involved with these puzzles.

Verizon Sues the FCC

Morgan Webb’s report on Verizon’s child-like behavior when they were told they would not be able to control how people access the new broadcast spectrum opened up by television stations vacating analog signals for high definition digital ones is reprehensible. I hope their case is tossed out of court and some kind of injunction is brought against this company that sues (the government no less) when they don’t get their way. It makes me want to switch telephone providers…

……mmmmmm, iPhone.

Click here for more information on the matter.

Grassroots Journalism

The second half of Dan Gillmor’s We the Media covers the impact of blogs on our society; in particular, the news media.

Blogs have long been criticized for their inaccuracy. Google News does not scan blogs with its news search engine because Google defines news as being edited/fact checked and most blogs do neither. But blogs can bring many subjects into the limelight. Gillmor uses the example of a man in Iraq running a blog about the injustices he witnessed everyday. This man’s blog became very popular and told a story the rest of the world would have otherwise been unable to hear. This site inspired many news stories and gave the world insight into the daily lives of Iraqi citizens. Gillmor thinks this type of grassroots journalism will take off in the near future and steal away many patrons of traditional news.

Gillmor adds credence to his theory by explaining new communication tools. The advent of RSS technology has made collecting information even easier. Instead of checking a website everyday for new content, a person is sent a message telling them when something new has been added. All the person has to do to receive that message is sign up for the RSS feed. This is especially helpful for sites that are infrequently updated. People tend to stop visiting a site if there is no new content because there is nothing new to see. This systems lets them know when new material has been added. RSS feeds can be used for news, sports, blog, and just about anything imaginable on the web.

This tool helps people stay abreast of their favorite topics. RSS feeds can be instructed to look for keywords on the internet and collect this information in one location. If your interests were Ohio State Football, an RSS feed could be setup to capture all the new articles on OSU football found on Google News. This is a great way to find tidbits of information that would have otherwise been glossed over.

One of the things I found most interesting was the blogger that asked his readers to send him to Iraq to cover the news. I think this is amazing and I fully support this method of information gathering. It is like sending a trusted friend to get the scoop that might not be covered in a method you find agreeable. Sending the person you want to have covering the story ensures that the information reported back is what you were looking for.

Gillmor’s section on piracy and the sharing of trade secrets on the internet is completely accurate. The internet community is an irreverent bunch (myself included). They thumb their noses at what authority figures tell them not to do, knowing full well there is little that can be done to stop them. According to one source, 40% of internet traffic is the transfer of copyrighted material. It is almost impossible for legal action to occur because many countries perpetrating these crimes do not fall under the jurisdiction of the courts that uphold these laws.

Instead of fighting what I call the Internet’s version of Vietnam, copyright holders should come up with methods to embrace this new technology, because we know it is here to stay.

Blog Post 2 – Social News Bugaloo

Publish2 Blog reports that social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Reddit, and Del.icio.us, are mostly populated with niche stories and main stream articles are frequently overlooked. My reaction is a lack of surprise.

It is my understanding that many things occur on a regular basis. I would not save an article about a police officer arresting a person for drunk driving. This happens quite frequently and is really no interest to anyone. Chances are I would never need to reread this article or pass it on to anyone. Now, when I come across a story about Mel Gibson calling a police officer “sugar tits” and making anti-semitic remarks, maybe I’ll save that to show some of my friends later.

This seems to be the story of these social news aggregators. Someone finds a funny article and saves the link into their feed. Other people see the item and save it if they find it amusing. Regular stories, such as the president making a speech somewhere, aren’t really that interesting.

Another factor is the community that uses these web sites. The early adapters to social news sites tended to be more tech savvy than the rest of the population, thus skewing the popular content of the sites in general. At this very moment in time, the top three articles on del.icio.us are Edit your CSS Code with Vista, Tracking Down Your Stolen Macbook via IP address, and a page about Lotus notes. All of these links are computer related in one manner or another, showing who uses this new communication method the most.

I think once the general population starts using social news sites, the content will shift toward more mainstream news. Until then, we should all enjoy the wacky stories found by our Internet contemporaries.

LinkedIn is the Devil!

This week’s reading for class covered the creation and societal position of blogs.

First item up for discussion was the definition of a blog. Blog is short for weblog and can mean a variety of things. My definition, based on what I use the medium for, is a collection of thoughts on a variety of subjects that allows a two-way dialog between readers and users hosted on a web site. Comments about the article posted on the website can be made and replied to. According to the reading titled Essential Blogging, people use blogs for just about everything, from journal-type entries for friends and family, platforms for political issues, or just topics of interest to the writer.

Dan Gillmor’s book We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, For the People discusses how blogs have changed the way journalism is done. The news used to filter down from the top; reporters would write articles, that were then published in the newspaper before an average person could read about it. Newspapers had some control over what topics went into print and distribution. News spread in a very controlled method this way.

With the advent of Blogs, this model has changed. An average person can write something and millions of people can potentially see it on the Internet. The average person doesn’t have to have a own a newspaper to spread their message; they only need a blog. There are no editors censoring material or space confinements of a newspaper column on the Internet.

According to Gillmor, blogging calls attention to stories traditional news media outlets may bury on page 5 or ignore completely. A recent example is the Sen. Larry Craig case. Apparently he had been having sex with men for a very long time, but publicly he is part of the conservative moral majority and is married. A blogger outed him on the internet a few years ago, but he was continually reelected on his family values ticket. This type of reporting, albeit ethically questionable, is something not picked up on in main stream media. It is investigative, sometimes perjoritive, reporting.

In general, blogs have been gaining respect in the media. Many newspapers employ bloggers to a variety of ends. The Washington Post and New York Times now keep bloggers on retainer and actively use this new medium to reach out to their readers.

LinkedIn was also mentioned in the class’s screencast, being described as the “professional” social network. I have a variety of issues with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is supposed to connect professional colleagues so they can make professional contacts and collaborate on projects. People are supposed to ask their friends for introductions to other people for professional work, but it seems more like professional collusion t0 me. Maybe it’s because I’m of a rebellious nature and revolt against any authoritarian figures that have the potential to stifle my freedom of expression, but LinkedIn seems to be Big Brother software more than anything. Employers have the ability to contact anyone in your network to ask about you. I don’t know about the average person, but I really dislike work interfering with my life more than necessary.

What happens when you apply for a job and a company sees that you have 100 contacts but no positive recommendations? Aren’t they curious as to why you know so many people but none of them can speak to what you’ve done professionally. With the amount of contacts in your network, maybe they think you’ve work at 10 different companies and aren’t reliable. What if you put that you are looking for work in your profile and your current job decides help you find something new by terminating your employment?

What happens if you get a negative review on LinkedIn? Is that like the mark of Cain where people can visibly tell you’ve done something wrong? What if you were fired unjustly or decided the company you work for does a lot of shady and questionable things?

When I go into a job interview I don’t want the company to have any preconceptions or misconceptions about me or the work I’ve done. LinkedIn gives companies an easy way to do a background check on potential hires. People should be VERY careful with the items they list in their LinkedIn profile and who they accept into their network. Accepting the friendship of a secondary contact might not be the best thing to do when your company can ask them about you. You don’t know who they are and wouldn’t vouch for them in real-life, so don’t stake your reputation on someone met on the Internet. Things aren’t always as they seem, especially on the web.