Posted on February 06, 2012 at 04:13 PM in Hypertext Theory, Journalism, Long Tail, Microblogging, Photography, Social Media, Web & Interface Design | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Just started playing this social media stock exchange game yesterday, but based on the existing strength of my social media network, I guess I got listed highly right away. My share price is hovering around $32 today, so not such a sharp rise, but still decent.
I love all the data they give you on the site, all the different aggregations and compilations. Here's a screenshot:
{EAV_BLOG_VER:1cdd47f3e1a1fb1d}
Posted on June 23, 2011 at 03:57 PM in Advertising, Cyberculture, Democracy Theory, Personal, Social Media, Stock Market, VR/Gaming, Web & Interface Design, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Posted by: Helen Walters on April 05, 2010
Interface designer and anthropologist Jan Chipchase (that’s him in the background, taking the picture) has made a name for himself and collected quite a following as a result of his work at Nokia, where he worked in both the research group and the design team (read a 2007 BusinessWeek Q&A with him here.) Having joined the Finnish telecoms company in October, 2000, Chipchase spent nine years in Tokyo and the last at Nokia Design in Los Angeles. Now, however, change is afoot, as Chipchase moves to work at design and innovation consultancy, frog design. As the firm’s new executive creative director of global insights, Chipchase is relocating once more, this time to Shanghai, China.
Posted on May 07, 2010 at 11:45 AM in Civil Rights, Cyberculture, Democracy Theory, Earth, Economy, Education, Free Speech, Long Tail, Research, Social Media, Sustainable Living, Teaching, UCD, Web & Interface Design, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
So I figure, why not look in at them here? Let's look beyond the practical vo-tech employment concerns and wax a bit philosophical.
First, to Robert Niles:
Writing skill is no longer enough to sustain journalists
By Robert Niles
What's the value of journalism?
The short answer is, of course, "whatever someone will pay for it." But a more thoughtful response gets at why people are willing to exchange something of value for news information.
Economics 101 teaches that if more people want something, and the scarcer it is, the higher the price. With millions of new websites competing for people's attention, advertising rates across all media have plunged, threatening news businesses that depend upon advertising income.
[Hmmm. Tell the Econ 101 argument to poets, and they may beg to differ.
While journalists have long had to contend with the idea that their best work has the value of the Daily Fishwrap, the thing that people pile up unread, throw away daily, or use to line birdcages, poets have lived with this deep knowledge, that their very best work, their best of the best, work that strives for standing the test of time, or ephemeral, contingent, and quickly forgotten work like performance art, has an economic value of precisely ZERO, since before the time of Gutenberg.
Continue reading "OJR's Robert Niles: Writing skill is no longer enough to sustain journalists" »
Posted on February 11, 2010 at 04:56 PM in Academia, Books, Citizen Journalism, Civil Rights, Copyright & Intellectual Property, Cyberculture, Democracy Theory, Economy, Education, Free Speech, Hypertext Theory, Journalism, Literature, Long Tail, Personal, Photography, Poetry, Social Media, Sustainable Living, Teaching, Television, UCD, Web & Interface Design, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Link: FT.com / Reportage - The rise and fall of MySpace.
I've been around the social media block long enough (Geocities, Friendster, Tribe.net, anyone?), and this seems to apply to the seemingly "invincible" search engines as well (WebCrawler, AltaVista?): the one thing that seems as constant as death and taxes online is that the social sphere (the wisdom of crowds or mob rule) is fickle.
You may be up one day, but most surely, a day will come when you will be down (think about it, Blackboard!).
So while I never really got into MySpace, the larger story of the MySpace failure is a cautionary tale for any 800 pound gorilla entertaining dreams of invincible bigness.(Note, it is not really dead, but it is acknowledged in this article that its 100M users are no longer contesting Facebook for leadership at 300M users.)
One could argue that as surely as MySpace rose, it would also fall, as surely as a small town church will split into two churches, as surely as Friendster begat Tribe begat MySpace begat Facebook (which will begat ???).
But back when this question of ascendancy between MySpace and Facebook was still in more open contention, I never once doubted Facebook would come out on top (and this wasn't just because MySpace often resembled the old Geocities pages either!).
But people argued with me. And I knew they were wrong, despite their very earnest and rational arguments, proofs, numbers.
It bugs me: How did I know they were wrong? I am wont to reflect on these things. I wouldn't just cite my online research background in social ecosystems, user experience design work, or some other thing from my resume' (an argument based on authority or expertise, which seems to be a cheat in this instance, since I have never designed a site as successful as MySpace or Facebook).
So truisms and arguments from authority or expertise don't count, at least for this exercise.
So how did I just KNOW? How did all those other 300M users just know? What did we know?
Continue reading "A cautionary tale as social media sites and platforms inevitably rise and fall" »
Posted on December 05, 2009 at 05:04 PM in Advertising, Citizen Journalism, Copyright & Intellectual Property, Cyberculture, Democracy Theory, Economy, Film, Free Speech, Hypertext Theory, Music, Privacy, Radio, Research, Social Media, Stock Market, Web & Interface Design, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
The bit I really listened to and took the most away from is about three-quarters of the way through the interview, when Clay starts talking about the way the Pirate Bay lawsuit morphed into the Pirate Political Party in Sweden, with ramifications for the European Parliament. I am definitely going to run out (figuratively, letting my fingers do the running) and find out more about that!
Also (and this relates to a recent post/discussion we were having on our Scatter/Gather work blog), the rest of the discussion from that point forward explores some of my favorite themes about how periods of great growth and intellectual energy are released in times when the sacred and the profane exist in very close proximity to each other. Except that isn't really the way Shirky put it (although others explore this connection, what in the field of Rhetoric you find in Bakhtin and his talk of the discourse of the "carnival")
The simplicity of Twitter, of course, is its genius. It has the power to do so much by doing so little. But that’s not the only thing that’s simple about Twitter. The service itself was only intended to share 140-character messages with the world. Its significance is its evolution. Everything from @replying and retweeting to using hashes and symbols can be attributed to the users. It has brilliantly allowed users to define it – almost entirely. As Shirky points out, “Most of the uses of Twitter were not imagined by the designers of the service – they were managed by the users of the service.”
Posted on November 28, 2009 at 10:55 PM in Academia, Citizen Journalism, Civil Rights, Copyright & Intellectual Property, Cyberculture, Democracy Theory, Economy, Education, Free Speech, Hypertext Theory, Journalism, Long Tail, Research, Social Media, Web & Interface Design, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
Society for New Communications Research Announces 2009 Fellows` Choice Award Winners for Innovator, Visionary, Brand and Humanitarian of the Year
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(Business Wire)--The Society for New Communications Research (sncr.org), a global nonprofit research and education foundation and think tank focused on the latest developments in new media and communications and their impact on business, media, culture and society, today announced the Society`s Fellows` Choice Award winners for the Visionary of the Year, Innovator of the Year, Brand of the Year and Humanitarian of the Year as part of the SNCR Excellence in New Communications Awards program.
The 2009 SNCR Fellows Choice Award winners are:
* Visionary of the Year: David Plouffe, President Obama`s campaign adviser, for his successful use of social media communications tools and technologies in the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign strategy
* Innovation of the Year: The Kindle, the popular software and hardware platform developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 for reading e-books and other digital media
* Brand of the Year: Ford for its innovative use of social media to improve the way the company communicates with its stakeholders
* Humanitarian of the Year: The Iranian Political Bloggers for their courageous use of blogging tools and Twitter to try share their experiences with the world and to try to effect political change in Iran
"The SNCR Fellows have chosen an incredibly impressive variety of individuals and organizations for this year`s award winners. These special award winners have the vision and success to provide a valuable example to others and we are honored to be able to acknowledge them through this awards program," commented Jen McClure, president, SNCR.[...]
The Society for New Communications Research is a global nonprofit 501(c)(3) research and education foundation and think tank focused on the advanced study of the latest developments in new media and communications, and their effect ontraditional media and business models, communications, culture and society. SNCR is dedicated to creating a bridge between the academic and theoretical pursuit of these topics and the pragmatic implementation of new media and communications tools and methodologies. The Society`s Fellows include a leading group offuturists, scholars, business leaders, professional communicators, members of the media and technologists from around the globe - all collaborating together on research initiatives, educational offerings, and the establishment ofstandards and best practices. For more information, email us at info@sncr.org or call +1 408.266.9658.
SNCR
Media: Jen McClure, 650-387-8590 jmcclure@sncr.org
Posted on October 31, 2009 at 06:18 PM in Academia, Advertising, Cyberculture, Economy, Education, Free Speech, Hypertext Theory, Personal, Social Media, UCD, Web & Interface Design, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)