Blog #6

First off, I want to say that every single TED video we watched in class was awesome. Every video was captivating and had the best concluding statements. I will definitely take note of the way some of the presenters presented. I especially enjoyed Shirky’s cognitive surplus presentation in the beginning of the semester. In relation to everything covered in this course, cognitive surplus is something I will probably keep locked in my brain forever. 

Copyright

I have always had trouble understanding copyright laws. This unit of the class was definitely hard for me to grasp.  One thing that is troubling with this issue is that because our lives have been infused with technology, the ability to take some ones work or project, and slightly change it to make it our own is at the reach of our finger tips. As we witnessed with the sampling assignment, it has become more apparent that we live in a remixed culture, where original ideas, songs, works, are constantly being changed, and we as a culture, continue to think this is O.K. Personally, because technology is this mad powerful tool and will be ever changing, so too will copyright laws.  I feel that because we have come so far today in terms of the history of people’s works, it is definitely difficult for one to create something authentic and original.

Lastly, the video Copyright Criminals was extremely engaging. It seems obvious that much of the music created today actually samples earlier works. It reminded me of the Bo Diddley beat, and how many composers utilized this beat into their music. 

Chunka Mui’s Facebook’s Privacy Issues are Even Deeper Than we Know

This article was a joke, and that is why I want to quickly talk about some of its flaws. Regardless of it not being an actual scholarly article, and its poor use of grammar, Chunka Mui makes some weird claims that are not really supported.  Essentially the problem is, that Facebook has become this worldwide photo identification database.  Mui mentioned “CMU researchers were able to match Facebook users with their pictures on otherwise anonymous Match.com accounts. The researchers also had significant success taking pictures of experimental subjects and matching them to their Facebook profiles. Well so what, this is what Facebook is. It is a book, with millions of faces to be viewed. I do not see the issue of where being able to match a users face to their profile on Facebook is an issue. Now, Mui does mention  “they were relatively successful at guessing individuals Social Security Numbers”. Certainly, this is an issue, however, he fails to relate the process of how someone could go about finding individuals SSN, and if at all, how it relates to the matching of faces through Facebook. Finally in the end of the article, Mui finishes by stating, “as of now, the only way to opt-out is to not participate”. This is so true, but how can one do this when social media sites are becoming such a massive part of our lives. It becomes increasingly difficult to monitor these types of problems where users are using the web to access others information. I wish I could answer that question. How can we better monitor and address these types of problems?

Dave Toliver’s 7 Ways to Create a Memorable Customer Experience with Social Media

This was a very brief and effective article about exactly what it says, how to maintain strong relations with your customers through social media.  Overall, Toliver efficiently lists proper methods to build your company, business, or even your own personal site.  Everything off of this article is beneficial.

1.     Give customers a place to talk- Remember that criticism is just as crucial as complements, use the complaints on your social media site as something to respond and improve upon your company.

2.     Integrate social media – This pretty much sums up the article, and probably does not need to be included as one of the seven ways, but either way, utilize the tools social media can offer.

3.     Activate your existing customer base- Reach out to your customers, allow for more engagement with your customers, perhaps by creating a contest or promotion on your social media site. Much similar to Lauren Fisher’s 5 successful Twitter Marketing Campaigns You Should Know About.

4.     Be proactive- Interact with customers, they want to “connect”.

5.     Reward influencers- Make customers feel special by offering prizes or rewards, it can be as simple as advance notices of special promotions.

6.     Create Compelling Content- Offer customers some value on your page. Updated photos and videos are always nice and engaging for potential viewers.

7.     Stand out from the crowd- Go beyond just text, images, and videos too.  Perhaps creating an app, or voice applications to let your brand speak for your fans.

Alice E. Marwick and Danah Boyd’s I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagines Audience

This article was interesting in that it provided a study on how we imagine our Twitter audience. Key points include:

“Technology continues to complicate the metaphors of space and place” (115).

The personal homepage is a more controlled performance. We can observe this by viewing a personal webpage that uses a template. Much of the material on these types of pages is fixed.

To understand how Twitter users imagine their audience a questionnaire was given. The results varied between users.  The most important question with this study was what makes an individual on Twitter seem authentic. Most users tried to balance the desire to maintain positive impressions with the need to feel authentic.  

Blog #5 Music Sampling

         Without a doubt one can determine that all forms of music from any culture or social context is incredibly unique and varies in terms of pitch, tempo, and rhythm.  Even the most minimalist of music is extremely complex in its own method of madness. For example John Cage’s 4’33” composition exemplifies the use of no instruments, but rather leaves his audience in silence for a random period of time, to illustrate the sounds of what our environment and the people create around us.  Well with all of the recent controversy of copyright infringement in the hip-hop music industry, is this not similar to Cage perhaps, using sounds from other people in the audience to construct his piece? Or maybe he is just stealing time away from our lives by playing absolutely nothing?               

         With technology at its peak, it is hard to turn away from computer-generated sounds, nifty turntables, and applications that make beats for you, not to mention utilizing works from previous artists and implementing pieces into your own.  That said I had to go back a couple decades into the famous rock band Journey and their song Send Her My Love.  Joe Budden sampled Send Her My Love and renamed it Send Him Our love. Incredibly, the song is very similar to the original, and I find it to be exceptionally innovative and creative. While the song pulls lyrics and beat from the original Journey song, it keeps its originality by applying its own overlying lyrics, beat, and intentions.  It is obvious that there are mixed feelings about artists using previous works and somewhat implementing them into their own sound. Of course, there will be varying opinions from different perspectives with certain songs. In the case of this song, and regardless of me being a die-hard journey fan, I can agree that it is inflicting with copyright laws because it was taking the original directly and plugging it into their song.  Where as with another song I searched, Blink- 182’s All the Small Things was sampled by Pearl Jam and in this scenario, the song had taken nothing at all original from Blink’s All the Small Things, and more so only had similar sounding power chords. There is definitely a fine line when tampering with music from the past, despite one’s positive and respectful intentions when composing remixed music.  So where should I stand? I don’t know.  I do know that legal rights are forcing cultural consumption into cultural production and is allowing for a more diversified culture within the music industry (Keller).  That’s a positive start. 

Privacy on the Web continued...

As discussed in 3/29 class, Papacharissi mentions how privacy is much like a luxury commodity, where “…obtaining it implies a level of computer literacy that is inaccessible to most, and typically associated with higher income and education levels, and certain ethnic groups, in ways that mirror dominant socio-demographic qualities” (par 7).  This idea is interesting, but her claim seems a bit odd.  Having a higher income, education level, and being ethnic does not necessarily correlate with one’s ability to learn, build, and maintain their privacy when using the web, or any social media site. I just feel this argument is pulling at straws, and it’s bugging me! I can’t quite grasp it at all. 

Privacy on the Web

It is clear that with today’s ever advancing technology, the opportunity for people to harness its power and utilize it both positively and negatively in society is an extremely complex topic.  As a result, the concern for privacy has arisen as social media sites are put onto the Web.   There are various stand points one can take regarding the internet and how it is consuming user identity and leaving it available for potentially anyone with means to capture personal information.  Thus, policies are constantly being implemented and modified to address the levels of protection a user has.  Of course, with Facebook, Twitter, and other profile drove media sites, a considerable amount of weight lies within the users choice of uploading his/her personal information into their database.  After briefing the articles assigned this week, I was not particularly intrigued with the arguments Chunka Mui made in, Facebook’s Privacy Issues are Even Deeper than We Know. Regardless of his ill advised informal expression (using the word and in beginning of a sentence, and the word a lot) he has little to no information when backing up his claims.  For example, Mui mentions “…CMU researchers were able to match Facebook users with their pictures on otherwise anonymous Match.com accounts”, well so what? He fails to acknowledge the kinds of harmful implications, if there are any, of being able to locate individuals through identification matching. Later Mui vaguely states that set aside Facebook’s struggle with privacy, it is more within what they have enabled others to do.  I would certainly agree with this statement, and because today’s information technology has consumed many of our lives, it becomes difficult to steer away from it, and leaves us incredibly vulnerable.  Further examination on Privacy as a Luxury Commodity by Zizi Papacharisii will be documented and posted later this evening.

Updated Blog Post #4 coming soon...

Facebook's Privacy Settings

Since I began an account with Facebook in 2008 there has been numerous advancements within the structure of their privacy settings.  By this I mean, being able to further customize and control who can view and post certain things on your page, blocking particular individuals, and managing your networked audience.  Perhaps America’s fears about twenty first century technology and the invasion of privacy has made an impact on Facebook with how and what the company decides as far as allowing their users to fully maximize their safety.  Certainly a sense of being watched is a concern with more employers using Facebook as a means of further understanding their potential employees.

Works Cited

Boyd, Dannah, and Alice Marwick. "I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context 

Collapse, and the Imagine Audience." Sage. 13.114 (2010): 115-130. Print.

Toliver, Dave. "7 Ways to Create a Memorable Customer Experience with Social Media." Nov 2011: n. page. Web. 22 Mar. 2012. <http://mashable.com/2011/11/03/social-

The Power of Social Media Systems: Steam and the Diverse Gaming Culture

In preparation for this project I began concentration with the company Steam, a game communications platform developed by Valve Corporation in 2003. While following Steam via social media systems (SMS), including Twitter and Facebook, there were various techniques utilized to grasp attention of their audiences. To assure a significant experience for their customers, both Steam’s Twitter and Facebook although different in their methods of rhetoric contained similar engaging content for their audiences. That is, a fairly constant stream of the latest details regarding discount sales and new available games for their users. A direct correlation between both SMS’s demonstrated that Steam remained consistent throughout their use of headings when distributing information. Before delving into further specifics, it is important to consider their potential audiences in determining their overall level of character and degree of success while using SMS’s.

While analyzing a potential audience that Steam may express to, a naïve observer may simply state they concern most to current and future gamers interested in PC and Mac gaming. Though this is certainly true, the atmosphere with gaming today has shown a dramatic change in the preferences of gamers, ranging from intensely diverse stylistic interface demands and stunning graphics, to distinct genres that speak to particular gamers. Assuming that the overall audience Steam attempts to network with is extremely diverse, and perhaps troublesome to analyze because of the mass variety of gamers within its culture, an audience analysis must be composed through both Steam’s use of Facebook.    

To imagine their audience more clearly on Facebook, focus must be within Steam’s “…language, cultural referents, style, and so on that comprise online identity presentation” (Boyd and Marwick 115).  At first glance Steam’s Facebook page contains a plethora of text, images, and comments from fans, and it is apparent that they are already fairly well popular with over one million likes.  Scattered throughout their page various posts with appropriate images and text inform their audience of new deals and available games (see figure 1).  In this post, the language used seems to be targeting those who are interested in pursuing a role playing game that makes references to real world locations and historical events, including the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople. The general attitude and style to this post is clear as with any large corporation attempting to sell products, produce revenue. Therefore Steam utilizes a noticeable heading, “Midweek Madness 50% off!” as an active link serving to direct the user to their main site where they can make a hasty purchase on the current sale. Much similar to this post, another post on Steam’s Facebook page not only demonstrates their lucid sales attitude, but also implicates the massively diverse gaming community (see figure 2).  Here, Steam is informing their audience of a brand new game available with a brief description to what the game may be about. In this case, the game is worlds apart from the previous as you are now are a little orange alien abducted and taken to an underwater research facility. It may be difficult for Steam to specifically target all of the different branches of gamers, first person shooters, role-playing, action, puzzle, adventure etc. through their use of language, cultural referents, and style.  While it is obvious that the gaming community and individual tastes are constantly expanding and may pose struggle for Steam, the vast gaming community certainly has a voice, and when an individual speaks out on their page, it allows for stronger customer relations, improves their company, and gains solidification to their overall online identity presentation through the use of SMS’s.

Because Steam is relatively popular on Facebook, the amount of incoming messages concerning positive feed back and complaints about games and their company is over burdening. However, in the article, “7 Ways to Create a Memorable Customer Experience with Social Media”, Dave Toliver’s number one is giving your customers a place to talk. That said, the following post entails a disgruntled user where after he purchased a game on steam, was not able to play the game (see figure 3). The user proceeds to mention that Steam’s customer support is terrible and could not help him at all. This is where Steam can take further action into addressing this issue, and any potential problems in the near future. As far as I know, I have not seen any posts through their Facebook or Twitter page that have addressed this type of issue. Although this is an issue Steam must certainly acknowledge, something they can continue to implement with their page is their interactive and engaging presence.  Toliver suggests “…giving your fans a true voice on social media, or encouraging participation through photos and videos, you humanize the experience that much more” (Toliver). Steam does a magnificent job at this and is evident through their likes. Their page is riddled with comments, pictures, and videos with active links to more information (see figure 4).  On the other hand, Steam’s Twitter page serves more as a means of quickly advertising their company.

Steam’s Twitter page is identical to its Facebook page in that it maintains consistent through its posts about discount sales and new available games (see figure 5). Steam seems to be tweeting quite frequently, and in almost the same persona and style as mentioned before with Facebook. I feel that because of the software limitations on Twitter where you can only post so many characters, it strictly prohibits Steam from allowing a more engaging and interactive interface where they can improve their online identity presentation. Overall, we have seen how active Steam is through their use of SMS’s regardless of their massively diverse audience. Their success is directly represented through their millions of likes and increasing user population. There is no doubt that Steam uses SMS’s well. 

Figure 1:

                          Figure 2:

                       Figure 3:

                     Figure 4:

                   Figure 5:

                                                                                                             

The Hunger Coalition: Social Media Connections

 
After briefing The Hunger Coalition organization and their site, I found some important components to keep in mind when detailing whether or not this organization is successful at maintaining powerful social media connections. Thus far, The Hunger Coalition has done a decent job at intriguing and informing others through the use of social media. When I refer to the Hunger Coalition doing a “decent” job at using social media, I mean that they utilizing the online community well, but there is room for improvement in…Other organizations that are similar with the Hunger Coalition is Feed The Children and RockCANroll.

I took more of an aesthetical and usability approach at first glance.   I felt that the site was extremely engaging and very easy to navigate. As far as usability, everything seemed fairly well organized in organizing information. Various uses of text in larger headings, and displayed in a hierarchy help navigate their audience.  The color scheme with the site matched their logo’s colors, and is also heavily consistent throughout their space with social media devices. Matching color schemes throughout social media devices will also enhance their which also keep an easily identifiable organization for reliable users.

The Hunger Coalition site also contained a plethora of information that linked you to corresponding YouTube videos, Facebook pages, and their own blog spot on Blogger. I would have to agree with both Gladwell and Mirani because it seems as if they have done all the right steps in terms of getting their organization on social media sites and known with local citizens of Blaine County, but have failed in gaining a larger collective effort from users around the nation.

While reading Mirani's article, I had an extremely affectionate and positive outlook (being a committed DTC major) on the power of social media and how it truly can diversify and open up opportunities for those with non confrontational personalities to speak up. Of course Mirani uses various examples, including India's recent Internet boom where it recently allowed truthful insight of rarely reported humans right abuses, which generally never received coverage. In a simple sense, sure, Mirani proves that regions in the world where the internet and access to social networking sites is minimal, the ability to know what is really going on can be difficult and discourage those who want to voice. Where regions with access to social networking sites know, and have shown a dramatic increase with online involvement, collaboration, collective intelligence, etc. to benefit a particular cause.

However, my not so technological side came out of me when I read Gladwell's article.  The dude is right. For centuries humans have learned to overcome struggle. It is shown in American history time and time again. Regardless of social networking sites and the internet, Gladwell proves we have overcome more important things, and uses the Civil Rights movement as an example. While Mirani may argue that Gladwell fails to acknowledge the fact that its the freaking 21st-century and it is just the way it is, more and more people must adapt to use the internet to help a cause, I feel there is a misunderstanding. Gladwell is just pointing out that stronger ties are made with face to face connections and some sort of stratified community to physically engage, and if for centuries humans have been accomplishing this (SNS's only been around for a decade or more), then why change the method now?

Mirani=must adapt to the tools we now have, its the 21st century.
Gladwell= what has worked for centuries can still work, so get over it.

Both articles seem to catch my attention in either way.

Takeaways from Unit One: DTC 356

Jenkins on Convergence

Media Convergence- is not just a technological process, but more a cultural phenomenon that involves new forms of exchange between producers and users of media content. Convergence according to Jenkins, takes place “within the brains” of the consumers and “through their social interactions with others”

With media convergence comes the expansions of participation, as well as greater access to production and circulation of culture. Because technology is uneven, we need inclusive and diverse use of new media, in this case a new style of digital education that allows for a more collaborative atmosphere between teachers and students. Ex: Smartboards initiated in many classrooms worldwide.  Jenkins “To continue implementation of new digital modes of education, we must change our academic curricula to fit the interdisciplinary needs of our convergence”

Convergence Culture(CC)- Old and new media cultures colliding. Manages to describe technological, industrial, cultural and social changes depending on who’s speaking and what they think they are talking about. CC pushed broadcasters to go where consumers are.  Media cultures need to be satisfied with media we want when and where we want. 

Using web if immigrated or disconnected from home countries, looking to old country news, events, etc. We see this in young American people who are seeking compelling content from Asia, Anime is prime example.  Brings up the concern with cultural access- flow of ideas across borders? Is this really concern?

Shrinky  “It Takes a Village to find an iphone”

Summary- In the article, Shrinky talks about a Sidekick being found in a taxi cab a woman (Ivanna) accidently left. The finder (Sasha), a young Hispanic lady then used the phone and posted images of her and her boyfriend online. Ivanna had a friend of hers who worked in programming who posted up a website, and blogs for the online community to help find the phone. Soon, they located the images taken by Sasha with the phone. Immediately controversy sparked over the phone, lies, etc. 

Takeaways- Crowd sourcing (collaboration-lol) is extremely powerful. It simply shows how opening a problem out to the public and away from a small group of workers can allow for huge gains. This allows for people with more diverse range of skills to view the problem. 

Other examples of crowd sourcing- Canadian Mining Company Goldcorp was struggling to find gold and a chief executive put up all of their geographical data online, and asked for help to find gold with a $500,00 reward. Of course this would entice people to explore the problem, and eventually submissions from people all over the world, including people using 3D modeling techniques.

Prologue “Information in Space”-

Physical mapping of a store needs to reflect the organization of the information, and the organization needs to be as simple as possible.  “Instead of atoms that take up a room, its made of bits in the digital world, and a few clicks away”

Chapter One “The New Order of Order”

In class: Grocery store example

1^st order- taking laps around store to find your groceries aimlessly.

2^nd order- viewing signs to guide.

3^rd order- Shopping for your food online, removes limitations we’ve assumed physical. 

Other Important Terms

Web 2.0-

Longtail- When you have physical objects in physical locations, you are narrowing your sale. 

Data Driven-

Users add value- Design a product where users will add value to it. Netflix great example of user ratings. 

Perpetual Beta-

Web as a platform- The idea that we are able to reach works, projects, media, etc. that we store online from any device connected to the internet.  A strong example of this are Google Docs, here a user can store text for another user to view through his or her device. Of course, unless the user does not have the correct software, they will not be able to access the particular file.  Think of the web as egalitarian in a sense of unrestricted information in many ways.  

Converse Culture- Flow of content across multiple media platforms, cooperation between media industries and the migratory behavior of Media. 

Old non- complex media environments vs. new complex media environments: constant struggle to balance the new skills with the old. 

Cool Quotes

“Old media has been powerful by new media”