Social Networking

I know a talked a lot about blogging already but social networking isn’t quite the same thing. Apparently this is what Web 2.o is all about, designing everything in a way to accommodate socializing. At a second glance, to me it just means that we’re not making brochure websites anymore. It’s not about the client and what he/she wants at all, but finding out how to gather their target market together and have them express themselves amongst each other.

The last couple of days I’ve been thinking a lot about organizing and increasing efficiency. As fast as the web is, there are still a lot of problems with handling information. People love that they can say anything, anywhere and anytime but they’re abusing this privilege too much. As it’s getting easier to access the web for lower income families, you also get a lot of uneducated people who often bring bad manners with them. The web being digital, I hate to sound like an evil sci-fi robot, it’s meant for facts and data, not emotions.

It’s hard to handle so much so fast, so we need to learn to filter what our behaviour on the net. This should be taught in grade school, professionalism on the internet.

Advertising and New Media

When I hear advertising I think of television commercials. I love judging them on TV, pointing out what companies did wrong or which are my favorites. They’re like their own little shows in between shows. When I was a kid watching cartoon channels they use to remind me “not to touch that dial” because they’ll be right back but actually just encouraging me to humour their sponsors.

But now on the web, advertisers are having a more difficult time getting in your face. They tried the aggressive approach with pop-ups but that just pissed everyone off. They think that all it takes is to just offer me a fantastic deal that’s obviously too good to be true and throw in a really annoying “HELLO?!” smiley. People on the web are too educated to fall for silly displays (and those that aren’t so bright are too small of a market, porn fiends aside).

Even when we thought the situation was beyond salvation, pop-ups have been pretty much murdered by Firefox. So the next target is flashy banner ads and I actually had a fix for this for a while, I think it came with Kazaa and it prevented your browser from downloading it and instead just showed a broken image link (sites loaded super fast). My point is that with interactivity comes more control for the user, just like recording an episode you can skip over the commercials, users are now finding ways of skimming over it on the net. Advertising needs to get more creative and tricky if we’re going to keep up with the users. We need to remind them of what they should want and care about.

I know a lot of the students in my program at BCIT groan when the teacher leaves the room “Why are we learning this?!” and I think “Well because we paid them.” A lot of the stuff they talk about I appreciate to hear because it’s the first time I’m hearing it, it’s just the timing and pressure that makes the course feel awful and evil. So we started Trendsetters or whatever it’s called a couple of weeks ago. I like it! Advertising is my thing, baby! When our teacher showed us the videos of the, oh damn what were they called, those movies where companies pay them to show their products… product placement! Yes, that’s it. I found it hilarious, especially the George Bush thing with the dell tv comment. Oh boy this kind of creativity gets my ideas flowing and I feel a little less dead inside after 12 months full-time at a school that resembles a prison. For one of our assignments she asked us to come up with a product placement for a non-for-profit organization and naturally I chose SPCA just because I think humans have gotten enough attention. So I started joking around saying things in an announcer voice like “We only wipe our puppies dry with Nike towels!”

We’re getting down to a very personal level with people. The thing that most influenced me to purchase something when I was in a teenager was if a trendy friend recommended it. Then all the girls would get it and I would think, “Well I don’t really know any alternatives, so I’ll just do what they’re doing.” Even today, I can’t shop around for everything I buy. I’m looking to buy a nice digital SLR camera but my budget is only about CA$500. Whenever I see someone who’s carrying one I run up to them and ask them what they think I should buy, since they probably know what they’re doing.

Opinion is really powerful, and if you can get trend leaders on your side you’ve got your work cut out for you.

Issues In Industry/Citizen Journalism

I hope this counts for Web Marketing. It’s about blogging, but versus the business type. Anyway, here goes

I’m glad I ended up writing this last minute because it just so happens that I was at Vidfest on Tuesday and I snuck in to see The Wisdom of Crowds: Web 2.0 Democracy or Mob Mentality. It sort of fits with this, but I still thought the speakers’ had weak arguments. I think it was a debate, and they talked about anonymity and bloggers on the internet.

So first of all, citizen journalism is anyone who works independently from newspapers and television news to collect information on a topic. They can do anything from run a written or a video blog consistently to speak to an audience, or just run into an event and happen to document a part of it (photography, video, etc). This isn’t necessarily for free, often news stations will offer big money for exclusive rights to use their content. There is controversy apparently because: these people have no training in the area and credibility is scrutinized, they could be too biased, they could be liars, they could easily misinterpret something and spread misinformation. So how does this differ from traditional journalism? Well in my opinion, one group gets paid and the other doesn’t.

Where do reporters get their information? They interview people. So what if these people just wrote it on their blog instead? What’s the difference? One of the speaker’s asked “Where did you get your news from today?” Well sir, it’s true I got it from the television but they were actually using YouTube videos to talk about Britney Spears and Chris Crocker. A couple of weeks ago I saw a news report on the news about emo kids. Apparently no adult knew about this culture until they found out about it through YouTube. In my law class I would sometimes tell my teacher about something I saw on the news that contradicted something he said, and he explained because he’s a lawyer he constantly spots false information. So since when was television and newspapers really so accurate? Not to mention the fact that they always suppress information; our law teacher also told us about the Harry Potter case that never quite reached the media in North America. Their content tends to lean too much towards whoever is advertising on their channel as well.

Enough of pointing fingers at traditional journalism, citizen journalism is probably going to be just as biased since the writers are people who are very opinionated. Even so, people like to know that if there are at least choices then we get to at least see more sides of an argument. My favorite and probably the most risky form of citizen journalism are through forums. People who are focused on one subject get together, gossip about the latest events, share photos and videos. This is also like blogs, but a little bit easier to read. I think this is more realistic because you could be as educated as possible in journalism but then know nothing about the subject you’re researching. If a person is really passionate about something they will know way more than any news station about it. Look at it this way, it’s cheaper to buy something at Walmart because they make things cheap, but if you go to a smaller store that specializes in the product then you’re going to get better quality (I already hear readers grumbling “not necessarily….”).

Citizens are also everywhere. Reporters can’t be everywhere, and that’s why the have to do research and borrow information. For instance you can’t have people ready to film natural disasters; it’s just sort of a fluke if you catch it. I must have seen those same tsunami and 9/11 recordings a million times already, but they never get less terrifying. Seeing the fear and deaths happening before your eyes creates more of an impact than a reporter just telling you that a bad thing happened. And now news organizations like MSNBC are encouraging us to send photos and video of news events.

I’d love to know more about this topic and the other side of the story. If anyone other than my teacher actually ends up reading this, leave a comment and tell me more about what you know. One thing I don’t know very much about is bloggers and where to find the good ones. Give me some good ones to check out.