Our past two classes were interesting because we had the opportunity to view a great movie entitled, "The Social Network." You definitely need to see this movie if you haven't seen it already for numerous reasons. The main reason being that it explores one of the biggest phenomenons within this past decade. It also, although slightly fictional, helps the average social media user become aware of the complexities and drama that helped to build one of the most successful sites of all time. While watching the movie, Sean Parker, played by Justin Timberlake, said a couple of sentences that really got me thinking. While hosting a party after reaching 1,000,000 users, he describes the site as "the true digitization of your life." Has anyone ever thought about that? Your life is online. You know how they say that everything that you post on the internet stays there forever even when you delete it? This means that even when we leave the earth, our legacy will still be online for others to experience via different social media sites. This blows my mind. He went on to say something like if someone missed a party, they will be able to relive the party online. This is so true because we can read status updates, tweets, blog posts, and look at photos to find out what we missed. Social media have changed our lives and I don't think there is any turning back.
Unfortunately I received some extremely sad news while sitting in class the other day. The text said that one of my classmates from high school was shot and died. I asked them how they found out and they said they found out through Twitter and found out more info through Facebook. I'm not sure when I would have found out this information if this was to happen a couple of years ago. We've talked about how fast information spreads with new media, but I want you guys to think about how we are leaving a permanent online footprint, and creating a story as a result. Some of you may be confused by the last part of that sentence, but I am about to elaborate further.
Most of you probably have not heard about one of the coolest sites I have ever seen. Let's take a trip to MEMOLANE! Memolane is a site that turns your social media life into a digital story. It connects the dots, and helps to bridge a gap that many of us didn't know was missing. I encourage you all to take a look at the site. I received an invite code and began to explore the true genius that is Memolane. Basically, you can import all content from your Facebook, Twitter, RSS Feeds, YouTube Flickr, etc., and Memolane will place all of the info on a timeline. My timeline goes all the way back to 2005! It is truly revolutionary. Below you can see a portion of my timeline that shows what I was doing during a weekend in October. As the picture above says, Memolane makes history your history. With Memolane you can see your life and collaborate with friends to help create stories and memories. This makes social media even more useful. Everybody please check it out, and check out the videos about it below which basically sums it up in a nutshell. The digitization of our life is inevitable. Are you going to accept it?
It's a new age people! I had to say that just in case anyone was not aware that times are changing. Believe it or not, there are still people who refuse to accept the rise of social media because they believe that it cannot benefit anyone. I believe that they should do more research. Today I want you to think about the following question. When you are about to purchase a product, do you look for reviews online first? I check the reviews for any product that I purchase to see what other buyers have to say about it. There is no sense in wasting my money on a product that has bad ratings. So if we can learn about a product from research online, can't someone learn about us by doing the same thing?
For our most recent Communication Colloquium, our speaker talked briefly about our personal brand. One of the things that she said was to type your name onto Google and see what shows up. Fortunately, I showed up in the results. One of the things that I noticed is that apparently when I am searched for on Google, people are looking for my YouTube videos. I had many results come up when I searched for Emile Ennis and Emile Ennis Jr. Some of my results were Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, my personal blog, Reinhardt articles, and more. Therefore, if an someone wanted to know more about me, they could follow some of the links that appear online via search engines. Social media have created ways to learn about people without ever meeting them in person. Therefore, online perception is extremely important in today's society.
So is personal branding necessary? What if someone does not want to have an online identity? What about those who don't want all of their information online? It's okay to not want to be found online for whatever reasons, but the advantages are tremendous for those who choose to use the tools that social media offer. Since I have decided to study this trend, there will be many more blog posts that discuss the branding of oneself, and I will continue to learn more about the advantages and disadvantages. One thing that is clear is that social media are not going anywhere. If someone wants to compete in today's society, they must have a name for themselves online. This does not mean that you cannot be successful if you do not take advantage of social media, but it may be a little more difficult to attain the success that you want. I encourage you to do some research on personal branding via social media. I will be doing lots of research over the next couple of weeks so that I can provide more insight about the true impact that your online imprint has on your success. Until then, I would like for you all to look at my sites that I have personalized:
All of these sites have helped me to create a brand for myself online over the past 3 years. Watch the following video about personal branding via social media from 2008. He uses some inappropriate language at times, but he is honest, informative, and HILARIOUS.
Since February is here and Valentine's Day is slowly approaching, I thought that I would talk about a beautiful relationship that has blossomed over the years. We all have read Jenkins, explored the meaning of Web 2.0, and have been using many social media applications for years. Therefore, we are aware of how they have transformed from meaningless applications to much of the population into something that the majority of the population can't live without. Although our relationship with social media has grown over the years, that is not the relationship that I am referring to. In New New Media, Levinson says "Mobile new new media applications and mobile devices spur each other in an obvious, powerful, mutually catalytic relationship: The better the mobile application, the more incentive to have a cool mobile device, and the better the mobile device, the greater the incentive for new new media to develop cool new mobile applications" (Levinson, 187). Think about it, can any of us remember our lives before Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Wikipedia, iPhones, or even Google? I try to remember what it was like to have to call someone's house phone to see what they were doing. Now we can get this information from a status update on Facebook or a Twitter post instantly.
When social media applications started to truly make a name for themselves, none of us could have possibly imagined how intertwined our lives would become with social media. Just think about it. I really want all of you to answer these questions. Have you recently been watching the news or one of your favorite shows and heard this: "Let's check our twitter page to see what our followers have been tweeting." Do you find yourself checking Facebook or Twitter during classes when you're bored? Have you noticed that although social media is on the rise, our real-life interactions are becoming awkward because we are using social media via our mobile devices to avoid contact? Social media has consumed our lives not only because of it's uses, but because it is available everywhere. We've had this discussion in class before. When you publish a new post on your blog, you can have that automatically publish to Facebook and Twitter, send an email blast, and followers can view it on multiple devices. Everyone is benefiting from the catalytic relationship between social media and mobile devices. Consumers, Advertisers, Web Developers, Phone Manufacturers, and Mobile Carriers are reaping the rewards of this growing relationship. I'll break each category down.
Advertisers: Money. Money. Money. Laptops, Smartphones, iPads, and Tabletsare with the consumer at all times. Advertisers are now finding new ways to reach their target audiences. Instead of magazine ads, commercials, and billboards, they can now personalize and tailor the ads to our interests. Also, they can incorporate ads into the games we play and the apps we use. Television shows and movies can further promote their projects by creating mobile applications that get the consumer even more interested and involved.
Web Developers: As stated in the previous blog post, Web 2.0 is YOU. So, anyone can create a mobile application for a smartphone, tablet, or even laptop (Mac App Store). With technology advancing rapidly, there will never be too many web developers in the marketplace. What makes Web 2.0 interesting is that if you want to see something created, you can create it and share it with the world. In turn, you may also receive monetary compensation.
Phone Manufactures: Talk about a hard job. Phone manufacturers must not only be aware of what the latest technology is, but they must also find ways to come up with the next great thing constantly. By staying ahead of the curve, they stand to make a large profit if they can create the next big thing before anybody else does. Remind you of anyone? Apple created the next big thing in 2007 and the competition is just now starting to catch up to them.
Mobile Carriers: Mobile Carriers make money not only from the consumer purchasing the smartphones, but also the other costs that accompany them. Because of the addiction to social media on the go,consumers are willing to spend at least 300 - 400 dollars a year on data plans. That doesn't even include the price of text messaging. Also, certain carriers are now restricting the amount of data that a customer can use, and the overage costs are ridiculous. Let's not even talk about the money that a carrier can receive if they have exclusive rights to a "hot" device.
Consumers: Finally, the consumers experience it all. We have the latest devices with the hottest apps that the advertisers use to reach us, all via a mobile carrier. There is a price to pay for all this and it can get expensive, but can we live without it? According to Levinson, "Highly unlikely to change is the public's taste for the freedom iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones give them from, on the one hand, conventional places of communication such as the home and the office, and on the other hand, the many other places in our daily lives which prior to cellphones and smartphones, were useless for communication" (Levinson, 189).
Now do you see how everything is connected? Social media has consumed our lives, and I hope that this blog post has given you enough to reflect on. As always, I share articles and links, but the following video was a great summary of social media.
Hope you enjoyed this post.
Now that we are slowly getting back on track in our Capstone Seminar class, I can honestly say that I am beginning to become intrigued by the questions that have been raised because of our readings and current events. While reading Chapter 2 of Jenkins book, my interest peaked because it addressed a topic that we discussed in Media Law & Ethics last year. In this chapter he wrote, " The tenets of Web 2.0 encourage users to join in the building and customizing of services rather than companies presenting consumers with complete and fully formed sites"(Jenkins, 3). He goes on further to talk about YouTube, copyright issues, fan labor, and how spreadable media is represented or perceived as when discussing Web 2.0. although it was a lot to take in, it seemed as if the concept is fairly simple. At beginning of Web 2.0, companies and corporations recognized that the audience had the power to spread information about their products and services for free. However, companies and corporations, while they may enjoy free advertising and marketing, main goal is to make money. So the issue that has occurred is that the consumer or "fan" uses commercial content for personal purposes or to share with others. This does not benefit the company if it ends up making them lose money. I think that Jenkins worded it best when he said,
At its core, the flaws in "Web 2.0" can be reduced to a simple formulation: the concept transforms the "gifts" produced from audiences into "user-generated content" which can be monetized and commodified, while audiences have in actuality used the commodified and monetized content of commercial producers as raw material for their social interactions with each other. This misrecognition is perhaps most profoundly expressed when companies seek not simply to "capture," "capitalize on," or "harvest" the creative contributions of their audiences but also to lock down the content so it can no longer spread beyond their walled boundaries.
So, what is Web 2.0? I read the chapter and discovered where it went wrong, but I still want to know exactly what it is. I found the answer by reading the article What is Web 2.0? by Tim O'Reilly that was written in 2005. I encourage you all to the glance over and see what you think. After that, mainly because I am a visual learner, I looked for pictures that describe Web 2.0. That led me to the picture on the right. Then I found a website, JustMeans.com, where the author had predictions as to what direction Web 2.0 was heading in 2011 (Those articles are linked at the end of this blog post). On the same website, there is a recent article that addresses the rising in Egypt and how Web 2.0 has helped write history. The article entitled, "Egypt's Web 2.0 Uprising Today: Let's Play Our Part", was written today, and I'm fascinated with the power that Web 2.0 gives the average user.
Therefore, Web 2.0 is You. I did not say that it is for you, but Web 2.0 is You. You have the tools and applications at your fingertips to create, share, trade, collaborate, explore, and profit off your ideas, creativity, opinions, and talents. The issue is that corporations have the following different models for numerous years and it's time for change. What I mean is that these corporations have models for how to market to consumers, how to reach a wider audience, how to capitalize from fan support, etc. However, it is now time for companies and corporations to realize that it's a new day with new technology that has changed the way we asked consumers view the world and communicate. So instead of sticking to these old models, filing lawsuits, and trying to retain the power that they once had over consumers, shouldn't these companies and corporations realize that things have to change and adapt? I leave you with that question to ponder over. More thoughts coming soon.
Before reading the articles below, check out this great video from 2007.
For more interesting Web 2.0 articles on JustMeans.com, just search for Web 2.0 on their website and go to view all from News from JM Writers or click the tag and the bottom of one of the links above. The latter is easier. :-)
Most of you probably have not heard about one of the coolest sites I have ever seen. Let's take a trip to MEMOLANE! Memolane is a site that turns your social media life into a digital story. It connects the dots, and helps to bridge a gap that many of us didn't know was missing. I encourage you all to take a look at the site. I received an invite code and began to explore the true genius that is Memolane. Basically, you can import all content from your Facebook, Twitter, RSS Feeds, YouTube Flickr, etc., and Memolane will place all of the info on a timeline. My timeline goes all the way back to 2005! It is truly revolutionary. Below you can see a portion of my timeline that shows what I was doing during a weekend in October. As the picture above says, Memolane makes history your history. With Memolane you can see your life and collaborate with friends to help create stories and memories. This makes social media even more useful. Everybody please check it out, and check out the videos about it below which basically sums it up in a nutshell. The digitization of our life is inevitable. Are you going to accept it?
