Social Networking

I’ve used social networks for many years. I opened a MySpace account at the behest of a friend. I didn’t immediately sign up, instead I waited a few months. It wasn’t because I was weary of the online social scene; I just didn’t see the point of the website. At that time, I used the web for e-mail and getting news about topics that interested me, I didn’t see the point in social networking. Eventually, I buckled down and joined the site.

My experience with MySpace was rather uneventful at first; I created a simple profile based on the default template and add a few friends who I knew from work. Other then that I didn’t do much else with the site, maybe because everyone who I was friends with were people I saw on a daily basis, so I didn’t see the need to communicate with them online. Eventually I began to see the usefulness of the site and as time progressed my friends moved away. Since I was in the Marine Corps I moved around a lot and so did my friends, because of this MySpace became much more relevant.

After I started using MySpace more often and seeing what other people did to their sites I decided to redesign my space. I added some graphics, changed the background and tried to make it a little more stylish. I thought about adding music, but I didn’t want to accost people with my musical taste. I also tried to get as many friends as possible, and in a sense compete with my other friends. I didn’t like going to other spaces and seeing higher friend counts.

Today my perspective on MySpace has changed, where before I focused on friend counts, today I am more interested in maintaining close relationships with people who I actually call friends and communicate with. I also restrict my profile to only friends, and only accept friend requests from people I know. This has limited my friend count, but the friends I do have are much more meaningful.

The other social networking website, with which I have intimate knowledge, is YouTube. I can say proudly that I knew about YouTube before it was famous. It was 2005 and I was working on a documentary about my recent 10 day trip to Israel. I got back in July and started working on the documentary immediately. Even though I spent most of my free time working on it, it still took me a good 6 months to get the entire project finished.

When I did finish it I wanted to distribute to all the friends who I went on the trip with. I thought about sending everyone DVDs, but that seemed too costly, I wanted an easier way to distribute my work. So I started to search online for websites that hosted videos, and the first one I found was YouTube, so I signed up and submitted my video. I submitted the video on January 26, 2006, and as of this post I currently have 11,899 views. It was my first documentary and the first video I ever put online.

Since then I have had numerous compliments and e-mails from people all over the world who have seen the video and have thanked me for putting it online. This encouragement inspires me to produce other videos some of which are on the site. I haven’t done another documentary yet, but I am working on one about my mother which I plan to place online before her birthday on October 1st.

Podcasting Anyone?

Hi everyone, just had the idea to do a podcast for my blog. Right now it's just going to me and my incessant ramblings, but I'd really like to get other students involved. We can talk about blogs or new media, or whatever for like an hour a week. I think it would really show our devotion to the course and maybe earn us some extra credit ;) Anyways if anyone is interested let me know. I've never done a blog, let alone done one with other people, so I'll will work out the logistics. The only thing I know you need are a microphone and skype, beyond that I'm unaware.

Anyways let me know. Peace, Dave.

Article Review

This week I would like to discuss my thoughts on a number of articles I was cajoled into reading by my Principles of New Media professor. After a brief recount of these articles, and my thoughts on them, I will discuss my fellow student’s thoughts.

The first article I read, Unbound, Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write a ... Blog honestly surprised me. This article discussed how Wal-Mart was encouraging members of its workforce to give their honest opinions about the products which sold. An intriguing idea, but one thing I didn’t see mentioned in the article was anything about the working conditions, lack of benefits or any general distention about the Wal-Mart Corporation in general. If there is really free reign to discuss anything on these blogs, why is it only limited to gripes and complaints about certain products? Where are the tastemakers who discuss how working at Wal-Mart is not “All that and a bag of chips?” Where is the blog about the clean-up crew who were locked in a Wal-Mart overnight? I guess it will be found somewhere else on the blogosphere.

The second article How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere? Discusses how the influence of blogs is measured. This article discusses various ways in which blog influence can be measured including sites such as Blogosphere, BlogRunner, Technorati, BlogStreet and The Influenctials, each of which represent blogs in a different way. I think I like Technorati the best because of it’s comprehensive indexing, and as the article says the site “watches almost 2 million blogs and 250+ million links.” The article also touched on the influence of blogs on politics by mentioning the Trent Lott incident which I remember distinctly.

The third article Celebrity Blogs: The Impact of New Media made interesting notes about two sites I’m very familiar with, Perez Hilton, and Gawker Stalker. Both sites are popular because they latch onto something that many people are addicted to, celebrity news. I think it’s interesting how the internet can thrive and grow by covering celebrities, and the internet can also make celebrities. Look at the case of Tila Tequila, a woman who use the internet, namely Myspace.com, to earn stardom, becoming a celebrity, and being covered by sites such as Perez Hilton.

The Power and Politics of Blogs is about just that, politics and blogs, and how the two intersect. The author discusses the influence of blogs by asking why they are influential in the first place considering their viewership is so much smaller than that of traditional media. The author uses graphs and charts to explain his ideas but in all honesty is was a bit over my head and kind of seemed more geared towards a statistics and class than a new media class. Ultimately though the author sees political blogs as losing some of their influence as politicians gain a stronger grasp on the medium, but that their strength will be more focused on the political debate.

Finally, Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid shows how blogging can lead to real change in society. In this article the author discusses how one neighborhood in Brooklyn. I like how towards the end of the article the bloggers are talking about the drug raid in almost real time, and discussing it on their blog. Still the importance of spreading information and the effects positive effects in can have on society are what this article are really talking about. I hope that information expression will lead to a greater good in society.

Now some thoughts from my fellow students. Adventures in New Media summed up the articles into a nice little package, instead my overblown and drawn out review. I agree with most of Irving’s points regarding the blogs, but I disagree with his thoughts on the influence of Wal-Mart’s blog being revolutionary. The ability to comment on products and give reviews is something that has been around for awhile, and I’d rather see reviews from the general public than Wal-Mart employees.

Moonphia’s blog, Media discussed the Brooklyn article and I don’t know if I agree with her not. It seems like she’s saying that she doesn’t think that a blog written in a criminal environment can be trusted. Not sure. But information is information, and even if it is one criminal turning in another criminal then I’m just fine with that.

Finally Bakshj’s blog Mets or Mutts? Took the long form approach, giving each article their own paragraph. I like what Bakshj says about celebrity blogs and the way they are “cheap and very quick to spread the word.” But I think we have to be wary about this facet of a blog. Yes, word can be spread quickly, but when the wrong word gets spread reputations can be affected. With blogs having no oversight, or central command, there is just too much chance of the wrong information being spread.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my New Media blog. Here you will find posts related to new media and its influence on society. Let me know what you think.