Aim of Page: Discuss Social Media in relation to New Media - for example, how Social Media has developed due to New Media? ... Also other related topics that you may find relevant.
Relevant Links:
As my Case Study I am studying the way in which Austereo uses New Media within Australia. One the most recent example is the digital radio U20 and Facebook.
U20 digital radio is a station that is created by people under the age of 20. You select your music and record your segments and upload them online. The people at U20 then have a listen and let you know if they think is good enough to on air.
U20 radio is specifically targeted at the under 20 audience, so to reach its audience it uses Facebook to upload show times and information about what is on air.
The way in which Austereo has used New Media through Facebook and U20 radio demonstrates one of the key steps that are being taken to reach out to the various ages of their audience. This is a crucial step in the way of radio stations in Australia. Austereo is keeping up to date with its listeners and their communication demands. By using FacebookU20 is able to see who listeners like the most, solve technical issue with members immediately through online conversation and many process with haven’t been able to be utilised to this extent before with radio.
Austereo is developing new levels of communication and Play and U20 is just the beginning. There is more information on Austereo on the Music page.
By Abigail Benaud
To Pay or Not To Pay?
In the past business strategies have been fairly black and white. They either follow the commercial economy like buying and selling books OR they follow the sharing economy like YouTube, which has huge entertainment value for the cost of nothing. However, in the past 5 years or so this notion of the Hybrid Economy has become increasingly popular, as businesses have begun to combine the two to leverage economic value from one another. As Lawrence Lessig discusses, the hard part is the commercial entities need to show respect to the sharing economy for this to be successful, some businesses do, and some don't.
One business that I think will achieve mutual respect between consumers and creators is popular social networking site Facebook, after announcing today they will be "going retail" in the US as of Sunday. Gift cards ranging from $15 - $50 will be available at a range of retail outlets for purchase, which look and work like Apple's iTunes store cards and can be used for social games, application and virtual goods. This new addition comes after a deal last month between Internet payment group MOL to sell the credits across 500,000 outlets in South East Asia. ( USA Today, September 2010)
Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg told mX news, "many of our millions of free social games players were beginning to spend money on goods and services associated with the games...We're investing in the long-term future of Facebook Credits and we view this agreement as a major opportunity to broaden the availability of a simple, unified currency that can be used in games and applications across facebook."
Facebook has still kept the main functions of the website free for all users, but has identified a new niche market within their users who are happy to use the paid service. I personally have never played any Facebook games or applications so this new move is of no interest to me, however I do remember earlier this year when my newsfeed was clogged with FarmVille posts, so maybe I am just the odd one out. It will be interesting to see how successful this new move is, when it finally comes to Oz later this year...
The world of communication has come a long way from messengers on foot or horseback. We gradually came across paper and newspapers to get the word out to communities and in 1861 the US developed the pony express as a way to deliver mail. Than televisions, radio stations, motion pictures, internet, and cell phones developed bringing us into the high speed technology world we live in today.
The social network market has grown enormously since the MySpace launch in 2003 and the Facebook launch in 2004. Facebook has all areas of the world and is used to communicate with friends, friends of friends, family members… their friends, colleagues, peers, and even professors. Different games developed through Facebook, like cow picker and Farmville, allow you to play with friends virtually but the newest additions to the book are topping everything.
This application is provided to those who have Iphones only at the moment but Androids and blackberry versions are said to be coming soon as well, expanding social networking opportunities. Personally Facebook is a social network addiction that I myself have become a victim of. Going from having access to Facebook on my blackberry in the states, to a flip phone without a front screen, I have purposely tried to tear myself away from checking my page more than twice a day. My basic use for it is to allow myself to stay caught up with my friends overseas (and to obviously make them jealous that I’m here in Australia J ) and to allow certain people to know very broad information about me. With the new ‘Places” application Facebook has gone to an entirely different level of social networking.
The new application went active on 18/19 August and to what I’ve been able to find, it is only available in certain regions. A facebook topic page gives some detail from users as to where the application is not working. It’s basically a GPS built into your phone connecting you with surrounding peers. What the application does
Allows you to check in ON YOUR MOBILE ONLY to local areas (i.e. bars, clubs, restaurants, hair salons, coffee shops)
Lets you see if friends are nearby so you can stop in and hangout, which I think brings a whole new meaning to social gatherings.
Check friends into places.
There are privacy settings you can choose that allow you to pick and choose who can and cannot tag you places and who can and cannot see where you are
Below is a YouTube clip giving more detail and explanation of what Places does and how it works.
This application makes me a little nervous. Facebook states that the places privacy options are enforced and unless you choose to check yourself in somewhere no one will be able to access the information of where you are. No one you haven’t accepted as a friend can view where you are checked in. That’s all fine and dandy but how many of your friends accept friend requests from people they have never met before? My point exactly. As much I don’t want to say it there still are the stalkers and creeps out there and some know a thing or to about computer technology and my guess is if they can hack into our computers they’ll be figure a way to hack into our phones and shut down the privacy shield.
It’s just scary to think about. I mean call me old fashion but I don’t like people knowing exactly what I’m doing when and where I’m doing it.
As for where this technology is going... honestly Facebook has gone above and beyond what I think anybody thought it could, I would be surprised if Facebook and skype combined their ways and developed an application where you can video chat and talk on the phone through your Facebook either via mobile or computer. References Brodkin, Jon. 19.8.2010. Facebook 'Places' not available in many places http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/081910-facebook-places-problems.html. (accessed 19 August 2010).
Since founded in 2009, the location-based service [Foursquare] has been providing its users enjoyable, interesting experiences (unlocking badges, gaining points which lets you be the mayor of different locations) in letting their friends know their whereabouts while they are on the go and vice versa.
This unique feature of Foursquare appeals towards different businesses. This is where the application sits in the minds of marketers: “Foursquare is a cool social media website to use to gain some buzz and grow foot traffic to the stores” (Social Media Commando, 2010). In order to obtain some free advertising and foot traffic, all marketers have to do is register their businesses on the website so users can check-in there and they will be on their ways to spread buzz on the Internet.
Pizza Hut recently decided to further exploit this emerging application. On Aug 9, Pizza Hut announced a promotion nationally in the US with Foursquare. “The promotion rewards the "Mayor" of each restaurant with a free single order of breadsticks with the purchase of a large pizza (DeRouen, L. 2010)”
The “Mayor” has to display his phone to the staff to prove that he is the “Mayor” in order to retrieve his free order. The special promotion can only be redeemed once a day, and only one “Mayor” exists in each restaurant every day.
Brian Niccol, the Chief Marketing Office at Pizza Hut explained that “customers are spending a considerable amount of time using social media and mobile tools; increasingly incorporating them into their daily lives. Loyal, digital-savvy customers will be attracted towards this fun promotion and hopefully Pizza Hut will obtain repeat traffic from Mayors looking to take advantage of this offer” (DeRouen, L 2010, Pizza Hut and Foursquare Offer Discounts for Mayors, para. 4).
Foursquare, an application that was meant to be created for casual fun ended up being exploited for marketers used for advertising. This not only brings a new definition to the word “play”, but also demonstrates the New Media’s potential to synergise with everything.
"According to Nielsen, the average number of mobile phone calls we make is dropping every year, after hitting a peak in 2007". And our calls are getting shorter: In 2005 they averaged three minutes in length; now they’re almost half that." (Thompson, 2010) Some of you might get shock that you would never realize how do we actually change after see the research result release by Nielsen. We are moving to different kind of communication way - call less but talk more. This has became a crisis for the phone call as well as ourselves.
Even though the rise of social media allow us to communicate [texting, chatting, and social-network messaging] with each other all the time and anywhere without disturbing other people, but it makes our conversation become cold and dull now. Sometimes we will get misunderstanding with the words in messenger and this might lead to conversation war or the end of a relationship. Although we can use a lot of emotions in our conversation, but I would rather to use voice call to transmit my feeling and emotion correctly to the other side.
"Consider: If I suddenly decide I want to dial you up, I have no way of knowing whether you’re busy, and you have no idea why I’m calling. We have to open Schrödinger’s box every time, having a conversation to figure out whether it’s OK to have a conversation. Plus, voice calls are emotionally high-bandwidth, which is why it’s so weirdly exhausting to be interrupted by one.The telephone, in other words, doesn’t provide any information about status, so we are constantly interrupting one another."(Thompson, 2010) Although this is the disadvantage of using voice call, but new technology allow the caller to leave voice mail to us, record their phone calling, allow the mobile phone to send text message to the caller when it switch to silent mode, etc. These are the solutions for us when we cannot accept the call.
While we are worrying about the dead of the phone call, people start to migrate from the voice calls to other media such as Skype video call. Some Skype users contact with their friends and relatives spontaneously and occasionally without worrying about the calling fees. Video calls start to become common when mobile phone such as iPhone 4 has been combined with the technology of video calling. Phone call has not die yet and it just change to different way.
Since the wide spread use of the Internet, it has never been a safe place. With the difficulties and lack of moderation and monitoring for New Media tools, cyberbullying, hacking, viruses, and distressing materials are getting more and more common. Out of all the potential dangers that lurk within the virtual world of the World Wide Web, sexual behavior grooming is one of the biggest problems that concerns parents and organizations.
According to Don Martelli (2010), despite social networking (and the internet) provides youngsters and teenagers with easy access to all types of content and people — most of it is good, but some of it can be bad, very bad. With these sites now being more popular than ever, pedophiles are now using these platforms as tools for searching their prey.
The UK Police force, Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre, and parents are now holding hands in order to protect children from becoming preys of pedophiles on social networking sites by urging Facebook and other social networking sites to install the “Panic Button”. The Panic Button is an existing link that allows users to report abuse will in future enable a report to be made to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, as outlined by BBC News (2010).
The tragic murder of the 17 years old girl Ashleigh Hall in UK caused the officials in UK to push Facebook for action. Ashleigh Hall was murdered by a homeless 33 years old man, Peter Chapman, who had faked his identity on Facebook and stalked Ashleigh Hall. Later on Ashleigh Hall went over to his house to sleepover, where he raped and murdered her.
Richard Allan, Facebook’s head of policy in Europe, said the social networking site and CEOP had a “common agenda” on child safety on the Internet, as outlined by BBC News (2010). Facebook has agreed to allow a window to pop-up when users click on the link (Panic Button), which then allows users to report abuse and make a report to CEOP.
Despite this, the critical issue is yet to be solved. Without direct visible access to the CEOP button on each and every page of social networking sites, I think pedophiles will still have easy access to prey and stalk children on the sites. Until these social networking sites agree enabling direct visible access, parents shall not be reassured.
New media technologies are giving everyday people more and more opportunity to express their opinions online, in journalism and on television. The most interesting of these outlets, I believe, is currently citizen journalism. Not many people outside of the new media sphere know how citizen journalism started; it was actually a Korean man by the name of Oh-Yeon Ho (Bentley et al. 2007). I was a little surprised by this as well, having always assumed that the concept came from somewhere in the West. Since 1999, when Oh-Yeon Ho began his online citizen journalism news site, along with 727 other citizen journalists, his novel idea has slowly been taking over the world. Citizen journalism is a commonly recognised term these days, with many individuals taking part in citizen journalism whether it be in online forums, blogs or even through television programs such as the 7pm Project. For those that have never seen it, this mainstream new media news show on Channel 10 features a segment where a citizen from each state of Australia gives a short report on what is currently happening in their home town. Apart from blogging, this would be one of the most relevant examples of citizen journalism to many Australians. Many Australians are also citizen journalists through the outlet of blogging. Many of my friends and acquaintances have blog sites, which reflect on their personal lives and what is happening in the world around them. This has many advantages over the ways of tradition journalism as “Although BBC, CNN and other international news organizations employ thousands of professional news reporters, these reporters will never be as omnipresent as the millions of people carrying camera phones who can act as journalists” (Leung 2009). This is food for thought for all of us as it captures the growing importance of citizen journalism. Won’t it be nice one day when you capture something on your phone camera, post it on a blog, and then you are offered lots of money from mainstream news to broadcast it? I think so. Power to the people!
Social media journalism
References
Bentley, C., B. Hamman., J. Littau., H. Meyer., B. Watson., and B. Welsh. 2007. Citizen Journalism: a Case Study. In Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media, ed. M. Tremayne, 239-259. New York: Taylor & Francis
Leung, L. 2009. User-generated content on the internet: An examination of gratifications, civic engagement and psychological empowerment. New Media & Society 11 (8): 1327-1347.
- Portia Vann New media gives power to the people The rise of citizen journalism and the future of the news are the two closely linked topics that I have chosen to look at for my essay this semester. I've already posted my previous entry on the gorwing popularity citizen journalism and believe that it will be a very interesting area to look at; as well as the divide between traditional and ‘new’ portrayals of the news. What I have begun to research is the rise of citizen journalism, and the elements that have contributed to this rise. According to Flew (2008 p. 145) there have been three elements critical to the rise: open publishing, collaborative editing and distributed content. The development of open publishing in 1999 (Flew 2008, p145) has helped citizen journalism as it has enabled new forms of news production. However, my main focus is on collaborative editing for this post, as I think it has the most relevance to the changing structure of the news. Collaborative editing has played its role in enabling new forms of news production, as it is the process that has enabled changes in the tradition ‘top-down’ news structure. The extent to which an open editing process is adopted depends of the website and type of media. Some sites allow completely for users to edit or shape the final content, while some sites still limit user participation (for example, only being able to comment on a news story rather than contribution content). This continuum can be classified starting from the traditional ‘top down’ approach in journalism (mainstream news) ranging to emergent ‘bottom up’ news (open news) (Flew 2008, p 146). Citizen journalism is a shift in the form of news production from top down to bottom up. References Flew, T. 2008. New Media: An Introduction. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. - Portia Vann
Are Second Life property and real life property the same thing?
In May, issues that arose in Second Life were brought into a class action lawsuit in the real world whereby a number of Second Life players filed a lawsuit against the creator of Second Life Philip Rosedale. This was following Rosedale and the Second Life team's decision to change the virtual property ownership laws and "residents were forced to agree to a new terms of service that eroded their ownership rights to virtual property and goods. In fact, the suit filed on April 15 claims, the promises of "ownership" were empty in the first place," (McCarthy, 2010).
The plaintiffs in the case cleverly referred to a previous lawsuit filed against Second Life, and possibly the most famous, by lawyer Marc Bragg in 2006, who requested the $8000 real life dollars he had invested in a Second Life business to be returned to him after his account was frozen, arguing that he paid for the land and thus he had ownership over it. However, Bragg's account was frozen because he had used unlawful and antisocial means such as hacking to aquire his land at abnormally low prices. Bragg argued back that this was the Second Life company's fault for allowing those auctions to be held whereby he could attain this land at these prices.
So who is right and wrong in this type of situation? The lines are a little fuzzier because of the fact that the properties being disputed are not actually tangible in the real world. However, some would argue that if you are using real world money, a tangible thing, to pay for these kind of properties then the laws of the real world do apply.
Second Life has been known to be extremely profitible, despite being described as a niche website. "The company recently announed that the first quarter of 2010 was the best in the history of the Second Life "economy," with $160 million in user-to-user transactions and over 500,000 users actively involved in the virtual market," (McCarthy, 2010). I have to wonder whether or not these virtual world to real world currency conversions are a good thing. In my opinion, it is pretty dangerous territory. Also it can have affects on the game and how it is played. For example, if real world money is thrown into the mix then those who are richer will automatically have more power in the game, much like in the real world, which takes away all concepts of democracy and fairness that these websites so often preach to those who are looking to sign up. Virtual currencies should still be maintained but acquiring of these currencies should be through the work you engage in through the site so that the power is distributed to those with the most skill and passion for the game, rather than those with large bank accounts. Obviously, with Gold Farmers etc this sort of democratic approach to gaming will most likely never be realised as there is always some way around the rules that are reinforced by the gaming companies. All people can do is strive for fairness in virtual worlds and attempt to make the game just that: a game.
The upcoming Melbourne Writers Festival has chosen to utilise Twitter for their main marketing tool to promote the event. An online program, called TweetWriter, has been created by festival organisers, which enables any Twitter user to enter their user name to see their Tweets published as a novel. This is done by sourcing information from the users profile to appear on the back covers. The purpose of creating this is to use the idea of seeing the story from every angle into social media. Dan King, the director of JWT Melbourne, states that " All Twitterers are writers after all, and there’s a curiosity associated with profiling one’s self online. We thought it was an opportunity for individuals to discover their inner Austen or Dostoevsky" (Ma, 2010) Online literary sites and publications now feature banners which display the online campaign. 300 writers from across the globe will feature in the festival, and like Twitter's users, the campaign reflects the diversity of the line up, which features, not only authors, but songwriters, playwrights, and journalists. The campaign is also featured in cinemas, press, and "experiential executions" (Ma, 2010) .
Exploring in Week 5 the issues regarding what is legal and illegal in a virtual world where items, possessions, money and people are intangible and depending on your outlook- pretend we discussed the legal implications of buying and owning virtual land and property within these games and also the selling of user accounts for real world profit. As a wiki user has already contributed, lawsuits have been filed against Second Life demanding real life compensation for transactions that have happened within the game which further complicates the argument of real life vs. virtual life and what is actually considered to have value.
What interested me more is how real life companies have deemed these virtual worlds profitable to their business and set up accounts and ‘worlds’ specific to their company online. On Second Life, the company Disney have created their own Virtual Magic Kingdom that allows visitors to interact with the Disney’s amusement park surroundings (Jana and McConnon 2007). Even Australia’s own ABC have ventured into the virtual world to create ABC Island that claims to be “a distinctly Australian destination providing visitors with opportunities to... discover a hidden underground music club, listen to Indigenous stories, wander round an environmentally friendly eco house, experience ABC audio and video in a social environment and attend live screenings and concerts” (ABC).
What this demonstrates is how the economic landscape is changing to incorporate and take advantage of all available mediums to turn a profit. Television has even turned to the game with the popular CW network show Gossip Girl filming ‘machinisodes’ following real plot lines with all characters represented virtually that will feature on the network’s website (Reuters 2008).
What this all has me asking though is what’s next? What started as a game has grown into a multi-million dollar business, a lifestyle and for some an actual reality. The privacy and legal boundaries have already been re-drawn so what can consumers and users expect from these companies in the future.
Abuse and Misuse of Social Networking: The Privacy Policy, EULAs and TOS Agreements
Privacy policies, terms of service (TOS) agreements and end user license agreements (EULAs) all govern what we do in the virtual world. Often, these are processes that as users we quickly click 'I agree' to or even ignore when using programs such as Facebook and Second Life. But in reality, they have significant implications in the real world and impact our rights. To use Facebook, consider some examples of the Facebook Privacy Policy outlined here:
“We keep track of some of the actions you take on Facebook, such as adding connections (including joining a group or adding a friend), creating a photo album, sending a gift, poking another user, indicating you “like” a post, attending an event, or connecting with an application.”
“In some cases you are also taking an action when you provide information or content to us. For example, if you share a video, in addition to storing the actual content you uploaded, we might log the fact that you shared it.”
“When you access Facebook from a computer, mobile phone, or other device, we may collect information from that device about your browser type, location, and IP address, as well as the pages you visit.”
It seriously concerns me to realise that Facebook actually track a lot of my activity and go as far to share my information with third parties, so that they can set up ‘personalised advertising’ and ‘social ads’. I wasn’t even aware of a lot of this until I researched the privacy settings. And this is pretty common - as Rosen (2010, p. 9) argued, “…social networkers…are often naïve or ill-informed about the amount of information they are making publicly available…”It will be interesting to see how privacy policies, EULAs and TOS agreements impact upon user rights and the ramifications this will have for the real world. Currently, these are not always enforceable but there are plenty of cases and examples where the user sues the corporation and where the corporation sues the user. Both examples of parties trying to enforce their rights and this shows that the area of law is muddled and unresolved. Halbert analyses these issues in her article "Public lives and private communities: The terms of service agreement and life in virtual worlds" and sums up the problem:“...Given the governing architecture of virtual worlds, one must consider that the future is not democratic…a tension exists between the governance structures as developed in EULAs and TOS agreements and the underlying expectations of users…” (Halbert 2009, p.11). And so, I end with this question: do you think these agreements/terms of conditions are legally binding - just like when you sign a contract would be in the real world? To what extent should we be regulating the Internet?
Privacy policy?
References:
Rosen, C. (2007). Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis, Number 17, Summer 2007: 15-31.
Debora, J. (2009). Public lives and private communities: The Terms of service agreement and life in virtual world. First Monday, volume 14, issue 12: 1-15.
By Katherine Buckley, August 19 2010. RE: Abuse and Misuse of online social networking: The Privacy Policy, ULA's and TOS agreementsI complete agree Katherine, when the new default privacy settings came out on Facebook I stubbornly ignored it as I do most of those information boxes when changes happen. Then I realised I could see all these peoples photos and and information that I couldn't normally, so I immediately changed mine back, and it seems that we aren't the only ones! Over 30,000 facebook users joined a group against the new privacy settings. I think one of the main issues is that the privacy agreement terms are pages and pages long, and people can't be bothered to read them.You should check out this youtube video of Zuckerberg's apology ( completely sarcastic but still makes a good point!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6nBhhnnuOBy Gemma Lacey
Online schoolyard behaviour
With millions of fans ‘following’ their every move it’s hard to believe that celebrities would use such a public platform to insult each other. However it seems that hugely popular Twitter has become the most recent battlefield, as pop star Brian McFadden and gossip columnist Ros Reines fight it out. With McFadden's post reading I really hope Ros Reines from the daily telegraph gets a root soon... merroraybe then she won't be such a horrible twat and just earlier this year referring to his ex-wife a “pig faced mole"”. A prime example of how the usage patterns of online social media exploit the service they offer.
So if this is condoned in the online world why isn’t it in the offline world?
As Christine Rosen discusses in her article Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism, the online world is hardly phased by the boundaries of the real-world communities they belong to. Rather online social media promotes this notion of “informal learning”. This can be explained as the process where the more traditional types of social norms are replaced with new ones. Furthermore she says "The world of online social networking is practically homogenous in one other sense, however diverse it might at first appear: its users are committed to self-exposure. The creation and conspicuous consumption of intimate details and images of one’s own and others’ lives are the main activity in the online social networking world".
So how does one categorise if something is unacceptable or acceptable, when there aren’t any formal boundaries? Is a user agreeing to this type of content to be posted on his/her friends pages when they "agree" to the Terms and Conditions of these websites? I think the answers to those questions falls into a grey area, which continues to expand.
As more and more people are using these sites as a primary communication tool, shouldn't we be carrying our day-to-day etiquette over to our online worlds?
Rosen (2007) states that social networking sites are becoming the modern day self portrait. As people once used self portraits to convey status and personality through an oil painting, that is now being done through networking sites. It is the “timeless human desire for attention” (Rosen 2007) that once drove the oil paintings to be made, and that same philosophy is fuelling the popularity of social networking. Facebook is a new way for self promotion and self formation. Everything that is done on Facebook; comments on walls, photos, status updates and event initiations, all produce a particular and manipulated image that has been created by user. Because such a degree of manipulation is put in to creating ones online profile, just as self portraits did, they can expose and obscure, clarify and distort (Rosen 2007). Essentially, users are able to portray themselves over social networking sites however they please, and can promote aspects of themselves that are popular, and eradicate those that are not. Or as Rosen (2007) puts it, “social networking site users are committed to self-exposure.” This idea is similarly explored by Thompson (1995) when discussing social networking site users “absorption of self in mediated quasi-interaction.” Are people starting to become so heavily absorbed with self exposure and interacting through impersonal social networking sites that we are giving up the chance for real intimacy?
TWITCHANGE: 'CHANGING THE WORLD, ONE TWIT AT A TIME'
Part of the thrill of owning a Twitter, is being able to have an insight into the personal world of celebrities. The more celebrities followed, the better. It's easy enough to add any of them, but to have them reply to your Tweet, is something that can not be bought - until now. Introducing TwitChange , a site that's "changing the world, one tweet at a time". It's a celebrity auction with a difference - instead of bidding for memorabilia, you are bidding for a moment of Twitter fame. TwitChange is an example of a small idea turned big, created by thirty-year-old Shaun King, who is a pastor at The Courageous Church, in Atlanta. He promoted his creation through his blog www.shauninthecity.com, where he stated "On September 15, 2010, something that has never been done before is going to take place. It's revolutionary. It's going to make international news. It's going to make a legitimate, tangible difference on the ground in Haiti." (Chester 2010). What followed this was a list of celebrity names that kept growing in the announcement of TwitChange , which has more than 100 celebrities lending their name to the cause. The aim is to build the Mirima Centre which houses Haitian children with cerebal palsy, severe autism, and other major life challenges and is the only facility of it's kind in Haiti.
The method of raising money is to let people bid for one of three things: to be followed by their favourite celebrity on Twitter, to be retweeted by them or mentioned of them in a special tweet. The idea has come under scrutiny, as being a sad reflection of the times, with people willing to pay money for a moment of fame measured in a character count and not by time. But there is a majority of positive opinion, who "see it as a chance to do good and feel good" (Chester 2010). The auction is said to be the first to exist on Twitter.
It's fascinating how the concept of Twitter is so simple, in terms of character limits, layout, and features available. Yet, because of the power of it's global users (ie the celebrities and politicians) it has enabled the network to go such a long way - not only for fundraising, but as a marketing/political tool and sharing global news.
Chester, R. 2010. Great Bid Twits. The Courier Mail. September 16.
- Amanda-Joy Evans
The Facebook Overshare
Everyone who has a Facebook has at least once seen friends airing out very personal details on the very public stage of the internet, and many of us have done it ourselves. However, we’re beginning to realize that what we say on Facebook can have a huge impact on our real lives – you can get fired for it, or lose a court case. In the US, information from social networks has become a popular form of evidence in divorce cases especially. According to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, “
81 percent of its members have used or faced evidence plucked from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, including YouTube and LinkedIn, over the last five years.” (Associated Press, 2010). There’s plenty of things that can be used as evidence in a divorce case: uploading pictures with a new girlfriend or boyfriend, bragging about infidelities or trash talking, sexually explicit photos or photos that were clearly taken whilst intoxicated, angry threats made on your partner’s profile, etc. It has also, in a few cases, affected parents negatively in custody battles (Sify Finance, 2010).
There are also increasing numbers of people getting fired from their jobs over what they say on Facebook. Kimberly Swann is a recent example: she changed her status to “bored at work”, her boss read this update and promptly fired her (NBC San Diego, 2010).
What we post on Facebook can affect us in other ways as well – it could prevent a potential employer from hiring us, or reveal secrets or things we’d been hiding from certain friends, as well as keeping logs of unfortunate or unwanted photographs even after we delete them off our pages. I think that while a lot of us realize the lack of privacy Facebook offers, we still seem to think that no one will come looking for information on our pages, and that we can simply delete the evidence. As more and more cases end badly for those who social network, we may begin to decrease how much of our lives we share online. However, the amount of information many of us have already published is technically the property of Facebook, and may have already done damage.
The “public displays of connection” that Donath and Boyd examine in their study prompt the reader to examine their own social network. These “public displays of connection” (Donath and Boyd 2004) explored in the study is similar to the saying, “public displays of affection”. The saying is continuously unpleasant to witness in public and this could also be said for social networking online. Not to the same extent, nevertheless some of my own friends are too visible online.
My connections online are people who I’ve met at least once in person except it has accumulated to an “extended network of friends of friends” (Donath and Boyd 2004). The online connections I maintain are usually close friends. I would be content with a network of my closest 20 friends; However, my online network is the opposite. The reliability of these social connections is a concern and the trustworthy issue reappears. When identifying social networking as a social stage, I would like to believe that I don’t maintain this visibility but am guilty of it.
I disagree with the networking sites being “crazes”, surely the sites will develop and grow to suit whatever need of the consumer. Hopefully, people spending time on their online social space will not grow into a concern.
References
Donath, J. and Boyd, D. 2004. Public displays of connection. BT Technology Journal volume 22 (4): 71-82.
- Georgia Dixon
Social Media: Be My Online Loudspeaker
With the continuing rise and growth of social media and their users, freedom of speech is given a larger platform and a larger audience. A basic way to express your own opinion or to highlight an issue that needs to be attended to can commonly be found through websites such as Facebook.com and Twitter.com. Through Facebook people are able to create groups or fan pages focussing on certain issues in society either past, current or rising. However, there are other and more effective ways to voice a cause examples of this can be found in Endorse for a Cause, SixDegree.org, adCause and Social Vibe.
Endorse for a Cause
People can turn their online shopping habit into a fundraiser for the cause of their choice. By visiting one of Endorse for a Cause’s online retailer partners, you can send a tweet or Facebook update with an endorsement of brands or products that you like. When your friends click on your endorsements and make purchases, Endorse for a Cause receives a portion of the money and allocates about 70% to your cause. You can track how much money you’ve raised on Endorse for a Cause’s personal home page and earn badges for participation. Right now there are only about 10 cause choices, and they are primarily large charities like the American Cancer Society and the Humane Society. You can, however, vote to add a cause if yours isn’t yet included (Endorse for a Cause, 2010).
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
The idea behind the game is that everyone in the world, including the prolific actor, is connected by no more than six steps of acquaintance. Although not initially pleased with the name of this game, Kevin Bacon decided to put its philosophy to use for good causes by starting SixDegrees.org. The website partners with Network for Goodto offer individuals the opportunity to create charity endorsement widgets called “fundraising badges.” These badges can be placed on their social networking profiles, blogs and websites. People who visit their sites can donate to the endorsed charity via the widget (SixDegrees, 2010).
adCause
The platform adCause gives you a little more control over the money you can make from Twitter. While structured as a network where publishers (tweeters) and advertisers can sync up and seal an advertising deal, you can decide what percentage of your profits should go to charity and what percentage you want to keep while also being able to split your profits between different charities. Unlike other sites, however, advertisers need to select you based on the tweets you create. These “adspot” profiles include a short description of what you usually tweet about, how long you would be willing to advertise a product, how often you would tweet about a product, and how much you would charge for this service (adCause, 2010).
Social Vibe
SocialVibe donates money to your selected charity based on participation in branded activities like surveys. A Facebook app encourages your friends to help by completing the same activity. Your friends earn points, and therefore donations for your charity by completing the activities that you post (Social Vibe, 2010).
By Jayce Silvallana
References:
adCause. 2010. adCause Saving the World... One Tweet at a Time. http://adcause.com/
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Social Media
Aim of Page: Discuss Social Media in relation to New Media - for example, how Social Media has developed due to New Media? ... Also other related topics that you may find relevant.
Relevant Links:
Digital Radio and Facebook
As my Case Study I am studying the way in which Austereo uses New Media within Australia. One the most recent example is the digital radio U20 and Facebook.
U20 digital radio is a station that is created by people under the age of 20. You select your music and record your segments and upload them online. The people at U20 then have a listen and let you know if they think is good enough to on air.
U20 radio is specifically targeted at the under 20 audience, so to reach its audience it uses Facebook to upload show times and information about what is on air.
The way in which Austereo has used New Media through Facebook and U20 radio demonstrates one of the key steps that are being taken to reach out to the various ages of their audience. This is a crucial step in the way of radio stations in Australia. Austereo is keeping up to date with its listeners and their communication demands. By using Facebook U20 is able to see who listeners like the most, solve technical issue with members immediately through online conversation and many process with haven’t been able to be utilised to this extent before with radio.
Austereo is developing new levels of communication and Play and U20 is just the beginning. There is more information on Austereo on the Music page.
By Abigail Benaud
To Pay or Not To Pay?
In the past business strategies have been fairly black and white. They either follow the commercial economy like buying and selling books OR they follow the sharing economy like YouTube, which has huge entertainment value for the cost of nothing. However, in the past 5 years or so this notion of the Hybrid Economy has become increasingly popular, as businesses have begun to combine the two to leverage economic value from one another. As Lawrence Lessig discusses, the hard part is the commercial entities need to show respect to the sharing economy for this to be successful, some businesses do, and some don't.
One business that I think will achieve mutual respect between consumers and creators is popular social networking site Facebook, after announcing today they will be "going retail" in the US as of Sunday. Gift cards ranging from $15 - $50 will be available at a range of retail outlets for purchase, which look and work like Apple's iTunes store cards and can be used for social games, application and virtual goods. This new addition comes after a deal last month between Internet payment group MOL to sell the credits across 500,000 outlets in South East Asia. ( USA Today, September 2010)
Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg told mX news, "many of our millions of free social games players were beginning to spend money on goods and services associated with the games...We're investing in the long-term future of Facebook Credits and we view this agreement as a major opportunity to broaden the availability of a simple, unified currency that can be used in games and applications across facebook."
Facebook has still kept the main functions of the website free for all users, but has identified a new niche market within their users who are happy to use the paid service. I personally have never played any Facebook games or applications so this new move is of no interest to me, however I do remember earlier this year when my newsfeed was clogged with FarmVille posts, so maybe I am just the odd one out. It will be interesting to see how successful this new move is, when it finally comes to Oz later this year...
References
Rose, C. 2010. A conversation with Lawrence Lessig. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9618 ( accessed September 2, 2010).
mX. 2010. Facebook goes retail. mX News. September 2.
Finextra. 2010. Facebook to sell virtual currency gift cards at US retail stores.http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=21749. (accessed September 2, 2010).
By Gemma Lacey
Facebook Places
The world of communication has come a long way from messengers on foot or horseback. We gradually came across paper and newspapers to get the word out to communities and in 1861 the US developed the pony express as a way to deliver mail. Than televisions, radio stations, motion pictures, internet, and cell phones developed bringing us into the high speed technology world we live in today.
The social network market has grown enormously since the MySpace launch in 2003 and the Facebook launch in 2004. Facebook has all areas of the world and is used to communicate with friends, friends of friends, family members… their friends, colleagues, peers, and even professors. Different games developed through Facebook, like cow picker and Farmville, allow you to play with friends virtually but the newest additions to the book are topping everything.
This application is provided to those who have Iphones only at the moment but Androids and blackberry versions are said to be coming soon as well, expanding social networking opportunities.
Personally Facebook is a social network addiction that I myself have become a victim of. Going from having access to Facebook on my blackberry in the states, to a flip phone without a front screen, I have purposely tried to tear myself away from checking my page more than twice a day. My basic use for it is to allow myself to stay caught up with my friends overseas (and to obviously make them jealous that I’m here in Australia J ) and to allow certain people to know very broad information about me.
With the new ‘Places” application Facebook has gone to an entirely different level of social networking.
The new application went active on 18/19 August and to what I’ve been able to find, it is only available in certain regions. A facebook topic page gives some detail from users as to where the application is not working. It’s basically a GPS built into your phone connecting you with surrounding peers.
What the application does
Below is a YouTube clip giving more detail and explanation of what Places does and how it works.
This application makes me a little nervous. Facebook states that the places privacy options are enforced and unless you choose to check yourself in somewhere no one will be able to access the information of where you are. No one you haven’t accepted as a friend can view where you are checked in. That’s all fine and dandy but how many of your friends accept friend requests from people they have never met before? My point exactly. As much I don’t want to say it there still are the stalkers and creeps out there and some know a thing or to about computer technology and my guess is if they can hack into our computers they’ll be figure a way to hack into our phones and shut down the privacy shield.
It’s just scary to think about. I mean call me old fashion but I don’t like people knowing exactly what I’m doing when and where I’m doing it.
As for where this technology is going... honestly Facebook has gone above and beyond what I think anybody thought it could, I would be surprised if Facebook and skype combined their ways and developed an application where you can video chat and talk on the phone through your Facebook either via mobile or computer.
References
Brodkin, Jon. 19.8.2010. Facebook 'Places' not available in many places
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/081910-facebook-places-problems.html. (accessed 19 August 2010).
Goldberg, Stephanie. 19.8.2010 New Facebook feature raises more privacy concerns.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/08/19/facebook.places.privacy/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn#fbid=m3ag67tVFJa&wom=false. (Accessed 19 August 2010).
Loaded: Facebook goes Places. Streaming video recording. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfsU_ATujDo (accessed 19 August 2010). Amy Hopkinson (19.8.10)
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Free Pizza for the Mayor
Since founded in 2009, the location-based service [Foursquare] has been providing its users enjoyable, interesting experiences (unlocking badges, gaining points which lets you be the mayor of different locations) in letting their friends know their whereabouts while they are on the go and vice versa.
This unique feature of Foursquare appeals towards different businesses. This is where the application sits in the minds of marketers: “Foursquare is a cool social media website to use to gain some buzz and grow foot traffic to the stores” (Social Media Commando, 2010). In order to obtain some free advertising and foot traffic, all marketers have to do is register their businesses on the website so users can check-in there and they will be on their ways to spread buzz on the Internet.
Pizza Hut recently decided to further exploit this emerging application. On Aug 9, Pizza Hut announced a promotion nationally in the US with Foursquare. “The promotion rewards the "Mayor" of each restaurant with a free single order of breadsticks with the purchase of a large pizza (DeRouen, L. 2010)”
The “Mayor” has to display his phone to the staff to prove that he is the “Mayor” in order to retrieve his free order. The special promotion can only be redeemed once a day, and only one “Mayor” exists in each restaurant every day.
Brian Niccol, the Chief Marketing Office at Pizza Hut explained that “customers are spending a considerable amount of time using social media and mobile tools; increasingly incorporating them into their daily lives. Loyal, digital-savvy customers will be attracted towards this fun promotion and hopefully Pizza Hut will obtain repeat traffic from Mayors looking to take advantage of this offer” (DeRouen, L 2010, Pizza Hut and Foursquare Offer Discounts for Mayors, para. 4).
Foursquare, an application that was meant to be created for casual fun ended up being exploited for marketers used for advertising. This not only brings a new definition to the word “play”, but also demonstrates the New Media’s potential to synergise with everything.
By Josiah Lau (Aug 23 2010)
References
DeRouen, L. (2010). Pizza Hut and Foursquare Offer Discounts for Mayors.
PR Newswire. Retrieved from http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pizza-hut-and-foursquare-offer-discounts-for-mayors-100264499.html
Social Media Commando. (2010). Foursquare Social Media Marketing for Local Businesses. Retrieved Aug 23 2010, from http://www.socialmediacommando.com/foursquare/foursquare-social-media-marketing-for-local-businesses
The Dead of the Phone Call and the Rise of the Social Media
"According to Nielsen, the average number of mobile phone calls we make is dropping every year, after hitting a peak in 2007". And our calls are getting shorter: In 2005 they averaged three minutes in length; now they’re almost half that." (Thompson, 2010) Some of you might get shock that you would never realize how do we actually change after see the research result release by Nielsen. We are moving to different kind of communication way - call less but talk more. This has became a crisis for the phone call as well as ourselves.
Even though the rise of social media allow us to communicate [texting, chatting, and social-network messaging] with each other all the time and anywhere without disturbing other people, but it makes our conversation become cold and dull now. Sometimes we will get misunderstanding with the words in messenger and this might lead to conversation war or the end of a relationship. Although we can use a lot of emotions in our conversation, but I would rather to use voice call to transmit my feeling and emotion correctly to the other side.
"Consider: If I suddenly decide I want to dial you up, I have no way of knowing whether you’re busy, and you have no idea why I’m calling. We have to open Schrödinger’s box every time, having a conversation to figure out whether it’s OK to have a conversation. Plus, voice calls are emotionally high-bandwidth, which is why it’s so weirdly exhausting to be interrupted by one.The telephone, in other words, doesn’t provide any information about status, so we are constantly interrupting one another."(Thompson, 2010) Although this is the disadvantage of using voice call, but new technology allow the caller to leave voice mail to us, record their phone calling, allow the mobile phone to send text message to the caller when it switch to silent mode, etc. These are the solutions for us when we cannot accept the call.
While we are worrying about the dead of the phone call, people start to migrate from the voice calls to other media such as Skype video call. Some Skype users contact with their friends and relatives spontaneously and occasionally without worrying about the calling fees. Video calls start to become common when mobile phone such as iPhone 4 has been combined with the technology of video calling. Phone call has not die yet and it just change to different way.
Vahn Low (24 September 2010)
References:
Thompson. C. (2010), Wired. Clive Thompson on the Dead of the Phone Call.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/st_thompson_deadphone/
(Accessed 19 August, 2010)
Panic.
Since the wide spread use of the Internet, it has never been a safe place. With the difficulties and lack of moderation and monitoring for New Media tools, cyberbullying, hacking, viruses, and distressing materials are getting more and more common. Out of all the potential dangers that lurk within the virtual world of the World Wide Web, sexual behavior grooming is one of the biggest problems that concerns parents and organizations.
According to Don Martelli (2010), despite social networking (and the internet) provides youngsters and teenagers with easy access to all types of content and people — most of it is good, but some of it can be bad, very bad. With these sites now being more popular than ever, pedophiles are now using these platforms as tools for searching their prey.
The UK Police force, Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre, and parents are now holding hands in order to protect children from becoming preys of pedophiles on social networking sites by urging Facebook and other social networking sites to install the “Panic Button”. The Panic Button is an existing link that allows users to report abuse will in future enable a report to be made to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, as outlined by BBC News (2010).
The tragic murder of the 17 years old girl Ashleigh Hall in UK caused the officials in UK to push Facebook for action. Ashleigh Hall was murdered by a homeless 33 years old man, Peter Chapman, who had faked his identity on Facebook and stalked Ashleigh Hall. Later on Ashleigh Hall went over to his house to sleepover, where he raped and murdered her.
Richard Allan, Facebook’s head of policy in Europe, said the social networking site and CEOP had a “common agenda” on child safety on the Internet, as outlined by BBC News (2010). Facebook has agreed to allow a window to pop-up when users click on the link (Panic Button), which then allows users to report abuse and make a report to CEOP.
Despite this, the critical issue is yet to be solved. Without direct visible access to the CEOP button on each and every page of social networking sites, I think pedophiles will still have easy access to prey and stalk children on the sites. Until these social networking sites agree enabling direct visible access, parents shall not be reassured.
By Josiah Lau (Aug 3 2010)
References:
BBC News. 2010. Facebook “panic button” calls backed up by police chefs.
__ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8616980.stm__ (accessed Aug 3, 2010)
Don Martelli. 2010. Facebook “Panic Button” Screams Parental Involvement.
http://technorati.com/blogging/article/facebook-panic-button-screams-parental-involvement/ (accessed Aug 3, 2010)
The Huffington Post. 2010. Facebook “Panic Button” To Launch.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/12/facebook-panic-button-to-_n_642590.html (accessed Aug 3, 2010)
New media gives power to the people
New media technologies are giving everyday people more and more opportunity to express their opinions online, in journalism and on television. The most interesting of these outlets, I believe, is currently citizen journalism. Not many people outside of the new media sphere know how citizen journalism started; it was actually a Korean man by the name of Oh-Yeon Ho (Bentley et al. 2007). I was a little surprised by this as well, having always assumed that the concept came from somewhere in the West. Since 1999, when Oh-Yeon Ho began his online citizen journalism news site, along with 727 other citizen journalists, his novel idea has slowly been taking over the world. Citizen journalism is a commonly recognised term these days, with many individuals taking part in citizen journalism whether it be in online forums, blogs or even through television programs such as the 7pm Project. For those that have never seen it, this mainstream new media news show on Channel 10 features a segment where a citizen from each state of Australia gives a short report on what is currently happening in their home town. Apart from blogging, this would be one of the most relevant examples of citizen journalism to many Australians. Many Australians are also citizen journalists through the outlet of blogging. Many of my friends and acquaintances have blog sites, which reflect on their personal lives and what is happening in the world around them. This has many advantages over the ways of tradition journalism as “Although BBC, CNN and other international news organizations employ thousands of professional news reporters, these reporters will never be as omnipresent as the millions of people carrying camera phones who can act as journalists” (Leung 2009). This is food for thought for all of us as it captures the growing importance of citizen journalism. Won’t it be nice one day when you capture something on your phone camera, post it on a blog, and then you are offered lots of money from mainstream news to broadcast it? I think so. Power to the people!References
Bentley, C., B. Hamman., J. Littau., H. Meyer., B. Watson., and B. Welsh. 2007. Citizen Journalism: a Case Study. In Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media, ed. M. Tremayne, 239-259. New York: Taylor & Francis
Leung, L. 2009. User-generated content on the internet: An examination of gratifications, civic engagement and psychological empowerment. New Media & Society 11 (8): 1327-1347.
- Portia Vann
New media gives power to the people
The rise of citizen journalism and the future of the news are the two closely linked topics that I have chosen to look at for my essay this semester. I've already posted my previous entry on the gorwing popularity citizen journalism and believe that it will be a very interesting area to look at; as well as the divide between traditional and ‘new’ portrayals of the news. What I have begun to research is the rise of citizen journalism, and the elements that have contributed to this rise. According to Flew (2008 p. 145) there have been three elements critical to the rise: open publishing, collaborative editing and distributed content. The development of open publishing in 1999 (Flew 2008, p145) has helped citizen journalism as it has enabled new forms of news production. However, my main focus is on collaborative editing for this post, as I think it has the most relevance to the changing structure of the news. Collaborative editing has played its role in enabling new forms of news production, as it is the process that has enabled changes in the tradition ‘top-down’ news structure. The extent to which an open editing process is adopted depends of the website and type of media. Some sites allow completely for users to edit or shape the final content, while some sites still limit user participation (for example, only being able to comment on a news story rather than contribution content). This continuum can be classified starting from the traditional ‘top down’ approach in journalism (mainstream news) ranging to emergent ‘bottom up’ news (open news) (Flew 2008, p 146). Citizen journalism is a shift in the form of news production from top down to bottom up.
References
Flew, T. 2008. New Media: An Introduction. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
- Portia Vann
Are Second Life property and real life property the same thing?
In May, issues that arose in Second Life were brought into a class action lawsuit in the real world whereby a number of Second Life players filed a lawsuit against the creator of Second Life Philip Rosedale. This was following Rosedale and the Second Life team's decision to change the virtual property ownership laws and "residents were forced to agree to a new terms of service that eroded their ownership rights to virtual property and goods. In fact, the suit filed on April 15 claims, the promises of "ownership" were empty in the first place," (McCarthy, 2010).
The plaintiffs in the case cleverly referred to a previous lawsuit filed against Second Life, and possibly the most famous, by lawyer Marc Bragg in 2006, who requested the $8000 real life dollars he had invested in a Second Life business to be returned to him after his account was frozen, arguing that he paid for the land and thus he had ownership over it. However, Bragg's account was frozen because he had used unlawful and antisocial means such as hacking to aquire his land at abnormally low prices. Bragg argued back that this was the Second Life company's fault for allowing those auctions to be held whereby he could attain this land at these prices.
So who is right and wrong in this type of situation? The lines are a little fuzzier because of the fact that the properties being disputed are not actually tangible in the real world. However, some would argue that if you are using real world money, a tangible thing, to pay for these kind of properties then the laws of the real world do apply.
Second Life has been known to be extremely profitible, despite being described as a niche website. "The company recently announed that the first quarter of 2010 was the best in the history of the Second Life "economy," with $160 million in user-to-user transactions and over 500,000 users actively involved in the virtual market," (McCarthy, 2010). I have to wonder whether or not these virtual world to real world currency conversions are a good thing. In my opinion, it is pretty dangerous territory. Also it can have affects on the game and how it is played. For example, if real world money is thrown into the mix then those who are richer will automatically have more power in the game, much like in the real world, which takes away all concepts of democracy and fairness that these websites so often preach to those who are looking to sign up. Virtual currencies should still be maintained but acquiring of these currencies should be through the work you engage in through the site so that the power is distributed to those with the most skill and passion for the game, rather than those with large bank accounts. Obviously, with Gold Farmers etc this sort of democratic approach to gaming will most likely never be realised as there is always some way around the rules that are reinforced by the gaming companies. All people can do is strive for fairness in virtual worlds and attempt to make the game just that: a game.
References:
McCarthy, C. 2010. Class action lawsuit targets Second Life. cnet news. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20004004-36.html (Accessed August 14th, 2010).
Craig, K. 2010. Second Life Land Deal Goes Sour. Wired. http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/news/2006/05/70909 (Accessed August 14th, 2010).
Sophie Kassay.
Twitter to market Melbourne Writers Festival
The upcoming Melbourne Writers Festival has chosen to utilise Twitter for their main marketing tool to promote the event. An online program, called TweetWriter, has been created by festival organisers, which enables any Twitter user to enter their user name to see their Tweets published as a novel. This is done by sourcing information from the users profile to appear on the back covers. The purpose of creating this is to use the idea of seeing the story from every angle into social media. Dan King, the director of JWT Melbourne, states that "
All Twitterers are writers after all, and there’s a curiosity associated with profiling one’s self online. We thought it was an opportunity for individuals to discover their inner Austen or Dostoevsky" (Ma, 2010) Online literary sites and publications now feature banners which display the online campaign. 300 writers from across the globe will feature in the festival, and like Twitter's users, the campaign reflects the diversity of the line up, which features, not only authors, but songwriters, playwrights, and journalists. The campaign is also featured in cinemas, press, and "experiential executions" (Ma, 2010) .
References:
Ma, W. 2010. AdNews. Melbourne Writers Festival turns to Twitter. http://www.adnews.com.au/news/melbourne-writers-festival-turns-to-twitter (accessed 18 August, 2010).
- Amanda-Joy Evans. 18 August, 2010.
Second Life vs Real Life
Exploring in Week 5 the issues regarding what is legal and illegal in a virtual world where items, possessions, money and people are intangible and depending on your outlook- pretend we discussed the legal implications of buying and owning virtual land and property within these games and also the selling of user accounts for real world profit. As a wiki user has already contributed, lawsuits have been filed against Second Life demanding real life compensation for transactions that have happened within the game which further complicates the argument of real life vs. virtual life and what is actually considered to have value.
What interested me more is how real life companies have deemed these virtual worlds profitable to their business and set up accounts and ‘worlds’ specific to their company online. On Second Life, the company Disney have created their own Virtual Magic Kingdom that allows visitors to interact with the Disney’s amusement park surroundings (Jana and McConnon 2007). Even Australia’s own ABC have ventured into the virtual world to create ABC Island that claims to be “a distinctly Australian destination providing visitors with opportunities to... discover a hidden underground music club, listen to Indigenous stories, wander round an environmentally friendly eco house, experience ABC audio and video in a social environment and attend live screenings and concerts” (ABC).
What this demonstrates is how the economic landscape is changing to incorporate and take advantage of all available mediums to turn a profit. Television has even turned to the game with the popular CW network show Gossip Girl filming ‘machinisodes’ following real plot lines with all characters represented virtually that will feature on the network’s website (Reuters 2008).
What this all has me asking though is what’s next? What started as a game has grown into a multi-million dollar business, a lifestyle and for some an actual reality. The privacy and legal boundaries have already been re-drawn so what can consumers and users expect from these companies in the future.
-Lauren Young
ABC. n.d. What can you do on ABC Island? http://www.abc.net.au/services/secondlife/ (accessed August 19, 2010)
E, Reuters. 2008. The CW films Gossip Girl “machinisodes” in Second Life. http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/05/20/cw-television-films-gossip-girl-machinisodes-in-second-life/index.html (accessed August 19, 2010)
Jana, R. & McConnon, A. 2007. Beyond Second Life. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_24/b4038417.htm (accessed August 19, 2010).
Abuse and Misuse of Social Networking: The Privacy Policy, EULAs and TOS Agreements
Privacy policies, terms of service (TOS) agreements and end user license agreements (EULAs) all govern what we do in the virtual world. Often, these are processes that as users we quickly click 'I agree' to or even ignore when using programs such as Facebook and Second Life. But in reality, they have significant implications in the real world and impact our rights. To use Facebook, consider some examples of the Facebook Privacy Policy outlined here:It seriously concerns me to realise that Facebook actually track a lot of my activity and go as far to share my information with third parties, so that they can set up ‘personalised advertising’ and ‘social ads’. I wasn’t even aware of a lot of this until I researched the privacy settings. And this is pretty common - as Rosen (2010, p. 9) argued, “…social networkers…are often naïve or ill-informed about the amount of information they are making publicly available…”It will be interesting to see how privacy policies, EULAs and TOS agreements impact upon user rights and the ramifications this will have for the real world. Currently, these are not always enforceable but there are plenty of cases and examples where the user sues the corporation and where the corporation sues the user. Both examples of parties trying to enforce their rights and this shows that the area of law is muddled and unresolved. Halbert analyses these issues in her article "Public lives and private communities: The terms of service agreement and life in virtual worlds" and sums up the problem:“...Given the governing architecture of virtual worlds, one must consider that the future is not democratic…a tension exists between the governance structures as developed in EULAs and TOS agreements and the underlying expectations of users…” (Halbert 2009, p.11). And so, I end with this question: do you think these agreements/terms of conditions are legally binding - just like when you sign a contract would be in the real world? To what extent should we be regulating the Internet?
By Katherine Buckley, August 19 2010.
RE: Abuse and Misuse of online social networking: The Privacy Policy, ULA's and TOS agreementsI complete agree Katherine, when the new default privacy settings came out on Facebook I stubbornly ignored it as I do most of those information boxes when changes happen. Then I realised I could see all these peoples photos and and information that I couldn't normally, so I immediately changed mine back, and it seems that we aren't the only ones! Over 30,000 facebook users joined a group against the new privacy settings. I think one of the main issues is that the privacy agreement terms are pages and pages long, and people can't be bothered to read them.You should check out this youtube video of Zuckerberg's apology ( completely sarcastic but still makes a good point!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6nBhhnnuOBy Gemma Lacey
Online schoolyard behaviour
With millions of fans ‘following’ their every move it’s hard to believe that celebrities would use such a public platform to insult each other. However it seems that hugely popular Twitter has become the most recent battlefield, as pop star Brian McFadden and gossip columnist Ros Reines fight it out. With McFadden's post reading I really hope Ros Reines from the daily telegraph gets a root soon... merroraybe then she won't be such a horrible twat and just earlier this year referring to his ex-wife a “pig faced mole"”. A prime example of how the usage patterns of online social media exploit the service they offer.
So if this is condoned in the online world why isn’t it in the offline world?
As Christine Rosen discusses in her article Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism, the online world is hardly phased by the boundaries of the real-world communities they belong to. Rather online social media promotes this notion of “informal learning”. This can be explained as the process where the more traditional types of social norms are replaced with new ones. Furthermore she says "The world of online social networking is practically homogenous in one other sense, however diverse it might at first appear: its users are committed to self-exposure. The creation and conspicuous consumption of intimate details and images of one’s own and others’ lives are the main activity in the online social networking world".
So how does one categorise if something is unacceptable or acceptable, when there aren’t any formal boundaries? Is a user agreeing to this type of content to be posted on his/her friends pages when they "agree" to the Terms and Conditions of these websites? I think the answers to those questions falls into a grey area, which continues to expand.
As more and more people are using these sites as a primary communication tool, shouldn't we be carrying our day-to-day etiquette over to our online worlds?
Reference list
Reines, R. (2010) Brian McFadden is an absolute dork. The Daily Telegraph. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sunday-telegraph/brian-mcfadden-is-an-absolute-dork/story-e6frewt9-1225890205333
Reines, R. (2010) No winners in a Twitter war. The Daily Telegraph. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sunday-telegraph/no-winners-in-a-twitter-war/story-e6frewt9-1225857546207
Rosen, C. (2007). Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis, Number 17, Summer 2007: 15-31.
By Gemma Lacey
Rosen (2007) states that social networking sites are becoming the modern day self portrait. As people once used self portraits to convey status and personality through an oil painting, that is now being done through networking sites. It is the “timeless human desire for attention” (Rosen 2007) that once drove the oil paintings to be made, and that same philosophy is fuelling the popularity of social networking. Facebook is a new way for self promotion and self formation. Everything that is done on Facebook; comments on walls, photos, status updates and event initiations, all produce a particular and manipulated image that has been created by user. Because such a degree of manipulation is put in to creating ones online profile, just as self portraits did, they can expose and obscure, clarify and distort (Rosen 2007). Essentially, users are able to portray themselves over social networking sites however they please, and can promote aspects of themselves that are popular, and eradicate those that are not. Or as Rosen (2007) puts it, “social networking site users are committed to self-exposure.” This idea is similarly explored by Thompson (1995) when discussing social networking site users “absorption of self in mediated quasi-interaction.” Are people starting to become so heavily absorbed with self exposure and interacting through impersonal social networking sites that we are giving up the chance for real intimacy?
References
Rosen, C. 2007. Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis 17 (Summer 2007): 15-31. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/virtual-friendship-and-the-new-narcissism (accessed March 13, 2010)
Thompson, J. B. 1995. The Self as a Symbolic Project in The Media & Modernity: a Social Theory of the Media, 209-219. Cambridge: Polity. https://cmd.library.qut.edu.au/cmd/KCB201/KCB201_BK_272535.pdf (accessed March 13, 2010)
- Portia Vann
TWITCHANGE: 'CHANGING THE WORLD, ONE TWIT AT A TIME'
Part of the thrill of owning a Twitter, is being able to have an insight into the personal world of celebrities. The more celebrities followed, the better. It's easy enough to add any of them, but to have them reply to your Tweet, is something that can not be bought - until now. Introducing TwitChange , a site that's "changing the world, one tweet at a time". It's a celebrity auction with a difference - instead of bidding for memorabilia, you are bidding for a moment of Twitter fame. TwitChange is an example of a small idea turned big, created by thirty-year-old Shaun King, who is a pastor at The Courageous Church, in Atlanta. He promoted his creation through his blog www.shauninthecity.com, where he stated "On September 15, 2010, something that has never been done before is going to take place. It's revolutionary. It's going to make international news. It's going to make a legitimate, tangible difference on the ground in Haiti." (Chester 2010). What followed this was a list of celebrity names that kept growing in the announcement of TwitChange , which has more than 100 celebrities lending their name to the cause. The aim is to build the Mirima Centre which houses Haitian children with cerebal palsy, severe autism, and other major life challenges and is the only facility of it's kind in Haiti.
The method of raising money is to let people bid for one of three things: to be followed by their favourite celebrity on Twitter, to be retweeted by them or mentioned of them in a special tweet. The idea has come under scrutiny, as being a sad reflection of the times, with people willing to pay money for a moment of fame measured in a character count and not by time. But there is a majority of positive opinion, who "see it as a chance to do good and feel good" (Chester 2010). The auction is said to be the first to exist on Twitter.
It's fascinating how the concept of Twitter is so simple, in terms of character limits, layout, and features available. Yet, because of the power of it's global users (ie the celebrities and politicians) it has enabled the network to go such a long way - not only for fundraising, but as a marketing/political tool and sharing global news.
Chester, R. 2010. Great Bid Twits. The Courier Mail. September 16.
- Amanda-Joy Evans
The Facebook Overshare
Everyone who has a Facebook has at least once seen friends airing out very personal details on the very public stage of the internet, and many of us have done it ourselves. However, we’re beginning to realize that what we say on Facebook can have a huge impact on our real lives – you can get fired for it, or lose a court case. In the US, information from social networks has become a popular form of evidence in divorce cases especially. According to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, “81 percent of its members have used or faced evidence plucked from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, including YouTube and LinkedIn, over the last five years.” (Associated Press, 2010). There’s plenty of things that can be used as evidence in a divorce case: uploading pictures with a new girlfriend or boyfriend, bragging about infidelities or trash talking, sexually explicit photos or photos that were clearly taken whilst intoxicated, angry threats made on your partner’s profile, etc. It has also, in a few cases, affected parents negatively in custody battles (Sify Finance, 2010).
There are also increasing numbers of people getting fired from their jobs over what they say on Facebook. Kimberly Swann is a recent example: she changed her status to “bored at work”, her boss read this update and promptly fired her (NBC San Diego, 2010).
What we post on Facebook can affect us in other ways as well – it could prevent a potential employer from hiring us, or reveal secrets or things we’d been hiding from certain friends, as well as keeping logs of unfortunate or unwanted photographs even after we delete them off our pages. I think that while a lot of us realize the lack of privacy Facebook offers, we still seem to think that no one will come looking for information on our pages, and that we can simply delete the evidence. As more and more cases end badly for those who social network, we may begin to decrease how much of our lives we share online. However, the amount of information many of us have already published is technically the property of Facebook, and may have already done damage.
References:
Sify Finance, 2010. Divorce lawyers: Facebook tops in online evidence, US. http://sify.com/finance/divorce-lawyers-facebook-tops-in-online-evidence-us-news-news-kg3hamhiehi.html (Accessed 24th September 2010).
NBC San Diego, 2010. Fired Over Facebook Status. http://www.nbcsandiego.com/around-town/archive/Fired-Over-Facebook-Status.html (Accessed 24th September 2010).
Samantha Oldham
THE SOCIAL STAGE
The “public displays of connection” that Donath and Boyd examine in their study prompt the reader to examine their own social network. These “public displays of connection” (Donath and Boyd 2004) explored in the study is similar to the saying, “public displays of affection”. The saying is continuously unpleasant to witness in public and this could also be said for social networking online. Not to the same extent, nevertheless some of my own friends are too visible online.
My connections online are people who I’ve met at least once in person except it has accumulated to an “extended network of friends of friends” (Donath and Boyd 2004). The online connections I maintain are usually close friends. I would be content with a network of my closest 20 friends; However, my online network is the opposite. The reliability of these social connections is a concern and the trustworthy issue reappears. When identifying social networking as a social stage, I would like to believe that I don’t maintain this visibility but am guilty of it.
I disagree with the networking sites being “crazes”, surely the sites will develop and grow to suit whatever need of the consumer. Hopefully, people spending time on their online social space will not grow into a concern.
References
Donath, J. and Boyd, D. 2004. Public displays of connection. BT Technology Journal volume 22 (4): 71-82.
- Georgia Dixon
Social Media: Be My Online Loudspeaker
With the continuing rise and growth of social media and their users, freedom of speech is given a larger platform and a larger audience. A basic way to express your own opinion or to highlight an issue that needs to be attended to can commonly be found through websites such as Facebook.com and Twitter.com. Through Facebook people are able to create groups or fan pages focussing on certain issues in society either past, current or rising. However, there are other and more effective ways to voice a cause examples of this can be found in Endorse for a Cause, SixDegree.org, adCause and Social Vibe.Endorse for a Cause
People can turn their online shopping habit into a fundraiser for the cause of their choice. By visiting one of Endorse for a Cause’s online retailer partners, you can send a tweet or Facebook update with an endorsement of brands or products that you like. When your friends click on your endorsements and make purchases, Endorse for a Cause receives a portion of the money and allocates about 70% to your cause. You can track how much money you’ve raised on Endorse for a Cause’s personal home page and earn badges for participation. Right now there are only about 10 cause choices, and they are primarily large charities like the American Cancer Society and the Humane Society. You can, however, vote to add a cause if yours isn’t yet included (Endorse for a Cause, 2010).
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
The idea behind the game is that everyone in the world, including the prolific actor, is connected by no more than six steps of acquaintance. Although not initially pleased with the name of this game, Kevin Bacon decided to put its philosophy to use for good causes by starting SixDegrees.org. The website partners with Network for Goodto offer individuals the opportunity to create charity endorsement widgets called “fundraising badges.” These badges can be placed on their social networking profiles, blogs and websites. People who visit their sites can donate to the endorsed charity via the widget (SixDegrees, 2010).
adCause
The platform adCause gives you a little more control over the money you can make from Twitter. While structured as a network where publishers (tweeters) and advertisers can sync up and seal an advertising deal, you can decide what percentage of your profits should go to charity and what percentage you want to keep while also being able to split your profits between different charities. Unlike other sites, however, advertisers need to select you based on the tweets you create. These “adspot” profiles include a short description of what you usually tweet about, how long you would be willing to advertise a product, how often you would tweet about a product, and how much you would charge for this service (adCause, 2010).
Social Vibe
SocialVibe donates money to your selected charity based on participation in branded activities like surveys. A Facebook app encourages your friends to help by completing the same activity. Your friends earn points, and therefore donations for your charity by completing the activities that you post (Social Vibe, 2010).
By Jayce Silvallana
References:
adCause. 2010. adCause Saving the World... One Tweet at a Time. http://adcause.com/Endorse for a Cause. 2010. Endorse for a Cause. http://www.endorseforacause.com/signup.ecp
Network For Good. 2010. Network For Good. http://www1.networkforgood.org/
Six Degrees. 2010. Six Degrees.org It's a Small World. You Can Make a Difference. http://www.sixdegrees.org/
Social Vibe. 2010. Social Vibe. http://www.socialvibe.com/info#/faq/