Enter World: exploring mediated cultures

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Diane Cipa, of The Closing Specialists in Pennsylvania, keeps up a blog about title insurance issues called Title Insurance Talk. I know this because about a month ago I was looking for recommendations on local title insurance companies so I posted to a Pittsburgh community blog. Diane got my question through Google Alerts, created an account on the community blog, and responded to me. She also included a link to her blog.

It may be a bit rash to jump to the conclusion that you want to work with someone because of a blog, but I fully support business transparency and her blog was definitely a good sign in my eyes. We had a good conversation via email about Braddock, and since then I have sent at least two more jobs her way plus recommended her to the mayor for anyone else new to town.

The Closing Specialists’ service was top notch, but it was really the personal connection with Diane during that first day that made all of the difference.

Using Google Alerts to watch for business leads is smart, especially when followed up properly. Unlike the situation with Comcast following Tweets, this interaction with a stranger left me very pleased.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Today a friend of mine had a problem with Comcast and posted about it on Twitter. They responded, and her internet is working again.

I had heard that the company is monitoring tweets with its name in it when I was at the New Comm Forum, so I replied to her about it. I added in a little criticism of Comcast too, as much as my 140 characters would allow. Even though following Twitter is a smart move for a company to put out the small fires before they become something more, it isn’t a substitute for improving their overall support.

Some background: I have never been a direct subscriber to Comcast, but I was forced into servitude while renting in Portland, OR. We rented two different places from the same property manager and had vastly different experiences with Comcast service in each. It was enough of a difference to make me question if the address on the bill shaped the quality of service available to customers.

Before heading back to Juneau for a month in December, we were staying at apartments on NE Prescott & NE 20th. During that time we shared an internet connection through a quadraplex and not once did we have a problem with Comcast. When we returned in January we moved into a house on NE Rosa Parks Way. We did not have consistent internet service for longer than a week during the three months we were there. In fact, when we arrived both the cable tv and internet were down even though the owner had been paying Comcast when the house was empty. It was a non-stop battle with the worst customer service I’ve experienced the entire time we were there, and enough to make us swear off Comcast at the expense of potentially slower internet service in the future.

So when wscottw3 and comcastcares responded to my response to my friend, rather than feeling all warm and fuzzy from the attention I got a case of the creeps. It turns out I’m not alone, there are other tweets about this type of invasion of personal space by Comcast on Twitter.

Can a tweet really go that far? Twitter isn’t private—it’s very public. Watching tweets is not so much eavesdropping on conversations, it’s more like perusing blogs. We all know our Twitter messages are all over the web for anyone to see, unless we chose to lock it down.

There is a definite need to explore the concept of personal space online. Is it different when a representative of a corporation contacts you than when a person finds you because of similar interests?

Perhaps our spaces on the internet can be understood in a similar way to how anthropologist Edward T. Hall looks at interpersonal spaces. It becomes more acceptable to be (physically and digitally?) close to someone the more you like that individual.

My friend can certainly respond to my tweet, others that I know or who have similar experiences can as well. And Comcast helped her, as a customer, fix a problem so their interaction was not invasive. But when it extends beyond the social realm, and turns into brand management, that does feel like an invasion of personal space despite the public nature of the conversation.

Sites to use to search Twitter posts:

• TerraMinds
• TweetScan
• Google Beta Twitter Search

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Back in January Jan Cartier had a birthday drawing offering to paint a dessert of the winner’s choice. I came across her painting a day blog in one of my art feeds and was drawn especially to her chaos paintings from New Orleans. What luck that the day I first came across her site she was offering this prize, because I tossed my name in the hat and won!

In an effort to pay it forward, the April issue of MetaPaint’s newsletter offered tickets to Juneau Jazz & Classics in a similar raffle.

Right around my birthday she posted the finished painting of my wedding cake for Naughty Friday. I’m excited to get the original in the mail and see the detail.

She also placed one of her Chaos paintings, Water Lily Chaos, up on eBay for Zoo-To-Do. The entire purchase price goes to restore the New Orleans zoo Audubon’s bird house.

Her site is an excellent example of connecting people, causes, and art through blogging.

Monday, May 05, 2008

Reading The Cult of the Amateur has made me mad. I guess that’s one thing to be said in favor of the author: his writing can incite emotion. There are so many flaws in his logic that I am going to break down this post with subtitles to keep myself from rambling on and on and writing my own 205-page diatribe.

The overwhelming feeling I get from this book is fear. Fear of too much information to sift through. Fear that the professional is losing control. Fear that the masses are uneducated and unable or unwilling to embrace quality media.

Information Overload
All of these fears have arisen with other societal changes and are not new to the web. Technology and change seem to have this effect. The press and mass production of books incited similar grandiloquences about information overload: How will the people (and the experts, as a separate entity of course) ever wade through the innumerable tomes?

Information overload is not a new concept. And perhaps not surprisingly, it seems to affect those who were raised in the old system of information more than those born into the newer, differently structured, information network. It has been shown that kids have the ability to mutli-task better than adults. While adults may feel they are multi-tasking, they are actually less adept at each of their tasks as they attempt to juggle them. Kids’ brains are able to nimbly handle all those things they’re doing: chat on IM, search the web, listen to music, text on the phone, and type up a homework assignment—without the struggle their elders face.

Blaming New Technology for Failures
One of Keen’s main criticisms falls on Wikipedia. However, this is a case where his flawed factual backup is such a stretch that I can only use his own words against him: “The 232-year-old Britannica went through a series of painful layoffs in 2001 and 2002, cutting its 300-person staff in the United States almost by half; with the advent of Wikipedia, no doubt more layoffs are to come.” Wikipedia started in 2004. The old system was failing before the new arose. Although other arguments he poses against Wikipedia hold some value, this leaping accusation deteriorates the value of all other statements near it.

Assumptions About Mainstream Media
Keen also supports the mainstream media and states that it has “reinforced American values and made our culture the envy of the world” for 200 years.

Sure, the AP wire started in the 1840s, and in 1800 the Sedition Act forbidding criticism of the government by the media expired. However, it wasn’t until 1920 that our modern interpretation of journalism arose. Four journalism schools were formed in 1920 (Columbia, Northwestern, Missouri, and Indiana) because of the lack of faith the general population had in a media system run for profit, before this professionalization of journalism the media was based on sensationalism and yellow journalism. Prior to this, it was not even acceptable for a journalist to take notes. This change in journalism did separate the United States media from other countries, but it certainly wasn’t 200 years ago. It also was not the glorious and value-ridden idealistic media that Keen seems to imply.

Media has always been questioned in the United States. Training journalists and following ethical codes was an attempt to create unbiased media in the face of a profit-driven industry, but the credibility of media continued to be questioned. By 1996 the media was “seen as part of a strongly disliked governing elite” according to a U.S. News and World Report survey. Where is the motivation to save an institution that has been taken over by corporations despite the efforts to professionalize it, one that is seen not as the reinforcer of values but instead as one big advertisement?

Cultural Collapse
If generations of information jugglers are able to find all of the information they want, then why would they depend on a talking head to tell them what to think? This is where the next fear arises. If no one listens to the professional, is there still such a thing?

Keen’s argument supports being told by someone else what to think, or at least what to think about. His assumption is that mainstream media provide this service. Keen fears that without mainstream media as the middle man, we will not be able to recognize, or find in the marsh of information, true genius.

This concept reminds me of a presentation at the New Communications Forum by Tim Westergren’s, of Pandora.com, and Milton Olin, Jr., Altschul & Olin, LLP, on the fall of the hierarchy in the music industry. Musicians no longer need to know who is the head of a major record label and bow to the lackeys below to struggle to the top. When that was the case, 1% of musicians actually made it to a label. Even fewer made it to the public. They may have been signed but if their music sales weren’t projected to cover the expenses of recording and marketing, they were shelved and no one was able to hear them. Even the ones who made it big handed over most of their profits to that label to cover expenses.

You tell me, which is better:

Old men in suits deciding what good music is and allowing the masses to hear a small percentage of what is out there, while hoarding the profits even at the expense of the musician?
Or
Everyone being able to find music they like no matter what other people think of it, at the expense of taking the time and energy to find it?

There may still be a need for people to find quality information and entertainment, but rather than controlling it they will be sharing it.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Move over mood rings, MoodViews is using data instead of heat to reveal moods.

As I write this the collective mood is calm, mischievous, envious, creative, and cheerful.

MoodGrapher turns the data visual by charting moods, and when combined with other features MoodView also predicts moods, looks for peaks and compares the moods to news, offers a search by date and keyword to find linked moods, and predicts mood prevalence. Although it currently only evaluates LiveJournal users, and those who post moods, it provides the opportunity to have an overview of collective moods in relation to any number of things. Seasonal moods, length of time the moods last, mood fluctuation by holidays and events.

This last category has already been charted for some global events in 2005 and 2006. Worried moods increased during Hurricane Katrina and persisted at a higher level after the natural disaster. Around New Year’s Eve people are more nostalgic, excited, drunk, lonely, and groggy but less frustrated.

I ran a MoodSpotter of my own: Let’s see how people felt when talking about media over the past few months.

February, 2008

Spiked red lines indicate “tired” and the flat yellow is for “bitchy.” Others that showed up on the pie graph were bored, amused, and sleepy.

March, 2008

March was much more active. I left the color key in the screenshot since there were so many, but for easier reading the categories making up the bars are (L to R) accomplished, amused, awake, bitchy, blah, bored, busy, calm, contemplative, lazy, thoughtful, and tired.

April, 2008

Back to simplicity, green is awake, yellow happy, and the flat red line bitchy.

What does this tell us? Nothing really at this level, but it’s fun.

Last October I posted about the lack of software available to integrate the many niche online social networks. It’s six months later and Six Apart news announced a cross-platform blogging application for Facebook called Blog It. This is a wonderful example of how fast technology changes, and in this case meets demands of users. (I’ll admit I’m not as enthusiastic when Adobe updates their software every year and charges me.)

While the Blog It application may not answer all my online prayers, if I can ever find anything more than an announcement from September 07 on their Social Graph the two combined might come close.

It looks like the Facebook application turns its normal method of feeding around and supplies rather than ingests information. The accounts that are currently supported include typepad, blogger, livejournal, moveable type, pownce, tumblr, twitter, vox, and the wordpress sites. It’s a start. But even though I can feed this blog into my Facebook account, I can’t update it from there since my blogging software is none of the above.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

I’m not sure how much more I can read, and I’m just starting. If it doesn’t flesh out into something more than the desperate ranting of a man frightened of losing his imagined cultural control, I may not make it to the last half of the book.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Just got out of the SNCR forum presentation by the creator of Pandora, Tim Westergren. I remember loving Pandora back in 2000-2001 when I worked in Tallahassee. Then it disappeared. Then it reappeared. I’m glad it’s back, even though it’s nowhere near as awesome in its new formation (can’t click through more than a certain number per hour, ads) ... at least they are able to keep it up and running.

The parallels between news media and music were touched on, and that got me thinking. The internet has definitely made a more (genuinely) democratic means of networking available, moving away from leaders and toward multiple centers rather than following one big talking head. That scares the shit out of the people who like working in the crumbling network structure based on figureheads and fraternities. But it excites the hell out of me. Why let one corporation take 90% of the insane profits of the 1% of musicians who make it, all the while keeping down 99% of the people with music (or art or news or whatever) in their souls when that insane profit can be split up amongst all of the people who want to work at making and sharing music—giving them all enough to live even if no one gets filthy rich? Fuck the man. Here’s to the many.

But, conversation kept meandering away from music and opportunities for independent musicians toward business models. It seems like a lot of the people at this conference are here to be told how to make money with XY&Z—even at the expense of attending a later presentation on Net Neutrality, which could make or break their ability to even use social networking.

I’m going to enjoy going to the smaller presentations on the two tracks that everyone else is missing. (I’m also thinking no one will show up to mine tomorrow, because not only am I not going to tell them how to make money but it’s the last session and it’s beautiful here, who wants to be inside?)

Monday, February 11, 2008

I’ll be presenting some of my research at the New Communications Forum, presented by the Society for New Communications Research, in Sonoma this April: Comparing Independent and Corporate Media Agendas. They asked me to participate in the track titled The Changing Face of Journalism & The New Business of the News Media. Below is my session summary:

Increasingly available participatory media technologies have led to easier production and consumption of independent news. Independent media outlets have been addressed as social movements, potential sources addressing oppression, and presenters of opposing views to corporate media. However, the producers of independent media are the public, and agenda setting research has shown that an increased need for orientation leads information seekers to integrate the media agenda. This session will explore the media agenda of independent media compared to that of corporate media. Based on original research using online news sources, we will discuss the tie between the corporate media agenda, the public agenda, and the independent media agenda. In addition, we will explore the nature and potential of independent media in relation to social change.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Google takes a hack at solving the social networking puzzle withOpenSocial