Readings:
Shirky:Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
Comments:
This reading is from a mailing list back in 2003. It is important to take into account that this is seven years ago. As a result, the statement
'A persistent theme among people writing about the social aspects of weblogging is to note (and usually lament) the rise of an A-list, a small set of webloggers who account for a majority of the traffic in the weblog world.'
is certainly outdated. My experience tells me that there are bloggers all over the world who contribute to all sorts of different aspects in today's society, among them a large number of journalists as well as people genuinly interested in certain subjects and contributing regularely to a world wide discussion.
'The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.'
This is a more general view that I can claerly agree to.
In terms of the power law distribution dogma, as I would like to call it, the more important question to me is, what I would like to achieve with my blog. Do I want to be famous (as many readers as possible) or do I want to contribute my time and effort to a subject that I regard as important (share with people interested ina specific subject)? If the latter is the case, then popularity doesn't have any meaning to me.
From what I understand, the top ranks are about popularity. The higher the numbers the more generic the content as it compliments mass appeal.
' It's not impossible to launch a good new blog and become widely read, but it's harder than it was last year, and it will be harder still next year.'
Again, this in my view is not the most important aspact of writing a blog. If you want to share information ranking is not important. Accuracy comes before popularity.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Mod. 4.1 -The Attention Economy
1. Reading: Shirky, C. (2002). Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing.
Writer Kevin Kelly has suggested that those publishing in a new media environment need to consider intangible value that can be added to information. He terms these elements "generative value":
Immediacy
Although information is increasingly easy to access, it is often the case that timeliness can add significant value to your work. The first review of a highly-anticipated product will be far more popular than the 100th. One way of gaining relevance for your audience is to respond to developments in your area quickly.
Personalisation
The idea of personalisation is one that we have explored in the earlier weeks of this unit, if not explicitly. By focusing on a particular group with particular interests, it is possible to create content with specifically that audience in mind. Kelly extends this idea to all types of media and forms of distribution, suggesting that personalising content creates a two-way relationship that an audience is often reluctant to break.
Interpretation
Discussing interpretation, Kelly points to open source software models where the software itself is free but manual and support come at a price. The same idea can be applied to specialist writing. If you understand and can explain something in a way that simplifies it for your audience, you have created value.
Authenticity
In the age of infinite replicability, what does it mean to hold a copy of the real thing™ in your hands? By offering audiences and consumers a seal of authenticity that tells them this is an original work from the author, we can add a value to a product.
Accessibility
Although we have become accustomed to thinking of the Web as being located on our personal computers, the increasing rise in mobile Internet devices such as phones and PDAs, along with a growing reliance on these devices to serve up media means that consumers are less concerned about 'owning' media as they are in having easy and flexible access to it.
Embodiment
As much information and writing as there is on the Web, there is something attractive about the tactile nature of a book. A number of bloggers have turned their work into published books. Similarly, although digitally stored music and video are convenient, physical media remain popular.
Patronage
Kelly has famously proposed the notion of "1,000 true fans". As he points out, there are many examples of audiences paying for content voluntarily - particularly when they know that the creator will benefit directly. Given a convenient and direct opportunity, audiences are happy to pay artists and creators they truly want to support.
Findability
As Kelly points out, even a free text has no value if no-one can find it! You need to make sure that your work is made available to people who might be interested in it. Perhaps the most obvious way of doing this for an independent publisher/creator is to nurture links with other writers who are working within the same area and to make yourself visible to the niche audience you are catering to.
Readings
Comments on Clay Shirkeys blog, 'Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing'
'Weblogs are not a new kind of publishing that requires a new system of financial reward. Instead, weblogs mark a radical break. They are such an efficient tool for distributing the written word that they make publishing a financially worthless activity.'
Comment: Interestingly, I read somewhere that this also is the case with music. Publishing music on the Internet also requires a new system of financial reward - in terms of music the solution is branding.
(make reference in the discussion board and use what I wrote about Dick Dale and The
2. Rading: Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail.
Interestingly Anderson confirms what I always thought - that major publishers of music and books simply tried to dictate a mainstream taste by overriding everything else available with ubiquitous marketing and advertising out of economic reasoning. There always has been the so called underground, but with online media the undferground is much easier accessible and people will find out that there is an almost infinite variety of interesting material that might attract them.
This is only possible because the regime of distribution and sales numbers does not exist in a virtual world.
Interesting remark:
'The other constraint of the physical world is physics itself. The radio spectrum can carry only so many stations, and a coaxial cable so many TV channels. And, of course, there are only 24 hours a day of programming. The curse of broadcast technologies is that they are profligate users of limited resources. The result is yet another instance of having to aggregate large audiences in one geographic area - another high bar, above which only a fraction of potential content rises.'
...and referring to digital jukeboxes:
'With no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.'
...and referring to CDs with a hit and otherwise crap:
'There's also a lot of crap. But there's a lot of crap hiding between the radio tracks on hit albums, too. People have to skip over it on CDs, but they can more easily avoid it online, since the collaborative filters typically won't steer you to it. Unlike the CD, where each crap track costs perhaps one-twelfth of a $15 album price, online it just sits harmlessly on some server, ignored in a market that sells by the song and evaluates tracks on their own merit.'
In general The Long tail asks the reader to rethink the concept of hits and bestsellers in the aim to browse for the really interesting stuff that usually falls beyond awareness of the consumer. In the virtual world all titles can be made easily accessible as they do not require shelf space and they are available 24/7 on top. As a result, online suppliers make more money out of the unnkown than traditional stores do with their limited shelf space.
Here is a link to Netflix:
3.Reading Kelly, C. (2008). Better Than Free.
As we've learned before, publishings as such are worthless as they are no longer limited to the number of issues in a physical edition. There are large numbers of copies produced on the Internet.
What cannot be copied are human qualities like trust. Looking at them from the user perspective makes it easier to understand the value. The qualities in detail are already discussed above in the first reading.
However, what is important is, that 'the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits' (Kelly, 2008)
Reference
Kelly, K. (2008). Better Than Free. Retrieved October 24th, 2009, from http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html.
Writer Kevin Kelly has suggested that those publishing in a new media environment need to consider intangible value that can be added to information. He terms these elements "generative value":
"A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold." (Kelly, 2009)Kelly's eight ways to add generative value to information in order that it becomes more viable as a commercial offering:
Immediacy
Although information is increasingly easy to access, it is often the case that timeliness can add significant value to your work. The first review of a highly-anticipated product will be far more popular than the 100th. One way of gaining relevance for your audience is to respond to developments in your area quickly.
Personalisation
The idea of personalisation is one that we have explored in the earlier weeks of this unit, if not explicitly. By focusing on a particular group with particular interests, it is possible to create content with specifically that audience in mind. Kelly extends this idea to all types of media and forms of distribution, suggesting that personalising content creates a two-way relationship that an audience is often reluctant to break.
Interpretation
Discussing interpretation, Kelly points to open source software models where the software itself is free but manual and support come at a price. The same idea can be applied to specialist writing. If you understand and can explain something in a way that simplifies it for your audience, you have created value.
Authenticity
In the age of infinite replicability, what does it mean to hold a copy of the real thing™ in your hands? By offering audiences and consumers a seal of authenticity that tells them this is an original work from the author, we can add a value to a product.
Accessibility
Although we have become accustomed to thinking of the Web as being located on our personal computers, the increasing rise in mobile Internet devices such as phones and PDAs, along with a growing reliance on these devices to serve up media means that consumers are less concerned about 'owning' media as they are in having easy and flexible access to it.
Embodiment
As much information and writing as there is on the Web, there is something attractive about the tactile nature of a book. A number of bloggers have turned their work into published books. Similarly, although digitally stored music and video are convenient, physical media remain popular.
Patronage
Kelly has famously proposed the notion of "1,000 true fans". As he points out, there are many examples of audiences paying for content voluntarily - particularly when they know that the creator will benefit directly. Given a convenient and direct opportunity, audiences are happy to pay artists and creators they truly want to support.
Findability
As Kelly points out, even a free text has no value if no-one can find it! You need to make sure that your work is made available to people who might be interested in it. Perhaps the most obvious way of doing this for an independent publisher/creator is to nurture links with other writers who are working within the same area and to make yourself visible to the niche audience you are catering to.
Readings
Comments on Clay Shirkeys blog, 'Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing'
'Weblogs are not a new kind of publishing that requires a new system of financial reward. Instead, weblogs mark a radical break. They are such an efficient tool for distributing the written word that they make publishing a financially worthless activity.'
Comment: Interestingly, I read somewhere that this also is the case with music. Publishing music on the Internet also requires a new system of financial reward - in terms of music the solution is branding.
(make reference in the discussion board and use what I wrote about Dick Dale and The
2. Rading: Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail.
Interestingly Anderson confirms what I always thought - that major publishers of music and books simply tried to dictate a mainstream taste by overriding everything else available with ubiquitous marketing and advertising out of economic reasoning. There always has been the so called underground, but with online media the undferground is much easier accessible and people will find out that there is an almost infinite variety of interesting material that might attract them.
This is only possible because the regime of distribution and sales numbers does not exist in a virtual world.
Interesting remark:
'The other constraint of the physical world is physics itself. The radio spectrum can carry only so many stations, and a coaxial cable so many TV channels. And, of course, there are only 24 hours a day of programming. The curse of broadcast technologies is that they are profligate users of limited resources. The result is yet another instance of having to aggregate large audiences in one geographic area - another high bar, above which only a fraction of potential content rises.'
...and referring to digital jukeboxes:
'With no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.'
...and referring to CDs with a hit and otherwise crap:
'There's also a lot of crap. But there's a lot of crap hiding between the radio tracks on hit albums, too. People have to skip over it on CDs, but they can more easily avoid it online, since the collaborative filters typically won't steer you to it. Unlike the CD, where each crap track costs perhaps one-twelfth of a $15 album price, online it just sits harmlessly on some server, ignored in a market that sells by the song and evaluates tracks on their own merit.'
In general The Long tail asks the reader to rethink the concept of hits and bestsellers in the aim to browse for the really interesting stuff that usually falls beyond awareness of the consumer. In the virtual world all titles can be made easily accessible as they do not require shelf space and they are available 24/7 on top. As a result, online suppliers make more money out of the unnkown than traditional stores do with their limited shelf space.
Here is a link to Netflix:
3.Reading Kelly, C. (2008). Better Than Free.
As we've learned before, publishings as such are worthless as they are no longer limited to the number of issues in a physical edition. There are large numbers of copies produced on the Internet.
What cannot be copied are human qualities like trust. Looking at them from the user perspective makes it easier to understand the value. The qualities in detail are already discussed above in the first reading.
However, what is important is, that 'the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits' (Kelly, 2008)
Reference
Kelly, K. (2008). Better Than Free. Retrieved October 24th, 2009, from http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Mod 3.1: Narrating Personal Interest (Writing Task)
In my first ever job in Australia I worked as a casual lecturer for a private education institute in the Melbourne CBD. Most of the students were from India and China. Naïve as I was, I thought these students were there to learn about printing, pre-press and multimedia. The conditions and the learning material provided were next to non-existent. I had to come up with all the teaching material by myself, which made me stay up weeknights until 2 am and work on weekends to keep up with the class schedule.
I was frustrated with the institute and how students and employees were treated, so I went to see the manager and told him about my concerns. He replied quite honestly that it’s all about money, which confirmed what one of his recruiting agents, responsible for recruiting Indian students, had already told me.
I talked to the students about the situation, but they seemed to be fine with it. All they wanted was a Certificate IV in printing; the requirement for Permanent Residency (PR). The institute guaranteed a successful graduation and only one of the students I knew seemed to be keen to actually work in this profession in Australia.
Later that year both Government and the Department of Immigration and Internal Affairs (DIMIA) became aware of the exploitation of mainly Indian and Chinese students. The institute I worked for was amongst the first to be shut down later that year. But having paid lots of money for their courses, the situation for students only got worse as they were left in limbo, Unable to finish their courses. Finally other private institutes that were not affected by the closures took them in.
Certainly, things have changed since then. DIMIA has come up with an additional set of regulations, many privately run education institutes, also nicknamed visa factories, have been shut down and it is much harder for foreign students to study in Australia.
Since January 2009 I work at Careers & Employment, a unit of the department of student services at Swinburne University. We run our own job-database and have direct dealings with other student services like Housing and Finance. Digging myself in, trying to overlook the complexity of the entire issue about the welfare of international students in Australia, I realized that there is more than meets the eye. I think it’s important to make transparent how many faces the problem actually has. Be it jobs, accommodation, education, or immigration – international students are still disadvantaged, left alone or treated badly.
I was frustrated with the institute and how students and employees were treated, so I went to see the manager and told him about my concerns. He replied quite honestly that it’s all about money, which confirmed what one of his recruiting agents, responsible for recruiting Indian students, had already told me.
I talked to the students about the situation, but they seemed to be fine with it. All they wanted was a Certificate IV in printing; the requirement for Permanent Residency (PR). The institute guaranteed a successful graduation and only one of the students I knew seemed to be keen to actually work in this profession in Australia.
Later that year both Government and the Department of Immigration and Internal Affairs (DIMIA) became aware of the exploitation of mainly Indian and Chinese students. The institute I worked for was amongst the first to be shut down later that year. But having paid lots of money for their courses, the situation for students only got worse as they were left in limbo, Unable to finish their courses. Finally other private institutes that were not affected by the closures took them in.
Certainly, things have changed since then. DIMIA has come up with an additional set of regulations, many privately run education institutes, also nicknamed visa factories, have been shut down and it is much harder for foreign students to study in Australia.
Since January 2009 I work at Careers & Employment, a unit of the department of student services at Swinburne University. We run our own job-database and have direct dealings with other student services like Housing and Finance. Digging myself in, trying to overlook the complexity of the entire issue about the welfare of international students in Australia, I realized that there is more than meets the eye. I think it’s important to make transparent how many faces the problem actually has. Be it jobs, accommodation, education, or immigration – international students are still disadvantaged, left alone or treated badly.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
3.1 - Discussion Board Contribution
· In what way do you see the function of traditional mass-media and so-called personal media as being different?
I believe that the function of traditional mass-media nowadays is to influence the masses rather than to inform them. There was an interesting interview on the 7.30 report tonight (12/10/2010), Kerry O’Brien interviewing Bruce Guthrie, who will release his book Man Bites Murdoch tomorrow. Guthrie made an interesting remark about the development of newspapers since the early seventies. He said that in those days, the role of the editor was simply to hunt down great stories and make them available to the masses. In today’s times everybody seems to try and take influence on what is published and how it is presented. Shareholders, Politicians, Industry all want to control - especially what is said about them and their peers and how that affects the public view. He further stated that this makes the position of the editor extremely difficult, as he has to constantly avoid accidentally stepping on somebody’s foot. An extract of Man Bites Murdoch is available on The Age’s website.
I believe that there are parallels in other traditional mass-media apart from print, like Radio and TV. They all have a one-to-many approach in common trying to control the audience by controlling what is published.
So-called personal-media is a many-to-many scenario, providing opportunities for dialogue. Traditional mass-media only allows for a monologue from the media to the masses.
Visualising traditional mass-media versus so-called personal-media, there are to levels. Traditional mass-media is on the limited space of an upper level, in a hierarchical position. Traditional mass-media communicates vertically, top down, one way.. To the contrary, so-called personal-media actually comprises the lower level. Communication commences horizontally between individuals that make up the masses to the effect that news (information) spreads virally: Individuals forward information to multiple recipients who then again individually spread the information to multiple recipients.
· In what way do you see the form of traditional mass-media and so-called personal media as being different?
My experience is that traditional mass-media and so-called personal-media are starting to interact. While so-called personal-media will approach traditional media to further popularise their offers, traditional mass media has discovered the virtual world of so-called personal-media for their own purposes. The borders are blurring.
Traditional mass media had to rely on physical data media like paper (books, newspapers, magazines) and radio waves (TV and radio).
So-called personal-media almost entirely relies on the Web. What traditional mass media required in physical means of transport, the Web can combine in a virtual environment that is accessible 24/7 and branching out into all sorts of Internet enabled devices outside standard computers and laptops, such as mobile phones and Blackberries. Further, replicating of information can commence infinitely, while physical replication always comes at a cost. This doesn’t only make so-called personal-media more flexible, it also comes at significantly lower costs.
· In what way do you see the reliability of traditional mass-media and so-called personal media as being different?
Looking at this question I also wonder how important reliability is. I would say it depends on how valuable the information is and how it impacts on the receiver. Women’s Weekly are traditional mass-media, as are Channel 9 News updates, Kyle Sandilands’ radio show, as well as newspapers like The Australian or Herald Sun. A significant part of what is sold as news is actually trivia. Is it important that the information is reliable when celebrity A has been divorced from celebrity B, or that C was seen drunk and embarrassed D with it or that E has put on some weight?
In my opinion reliability is important when the information provided affects the consumer directly. I will further discuss the reliability issue from this point of view.
As stated above, traditional mass-media and so-called personal-media are starting to interact. Both cite each other (e.g. newspapers, TV and radio report on blogs, vodcasts etc. and vice versa) and traditional mass-media also starts to use the means of so-called personal-media communication. A good example is ABC TV which uses the means of Internet communication to promote their programs online. The political program Q&A offers viewers (the masses in front of their TV) to ask questions to the panel through vodcasts and to comment on the show via Twitter. Randomly tweets are faded in during the program.
To be accepted as a reliable source of information I believe that traditional media will have to move away from the hierarchical communication position as outlined in the response to question 1 and get on the same level with the masses. I think that ABC is a great role model on how to transition from vertical one way communication and taking the risk of engaging in many-to-many horizontal communication, arriving on the same level with the audience.
I do tend to believe that so-called personal-media is more reliable than mass media, the reason being that you have a personal relation with your audience, based on two-way communication. Interacting in two-way communication is more risky than simply talking at the masses.
All individuals in a so-called personal-media CME interact. Statements can be questioned or even dismissed directly and in person. But they can also spark new discussion. So-called personal-media relations demand accountability in the aim to gain trust in what you communicate. In traditional mass-media trust was out of the question as there were no alternatives than what traditional mass-media would actually deliver to the masses. Everybody had the same information and if the information was questioned it again happened through traditional mass-media.
Further response to Sky's question:
Hello Sky,
It’s interesting that you ask this. I totally agree that we should be abandoning some of our mistrust of sources that aren't affiliated with large organisations, and instead put more value on sources that are aware of local issues that affect us directly.
From a traditional perspective, I think it is a habit to believe that information provided by large organizations is generally of better quality than less common sources. Consuming information was a passive experience. How could consumers find out if they were told the truth? It was almost impossible, as distribution was in the hands of the traditional media. There was no alternative. As a result, the consumer was also easy to manipulate. There is a great example from 1977 when an investigative journalist (Wallraff, 1997) worked undercover for three and a half months as an editor at Germany’s biggest newspaper (Bild ). Soon after his experience, he published a book, which became an instant bestseller, followed by a number of charges and counter charges between Bild and Wallraff, as Wallraff had badly damaged the reputation of the newspaper.
I think that so-called personal media consists partly of people like Guenther Wallraff. Today they still engage in investigative journalism, but instead of working undercover, the Internet provides the technology to simply interact with those who are aware of local issues and can either confirm information as accurate or reject it as incorrect. That is why I believe that consumers should put more value on these sources. I’m not saying that I categorically reject anything that is provided by large organizations. What I think is important is that consumers should not always accept simple answers to complex questions and use the means that are available to do their own research and use some local sources to confirm what they’ve been told – especially when it affects them directly.
References
Wallraff, G. (1977). Der Aufmacher: Der Mann, der bei Bild Hans Esser war. Cologne, Germany, Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co KG
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