The daughter who threw the ball back at the Phillies game quickly became an internet sensation with viral power until the MLB pulled the video from YouTube. Apparently they don't want to play ball and share the rights to their content, but I found a clip that still works and you can see the video below (at least at the time of this writing).
As an aside, I don't think it should go unnoticed that Fox News got in contact with this family via Facebook. It's an interesting time for journalism and media.
Disney is taking a completely different stand on user generated content. When a group of flamboyantly gay guys went to Fire Island and remade Miley Cyrus' Party in the USA" Disney employees not only embraced, but also encouraged the viral nature of the remake by emailing the video to each other. Rich Ross, the president of Disney Channels Worldwide even took the time to call up Mr. Fudge (the video maker) and tell him he liked the video. So what does this reaction vs the MLB reaction mean for branding, copyright, and the nature of the internet? My opinion is right out of Lessig.
Miley Cyrus - "Party in the USA" Fire Island Ramake
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Music Recommendation: The astonishing, beautiful Catherine Feeny
In an attempt to archive some of my favorite internet content, here is a shortlist of great articles, blogs, and post.
- In honor of 9/11 I give you a beautiful NY Times article that captures the attitude of New York.
- People infer a lot based on the emails you send. Check this out to see how.
- A new political party has formed around our perception of ownership and copyright. They're called the Pirate Party of the United States.
- Users click on links from Facebook Fan pages 9% of the time on Mondays, 10% of the time on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and much less frequently on other days of the week. (Business Insider)
Since the internet came into existence everything was about leveling the playing field. There's Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, the bits economy of costs getting closer and closer to zero, the idea that music should be free, and the ruling principle that on the internet anyone can do anything. All these concepts remain, but now that the internet is growing into an unfathomable web of layered thoughts and contextual relationships it seems like our content consumption is depending more and more on 1. friend recommendations (something I plan to address in a future write up) and 2. the power of search.
Whether you're a traditional Googler, a nerdy early adopter of Wolfram Alpha, or a sucker for Bing!'s bizarre advertising, what you consume is depending more and more on keywords and the algorithms of search engines. Companies are paying a lot of money for SEO gurus to guarantee top search results and I only see this trend increasing. I could be totally wrong, but I foresee a time when we need complicated SEO techniques to guarantee search placement. And what happens then?
What happens to the mainstream web user who doesn't know the intricacies of SEO? More important, what happens to the people in that category who can't afford to hire someone to optimize their page? Will their content get buried because they don't have the money or resources to put their content at the top? Maybe I don't know enough about search (Full disclosure: SEO is my weakest area to date), but the thought seems plausible. Maybe someone can prove me wrong? If not, one day we'll have to kiss democratization on the internet goodbye and find ourselves entrenched in yet another classed system run by capitalism.
Last November I wrote about a dizzying 2008 video called Did You Know 3.0. Socialnomics author Erik Qualman created a Social Media focused video with equally fascinating statistics (and the exact same song as the previous video). Check it out:
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Take a listen to Free Energy, an emerging rock act with a gentle sentiment and the heart of a pride of lions.
Pear Analytics filtered through 28,000 tweets in a recent about Twitter usage and consumption, and if you're at all familiar with Twitter some of the results may be predictable. Apparently 40.55% of 0ur tweets are what they consider "pointless babble," but 37.55% are conversational and 8.7% were of what Pear Analytics calls "Pass Along Value."
You may have heard about the recent Pear Analytics study analyzing the nature of usage and consumption of Twitter, and whether you've read the study or not it probably won't surprise you that 0.55% of 0ur tweets are what they consider "pointless babble." On the brighter side though, 37.55% are conversational and 8.7% were of what Pear Analytics calls "Pass Along Value."
All this is interesting, but here's the real gem of this study, the part that might actually help you. Tweets that occur on Monday and near 11:30am are most likely to be retweeted (quoted and passed along) and if you're looking for news tweets on the public timeline are most newsworthy around 2:00pm and on Tuesdays. Hopefully that helps somebody out there, but if not, check out this beautiful music recommendation.
Yes, you read that right. I put the job in my job cart and sent it away. What job, you might ask? Well I applied for the New York City based Media Lead position in the Creative Labs.
And wouldn't that require like, a lot of experience, you ask? The answer to that question would be a resounding yes. This position requires eight years experience but in my rare case I'm hoping that the fact that I'm in my twenties and going on 40 will do something for me.
And now you want to know what I wrote in my cover letter? Why of course I'll show you. I'm warning you that you'll probably finish reading it and ask if I really did send that pun filled email to Google. Again, your answer is yes. Enough questions though, here's what I wrote:
Hi Google,
My name is Lauren Proctor and new media marketing is my passion. I follow the beat with an unwavering commitment and think of so many ideas for connecting brands with people in meaningful ways through modern media that more than one person in my life has asked if new media communication is as essential to me as the water or salt that keeps me alive.
I'm also a Google fan who believes that your new real time search engine will blow Twitter and Facebook (even with the acquisition of Friendster) out of the water and wonders why the drop down menu asking applicants to disclose the type of phone number they provided doesn't include Google Voice as an option.
When it comes to actual experience in the field my CV doesn't have much to show but in that regard I suppose I'm only taking from the Larry Page and Sergey Brin model of shooting high right from the beginning.
I am, after all, a hard working quick study with a knack for innovation and a hankering desire to make waves (pun intended) in the Google community.
Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon. This is one chance you want to take.
Trust me,
Lauren Google Voice number 347.926.3232
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Beautiful Music: Orin Lavie - "Her Modern Elegance"
Did you watch your news channel of choice and read your papers but miss out on your social media related news today? Never to fear. I'll catch you up with a quick list of highlights (or low lights if you're a Friendster fan).
Please note that this list is by no means comprehensive, nor does it even begin to acknowledge much beyond the realm of new media. It's at the very least entertaining, so here we go:
1. Facebook bought Friendster for $50 million dollars. What does this mean? We're not really sure yet, but a lot of people think the two services will integrate. Friendster will become obsolete and Facebook will adopt more Twitter-like technologies like real time search in hopes that when newsworthy events take place people will stop turning to Twitter and start using Facebook instead.
Somebody best get out the printing presses and make a new shirt because like everything else in the world these days, now has quickly slipped away into the future.
2. Google has also announced their intentions to overhaul their search engine to add real time search. Some rumors say that they're going to partner with Twitter in order to create this real time search that includes microblogging, so this is something to watch out for.
2. A study reveals that Gen Yers are claiming that their real friends are the friends they have in cyberspace. Meanwhile, another study shows that Facebook increases jealousy in relationships.
3. While we're on studies, yet another study points out that psychological distance increases creativity. This article talks about the research and suggests a few ways to increase your own creativity.
3. A year ago we were saying goodbye to human customer service by increasing the capability of ATMs. And now you won't have to go to your ATM as much either, because USAA Bank is going to release an iPhone app that allows people to deposit checks by sending in photos of the front and back of the check.
4. YouTube surges 9% in the month of July and passed MSN and Live.com in the traffic department. Of course we have to take Bing.com into consideration when we look at the numbers of Microsoft properties, but what does this mean about our society?
5. Excuse me for being so late to discover this, but I found out that the British Prime Minister's office tweets. I'm going to do something really British and leave it at "Brilliant."
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With snarling lyrics, a voice that varies between breathy nothings and towering hope, and enough bounce to send you dancing from state to state, Florence and the Machine will take you
According to The Guardian and Mashable, Murdoch plans to start charging for online news and he expects to make a profit. If he does, of course all media will follow like they did when he created his first profit horse business model and transformed the nature of news into entertainment.
I wonder what Murdoch is really thinking? Perhaps he figures that traffic volume isn't that important? So many people interact with News Corp owned media that if it reduces by ten, twenty, even fifty percentage points then who cares? 50% of Facebook readers is still 15 million people.
Meanwhile, Digg seems to be embedding semi-incognito advertisements in content. People can still vote ads up or down meaning bad ads will get buried quickly, but is this the future or a blur between product and content that crosses the line?
I'm going to read Chris Anderson's Free by the end of the week and I should have more ideas on the future of media, but for now I thought I'd share Murdoch's intentions and Digg's plan so we could see what comes of it together.
Cyber warfare. It's one of the only social media related news I heard about after reports started coming out offering reasons why Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal were experiencing so many problems. It was DDoS (Denial of Service Attacks) related to the conflict between Russia and Georgia, and the attackers wanted to stifle the voice of a guy with a handle of Cyxymu.
In turn, people suddenly started talking about ways to back up your social media profiles and Twitter accounts, and just about everything else on the elusive cloud where we're all starting to store more of our data. They also started talking about cyber warfare and how it might become a piece of the future. But before the lights went out on Twitter I had no idea Cyxymu even existed, and goodness knows I didn't know to he was someone whose voice was important enough to send internet usage for millions to a screeching halt.
Now my appetite for Cyxymu's words is insatiable and it makes me wonder. If an attempt to stifle a voice sends its decibels further than they would have reached before, can this so called cyber warfare really be effective?
Let's hope not.
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Now for some affable folk (although as a warning, some of his songs will hit you hard and leave you wallowing on the floor in sweet misery...okay that was major hyperbole). Check out Brooklyn's own Jonah Smith.
I learned yesterday that Twitter keeps any single person's 3,200 most recent tweets and then poof, it's gone. I feel stupid for not knowing this and particularly distressed (in a not really distressed and I realize I'm being dramatic sort of way).
I suppose 3,200 is a lot, but to think that in an age when storage costs virtually nothing, Twitter isn't playing the Google card of unlimited storage? I thought we had finally found something that would put moments in a vault and help us remember the time when we picked out all the marshmallows in the Lucky Charms to see if there was enough in a box to fill an entire bowl, and then spent the rest of the night snacking on the sweetest part and wondering if we were Lucky, Charmed, or both.
I opened my eyes slowly this morning to a slight tinge of regret. I had missed yet another CBS Sunday Morning, and not just because I slept in late after a Fourth of July packed with Jenny Lewis, Conor Oberst, 40,000 fireworks shells (1,200 per minute for 26 minutes), an Apples to Apples marathon, and loads of food. It wouldn't have made much of a difference when I woke anyway, because I don't have a television or DVR. Buying one or both would probably be for the sole purpose of witnessing Charles Osgood and the crew's thought provoking journalism, but I just can't justify it. Every now and then I catch a few clips and video recaps on the CBS Sunday Morning website but I miss Osgood's narration and I want the ability to sit down and feel the comfort of watching an entire episode ceremoniously from start to finish.
I know internet television advertising isn't as profitable as traditional broadcast (which I think is twisted based on a number of reasons including the sheer volume of target demographic that is starting to actually prefer watching television online), but I know a gaggle of New Yorker reading, non TV owning people like myself who wish they had a way to catch up on Sunday Morning on their computer and after the fact. So give me Flanagan and give me Osgood. Bring me politics and show me pool prodigies. Move into multimedia, Osgood, and let's move soon. It will certainly help me wake up every Sunday morning without that haunting tinge of regret.
Until you can catch CBS Sunday Morning at least you can listen to some tunes. Check out Anya Marina. Her style varies from Karen O like boldness to quiet and silky and pure danceable. "Vertigo" has had me red in the face and dancing for weeks.
Anya Marina - "Vertigo" (This video is really quiet so the version on the link above is better, but I figured I'd add this for pure convenience.)
Praise Gallatin, free cake, and good music. In the meantime, take a listen to An Horse, a Tegan and Sara type band for the mixed crowd. They are, after all, strikingly beautiful.
Telegraph companies did not invent the phone. Music companies did not envision the future of the mp3. Print media did not invent the internet. Although I haven't read it, that's my understanding of the basic premise behind John Seabrook's Flash of Genius: and Other True Stories of Invention.
It's almost always an arguably unpredictable outlier that sweeps in and changes the world as we know it. When change does occur though, the doors swing open and fear and instability invade. In our world of exponential information flow, the speed of change is only increasing. But take note, my friends. Video did not kill the radio star. Even today, in a world where video is on TV, DVD, video game consoles, and streaming on the internet as the projected lasting vehicle for optimum promotion, radio still exists. And believe it or not, radio play still makes one huge difference.
And so for everyone who says print is on it's last legs, I vehemently refute. New creations in the media world do not kill. Rather, they expand the amount of information that is delivered. The VCR did not stunt the movie market as originally predicted. Instead it spurred the creation of even more movies.
When the printing press came into existence at around 1440 people were afraid of the consequences. Plato's allegorical Thoth in "Phaedrus" warned against recording knowledge in books, saying that the printing press would destroy the oral tradition of knowledge and pedagogy. This was, according to Katheen Tyner, partly because he wanted to maintain control over how people understood and interpreted exactly what they were being told. But isn't losing an element of control something that the once few media voices are afraid of now that information is on a many to many scale?
Despite all the fear oral communication still exists and people still go to the movies. The advent of new methods for delivering media often changes the mission statement of the old medium, but I will argue that it's usually all for the best. Of course there's nothing good about people losing magazine and newspaper jobs, but this is part of the inevitable growing pains of change. Jobs will move and shuffle and products of the printing press may mean new or different things than they once did. These changes aren't bad though. Thoreau will always be Thoreau and good literature will always hold value.
The advent of new communication mediums have changed our society for thousands of years and will continue to do so at only a more ferocious pace. If I step back to look at the big picture though, I have faith. You can call me blindly optimistic but I would argue that, for the most part, we make these changes in our methods of communication because new mediums give us what we desire.
The virtual community of blogs, mp3's and streaming video stands atop many other means of communication. We made the choice to employ these mediums and moved in this direction because people are empowered, informed, and freed by new media literacies. Like the people who constantly improve the iPhone with the creation of new applications based on what was once desired but just barely unattainable, the advent of new means for transmitting information enable us to do more with our lives.
Now the only matter that's left is figuring out how to best adapt to these changes and use the power we wield in ways that improve society. That part begins now, and the most exciting facet of it all is that we're right in the middle of it. This is the new Enlightenment. May it go down in history as a time of beautiful change.
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Green River Ordinance approaches with cinematic songwriting and a grand, easy sound. Blare them or let them play softly in the background as you fall to sleep, but listen to them at some point or another.
I am a determined lover of life who insists on trying almost everything at least once and becoming passionately obsessed with most of it. I read constantly, eat frequently, and rarely lose sight of my goals.
My work has brought me into LuxuryLab (a new think tank/luxury brand consulting company), music publicity, magazine writing (music features, restaurant reviews, etc), and coaching Columbia University softball. Learning is at the core of my being so I'm an aspiring DJ and renegade marketer on the verge of new academic discovery at NYU.
More than that, I'm the person you'll find dancing in the living room as the sun rises over New York City.
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