The Blog Finale

We have finally reached the end of the blogs. Time to look back at all that has been taught to me throughout the past 3+ weeks.

First and foremost, I found each topic to be challenging in their own right. I had hoped to avoid more theory but sure enough we learned theory in this course. The thing that I found most interesting about theory in this class was that it is ever-evolving. New theories can pop up at anytime and could possibly accepted until something new comes out to disprove that theory or to improve the theory’s image. I thoroughly enjoyed our discussions over interactivity and our own definitions of new media. It seems like as technology moves on, these two themes are going to be re-occurring over and over again.

I was blind to the overall wars that had occurred between browsers and did not even know that it was that big of a deal until this class. I also had no idea the behind the scenes wheeling and dealing going on between Microsoft, Google and up and coming companies such as Facebook. All of this had been hidden from my eyes until this class came along and was exposed. Another thing on my “I didn’t know that” list was the fact that SXSW was more than just a music festival. I had no clue that there were panels and different technology seminars involved alongside the music. I’m glad that I know this now although I still struggle to see myself going to SXSW anytime soon. Unless, in all honesty, one of my favorite bands is playing.

Overall, I really enjoyed learning a lot of new stuff in this class. It opened my eyes to see where technology had come from and how this class has me thinking about where media and technology are now heading. Nothing has really changed my attitude toward technology and new media. I still find myself in that stage where I don’t wanna be the guinea pig when something new comes out. I’d much rather wait and see the reaction to it before I try it out myself. I think the only minor change I have had is my “want” to check my Twitter accounts. I have actually looked at my Twitter accounts more in the last three or so weeks than I had since I joined Twitter in April 2009.

I think that the only thing I would do differently in this summer class is to de-emphasize a little on the theory of new media and emphasize more the aspect of social media and how to use it. I’d love for us to have had a day of just hands-on learning of Twitter and WordPress so that I could do more with it than just write and change the background. I don’t think anything can be added to this course because it pretty much covers all topic areas of new media.

With that said, I REALLY enjoyed this class and I cannot wait to get to the Online Media Design course in the Fall. Now, to devote myself entirely to the research paper due at the end of next week!

Data in Journalism

When it comes to data in journalism, I feel that it is extremely important to include data at all times. Data will help journalists to present a more honest and truthful story when it comes to public opinion pieces. Now, the problem with data is that we cannot always be assured that this is true data, especially when it comes to controversial political stories. Journalists are able to spin the story to appease whichever side of the coin has more viewers.

The way that journalists, journalism educators and journalism students need to prepare for data in today’s journalism world is to look at their numbers and make sure they have equal representation before placing these numbers in newspapers, magazines, online, and on the television news. Journalists themselves need to be open in allowing data to infiltrate their news to provide a clearer picture to their audience. Educators must use sample news articles that involve data in their classrooms and help their students figure out which is the best way to make this data stand out. Students of journalism need to understand outright that data is a part of the new age newsrooms. They need to take the reins and utilize data so that when they are stepping into the newsrooms for the first time, they are able to have this training and know what it takes to incorporate the data. In doing so, they will be able to teach the “old guard” journalists how the news is becoming more data oriented.

To be private or to not be private…that is my question!

Research Question: How do Facebook users perceive risks to their privacy within the social networking site?

In a research study, I would have to create a survey in which to send to the 729 friends that I have on Facebook. Through this survey I would ask questions based around how people feel about Facebook and the company’s efforts to keep profiles private and hopefully I would get enough people to respond back to me in a timely manner to complete my research. I would also have to view the history of privacy on Facebook and see how far it has actually come since Facebook’s inception in 2004.

The Long Tail and Free

Ah the joys of the “free” stuff that only comes when you buy special marked items and only if you use a coupon for it in order to make the extra stuff free. This is basically my quick hit analysis of Chris Anderson’s February 2008 article over how the world of free stuff has entered the marketplace.

Anderson used a great example to begin his article by using the story of King Gillette and how his promotional razors became a business model that “is now the foundation of entire industries”. His concept was to package his razors with something that people knew like coffee, tea, marshmallows, etc. He basically gave away the razors for men to use but the consumer really didn’t get those razors for free as they had to buy a product in order to get to the free razor.

This concept of free allowed us to understand that you can still turn a profit even though you may still “give” your product away and the best example of that is the use of transistors within computers. Transistors are so numerous within a computer that when you break it down to an individual cost, they are close enough to costless that they should be free anyways. I think the best way of putting this in terms that I could understand was to use Zeno’s dichotomy paradox in the article. “…[Y]ou run toward a wall. As you run, you halve the distance to the wall, then halve it again, and so on. But if you continue to subdivide space forever, how can you ever actually reach the wall? (The answer is that you can’t: Once you’re within a few nanometers, atomic repulsion forces become too strong for you to get any closer.)”

Anderson’s other article called “Long Tail” was a little bit more confusing to me than I originally thought it would be. His concept here, in my estimation, was that in order to make money off certain aspects of the entertainment industry, you can’t put all of your eggs into the “popular now” basket. Instead, you should spread them out within the niche to maximize the profits.

Again, Anderson puts out a great example of his idea on the first page of his article. He uses two books that have similar areas of interest and how one was revived through the release of another. His economic model here was based off how one product can cause further interest in a similar product through consumer taste. This will allow the consumer to be free to follow a trail from the more popular to the less popular in certain areas of the entertainment industry.

Anderson also foreshadowed his 2008 “Free” article a little bit when he described his rules for the market. His rules were pretty simple and pretty easy to follow:
1. Make everything available
2. Cut the price in half. Now lower it (his foreshadowing of the “Free” article)
3. Help me find it.

The basics of rule #1 are simple: Offer up everything because you never know who is willing to buy what you have to sell. It doesn’t matter what it is that you are selling because someone out there is always willing to buy it from you. Even if you don’t think the item has a chance to sell, put it out there on the market because maybe someone will see it or hear about it from someone else.

In terms of rule #2, people don’t want to pay more than they think they should have to for anything nowadays. If we take Anderson’s example of Rhapsody, we can see where he has the right idea. The thought of breaking down the cost of a single track off a CD allows us to get a generalized idea as to how much that track should cost. However, when we go to buy it, we are almost turned away due to generalized pricing on Rhapsody and the  iTunes site even though the middle man (Rhapsody, iTunes) has fought to make the price what it is. The music industry thinks it’s too low, the consumer believes it is too high and this is where we as consumers want the price to be fair.

The final rule of “Help me find it” was the basic idea behind Napster, Kazaa, and currently LimeWire. People want help to find certain music and through other people’s computers, they are able to find it and (to ward off the FBI for a little while longer) UNFORTUNATELY illegally download that music. This approach is used by Rhapsody now as well and they have been successful in their ability to help the consumer use recommendations in order to drive demand within the idea of  Long Tail.

The Coke Bottle Cheat Sheet

For obvious reasons, this instructional video could definitely get you suspended or kicked out of school depending on what level of education you are at in your life. I find that this video, while educational, raises too many questions when it comes to actually pulling it off. For one, your parents would probably be pretty suspicious when it came to you scanning Coke bottle labels. The second question is, are you willing to drink a warm Coke just so that you could cheat on a test? Another question is, how will your teacher not notice this?

“Instructional” videos on YouTube are more for entertainment purposes, in my opinion. Something like this has to have been seen by educators and they have probably warned their fellow co-workers about this little scam. So it really holds no educational value. The only thing YouTube is good for is: 1. Watching scenes from your favorite movies, 2. Watching music videos, and 3. Uploading videos of yourself acting a fool at a party.

Social Media: The Next Big Thing

So the question now becomes, What is the next big step in the world of Social Media? So far we have had Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter but with the ever evolving world of keeping in contact with friends, family and co-workers, eventually something new will be released that will knock Facebook and Twitter off their ivory towers.

Ever since I can remember, Facebook and MySpace have been at odds with one another to see who could outdo the other in terms of applications on their homepages, how attractive they look to online users, etc. In all honesty, I don’t see what the big fuss is over MySpace except for the ability to blog. But even then, Facebook allows you to kind of do that except its not called a “blog”. Facebook calls it “Notes.” And on top of that, thinking back to 2006-2007, Facebook gave users the ability to connect their MySpace blogs to their Notes on Facebook so that Facebook users could read those blogs. The only misstep that Facebook had was that in order to view the blog, you would have to click on a link that would take you to someone’s MySpace page. This is where I see how Facebook could have seen a stunted growth in the battle of social networking sites. I still prefer Facebook over MySpace and my usage of Facebook reflects  this as I RARELY log onto MySpace these days.

Alright I’m off my soapbox for a little bit until we begin talking about Twitter. The thing behind Facebook which leads me to believe that a new social media giant is in the making right now is the fact that Mark Zuckerberg and his posse have laid out some of the ground work for a super social networking site. Something bigger than Facebook and Twitter combined. Facebook is based off the idea of a social graph which Zuckerberg describes as “a mathematical construct that maps the real-life connections between every human on the planet. Each of us is a node radiating links to the people we know.” In the article “Great Wall of Facebook,” I noticed something that could prove to be the downfall of Facebook. They are so involved in fighting with Google that they are truly leaving a small space open for anyone from either company who knows all the details to slip through and create “The Next Big Thing” in social media. In that article, Zuckerberg calls Google “Big Brother” and yet some people are beginning to paint Facebook in the exact same light which is another thing that could prove fatal to Facebook.

Twitter…Where do I begin? I don’t know that much about Twitter except that the 140 character limit is at times the perfect limit for a “Tweet” and at other times, I could use another 20-30 characters in order to get what I have in mind into the “Tweet.” I didn’t have an account on Twitter until April 2009 and even then, I barely used it. Now, I have two accounts, one personal and one for this class, and I tweet probably once to twice a day on my personal one and only when it is necessary for my class account. I am not all that Twitter saavy and I doubt that I ever will get to a point where I can do all the things that some Twitter lovers are able to do.

I felt the same way that Steven Johnson felt when first introduced to Twitter, “Why does the world need this, exactly?” 15 months after opening my first Twitter account, I can see why the world needs Twitter. The short messages are basically the same thing as a screen crawler on your morning news station, the Weather Channel or even ESPN. David Carr (the writer, not the journeyman quarterback) stated correctly in his New York Times article that Twitter has become a news platform. It’s amazing how you can get updates on everyone from Lance Armstrong to Bill Gates and on everything from sports to breaking news in Austin. That is probably the one good thing that I see about Twitter in the sense that it gets the news out there to everyone online without them having to initially log onto a news site.

When it comes down to it, the “Next Big Thing” in social media will be something that is thought up by someone within these two major companies. Exactly what that is, I’m not entirely sure. Facebook, in my opinion, currently has almost every step covered and I scratch my head trying to think about what else there is to add to a social media site. The new social media site will probably have a live video feed if users want to have it and there will probably be video blogs on the site or maybe just straight audio blogs. I know one thing that I would love to see is something that completely conforms to what the user is into. I would like to see the next social site have a live sports feed and maybe be updated immediately with highlights of everything from manager ejections in baseball to major injuries in football. I can only hope that someone from Facebook or Twitter reads this and has a light go off in their head like, “He’s got a great idea!” Oh, if only I was a computer science major….

Gooooooooooooooogle

I never have understood search engines and what the big deal is about which search engine is best. I basically click onto my Mozilla Firefox browser which immediately pulls up my MSN.com homepage and if there is anything I need to search, I just type it into the search box and let it ride. Over the recent months, MSN has launched Bing which never has mattered to me because it’s just another search engine in my book. If I told that to anyone working for Google or Bing, who knows what would happen to me. The Silicon Valley might do to me what the Bermuda Triangle did to ships, planes and humans….cause me to disappear.

When it comes down to it, Google makes their revenue off online advertising. Oooook? If I read the “Secret of Googlenomics” article correctly, basically what has happened is that Google has done is created a virtual auction where they sell “sponsored links” to the advertisers of the most widely searched items. Alright…how is this a money maker you ask? Well, it’s not just the selling of the ads that allows Google to profit. It is the ability for Google to be able to sift through the millions of searches and begin to predict what consumers are shifting towards and what they want. They then will begin the online, behind the scenes auctioning where they can charge companies whatever they want in order for that company to get the top spot on the page when the consumer searches for that particular item. How much does Google make off all of this? Well, thankfully Google is a public company so when we “Google” (pun intended) up the numbers, we find that the company made $21 BILLION last year. I want some of that money!!!

When it comes down to it, however, this business venture should be left solely up to the search engine companies. This business model could work but the fact remains that this is an EXTREMELY complicated model with various ups, downs, twists, turns, etc. When it comes to media corporations, as Dale mentioned in his blog, “[it] sounds simple enough in theory–but there’s a HUGE problem in getting newspaper and television websites to adopt technology like this…It takes engineers to master technology like this, and that’s just something mass media outlets don’t invest in.”  Well said, Dale. Well said.

Defining Interactivity

The term “interactivity” seemingly has multiple definitions depending on how you approach the subject but a common theme stands out in the sense that all of these researchers and authors use different concepts in order to come to their own interactivity definition.

In Kiousis’ article, the first definition of interactivity is pretty basic, “interactivity is associated with new communications technologies, especially the internet and world wide web.” Kiousis also studied various other definition concepts such as communication to see if there would be any other definitions for interactivity. He found that the within the basic communication model that the difference between the theories is the emphasis on feedback. Later on in his article, Kiousis states that “[i]n recent years, interactivity has become more and more allied to the personal computer.”

Kiousis uses a lot of other researcher’s definitions within his study. One that stands out to me is his use of Heeter’s 1989 six-dimensional definition of interactivity which includes:

1. complexity of choice availible
2. effort that users must exert
3. responsiveness to the user
4. monitoring of information use (when a system can track users for example)
5. ease of adding information
6. facilitation of interpersonal communication

Ed Downes and Sally McMillan’s article dives right into the concept of interactivity in computer-mediated environments. They state that interactivity is not a monolithic concept but examination of interactivity needed to be narrowed. In the findings of their study of interactive communication, they are able to group together what their subjects had said about interactivity. “Respondents viewed interactivity as something old, something new, something borrowed from other disciplines, and something both people and computers do.” During the study they also came up with the concept that interactivity may represent a threat to institutions while creating new opportunities for people to participate.

When I thing of the term “interactivity,” I think of online communication with others no matter if it is through Facebook, e-mail, and/or messenger services such as Yahoo! and AIM. Through evolving technology, interactivity has become a mainstay in people’s everyday life. Interactivity, in my opinion, falls under the umbrella of “new media” in that it is better technology than a telephone because you can speak volumes without actually having to use your voice.

Bush, Engelbart, and McLuhan

After skimming, reading and then skimming again through the articles published by Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart, and Marshall McLuhan, I have come to the conclusion that the main theme of their articles centered around the idea of human intellect and innovation. It was rough to really read these three articles because theory is the kryptonite for my brain. Anytime the word “theory”, “scientific”, or “science” gets tossed around, my brain decides to run to a place a million miles away.

When it comes down to comparing and contrasting these three individual pieces, the one constant is what I mentioned above with the idea of human intellect and innovation being the central theme of the articles. Upon further investigation, I found that Vannevar Bush’s ideas basically allow for the availability of having retrievable information. This in turn will lead to hard drives for the keeping of files and other information which will eventually lead to the idea of file sharing. “So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.”

Douglas Engelbart can be seen almost as a disciple of Vannevar Bush in the sense that his opening statements for Part III of his “Augmented Human Intellect Study” are chock full of quotes from Bush’s 1945 article “As We May Think.” He follows the idea of storing files and discusses the use of IBM-style cards in order to allow for quicker information retrieval. “These notecards represent much more than just an in formation file. They provide a workspace for me, in which I can browse, make additions or corrections, or build new sets of thought kernels with a good deal of freedom. I can leave notes with suggestions or questions for myself that will drop out at an appropriate later time. I can do document-reference searches with good efficiency, too, by needle sorting for notes within relevant descriptor categories.”

Marshall McLuhan is a completely different animal from both Engelbart and Bush. His idea of innovation does not key on content that was produced by technology. He instead focuses on the impact of technology on people and how they respond. McLuhan, unlike Bush and Engelbart, is not looking for a way to create new processes or any new devices. Instead, McLuhan bases his theories off of how media carries messages. “For the “message” of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” I believe what McLuhan means by that is what kind of impact a certain medium has on the people through the message that it sends out.

Introduction and New Media

Welcome to my first ever blog post on any website outside of MySpace and allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ryan Fritsche. I am 23 years old from Cypress, Texas. I graduated from Cy-Fair High School in May 2005 without honors due to a grade input error by one of my teachers. It was fixed thankfully but I never received recognition for it. I graduated from Texas State University in May 2009 with a degree in Mass Communications in the field of Electronic Media and a minor in Coaching Athletics. I made the decision during my senior year at Texas State to come back for a Master’s Degree in Mass Communication mainly because I was not ready to jump into the workforce and I wasn’t 100% sure which career path I was going to choose. Now, a year later, I’m fully focused on finishing up by May 2011 and moving on to a career in the Sports Information field.

When it comes to my career choice, new media and the sports job field go together hand in hand. New technology allows SIDs (Sports Information Directors) to reach out to the fans quicker and more completely now than in years past. Video blogs, lightning-fast updates in player statistics, interactive websites for fans, and of course, the ability to watch games online are just a few improvements that new media have come up with to be integrated into the world of sports information. The idea of playing around with new technology in the sports information field has me really excited to get out there and start my career.

New Media Definition:

The first thing that I think of when I hear the term “new media” is “better technology.” As time has progressed, the world of “new media” has gotten bigger, gotten better and still has plenty of room to grow. I agree with Dennis Baron’s thought that, “The computer has indeed changed the ways some of us do things with words, and the rapid changes in technological development suggest that it will continue to do so in ways we cannot yet foresee.” Even Lev Manovich states something along the same lines as Baron in his text. Manovich said that “a new media object (such as a Web site) is not something fixed once and for all but can exist in different (potentially infinite) versions.” My own definition of new media can kind of be married to both Manovich and Baron’s thoughts in that new media is technology that can never rests. It is always changing, always improving and always branching out into more specific versions.

Overall, when it comes to new media, it is simply amazing how quickly technology has arrived. Humans have come from papyrus paper and stone tablets to 17.4″ thin LCD screens with processors allowing for “x” GB of RAM that does all the difficult work for us.