Recently I wrote about Google Buzz and some of its shortfalls, detailing what it does and doesn’t do well, along with some speculative scenarios that could see Buzz becoming a dangerous infraction on privacy. I think this did well to give a very basic overview of what Buzz does and, hopefully, help us be on the look out as responsible media users for things that seem just a little bit fishy in the Google world.

What that little project didn’t do is look at the inner workings of Google the parent company or how Buzz was birthed. Now, I’m not an insider and Google itself isn’t the most vocal about its trade secrets. However, with a little bit of research and the help of people who keep track of acquisitions, I think we can start to get a pretty good picture of what makes up Buzz.
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Rettberg, J.W. (2009). ‘Freshly generated for you, and Barack Obama’: how social media represent your life. European Journal of Communication, 24(4), 451-466.

The primary point of this article is that the information we give to social media, be it personal, travel-oriented, photographic, or anything, combines to create a narrative surrounding us.  The author uses a personal example of Dopplr.com’s 2008 Personal Annual Report to show the ways location, contacts and chronology intertwine to tell a story. It is argued that the ways in which we document our lives in ‘personal media’ contributes to a type of cultural template that shape these narratives. Included in these templates are the ways in which this information is organized and presented. The media itself shows its users information about their travel, search history, or reading tastes generating what the author calls filtered self-portraits. The author suggests that this may be good as it allows us to see our place in the the cultural templates and larger stories of the world.

Stolley, K. (2009). Integrating social media into existing work environments: The case of
Delicious. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 23(3), 350-371.

This article provides an overview of the social bookmarking site Delicious.com and its functions. The professional use of Delicious is described in terms of activity theory and interaction design, making a case for specific and limited datatypes being particularly useful for technical communicators. The author argues that RSS and APIs allow technical communicators open up a centralized system, but these functions must be integrated into common use applications in order to gain widespread adoption into business workflows, with one proposed solution being the use of third party browser add-ons such as have been made for Firefox. The article then details the technical processes needed to achieve a useful level of integration, effectively opening up that centralized system.

This TED talk was used in my Media Literacy course discussions last week, and it’s just so true that I felt I needed to share it. Sir Ken Robinson talks about how the current education system basically sets us up for failure if we’re at all different. By stifling the arts and punishing mistakes, students coming out of school have a harder time grappling with real issues. They can’t think as creatively. Some may have pent up creative energies that were never allowed to be expressed.

Instead of diagnosing everything as a condition, why is it so hard to admit that something is a failure and work to correct it? Maybe it is that same fear of mistakes that schools are instilling in students. This is an inspiring (and hilarious) TED Talk.

This mini-autobiography was written as a class assignment for Understanding Media Studies in the Media Studies MA program at The New School.

Perhaps unlike some of my colleagues and predecessors in this MA program, my intellectual story hasn’t been defined by distinct, earth-shattering moments of revelation.  In fact, very few people were involved in my scholarly formation in regards to this program.  But maybe that makes my story all the more unique.  Since childhood, my interests have always been shaped and informed by music, visual design, film, television and print.  In some ways it seems this course of study was inevitable. In any case, I know why I am pursuing this degree, and in this essay we’ll look at the progression of circumstances and choices that let me to this point.

In high school my interests always stood firmly grounded in the technical side of media.  As an audio technician I learned the skills of removing distraction to let whatever voice or message I was amplifying be understood as clearly as possible.  This philosophy was one I developed on my own and succinctly stated to as many people as would listen to my yammering.

I learned the basics of the art of video editing in an internship under Tony Mercado. His experience as both a cameraman and editor for various documentary films, along with his prowess for technical processes, further developed my love of multimedia.  At the same time, it definitely played up my computer geekiness. ¶ Read More…

Today Conan decided to finally follow someone on Twitter. His choice was random (so he says), but the lucky Sarah Killen has no doubt felt the power of his action. And it’s an interesting case study in the power of celebrity in the new digital participatory culture.

When Conan O’Brien first created a Twitter account we students of social media had a fun new game to play: Guess how many followers Conan will have after each refresh. When I got into the game, he had around 71,500 followers and jumped up to over 72k in less than a minute. And kept climbing. That was eight days ago.

What’s really interesting is Conan’s foreshadowing:

Today, Conan has 535,275 followers as of this writing (and climbing, no doubt). Sarah, the one person he decided to follow, gained over 2000 followers in a matter of minutes. And, as in Conan’s case, that number is still climbing.

Behold the power of celebrity in participatory culture. This makes me wonder if Conan and his crew realize the amount of influence they have on the web. I’m sure they do. Now, Sarah Killen’s life probably isn’t changing all that much. But she has been brought up alongside Conan’s image and, holding onto his coattails, so to speak. Pretty fascinating. I wonder if NBC is noticing this and realizing how incredibly bad their move to get rid of him was…