Here’s a nice, happy Sunday night post. First, this map of online communities from TechCrunch which shows the volume of activity on social media sites.
Compared to 2007. Look how teensy Facebook is!
And just because, here’s, Sesame Street‘s answer to the Old Spice ad:
This is the most fun, most exciting thing I’ve seen on the web for a while.
The Paddlesworth Press is an online fictional newspaper running for the next ten weeks. Its stories and the editors and writers who create them will form the plot and characters of an elaborate Web 2.0 narrative.
The newspaper has begun by declaring the end of the world. The editors can be followed on social media and the outcome of the story will be influenced by its readers.
It’s funny and clever and looks to be well worth following.
Photo: web.pacific.edu
The Internet has resulted in a lot of strange, unexpected things but something we really should have seen coming was the rise of the influential spotty teenager. A completely ordinary, unknown Internet enthusiast can become famous the instant they create something new and impressive or test the abilities of huge corporations online.
This week Melbourne teenager Pearce Delphin found a loophole in Twitter’s security which led to a malicious worm spreading through a million Twitter accounts, including the account belonging to the White House Press Secretary. The worm replicated when users hovered over links, posting unauthorised material in their tweets. Delphin did not create the worm, only carefully testing the flaw, but he did manage expose problems with Twitter and its ability to cope with worms and similar threats. Delphin, a Year 12 student, made the front of page the Age simply for his computer skills.
An unknown geek or student can suddenly become famous for achieving something better than a large corporation can. An example is Feross Aboukhadijeh, a computer science student who decided to create YouTube Instant after the release of Google Instant a few weeks ago. He let YouTube CEO Chad Hurley know via Twitter and Hurley was so impressed he offered Aboukhadijeh a job.
And for the ultimate geek success story, see the Facebook movie, the story of Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of the social network.
The Internet is unique in the way it embraces the spotty teenager in their bedroom churning out HTML and truly allows a user to contribute not only content but the functioning of an online corporation.
This week we discussed social media being used by writers and how writers can promote themselves using such services as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. One suggestion was to cross-promote all your social media.
Wisestamp offers an add-on for Firefox, Chrome and Safari that adds a personalised signature to your emails. Along with any text that you want to share with your emails, such as your phone number and address, you can add links to your Facebook page, Twitter account, RSS feeds and many more social media accounts. You can also add details of instant messaging services you use, such as MSN Messenger and Skype.
The stamp can be added automatically to every email or you can add it manually depending on what kind of email you want to send. You can create different stamps for personal messages and business messages.
Wisestamp is simple to use and everything can be customised, including the text, links and design. You can add an image and random sign off. I highly recommend it.
Following a brief conversation in class this week about Google heading under the sea with its 3D mapping, and with the current Titanic exhibition at the Melbourne Museum, I saw this in the Age and thought it may interest some people.
Expedition Titanic is an exploration of the Titanic and recording of its current state using sonar, 3DHD film and other technological wizardry. What makes it great is that the whole thing is being shared with Internet users. You can view live footage of the submarines and video and images are shared through the RMS Titanic, Inc. Facebook page and Twitter feed.
Even if you’re not too keen on following the expedition, have a look at the official website for a piece of great web design:
An international book club on Twitter! I know this is an old story but I had only heard of it now.
One Book, One Twitter was an attempt to create a Twitter book club, where users would all read the same book and tweet about it. A call went out in March for suggestions of which book to read and American Gods by Neil Gaiman was chosen. The reading began in May.
Using the hash tag #1b1t, readers commented on their reading, their ideas about the book and asked the author questions. Readers are still discussing the book’s plot and characters now.
And for another odd fusion of Twitter and books, see Twitterature, a collection of 140 character summaries of classic works.
I tried Twitter last year, when the hype was still gaining speed before its dizzying take off. I didn’t stay for long – my friends were reluctant to try it and while it was exciting for a few days to find out what celebrities ate for lunch, I quickly got bored and returned to the comfy confines of Facebook.
But now I’m back, ready to embrace the 24-hour connectivity, to share my innermost thoughts with complete strangers and to sit staring at the update bar for an hour thinking of how to be witty and wondering if anyone is really interested in what the cat dug up in the garden.
I’m still not hooked up to Twitter constantly, which is not ideal for the dedicated Twitter user. If you’re following a large number of people you can miss a lot by logging in and out every so often. I’m also still uncertain about the “right” people to follow and the “right” things to tweet.
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It’s disturbingly easy to find actors, writers, comedians and sportspeople ready to share their personal lives in often excruciatingly minute detail. I find Twitter works best when it is used as a marketing tool. An actor can tell fans about what film they’re currently starring in, a writer can share their writing process with readers or a television personality can advertise their program.
I found this view by an AFL footballer on the use of Twitter quite interesting. Cale Morton from the Melbourne Demons encourages fans to follow the Demons players who are using Twitter, and I was a bit surprised by his view on the interaction between players and the public. He says he follows journalists to receive breaking news and sees Twitter as a beneficial tool in connecting the club to its supporters. He reveals the football club’s attitude towards social media:
“Before you feel like you’re intruding a bit on our personal lives, Twitter is predominately a public forum – everything is for all eyes to see. At the Demons, we are encouraged to provide this insight for fans and followers to enjoy – led by fellow Twitterers Jim Stynes and Cameron Schwab!”
Twitter is a powerful way to communicate if used in the right way. Being free and easy, it breaks down the barriers between content producers and celebrities and the ordinary fan.
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Just as there is good and bad web writing, there is good and bad tweeting. The best tweets are funny or informative, or link to something that is funny or informative, the worst ones are dull and rarely updated.
For an example, a quick visit to TonyAbbott’s twitter page shows his last tweet:
“This election is about giving a great people a better government. The Coalition will end the waste, stop the taxes and stop the boats.” – 6:35 PM Jul 17th via web
This, in my opinion is a BAD tweet. It shows little regard for the platform on which it is posted. A slogan posted almost a month ago does not an active Twitter user make. Compare this to Julia Gillard. In the middle of my writing this blog post, Julia Gillard has tweeted to her followers:
“Switched on the NBN in Tasmania today. It will deliver faster internet to Australians & create jobs but @TonyAbbottMHR wants to axe it. 5 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone”
No, it’s not a brilliant tweet, but it uses some Twitter infrastructure and it was done from an iPhone! How hip and trendy! The language is also more appropriate for a more informal platform.
Being new to Twitter I’m still trying to discover what constitutes ‘good’ tweeting. When presenting links to a photo, video or web article it seems important to provide some comment or explanation of it. Good spelling and grammar is still important, which is surprising for such a quick medium. I would have thought abbreviations would have become commonplace, but most Twitter users put lots of information across multiple tweets rather then trying to cram it all in one.
Over the next few weeks I expect I’ll pick up some of the conventions of Twitter. In the meantime you can follow me at @lizchomiak and witness all my Twittering mistakes.
Even though I’ve been trying to avoid all press, TV and radio coverage of the Federal Election to stop my brain from dissolving into a stew of catchphrases and jaunty anti-mining-tax jingles, I’ve found the online election coverage and discussion quite fascinating.
The 2007 election announced the coming of social media into Australian politics, with Kevin Rudd and John Howard trying to connect with first time voters by logging into MySpace, posting campaign announcements on YouTube and collecting friends on Facebook. Three years later, any excitement surrounding politicians using the Internet is dead, buried and cremated.
The article from the Australian, ‘Sorry, this isn’t the Twitter election’, describes the online campaigns of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott which are, let’s face it, pathetic. Gillard’s advisors have tweeted on her behalf less than 20 times since July and Tony Abbott’s Facebook page hasn’t been updated since June. Since before the election was called. The most interesting thing on Facebook is the group with 50,000+ members, ‘Friends don’t let friends vote for Tony Abbott’, and they’re not doing much other than posting funny Abbott quotes.
Given the huge number of Australians on social media, this seems a great opportunity to use social media for something tangible, such as getting young people interested in voting, yet the mainstream media still holds the most political clout by a long way. A journalist asking Gillard about her education policy reveals a lot more than a tweet from one of her advisors pretending to be Gillard visiting a school. Until politicians advisors find a way to use it in an engaging way, there won’t be a ‘Twitter election’.
I have found some online political material which I think is quite interesting.
I was impressed by the ‘Women Speak Out” campaign from GetUp! (A political movement which tries to get issues into the mainstream media). While the video ad about Tony Abbott is interesting in itself, I find the campaign around it even more so. The organisation asks viewers to donate so that the ad can be shown on television, and at the time of this post, they had collected more than $150,000 in less than three days.
I think it touches on our topic for this week, the role of the “user” in Web 2.0, as an actor that enjoys participating in creating and publishing content. While GetUp! shot the ad, it is the users who give money and ultimately get the ad into the mainstream. They can feel part of the process and are probably more likely to help GetUp! again in the future, while GetUp! raises the money for ad space solely from its followers. It’s a different way of users acting than the purely creative users of YouTube and Flickr.
Another interesting possibility of the Internet in an election is getting people interested in voting and making their vote count, as demonstrated by the website Below the Line. I had this site recommended to me, and as an active participant in democracy, duly used it to plan my Senate vote on election day.
After selecting your state of residence you can plan what order to vote for senators on the massive Senate ballot card, create a personal PDF How to Vote card, print it out and take it into the polling booth. A quick Google search can tell you about each candidate and help you make an informed decision about who to vote for. This kind of thing was not nearly as simple and accessible a decade ago.
Even though elections and campaigning have not been revolutionised in the way we were promised, Web 2.0 has changed some aspects of Australian politics. At least it’s more than just Malcolm Turnbull tweeting about how nobody loves him.
Digital Media Musings 