Last month, two essays I wrote about Internet topics for Royal Road classes were published in journals. Researching Delicious and Rotten Tomatoes (see below) was a blast and proved a fertile source for a lot of interesting stuff. Hopefully as my academic careers progresses, I'll be able to continue to write and publish on Internet topics.
I was just accepted into University of Toronto's Faculty of Information PhD program, so I think I'll have the venue and opportunity for some cool research (stay tuned).
Here are the journal article links and abstracts:
Does Rotten Tomatoes Spoil Users? Examining Whether Social Media Features Foster Participatory Culture
Participatory culture existed prior to the advent of the World Wide Web. Now, due to the increasing popularity of social media tools, participatory culture is flourishing online as well. One popular movie review website, Rotten Tomatoes, demonstrates this trend. The website includes a suite of interactive, social media tools. Based on an ethnographic observation, participatory culture was seen to be occurring on the site. The power of the website to provide an open and accessible means of cultural dialogue and to encourage civic participation can be observed particularly when online user activity moves beyond discussions of film aesthetics to encompass larger societal and cultural issues. However, despite the site’s intriguing potential, there are various flaws observed that prevent a greater flourishing of participatory culture.
On Tags and Signs: A Semiotic Analysis of Folksonomies
The practice of tagging resources on the Internet has become a popular activity on such websites as Delicious, Flickr, Technorati, CiteULike, and LibraryThing, making tagging a key method to enable online information retrieval and sharing. When tagging is done by members of the general public, it is known as a folksonomy. Folksonomies, unlike many other forms of communication, are created by individuals acting in isolation from one another and with no coordinated effort. Yet when the individual practice of tagging resources is shared openly difficulties in meaning arise, due in part to the lack of sufficient message coding and ambiguous connotations.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
My Submission to CRTC on Net Neutrality
I am very concerned about ISPs' Internet traffic shaping actions. While I am not completely opposed to traffic shaping, for example as we engage in more e-Health practices, it is acceptable if this type of Net usage is allowed to proceed in a quicker fashion. However, I strongly object to ISPs indiscriminately filtering traffic. If some Net users consume much more bandwidth than others, they should pursue this through other means, such as setting monthly bandwidth limits. The CRTC must guard against ISPs being allowed to have their or their partners' content download faster to their customers or slowing down access for non-customers. My main concern is that the Internet not end up like cable television in Canada, where instead of any real choice consumers are forced to purchase (at very costly rates) packages that reflect profit-maximization for companies and not consumer preference. The CRTC must preserve and facilitate the Internet's open model of access to information and freedom of choice as this is so foundational to our Canadian society and the future of innovation in Canada.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Social Media Marketing Conference
Today was the first day of OpenDialogue's Social Media Marketing conference in Toronto, at the Old Mill, where amidst the old world eclectic setting, we tried to make sense of the new media chaos that is social media. As if symbolizing the lingering role of old technology disrupting the promise of the digital age, an ornate chandelier obstructed the PowerPoint presentations from being fully viewable. Still, the Old Mill is the best location of any Toronto conference I have ever been to, not only for the beautiful building, natural setting, proper tables, but most importantly: comfy chairs and ample personal space. (Here’s a cardinal rule for conference organizers: if you expect people to sit all day, do not have crappy, hard plastic chairs stacked so tightly together I can’t exhale without knocking over my neighbour’s knee-straddled laptop.)
As one who follows social media developments, I’ve heard a lot of hype but haven’t seen a lot of proof on how it is actually transforming business. Today’s speakers presented case studies of impressive use of social media delivering business results and offered useful best practices and insight into the medium. I’ll focus on the points that particularly intrigued me.
NutriSystem presented on their Canadian launch. They recruited Canadian bloggers to try their products, for free, and blog about the results. That takes a lot of courage as bloggers are known for being opinionated and irrational at times (not this blogger of course). NutriSystem, and the bloggers themselves, were open and transparent about this arrangement, and NutriSystem did not direct or influence what the bloggers had to say, so there were no charges of “pimping”. According to NutriSystem, the bloggers delivered messages consistent with the company’s and were effective in generating interest and sales.
Perennial conference presenter Bryan Segal from comScore presented impressive statistics on Canada’s adoption of social media. Canadians have the highest rates of social media page views and visit durations and “Canada is a Facebook and YouTube nation” declared Bryan. I was dying to know why he felt we have such fondness (or in my case addiction) of social media, but figured it was too academic a question for this marketing-focused crowd.
Adrian Capobianco of Quizative offered a lot of useful guidance on social media, so I’ll just bullet his words:
• The Pope is into social marketing, are you?
• Should you be listening to social media? Absolutely? Should you be participating? Maybe.
• Social media is changing so fast it’s like running on sand instead of concrete
• Social media is popular as it is relevant, immediate, self expression, conversational, real, human
• To maximize engagement, reward contributions with badges/visibility, rankings, points, contests, discounts, gifts, cash
• Marketing structure is often campaign based, but social media is iterative & ongoing
• Companies using social media need to have an employee anointed to listen and empowered to respond
Focusing on the rewards of online niche marketing , Andrew Cherwenka from Trapeze described how highly targeted social networks are present in the mass social networks, like Facebook. I was impressed by his campaign he described for a car company. For a relatively small sum of money, they launched a microsite for a specific car, accessed from the main car company site. That microsite then feed to channels/groups on Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr where user fans could post their own content in an organized, social fashion. They advertised to initially get word out but then involvement snowballed.
Making similar innovate use of existing social media, Wayne MacPhail, presented how an Ontario charity made incredible use of wikis, delicious, Google, and Flickr, to enables individual across its many local chapters to organize and produce their own content. As he pointed out, what resulted was the “opposite of the tragedy of the commons” as there was a high degree of participation and surprisingly little negative behaviour. To get this level of involvement, they did have to do some one-on-one in-person training and have instructional aids, but with some inventive use of existing, free services (such as Flickr’s slideshows, Google Maps, RSS feeds from delicious) the users themselves were inspired and able to do it themselves.
Overall, the conference today had a lot useful advice to offer companies on how to enter social media, but the examples cited today and, in generally hyped by social media enthusiasts are that it enables companies to now have earnest conversations and responsive action with their customers. This is rather utopian and not new, as companies have been able to do this through their telephone and email customer support - and we all know how mixed this media service has been. We are at a social media conference, so we do need to hype cases where companies did have the culture to be open to this, but as some presenters acknowledge social media participation (everyone should be monitoring) is not for every company – and this, I would argue, is the main reason why.
I opened this post describing the irony of discussing new media at the Old Mill. In another old vs. new analogy: before I left for the conference this morning my four year old daughter asked me incredulously if I was going to be talking about YouTube for my work (she LOVES it, BTW). As an Internet vet (ten years last month) it makes me so happy that I can reply to her that yes I was going to talk about YouTube and yes this was my job – how cool is that!
As one who follows social media developments, I’ve heard a lot of hype but haven’t seen a lot of proof on how it is actually transforming business. Today’s speakers presented case studies of impressive use of social media delivering business results and offered useful best practices and insight into the medium. I’ll focus on the points that particularly intrigued me.
NutriSystem presented on their Canadian launch. They recruited Canadian bloggers to try their products, for free, and blog about the results. That takes a lot of courage as bloggers are known for being opinionated and irrational at times (not this blogger of course). NutriSystem, and the bloggers themselves, were open and transparent about this arrangement, and NutriSystem did not direct or influence what the bloggers had to say, so there were no charges of “pimping”. According to NutriSystem, the bloggers delivered messages consistent with the company’s and were effective in generating interest and sales.
Perennial conference presenter Bryan Segal from comScore presented impressive statistics on Canada’s adoption of social media. Canadians have the highest rates of social media page views and visit durations and “Canada is a Facebook and YouTube nation” declared Bryan. I was dying to know why he felt we have such fondness (or in my case addiction) of social media, but figured it was too academic a question for this marketing-focused crowd.
Adrian Capobianco of Quizative offered a lot of useful guidance on social media, so I’ll just bullet his words:
• The Pope is into social marketing, are you?
• Should you be listening to social media? Absolutely? Should you be participating? Maybe.
• Social media is changing so fast it’s like running on sand instead of concrete
• Social media is popular as it is relevant, immediate, self expression, conversational, real, human
• To maximize engagement, reward contributions with badges/visibility, rankings, points, contests, discounts, gifts, cash
• Marketing structure is often campaign based, but social media is iterative & ongoing
• Companies using social media need to have an employee anointed to listen and empowered to respond
Focusing on the rewards of online niche marketing , Andrew Cherwenka from Trapeze described how highly targeted social networks are present in the mass social networks, like Facebook. I was impressed by his campaign he described for a car company. For a relatively small sum of money, they launched a microsite for a specific car, accessed from the main car company site. That microsite then feed to channels/groups on Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr where user fans could post their own content in an organized, social fashion. They advertised to initially get word out but then involvement snowballed.
Making similar innovate use of existing social media, Wayne MacPhail, presented how an Ontario charity made incredible use of wikis, delicious, Google, and Flickr, to enables individual across its many local chapters to organize and produce their own content. As he pointed out, what resulted was the “opposite of the tragedy of the commons” as there was a high degree of participation and surprisingly little negative behaviour. To get this level of involvement, they did have to do some one-on-one in-person training and have instructional aids, but with some inventive use of existing, free services (such as Flickr’s slideshows, Google Maps, RSS feeds from delicious) the users themselves were inspired and able to do it themselves.
Overall, the conference today had a lot useful advice to offer companies on how to enter social media, but the examples cited today and, in generally hyped by social media enthusiasts are that it enables companies to now have earnest conversations and responsive action with their customers. This is rather utopian and not new, as companies have been able to do this through their telephone and email customer support - and we all know how mixed this media service has been. We are at a social media conference, so we do need to hype cases where companies did have the culture to be open to this, but as some presenters acknowledge social media participation (everyone should be monitoring) is not for every company – and this, I would argue, is the main reason why.
I opened this post describing the irony of discussing new media at the Old Mill. In another old vs. new analogy: before I left for the conference this morning my four year old daughter asked me incredulously if I was going to be talking about YouTube for my work (she LOVES it, BTW). As an Internet vet (ten years last month) it makes me so happy that I can reply to her that yes I was going to talk about YouTube and yes this was my job – how cool is that!
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