JOMC 191.3 Blogging, We the Media and Virtual Communities

I’m still plugging away but it’s almost done:

Myspace Music Community Study

-Dan

CNN just launched it’s newest version of its website… from the article:

Early reaction to the commercial-free service, which costs $2.95 a month or $24.95 a year, has been predominantly positive, judging from entries on media, technology and Web-watcher blogs that have feedback on the programming and application.

“The video quality is very nice even in full screen mode … I’m surfing and watching news at the same time. I’m impressed so far,” one blogger said on TADSpot.com. A post on Lost Remote read: “The interface is fairly intuitive.”

But there were suggestions on the blogs, too. “There ought to be a way to automatically continue playing the on-demand reports. Right now, once your chosen video is over, it stops playing,” posted a user on Lost Remote.

Full story at http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/12/05/pipeline/index.html

This probably could be a comment to the original post, but I felt it was going to cover enough new ground to deserve its own post. Discussion on the library listserves about Seigenthaler’s article in USA Today continues. It has become a heated debate on at a few listservs.

People are using it to discuss blogs as well. They brough up an article called Attack of the Blogs, that was published in Forbes on Nov. 14. I don’t think we have discussed that yet. On the first page of that article, Daniel Lyons, basically attacks blogs as slander machines. It is long, so I haven’t made it to the other 3 pages yet. Karen G. Schneider, then points to a blog entry of hers where an open letter in response to Forbes has been published. The letter was written by the Internet Press Guild.

This article in the Onion was also posted as comic relief. This article jokes about the idea of a wiki-constitution. As someone who has published a copy of the constitution, Michael S. Hart, of Project Gutenberg, then pointed out that even the original copies of the constiution differ from one another.

p.s. I also noted on Karen’s blog an entry about Leslie Burger, President of the ALA’s, return to blogging. She got this from an entry on tametheweb. They both pointed to this entry about Leslie’s visit to UNC-Chapel Hill. Free press about our event. No one noticed when Leslie posted it to her website, but her blog, and lots of people now know.

I started a group on Facebook last night called ACC Pride:

Basketball runs red in your veins and when it comes down to it, you go to a school in the best conference in the U.S. Come Big 10 v. ACC you have to go with your ACC pride and root for the good old Atlantic Coast Conference (except for dook…).

So far I have one member besides myself. I started to group because I thought it’d be interesting to see how many members I could get without telling anyone/inviting anyone to join. Since this is a basketball school I figure maybe a handful of people would join.

I thought I posted this on the links bar last night, but it seems like I did something wrong. Anyway, here’s the link to my project for class today:

http://www.unc.edu/~eqgibson/destiny

http://www.unc.edu/~kunza/psp

Looks like AOL is going to face some difficult decisions.

With their user base falling due to cheaper, faster service providers, it seems that AOL has turned to advertising to boost revenue. This means ads on AOL hosted blogs and online journals.

Sounds like a good idea?

Problem is, AOL’s devoted base that remains doesn’t like these ads, saying it infringes on their desire for privacy and personalization of their home pages.

This leaves AOL in a sticky situation. They have to make money, but they don’t want to alienate their customers even more than they already have. But it seems like they don’t want to listen. Their response?

“The decision to implement banner advertising on AOL Journals is consistent with our business and advertising practices,” AOL spokeswoman Kathie Brockman said in an e-mail.

AOL better work to find a way to reach a common middle ground acceptable to both parties. Their business plan is failing as it is.

After taking this class I realized how much I miss being on the internet and working with an online community. It really is a helluva lot of fun managing an online community and being in the midst of things as a moderator. I’ve been talking with my past business partners and I’m going to get back into it… but this time it’s going to be different, I might just put the things that i’ve learned in this class into use and see how far I can go with a site based on the readings and chats I’ve had with everyone… So who knows what might happen, but here’s to the inet!

In the reading for the class tomorrow, a book by one of the UNC JOMC faculty is mentioned. Can you find that book and name that person. Be sure to look at the end of the chapters in the further readings. The index is not helpful. You’ll need to read the chapters.
It may not be someone who you might immediately expect.

The use of social networking software by young teens has gotten a lot of press. I haven;t had a time to read through these conversations fully yet, but they definitely touch on a lot of the social ramifications of social networking tools that need to be taken into consideration.

This posting: round-up on MySpace and culture of fear
Posted by danah boyd

I’ve been thinking a lot about how anti-MySpace propaganda has been rooted in the culture of fear. Given that youth play a critical, but different, role in social software, i suspect that folks might be interested in how MySpace is getting perceived as a scary, scary place.

starts a discussion based off this posting:

growing up in a culture of fear: from Columbine to banning of MySpace

I’m tired of mass media perpetuating a culture of fear under the scapegoat of informing the public. Nowhere is this more apparent than how they discuss youth culture and use scare tactics to warn parents of the safety risks about the Internet.