Guest Speaker Talks

This week in class we heard from two different speakers; Fiona Goldstein and Mike Boyce. Both of these people has had a lot of experience in social media marketing and public relations. These are the main ideas from their talks.

Fiona Goldstein

1. You might not do what you set off to do in life. She started out in college as a psychology major and found that she liked marketing better.
2. You can learn more about what is going on in a company if you work for a specific brand rather than for a larger company.
3. Fiona has been working for Thompson Hotels since September 10th, 2001. Unfortunately, they couldn't open up right away due to the tragic events of 9/11.
4. Always look at the analytics for you marketing campaigns. These can help you figure out which ways are working.
5. Twitter is a good way to build up a relationship with your customers. For Thompson Hotels, Twitter can work faster than their customer service number.
6. You should have a main company Facebook page, and if there are separate branches (in Thompson Hotels case, different hotels in different cities), they should have their own individual Facebook page.
7. eBlasts are more for e-commerce more than anything else.
8. Booking hotels through travel agencies loses money for the hotel. The rates might be cheaper, but they will also give you a lower quality rule.
9. Interships are really important and can help you get into the real world.
10. Don't get too comfortable where you are. You will only get a raise if you ask for one.

Mike Boyce

1. Mike is a copyrighter, which means he writes adverstisements. (sometimes)
2. He originally went to Syracuse University for illustration. He didn't get along with his illustration professors, so he moved on to something new.
3. Since his graduation, he has worked for Outhouse Communications, Uproar!, Rosetta and recently started at co:collective.
4. During his time at Uproar!, he helped make a number of Hasbro ads that were about re-vamping old games for a new generation.
5. Advertisements are interruptions, and interruptions are not fair and are no way to treat people.
6. co:collective is a company about story-doing rather than making a regular commercial that will interrupt us.
7. The Hasbro advertisements were meant to make the games look less complicated than they actually are so people would buy them.
8. Rosetta was AdAge's #1 agency to watch because they were pure digital.
9. Mike told us that we should check out The WOW Reply and byzantiumtests.com because they were really good ad campaigns.
10. The James Walter Thompson Company (JWT) invented the grilled cheese. And if you're grandmother says she invented it, she's a liar.

Public Relations!

Public Relations is the field of getting information to the outside world. It started long ago in Europe as a way of spreading propaganda throughout history; ancient Egyptians used art and architecture and during the French revolution Bibles were translated from Latin to every day languages to gain support for the war. In America, public relations would be used to get people to join the army. Since then, public relations has grown into a very large field that is a necessity in business. It has become important to have a public relations department in business because it is the way that a product or a business gets advertised. Over time, public relations has been expanding how it gets the word out about something. It started with print media and has since moved on to commercials, pop-up ads on the internet, Facebook and YouTube ads, and even putting logos on clothing as a promotion tool.. Whatever it takes for us to know about the business or product, the public relations department will do it.

One of my favorite things at the moment is a British television series called Doctor Who. As a new fan, I’m always wondering why other people are not watching this show. It already has a pretty good following, but it always seems like the same sorts of people are watching it. This is how I would advertise the television show Doctor Who if I were a public relations practitioner.

First, I would do a lot of research about the show itself. It’s important to know about what you are trying to promote. That way you don’t present any false information about it and not mislead the general public. Not only is that wrong, it is also illegal.

After that I would start to brainstorm which ways would be the best ways to advertise the show. I would look into what magazines are popular, like maybe People, TV Guide or Entertainment Weekly and try to get an ad in it. I would also create ads that could be put on websites like Facebook so people will start to see something about the show. That way people will start to recognize it and maybe want to know what it is.

After that, I would look into creating a commercial to promote the show. I would take the coolest and funniest parts of the show to create a couple of really good and memorable ads. Once they were done, I would create versions that could be streamed online, like on YouTube. That is what I would do to promote Doctor Who.

Social Media Marketing Sites

Mashable.com

Mashable.com is a social media website. You can access the website on your own, or you can sign in using your Facebook or Twitter account. There are many different types of social media news that you can access from this website, which are divided into categories based on genre. The tabs are labeled Social Media, Tech, Business, Lifestyle, Water cooler, Entertainment, US & World and videos. These lead to different kinds of stories based on these categories. For example, under US & World you can find stories about politics and government, while under Water cooler you can find comics, memes, pictures and videos. Meanwhile, on the rest of the page you can find the top stories that are happening that day, the highest trending topics that are being discussed and the top photos and videos that are being viewed on this website. This is a good website to use to keep up with the world.

Readwriteweb.com

Readwriteweb.com is now called readwrite.com. The purpose of this social media marketing website is to keep yourself updated on the daily news of technology and its users. For example, there are about five to seven articles every day going back a couple of days that are visible on the home page. These articles come a variety of different topics, such as Microsoft, Apple, International, Photography and even posts from the people directly from ReadWrite.com. When you click on an article, the website takes you to a page with the article where you can comment on what was written and learn a little bit more about the author. At the bottom of the page, you can find links to past articles that have been published. You can also like the articles on Facebook or share them on Twitter or Google Plus. This website deals with more articles strictly in the media world.

Thenextweb.com

Thenextweb.com is a social media website that deals with a lot of the legal parts of being in the media. The articles that are being featured are ones about different companies and how much money they are making (or not making) and the new kinds of software that is now readily available for certain technology. There are three main general separations between the articles: Latest, Popular and Discussed. Latest is the newest, Popular is what is being viewed the most and Discussed is what is talked about the most. There are also articles that divided by different categories, much like the first two websites. That way you can find a number of different articles on almost any media-related topic. Thenextweb.com is also partnered with three different companies, which are called Dyn, Net DNA and Pivotal Tracker. There are also several other editions of the website available in Africa, Europe, Asia, the UK, Australia, Latin America, the Middle East and Canada.

Adage.com

Adage.com, which is short for “Advertising Age”, is the last social media website on the list. This website is used as the online version of the Advertising Age magazine. It has everything that the print version of the magazine and much more. The website has access to articles about the media, global news, news about the agency and much more. The site also has links to a number of different social media-related blogs. Some of these have been made by the magazine’s editorial team, while others were made by members of the Ad Age community. The website also has a bookstore that is available to the public. Ad Age also looks at the most creative advertisements and picks the best one of that day. AdAge.com keeps its readers in the loop about their partners as well. They are partnered with Automotive News, B to B, CCN Money, Crain’s New York Business, MSNBC.com and shopautoweek.com.

E-Books do WHAT?

Books are becoming much more digital. The following three pod casts address different aspects about these new e-readers that we might not have noticed in the past.

E-Books that read you

      - E-books now collect data about how you read your e-book. This is shaping how books are being written.
     - This data allows Amazon and Barnes and Noble (creators of the Kindle and the Nook, respectively) to see what people are reading within each book. It also allows the companies to know what to offer certain readers based on their preferred genre.
     - Authors are starting to release digital copies of their books so they can receive feedback from their readers before the book is even published. The feedback allows the authors to make changes based on what the audience wants.
     - Despite the data taking over, editors will still always be needed. However, now they have to take the data into account.
     - A risk of the data is that we can lose the author’s “voice” in genre authors or fiction authors. It will make reading less personal.
     - The Reader Privacy Act allows privacy of what people are reading on e-books, but it can be pulled if you are under investigation already. They can’t just pull it for no reason and would be a waste of their time.

Books are no longer an Ad-free zone

     - Books are becoming advertising tools and that can make the reader pay nothing for the book.
     - If ads are done in an aesthetically pleasing way and don’t interrupt the flow of reading, then ads in a book shouldn’t be such a big deal.
     - Brian Altounian, CEO and Chairman of WOWIO, uses ads at the beginning that would be personalized for the reader and could navigate them to a different page if they click on it.
     - Ads at the beginning of a book can make a reader worried that the ad will show up again.
     - E-books can offer ads with no fees, or you can buy an e-book for a fee to have no ads.
     - The ads are very broad so that they can sponsor and support ads from companies like DirectTV.
     - There is more opportunity for other e-book companies in the past year and a half than there was when Amazon first started with e-books.

Book It
     - Most common complaint: there are too many books.
     - People still love books but it’s hard for people to find them.
     - The people’s reviews are starting to narrow choices for other people.
     - E-books and scanning of old books can produce more books in bulk and make them available to more people. This is raising the number of choices in the world.
     - There’s a lot of format competition in buying books. People are still buying books, but they are buying more electronic books than print books.
     - It’s hard to gather numbers on how many books are sold. Even the company called Neilsen, which scans books at registers and collects data doesn’t get data from everywhere books are sold.
     - E-books are going up by 3-4%.
     - Young adults are now buying more books and adults are reading more books online than ever before.
     - Publishers are starting to publish less books and selling them directly to the consumers rather than through a book store.
     - Authors can be pirated so they should start doing books tours.

Sources:
E-books that read you
Books are no longer an Ad-free zone
Book It

Ladies and Gentlemen, Carlo Vittorini!

This past week in class Carlo Vittorini came and spoke to us about his time in his career in the business of print media. He was offered his first advertising job in 1955 and did not stop until his retirement in 2000 at age 70. That’s dedication. He spoke to us for a long time (longer than he actually wanted to) about his career and there were a few things that stuck out in his talk.

           1. You may start out wanting to do one thing, and end up doing something else. Mr. Vittorini started out wanting to be a writer. He majored in English in college. But his skills led him in the advertising direction.
          
           2. Trade magazines are genre magazines targeting a certain career demographic.
           3. Some publishing companies can control a number of different publications in a given area. Whether it be major magazines or small town newspapers or even newsmagazines, these publishing companies become oligopolies.
          
           4. There has been a huge progression of different kinds of printing presses through Mr. Vittorini’s career. The publishing companies went from hard, metal presses to electronic digital presses.

           5. Making early decisions can be a very bad idea. Everything is changing too often to make a decision early, and this can affect ratings if things are not current or up to standard because of a poor decision.

           6. Some companies don’t function well because they run on a top-heavy system. When a company is top-heavy, it affects their profit margin in a negative way.

           7. Mr. Vittorini was able to help build up some of the newspapers he worked for because he had skills in marketing and production.

           8. No matter how many new multimedia technologies are made, print media will never die out completely. There will always be a hard copy to back it up.

           9. Relating to the last point, printed word will never disappear. It‘s our main outlet of communication. Whether it be through texting, through a blog or an email, we use language to communicate, which is expressed through printed word.

          10. Finally, Mr. Vittorini kept repeating one main point over and over again. If you don’t like what you’re doing, chances are you won’t do well. But if you do like it, you can climb higher in your career.

Mr. Vittorini’s talk was very informative and very interesting. He was sure that he was going to bore us, but I don’t think he did. It was cool to listen to someone who has a lot of real experience.

Print media disappearing

Technology is changing the way that print media is being produced. We are way passed the days of the original printing press. These days, it is more common to see people reading what was once a popular print media on an e-reader. It has become cheaper to produce print media digitally. Once a book is online, it is easier to keep track of the copyrights and can be distributed in a number of ways. The most popular methods of distributing books are through Google, who has digitalized thousands of books, through e-readers such as the Kindle from Amazon or the Nook from Barnes and Noble, and printing books instantly. This has become very appealing to the masses because it has made it easier to gain access to pretty much every book ever written. Unfortunately, it has also contributed to the decline of print media, like books and magazines. So it’s hard to say whether or not this shift is really a good thing.

It hurts me to say that books are becoming less prominent in the world today. While I don’t want to say they are becoming obsolete, they are certainly headed in that direction. E-readers such as the Kindle and the Nook allow readers access to a number of different books in a number of different genres. Once they have the e-reader, the reader can download a book instantly to the device without having to physically go to the book store. They also don’t have to wait for a book to be shipped to their house through online shopping. E-readers are also ideal for readers who travel a lot. The Kindle and the Nook can hold thousands of books at one time. That means you don’t have to waste space in your carry-on bag with books. Finally, the e-reader is more appealing than a physical book because it doesn’t kill any trees, and people these days are becoming more aware of their carbon foot print. It’s these reasons that are causing books to become obsolete. I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I know I still like books and don’t want them to disappear.

The Museum of the Moving Image

The Museum of the Moving Image is clearly one of the greatest museums I have ever been too. There were so many cool things in that museum that could not be seen in another museum. One of my favorite things in the museum was the stop-motion display. It was really cool to learn about how stop-motion films are made. We even got to make our own stop motion videos on the computer. What was amazing to me was how much time it actually takes to make a stop-motion animation. It is unbelievably time consuming. You can take twenty five pictures, changing something slightly to make a flipbook, and you’ll have five seconds of an animation. But it makes some really cool animations.

Another thing I liked about the museum was that it had some really old stuff in it. I know this is common in museums, but it was really cool to see some of the first cameras. Although they did not have the original Lumiere camera, they had some pretty old ones. I learned a lot about how cameras were changing throughout the years. While I knew that some of the old cameras were operated by a crank, I learned that the cranks were actually controlling the shutter speed as well as the amount of light that was exposed to the film in the camera. It was very informative and stuck out in my mind.

Finally, one of the exhibits that I thought was great was the exhibit that had the stand in dummy of Yoda and other props like a giant version of Freddy Kruger’s sweater. I didn’t know that they actually made larger or smaller props for certain shots in movies. But looking back, it actually makes more sense, because it probably wouldn’t be possible any way else. The giant sweater, for example, was used in a scene where the souls were pulling themselves out of Freddy’s body. I also liked that they had a replica of the Yoda puppet. This was one of the coolest museums ever, and I would love to go back someday.

Radio, Radio

1. What kinds of radio networks exist now?

There are different kinds of radio networks that are starting to form these days. One of the major stations is the National Public Radio, which was significant in the news and public affairs as well as linking many radio stations together. There are other kinds of radio other than music radio too. Talk radio is a kind of station that specializes in talking about the news, sports or anything local. These stations will tend to be more AM stations rather than FM.

2. How are radio formats related to music genres?

Radio formats play off of what music genres people want to here. Because of this, radio formats can change frequently. For example, in the 1990’s many radio stations switched over to alternative rock because that’s what was popular at the time. Other stations will play Top 40 hits, or songs that are very popular. Today, many stations are playing a variety of music from different decades, called “Jack.” This is how radio stations try to get ratings.

3. What are the target audiences for some of the main radio formats?

Radio formats base their choice of target audiences on certain demographics. For example, a Top 40 station might be aimed towards a younger demographic. Talk radio is usually aimed for adult listeners. The radio stations can base what music they should play on certain demographics.

4. Why does the concentration of radio ownership cause concern?

Concentration of ownership is becoming a problem in radio. More times than not, a couple of large companies can own as many as half the radio stations in a given city. This poses as a problem because it reduces the chances of local ownership of radio stations. This also reduces the amount of diversity on the radio, even if the owners say it will increase diversity.
5. What copyright challenges are raised by Internet radio and pod casting?

Music that is released is almost always copyrighted. According to copyright law, if you want to play a song, you have to pay in order to do so. Internet radio and pod casting have many issues when it comes to playing copyrighted music on their stations. Internet radio stations have to pay the song writers and performers at a higher rate than satellite or terrestrial radio stations just to play the songs on the internet.

Monopolies and Mass Media

There are lots of gadgets out in the world these days. Many of them are made by Apple, Inc., which was owned by Steve Jobs up until his death. The question that is always asked about whether or not Steve Jobs had a monopoly on the media business. It can be pretty easy to say that this could be true in this case. For years now Apple has been producing a number of different products to appeal to the masses such as iMacs and laptops. While they are still in competition in the computer department, in other areas they are dominating. For example, most people who like to listen to music are listening from their iPod. To the best of my knowledge I know only one person who has ever owned a Zune, which was the Microsoft equivalent of an iPod, which was phased out years ago. Because of this, there isn’t much of a variety in the mp3 player market. This results in the Apple products being more expensive because there is not much competition against them. For this reason it can be said the Steve Jobs was a monopolist.

Mass media is a business in itself. Basic theories and economics shows that mass media should be making profits. One of the main ways that mass media makes a profit is through the law of supply and demand. This law states that cost savings caused by economics of scale can be passed down to the customers. This results in more of the product being made, which makes more people by the product, causing a spiral effect of profits and supply and demand.
There are other ways that mass media can make profits. For example, in many commercials these days use songs that were written and copyright by a certain music artist. The artist receives a copyright royalty fee in exchange for them to use their song. This is only one of many different ways to make money, including advertising and syndication. It is important for the mass media to make profits because it helps keep the mass media running.

Changing media and changing laws

It’s an understatement to say that New media is always finding new ways to change. This is because there is a trend of convergence in the media. This means that many forms of mass media, computers or telecommunications are starting to merge together to dominate new media. This kind of merging introduces us to new kinds of communication. Being born in 1992, I was exposed to analog communication as well as digital communication, and as I got older it was easier to see the convergence happening around me. Slowly but surely the original ways of communicating were being phased out by newer ways. As child I had CD’s, a boom box and used a land line, and now I have upgraded to an iPod and my own cell phone. Being born when I was allowed me to see the digital divide between those who can afford it and those who can’t. My life has become mediated through different channels of media. I keep in touch with old friends in different colleges through social media like Facebook or I read their blog to stay in the loop about their lives. Convergence has caused new media to be much more interactive, which is probably why merging everything seems more appealing.

Back in the days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed before congress. In this piece of legislation, Congress stripped away the regulations that protected publishing, broadcasting, cable and satellite television and other media companies so that they wouldn’t have to compete with each other. The hope of passing this legislation was to reduce prices of communications, improve the services of these companies and spark some competition between them. In hindsight, this did not sound like such a bad idea. What would be better than having cheaper communications services? Unfortunately, things did not go in this direction. More companies either merged together, were bought out or declared bankruptcy, and this outpaced the consumer benefits. It just goes to show that reducing the regulations does not work in this field, particularly since the field of new media is highly based around competition.

A Post About Art

In the OSilas Gallery, there is always a number of different works of art that all revolve around a certain theme. This time, the exhibit is called "Drawing the Mind: Neural Networks and the Emergence of Complexity." What this means is the work that is being displayed has to do with your brain, which makes for a cool exhibit.

While the whole exhibit in itself was very cool, there was one piece that really stood out to me. It was called "Wall Drawing" and it was made by Margaret Neill. This piece is exactly what the title says it is. It is actually a series of curved lines drawn on the wall of the gallery. It took Neill 4 days to complete this work, and the lines she drew were based on the sounds she was hearing in the gallery. If there was little noise, the waves in the lines were softer, but if it was loud that day the lines got thicker and harder. This piece really stood out to me because I feel like my brain works like the way she drew this piece. I've noticed that when I draw in my notebook during class, if the lecture is giving me a headache the lines become darker and more intense. Overall it was a really cool piece.

photoshop images

So in this class called Intro to New Media, we have been editing pictures in photoshop to enhance them or just to make them look cooler. My portfolio has 31 images in it, but the ones that I am posting are just a few of my favorites.

Are we ready for change?

Let's face it, technology and the media is going to be changing around us. But do we really understand how much the media is changing?

Take for example Google.com. Just recently they have changed their privacy agreement. How many of us actually took the time to see what that was all about? According to Jasmin Melvin of huffingtonpost.com, Google is changing it's policy in order to make using Google more user friendly. However, this changes how data is distributed and shared with the world. It will also be collecting information on us through our Google accounts to make it better for us.

Consider also the new layout on Facebook called the Timeline. In this new layout, according to mashable.com, your whole life is put on display for the whole world to see, from birth until you last logged on. So all those posts that you thought were lost in the Facebook vortex are now going to be available for viewing once again. Are you ready to see that again?

Personally, I can see why people will see these changes as a problem. It's scary to think that websites like Google can now take what you like to search for and make it easier for you to find them without your consent. But I'll be honest when I say that I absolutely hate the new Facebook Timeline. It's not a fun layout, plus I just got used to the last one since the last update. So I'm going to hold off on the timeline for as long as I can. If you have nothing to hide, these changes aren't a problem. If not, start cleaning up your profile.

Facebook is also in the news recently for their IPO. According to Matt Silverman of mashable.com, the money that Facebook is putting into their IPO will be able to make Facebook worth $100 billion. Facebook is becoming one of the richest websites on the internet, and now it's going to profit off of the daily users of Facebook. With all this money that's coming in, where is it all going to go? Not to the users, that would just be ridiculous. I feel like we, the users of Facebook, should get some kind of benefit from all of this. Is that going to happen? Probably not, unless it's in some really small way, shape or form. 

Sources:
Google Privacy
Facebook IPO
Facebook Timeline

Apple Textbooks

We all know that Apple Inc. is one of the leading companies in new technology. Now they are trying to have even more influence in our education systems. They want to make it so we can have our textbooks be available on the iPad. So what is the reason behind this?

In the New York Times blog called Bits, there is an article about this matter called "Apple Introduces Tools to (Someday) Supplant Print Textbooks" . They talk about how Apple has created 3 programs: iBooks 2, which offers textbooks to be available to buy for your iPad, iBooks Author, which allows you to create textbooks, and iTunes U, which allows instructors to create digital curriculums and share them with the students. These programs allow digital textbooks to play audio, video and show interactive diagrams. With textbooks being so expensive, it is ideal to pay $15 for it online reather than spending $100 to print a book that could be outdated in 5 or 6 years. However, the hard part is finding money for schools to supply iPads for allow of their students, which sell in stores for around $500. Apple's only competition seems to be Amazon, who sells the Kindle e-reader, but Amazon hasn't had much luck in the education market.

Another article about this is on huffingtonpost.com called "Apple Introduces iBooks 2, iBooks Author, iTunes U App in Pish to Transform Textbooks, Education". In this article, it explains how the iPad is hoped to take the place of textbooks in the classroom. Like in the first article, it explains how each program that Apple released will enhance the learning experience. The textbook is not durable, portable, interactive, is too heavy and expensive. By having the iPad, the textbooks can be all of those things, while being lightweight.

I think the idea of having textbooks on iPads wouldn't be such a bad idea. I remember having to carry around many textbooks throughout middle school and high school it was always a pain. However, the schools might not be willing to drop a lot of money on very expensive iPads. Most schools are cutting departments because they can't afford to have it (so they claim), so why would they go out and buy iPads for every student?

We could use these tools to create the ideal interactive learning environment. The iBooks 2 app would have to be able to explain what we are learning so if we are studying at home and don't understand something, it should be able to explain it. This would be ideal because we do not live with our teachers. The rest of the apps would have to make it easier for teachers to communicate assignments with their students. For the part mentioned earlier about interactive diagrams, they would have to be engaging. Probably using bright colors or cool graphics would be best. As for the audio, it would have to keep our attention. Perhaps the voices could have accents. That would keep my attention.

Sources: Apple Introduces Tools to (Someday) Supplant Print Textbooks (nytimes.com)
     Apple Introduces iBooks 2, iBooks Author, iTunes U App In Push To Transform Textbooks, Education
   (huffingtonpost.com)

SOPA and PIPA.

There have been two bills that were trying to be passed this past week, one called SOPA and the other called PIPA. There have been many people and websites that have been protesting these bills. So what are these bills about that people are against them?

According to CCNMoney, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill that is meant to stop copyright infringement on the internet. This means they want to restrict access to websites that have pirated things on it. Their main target is the websites that deliberately pirate copyrighted information. For example, you could go on a site called Pirate Bay and type in the name of a tv show or movie, and it will instantly download the entire season for free. So they basically want to shut down any website that resembled Napster. (Remember Napster? Yeah, I do too.) The issue behind SOPA is that the idea of cutting out the pirating websites means that search engines won't be able to do their jobs by providing all the information they can. While they claim to be promoting protecting content, they also appear to be promoting censorship, which is why many websites blacked out for 24 hours in protest of this bill and PIPA.

PIPA is another bill that was being protested on the internet. According to Forbes, PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) is a bill that has the same sort of goals that SOPA has, except that this bill is through the Senate and SOPA is through the House. PIPA wants to protect copyrighted information and if passed, would allow those websites to be shut down that have copyrighted material. It's really just two different bills sending the same message. Both of these bills have been shelved due to all the protest.

In my opinion, these bills deserve to be shelved. I understand how protecting copyrighted material is important, but these bills are on the side of that fence that leads to censorship on the internet. The internet is one of the few places left that we can have the freedom to look up whatever we want or express ourselves in any way possible. These bills would get in the way of that. We also wouldn't be able to access the information we need because a website is "flagged" because of these bills. For all we know, the site might just have a link to a Youtube video that is a song that is not owned by VEVO or the artist. So the whole thing is just ridiculous to me. I'm honestly also sick of hearing about it. They were shelved. They are not going to be worth my thoughts until they are brought up again. But I will be happy that my internet will not be censored now and for the foreseeable future.

Sources: http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/technology/sopa_explained/index.htm               http://www.forbes.com/sites/derekbroes/2012/01/20/why-should-you-fear-sopa-and-pipa/

Filter Bubbles

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

Ever wonder why we see the specific things we find on the internet? Eli Pariser talks about this in the video Beware of ‘filter bubbles’. It’s a good video to watch because it points out a lot of things about the internet that we may not even realize. His main ideas in the video are:

1. The internet is filtering what we see in search results.
2. The filtering can be based on what type of computer you have, where you are located, and even what search engine you use.
3. Facebook does the same filtering in your news feed.
4. New sites are being personalized based on what they think we would like to see.
5. A “filter bubble” is your own personal unique universe of information that you live in on the internet.
6. Filter bubbles throw off the balance of information that we receive.
7. Our idea about the internet and gate keeping is wrong.
8. We need to be exposed to new ways of thinking.
9. The algorithms of the internet need to be encoded to allow us access to information we should be seeing.
10. We should have control over what gets through the internet and what doesn’t.

In my life filter bubbles mostly exist on Facebook. In my news feed, I usually only see what is going on in my true friend’s lives, because those are the pages I am usually on the most. There will be times when I will see a friend randomly show up in my news feed, and I won’t remember who they are because I don’t remember adding them. These days that is usually people I went to high school with. So these filter bubbles definitely exist and Eli Pariser is right to bring this to our attention.