Creativity and New Media

I've always wanted to put some sort of video up on YouTube with myself in it but never really had an idea. I decided this was the perfect chance so I made a short clip portraying Old vs New medias. It was also my first time using a video editing software so that is a new thing I'll be trying to learn too. Hope ya'll enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LESmjqoPVK4

Creativity

New media can help foster creativity in many ways. Since new media allows people to communicate and collaborate with each other it is easier to share your ideas. For example, popular YouTubers such as "MysteryGuitarMan" and "Smosh" have to constantly be creative to produce content that people want to see. The reason they have so many subscribers is because of their creativeness. Sometimes they ask for people's opinions in the comments section to get ideas because that is the best place to interact with your audience. Another example would be the new Lego site called Design byME. According to the NYTimes article titled "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Users", Lego made this site so that fans could create their own designs and models and Lego eventually sells those designs. They are basically leaving the creativity to their fans and Lego is saving loads of money by doing this.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are an alternate world in a game where people can be someone else and do almost anything they want to. They are able to become someone else by creating what is known as an avatar or character that represents themselves in this virtual world. Some examples of virtual words are SecondLife, IMVU and World Of Warcraft. These virtual worlds can serve as a place to escape from reality. You can do things in virtual words that you can't in real life such as fly or something that you are not good at such as dancing or playing a sport. Anything can happen in a virtual world. There are many pros and cons for virtual worlds. The positive effects of virtual worlds are that it encourages community and creativity. You can meet other people with same interests and goals. It can be a place where you go and relax if you are having a stressful day in real life. However, virtual worlds have some cons too. MMORPGS like World of Warcraft usually have a monthly subscription fee to play and sites like SecondLife and IMVU have virtual currency that you have to buy with real money. Some people spend a lot of money to play in these virtual worlds. According to an article titled "No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You", the chief executive of There.com, Mike Wilson, said that they actually saw an increase in spending during the recession. Sometimes people spend more time playing in these virtual worlds than they do interacting with people in real life. For example, in the article titled "I've Been In That Club, Just Not in Real Life" the author writes "despite knowing that its real-life inspiration exists right outside my door, I have spent the last few months making such visits to the Virtual Lower East Side" which shows that some people would rather experience something in a game rather than do it in real life. Sometimes, people get so caught up in these virtual worlds that they forget about reality.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter discussions are a lot different that blackboard or in class discussions. Twitter is limited to only 140 characters so you have to choose your words wisely and be concise. You may not even be able to get your point across with that limit holding you back. Twitter is also more difficult to have a discussion involving more than one person. On Blackboard, it is relatively easy to look at each other's threads and replies but on Twitter it requires a little more work. Twitter is more geared towards one on one discussion. I feel in class discussions are the most beneficial because it is happening in real time. You are there with your classmates and you can respond to them right there which may lead to discussions of other ideas. I feel the only downside of in class discussion is that some people may be shy and may be hesitant to participate but having a discussion on the internet may be easier and you can organize your ideas before you post.

Social Networking Sites

My impression of Facebook is that it is a very clean and organized site. It is always going through new changes to try to make features easier to use such as posting your status and looking at pictures. I have been using Facebook for about 5 years and I don't remember much about how it looked like back then but I think people tend to dislike changes at first but they adapt to it. Facebook is hands down the most popular social networking site around.

My first impressions of Twitter was that it was dumb. I didn't see the need of people constantly updating what they were doing. But once in a while I would check the site and realized that celebrities use Twitter and you could see what they were doing. Twitter is also great to get up to the minute news because a lot of news get tweeted by people right as they see or encounter it. It also uses a shade of blue for its color choice just like Facebook. I feel Twitter is a little more confusing to use because of the Trending Topics and the idea of Retweeting. You are also limited to 140 characters so you have to choose your words wisely.

I havent visited MySpace in a long time and I just checked it out right now. It is MUCH different than the last time I visited. I didn't even recognize it at first because the main page was so clogged up with popular videos and such. It seemed that everyone who used to use MySpace moved to Facebook and MySpace revamped their site trying to attract a new audience.

I've never been to LinkedIn and felt this was a great opportunity to go and make an account. You immediately feel the professionalism that the site is geared towards. It took a little while to make the account, I don't know if it was my internet connection or the way the site works but it took a while to verify some of the information. The site is great for professionals to showcase their skills and is an asset for people in the workforce.

Social Networking

Social networking is the new trend on the internet. Some of the most popular social networking sites include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn. These sites benefit society because it helps connect each other even though we may live miles apart. Friends and families who haven't spoken to each other in a while can find each other on Facebook and reconnect. You can easily keep in touch with new people you meet. You can communicate with people of the same interests. Status updates from your friends usually let you know whats happening around you faster than news sources. The list goes on and on.

The business world has also taken advantage of these popular social networking tools to reach out to people. Advertising and promotions are usually spotted while you make your way around Facebook. Corporations may also use these sites to give you the latest updates on their companies. Some companies even use social networking sites to do a background check on you to see what kind of person you are if you are applying for a job so you have to be careful on what you decide to put out on the internet. In fact, LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business person. One can put their resume/skills/experience on there and begin networking with others to try to find jobs. According to the article titled "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" by Frank Langfitt, many Fortune 500 companies use LinkedIn to find qualified candidates using a simple search function. "Social Networking is the best thing that happened to recruiting-ever" says Maureen Crawford-Hentz, a recruiter for a global lighting company.

President Obama even used social networking during his presidential campaign. Through these popular sites he was able to connect with more people and raise money for his campaign. In an article written by David Carr titled "How Obama Tapped into Social Network's Power", he writes that "Mr Obama [had] not just a political base, but a database, millions of names of supporters who can be engaged almost instantly". That basically sums up the power of social networking and how it can even help the President of the United States.

Privacy is a big issue with the social networking sites. There are privacy settings that the user can put in place but are all your information that you put online actually safe? There are probably ways around everything if you really wanted to exploit something, especially with the growing popularity of social networking. There are always people out there trying to do harm.
All in all, I believe social networking has come a long way in the last few years and am interested in how it grows in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a video streaming feature in the future on these sites where you can see what people are doing at any moment because we are already doing that via text.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and wikis are great new medias to collaborate on the internet. They both communicate information about a certain topic or idea. They both are user generated information and promote the 5 C's (collaboration, communication, community, creativity, convergence). Although they may have similar characteristics, they serve entirely different purposes.

There are many different kinds of blogs. Some people may write blogs about their daily life while others might blog about a subject or idea that interests them. The blog owner has control over what they want to write and what to be shown on their blog. People who are interested in reading these entries are free to respond and comment to these entries which form a sense of community. These comments may lead to a bond between the reader and the poster and it may even lead to collaboration of future blog entries. The comments may help fuel for ideas for the next blog entry. In fact, one blog even helped provide information that led to a drug raid according to the article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid" by Michael Wilson. The blogger started off blogging about apartment sales and plumbing tips but eventually started to blog about shady occurrences in his neighborhood. People who also encountered this in the neighborhood would reply and it led to a small community of bloggers talking about the shady stuff they saw in their neighborhood of Bayridge Brooklyn.

Wikis are a little different from blogs because anyone can contribute to it and have power to communicate. Wikis usually are very informative and describe a certain idea or word. They are more organized that a blog and usually written with more care and etiquette. Anyone can edit and update a wiki so the information may not always be reliable. According to the article titled "Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People" by Noam Cohen, Wikipedia (most popular wiki site) has to limit the power of the users because people can edit anything in these wikis. Wikipedia wants to make the site more "mature and dependable". I feel that wikis are the ultimate collaboration projects because everything is user generated and the finished product can sometimes be amazing.

Convergence is very important in today's networked world because new ideas are growing rapidly and we have to be able to capture it and utilize in the best way possible. It has helped us do stuff more efficiently and we are finding new ways of connecting to each other and sharing ideas.