New Media Comentary.
I Am Zlatan
Concept video: I Am Zlatan Biography App from Bonnier on Vimeo.
Not only is Zlatan Ibrahimović the BOSS on Fifa 12, and responsible for more than his fear share of game changing goals by yours truly, his “I Am Zlatan” biography App for the iPad is ingenious. The concept of repackaging a text heavy book into a visually reliant interactive app with a $9.99 price tag not only opens his biography up to a whole new market of fans, but it creates a far richer experience.
I don’t need to tell you that for a sportsman, what you can produce on the field is far more important than what you say and do off it. So the integration of video highlights throughout the app lends itself extremely well to this type of biography. The inclusion of interactive timelines, visual stories about his tattoo’s and information sorted geographically on an interactive map also add to this amazing new experience that highlights how new media is transforming the way we consume book.
Imagine the depth this platform would give to an actors or directors biography!
Check out the app here.
Online Video to Double by 2015
" Netflix's video streaming already accounts for more Internet traffic than anything else on the Web, making up nearly a quarter of all Internet traffic, according to a recent report by Sandvine Inc., a networking equipment company.
Individual Internet usage is also expected to more than triple to nearly 25 gigabytes a month for an average user in 2015 from 7 gigabytes. That would be like watching six HD movies, 30 TV episodes and a 3-D move a month, compared to the average user today who could watch three HD movies and five TV shows.
I Am Awesome, Watch Me Grow.
You know those awkward moments when you're chilling in the shower just thinking about how cool you are and all the clever things you've said. This is like that, except its got cool music behind it.
Did Ryan Giggs Kill The Newspaper?
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you have no doubt heard about the escalating “freedom of information” battle surrounding Twitter and the breach of numerous injunction orders. This is a debate that has been brewing for sometime and as it rapidly approaches boiling point authorities are struggling to put a lid on the emerging pot of internet activists. For the first time in the lengthy saga that stretches back to 2009 Twitter has bowed to pressure from the courts and made it known that they will “comply with a law, regulation or legal request” The statement follows in the wake of a flurry of publicity surrounding the naming of English Football star Ryan Giggs as the holder of an injunction that protects details of his personal life. Just hours after the move by Twitter, an anonymous user mocked authorities by posting a fresh batch of injunctions on the mini-blogging site. Despite quickly being removed, the post attracted hundreds of followers who wasted no time in plastering the names all over the web.This blatant disregard for the court warnings, and the inability for authorities to enforce injunctions has once again put the issue of “free information” under a spotlight.
The social web, and the ease in which it facilitates the dissemination of information is at the heart of this debate. In this new environment we are all broadcasters. We can share and access information from a huge range of sources, and if we choose we can remain anonymous in the process.
The movie The Green Hornet, which I just recently watched for the first time paints a nice picture surrounding the spread of Information and should help explain the rise in the social web. If you haven’t seen it, the film is about Britt Reid (played by Seth Rogen) a party boy and heir to his father’s Newspaper fortune. “When Daddy gets murdered, Britt hires a secretary, Lenore Case (a superfluous Cameron Diaz), who is older and smarter than he is. [And] teams up with Kato (Taiwanese singer Jay Chou), the family chauffeur, a gadget-maker and martial artist, to exact revenge.”
Adapted from the 1966 TV show, The Green Hornet is set in a historic land where News Paper’s were the worlds primary source of information. Throughout the movie we are repeatedly reminded of the power that these News paper’s possessed, and how easily the news could be manipulated. After inheriting the paper from his father, Reid wastes no time in harnessing it’s influence to establish his alter alter-ego - The Green Hornet - as a household name. Sitting at the head of the News Room table he fires off headlines and stories to his staff despite the warnings of Mike Axon, one of his fathers trusted advisors.
As the story progresses we learn that Reid’s father was being bribed by District Attorney Frank Scanlon, and was slanting the news in his favor by refusing to print stories about the rise in crime. As a result there was a wide-spread public disillusion that the D.A. was doing a sterling job fighting crime. When in actuality there was a ruthless gang-war tearing the city apart. This revelation is in contrast to his father’s claim in the opening scene of the film. With his son sitting in his office he yells down the phone that “he will never jeopardize the journalistic integrity of the newspaper for some random mayors political agenda.” highlighting the fact that despite the best intentions, it is far to easy for the news to be manipulated when controlled by a single individual or conglomerate. The ease in which public perception was manipulated by the newspaper coupled with the public’s inability to garner another source of information is a sharp contrast of todays “social” society where Twitter and Youtube are fast becoming staple sources of news.
Another interesting observation from the movie is the way the villains obsess over how they’re perceived. This is a notion that is introduced in one of the opening scene’s where two rival villains argue over what makes them scary.
In the scene Benjamin Chudnofsky, the head of crime in the city, sits down with a young hot-shot drug dealer who threatening his dominance. The flamboyant drug dealer - Crystal Clear - dismisses the aging Chudnofsky as a boring washed up old man who “dresses like shit”. He claims that today, in order to get to the top, you need style, you need a catchy name, you need henchmen dressed in Gucci and Armani, and you need to leave a calling card that people can use to spread word of your scaryness. This strong emphasis on perception and the reliance on word-of-mouth to build up their reputations highlights two of the key factors in the emergence of the internet and prevalence of the social web.
When exploring any new media, or information communication technology (ICT) I always look at it through the eyes of Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of the Media. This concept was created as a means of understanding the effects that new technology has on society. McLuhan concludes that four things happen whenever a new technology is adapted, these effects are universal, they happen to all new media and human artifacts, and they happen simultaneously.
In terms of Marshall McLuhan’s laws the rise in the “social web” represents the “Reverse” law, whereby the Newspaper has been pushed to the limit of it’s potential as a source of news. In the example of the Green Hornet this is highlighted by its inability to accurately report on the state of crime, in the case of modern society it represents the inability of traditional media to report on things that are protected by injunctions. McLuhan’s law states that when this happens we see a reverse effect whereby a new technology emerges with opposite characteristics. In this case, the social web. In today’s society Twitter and Youtube are widely used by the individual to disseminate information free from agenda and influence. Word of Mouth is now the norm whereby information is Tweeted and Re-Tweeted on Twitter at an extremely rapid pace. The power of traditional media has taken a huge hit as people shift away from the notion of being spoon-fed news and move towards a word-of-mouth environment where they can consume news directly from the source.
So while authorities and law-makers scramble to adapt to this changing environment and snatch back some of their control, ultimately they are fighting a loosing battle.
The days of a single source of news are gone, the individual now has the power.
At Home, In My Room, Alone.. Chilling With All My Mates
On the back of this video Ive been spending a lot of time monitoring technology and trend blogs trying to identify the where we are heading. In doing this one of the things that has really rubbed my nips is the rise in Social Commerce. Websites like this and this, and this, are really starting to gain traction and are generating healthy user-bases. Groupon, a website that slid straight out the tubes of social commerce was offered a staggering $6 billion dollars from Google just 2 years after inception. And they turned it down. There is BIG money getting thrown around in this area already, and its poised to get bigger.
Its not hard to see why either. A big portion of Gen Y spend almost all of their time behind a screen. The rise in cloud computing software has meant they are online while they work . The growth of smartphones and the steady decline of mobile data rates means they are online when theyre waiting at the super market. When they get home after a long arduous day at work.. They jump straight back on the internet and meticulously check Facebook until their heads hit the pillow.
They do this because thats where their friends are.
Their whole network of friends is sitting behind a screen talking about their day. About what the drunken chick on Jersey Shore said on TV. About what they are going to do on the weekend.
As they do this, lurking deep within their timelines are the Brands and Products that they like. Each one pushing out new deals, links or questions that spark conversations with their fans and followers.
As a marketer this is golden.
Companies pay massive money for market research. They pay companies to hold focus groups, to conduct A/B website tests, to survey their customer bases and to determine what is currently resonating with their target markets.
For the companies this is essential information when they're working out how to position products and build campaigns. Only now, its not necessary to spend the bucks.
All you have to do now is kick back and absorb Facebook and Twitter, get amongst some blogs, dabble in some popular YouTube clips. You can literally sit behind a computer screen and find out exactly what you target market is talking about, what they are interested in and what products they like.
Social Commerce is about to get massive because that is where the market is beginning to live. Theyve gotten sick of flicking through shopping racks at malls and sales. They cant be arsed driving from one shop to the next looking for a top that like totally makes their eyes pop. They want to sit in front of the TV chatting to their mates, and flicking through products that their peers have recommended.
Trend Watching China
Found this article on The New York Times site. It talks about Neocha EDGE. Both are worth checking out.
When All Else Fails.... Turn To Facebook
Zeald Case Study - by PatchworkMedia
The Return Of The Community
So rather than trim it down and I thought I’d convert it into a rebuttal-blog-post instead. What I’m getting at is that before you read this I highly recommend you read Thomas’s post.
This section bellow is the one section from the post that really stuck with me and got me thinking.
Remixable and conversational new media; like zines, hip-hop, hypermedia and then the Internet have burst the spell/bubble. They are a re-awakening of our essential humanness, an interest in community, conversation and direct connection with those who produce what we consume (food, services, media…).
This is the essence of social media. Which is not a specific tool – but more like a set of wedges that we can jam in the cogs of the printing press and move from audience to participant – in terms of again participating in creating our culture(s), interacting with one-another and business.
First off I disagree and think social media can be a specific tool, especially for the individual. It all comes down to how it's used; some people use Blogs and Twitter as a means of "broadcasting" their opinions, and participating in the media - a channel/tool they utilize for self-expression. Others use facebook, bebo, myspace and twitter solely as channel of communication between them and their friends. And others use it as a one way channel for receiving information; subscriptions to blogs and twitter and facebook streams can all be fine tuned into delivering specifically tailored news and information directly to the individual’s pocket.
With that being said, I think Thomas nails it when he states that the way social media differs from other channels and tools, is that it resurrects the concept of a community. This is a concept that suffered a deadly blow at the hands of the printing press – and later television - as individuals no longer had to communicate with their friends and neighbors to get information and news. They could now purchase a newspaper and read up on all that was interesting, and news worthy from the comfort of their homes. The days of converging in the town square for a town meeting, and gossiping at the local pub or convenience store were on the decline.
As is the nature of all technologies and tools however they eventually get pushed to their limits and usher in a reverse effect (read this: McLuhan's Laws of Media).
This detraction from the community did exactly as Tomas stated above. It resulted in a scenario where the voices of the many were being overshadowed by the voices of the powerful. And everyday people began to long for a channel in which they could participate and express their opinions. Social media has stepped into this void by bringing back that sense of community and providing everyone with an equal voice. “Tools” like twitter and facebook essentially function as great big group conversations, or communities. Everyone can converse and listen to everyone else’s conversations. News and information is rife with opinion and comes from the mouths –or keyboards- of trusted friends and family. Businesses have gone from being faceless entities, to friendly community stores who not only provide goods and services, but also join in the conversation. The days of the community are definitely returning.
As Thomas says later in his post however the danger – I tend to think its an inevitability - of this is that once social media is pushed to it’s limit and everyone turns into “mini-mass-media beings, or micro-broadcasters” then we will become so overwhelmed with the opinions of individuals that we will once again long for a unified authority and source of news.
But at the end of the day that appears to be a long way away. And at the current rate that the technological landscape is changing who knows what that day will look like.
(Thomas’s post is the 1st in a series, definitely worth following)
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