JMC163 for March 13, 2007

Guest Speaker
Still photography, photojournalism and new media. Introducing Flickr (and other photo social media) and photo blogging: Daniel Sato

Vlogging on the Mac
Demo of using the iSite on a Mac to do a simple Vlog entry. Also, a demo of iMovie another tool for video blogging.

Keystone technologies for the Web
HTML; Introduction to Dreamweaver and Web Page Design.

Lab
HTML 102; Do Web Page using Dreamweaver.

Mid Term Discussion
We will continue the discussion about the mid-term and the production schedule for it.

The evolving Web, beyond HTML
Introduceing: Web. 2.0, XML, RSS and related technologies.

Creating an RSS Feed
Introduction to Podcasting

Book Discussion
Looking back on Cluetrain

“We rule, dude” (Chapter six)

I finished the book. YES! Here are my thoughts: 

In chapter six, the author wrote about knowledge deficit, where company executives don’t know their subordinates’ jobs. The CEOs from conglomerates are assertive and innately talented at delegating entire masses of workers toward a goal; however, they rarely know what each one’s everyday workload. This seems all too true.

The root of lacking communication between leaders and followers in business is—drum roll—human conversation coming to an end, as written by the author.

“Genuine” conversation with the company’s targeted market and its employees is vital for growth and future prosperities. Something so simple is overlooked in the workplace because everyone is so caught up in their duties, and lives. Then management wonders why their workers’ attitude is composed of disgruntlement. I know this from experience being part of the minion level in the hierarchy.

The author then explains the Web has no real definite or defined future. That’s true. The Web is rhetorical, like these blogging assignments. It’s what you make of it.

The 12 steps were interesting; I could narrow it to three: find a voice, be brave and, of course, have a sense of humor. People don’t have fun at work or with their coworkers until happy hour arrives at their usual spot. They spend eight hours working together, but not really working together, if that makes sense.

“Ignorance is power” detailed in chapter seven is the truth. People who live in darkness are shielded by its primitive power: lacking deeper sense of truth. What is the truth? There isn’t a right answer, but knowledge offers more versions of it, opening the person to a higher sense of objectivity.

The power of invisibility is a double-edge sword like most concepts. Being invisible, as the author noted, allows people to be left alone, to go unnoticed, allowing them to live their lives peacefully. Invisibility also musters a sense of being ignore; you ignore me, I ignore you. That’s why most Americans walk past each other and rarely make eye contact or greet each other, at least in cities. Small-town America may be something else.

I close with the corporations are like Pinocchio: They lie, their nose grows, but most don’t notice the growth, and who holds the strings? Mainstream consumers do. We do. You do. I do.

Assignment: Finish Cluetrain

Assignment for Tuesday: March 13
Finish the Cluetrain Manifesto, post comments to the blog and be prepared to discuss the book in class.

cluetrain 3-5

I already posted this and then accidently erased it, just in case you were wondering…Sorry about that.

“E-mail is a more immediate medium than paper.” Now there’s a statement that rings true to me, why write a letter when you have e-mail? I can’t even remember the last time I wrote someone a letter and mailed it out, mail without the E seems so outdated. I agree with the author when he writes about how E-mail is forging new connections and conversations between people and businesses all over the world.

  Mailing lists are actually new to me and the author of this very old book is sadly the first to introduce me to this little hidden jewel, I prefer real jewels for the record. The two-way list seems like a more interesting and effective way to use  e-mail as a tool to start conversations. Maybe one day in the near future I will actually take advantage of this so-called mailing list.

The  author believes that the Internet was built by pure conversation, and now that I think about it I believe what he believes. Conversation built the Internet? Sounds almost silly but when I started to think about the Internet and what people do when their using their e-mail and creating their web pages it made much more sense. No one controls the conversation or the connections made on the Internet and that’s why it thrives and continues to be a crucial part of every-ones lives.

 In chapter 5 the author speaks of connections again; “businesses are just a set of connections among people.”  In fact let me link you to an article that explains this concept further, Ok that was a joke and it only makes sense if you read the chapter. I must admit I never thought of hyperlinks as this great way to connect people and web pages but now I see its importance. So in a way a single web page is potentially linked to every other web page, we’re just a few hyperlinks away from being connected to any page and any person.

“Fatuous self-praise.” Yup, That’s what I think, too.

In chapter four, the author talks about how “Visitors have to click through screen after screen of fatuous self-praise to find the few bits of useful information they really want.” It’s ironic because as I read and read, screen after screen of content, my brain bursts because of the pompous, grandiloquent vocabulary. I thought ‘why can’t the author write in layman’s terms?’  I do agree with the rudimentary concept that communication is key for development of a new idea whether it’s the Web, a product or a company. Though the book was written in the ‘90s, the humanitarian concept from the ‘50s still prevails: People do matter, and so does their opinion. Word of mouth is the best form of advertisement. No medium can compare to feedback from a trusted, reliable source like a friend or family member. Even feedback of a product from a stranger who owns the product will outweigh a company’s self-praising attempt to lure shoppers. Employees do matter; they’re the essence of teamwork and the product. If employees take pride in their work and their company, they are the most effective, inexpensive form of advertisement. I also agree that e-mail leaves little room for thought-out communication since its response is expected quickly unlike days of snail mail and letters written by hand. Today’s Web culture is to be efficient and press, “send” while reading the next e-mail, answering the phone and printing the agenda for the meeting in a few minutes. Good luck to all future college students who think they’re going to “get by.”  The authors were incorrect that the Web wasn’t going to be an effective medium for advertisement, but then again, this book was written in times where technology was a huge, clunky computer with little memory and software capabilities. Sites like MySpace are strong examples of denizens flocking to upcoming artists because of the popularity this social Web tool offers. Chapter three’s example with the Saturn owner’s question and the open forum that developed parallels today’s Web community; sites like Craigslist flourish with various avenues of information exchange from selling items to forums on subjects. The third chapter seems to regurgitate chapters one and two with the whole power of the Web and the in-depth concepts that these authors have made a common ideology.  Sadly, like my peers have commented, most of the writing is fluff and unnecessary. Redundancy is the common theme in the book that makes the chapters cohesive. Glue that is a slow death, and perplexing.  A chapter on hyperlinks (chapter five)? A whole chapter on hyperlinked headaches, that’s how I can sum it up. Congratulation, Prof. Sloan on the arrival of a new family member; maybe you’ll have more good news like not asking us to read any more of this book.

Chapters 3-4

“Chat gets a bad rap. The Web canard says all chat sessions degenerate into conversations about sex within five minutes. It ainít so. Because it is immediate — taking place in realtime — chat can enable conversation that feels more genuine, more substantial, and more human than any other Net channel. “

this was the part i agreed with the author the most, also because i understood this part.i like to chat, and i dont think that i have ever had a chat about sex.i also had no idea that Web canard made a statement like that. unless they were able to read every single chat converstaion ever, there is no way they could know that.its ridiculous.I love his point about how chat is “genuine” because it takes place in real time.Chatting is as real as speaking. you may not be looking at the person(but you can)but you are still having a conversation with immediate response.it is also better than any other net channel i think. email is not as immediate, neither is blogging.

In order to expect change, one must first realize what needs to be changed.

In chapter 4, I was not able to figure out if he was talking about markets as the corporations and businesses under Networked Markets when he said that markets want to talk, or if he was talking about markets as the consumer. If he was discussing it as the companies, I would have to disagree that they do not/are not ready to talk. Sure, some companies are beginning to figure out blogging, but that’s really nothing more than a PR stunt. Try emailing different companies and corporations. See what kind of a response you get; do you get a real message back from someone, or a computer generated message created off key words in your original email? I’m willing to bet if you get anything back at all, it would be the latter of the two. You’re better off going to ask your kid brother what he thinks, because he is probably more connected with the “market” than the company is.
“That’s the awful truth about marketing. It broadcasts messages to people who don’t want to listen. Every advertisement, press release, publicity stunt, and giveaway engineered by a Marketing department is colored by the fact that it’s going to a public that doesn’t ask to hear it.” “As sophisticated as marketing became, it has never overcome the ability of people to smell the BS behind all the marketing perfume.” I agree with the author on these points. Sure the market has miles and miles of demographic and psychographic lists so they can “tailor” their messages accordingly, but in truth, it’s just a mass message thrown out in hopes to hook some random person and reel them in. Sure, they can play their message during a television show to get people, or have it slipped into a newspaper or website and try to get someone to read it, but in truth, half the people will see right through the PR and ignore it, and the other half just won’t care. However, this is where we also need to realize our own faults in distancing the business from the consumer, because of what we are taught from day one. Take for example the name of this college and note most importantly the second half of the name: Journalism and Mass Communications. One day we will all be on the other side and end up working for one business or another and we will have consumers who want to talk to talk to or hear from a real person with a more personal message. However all we have been taught how to do is write press releases, put together mass campaigns targeted at the whole market, and devise PR stunts that make the public think we really do care. I agree with the author that businesses need to change, but so do we.

 

 

————————-

 

On a side note, I would like to point out its interesting that Microsoft has not yet entered the word blog into the dictionary in Microsoft Word. You would think they would be aware of this by now… However they were late to join the internet community too, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.

That is all. And to quote Edward R. Murrow, “Good night, and good luck.”

Talk is cheap

When reading chapters 3 through 5, the concept which seemed the most relevant to me was that “talk is cheap.”              

Like the Saturn example in chapter 3, many companies are not aware of the conversations being held about company issues over the Internet. Many times it might even be some sort of misunderstanding which a customer is upset about. In that case all the company would have to do is join the conversation and correct the misunderstanding. It would cost them virtually nothing, but the gain is significant.  By not responding to the customers concerns, “their silence speaks louder than their words might have.”

Large companies would benefit immensly by investing on a group of correspondents  who search the web for various conversationsabout their company and join and respond to them. This would definitely alleviate the burden of dealing with angry customers. 

Cluetrain Community

If the last reading introduced the idea of having a voice through the Internet, I think this week’s reading emphasizes a bigger picture: being part of a community. Poet John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” In the context of the Internet, it’s fine if you have your own Web page, for instance, but if nobody visits it and contacts you through it (in other words, if no one interacts with you), does it really mean anything?

Some quotes from Chapter 3 stand out to me. For instance, Rick Levine writes, “One definition of community is a group of people who care about each other more than they have to. This isn’t a business exchange, even more remotely. It is conversation, the verbal glue binding people separated by geography into a community.” This quote comes from the section about chat, but I think it applies to on-line communication in general. I’ve used the Internet for years, but the idea of communicating with people from around the world without leaving my chair still amazes me.

This on-line communication creates a sense of community. For instance, I like that Saturn car example from the newsgroups section of Chapter 3. It illustrates how people can give advice and help each other out- even if they have never met in person. Levine writes, “This conversation wasn’t simply a business correspondence. It was among lots of people, ordinary folks. These people are writing in their own voices because they want to talk, to help, to contribute. If it’s not altruism, it’s something close to it.” I like how he includes the phrase “ordinary folks” because it shows that you don’t necessarily need a title (in this case, to be a Saturn employee) to contribute something to the conversation. Although the Internet can be used deceitfully, it can also be used honorably. People didn’t have to respond to Ross’ problem with Saturn, but some people did, even though they didn’t have a vested interest in the matter. I observe a lot of this on-line “altruism” at the message board that I participate in, such as sending condolences to a member who lost a parent or suggesting U.S landmarks to an Aussie who’s planning a trip with her husband. These examples illustrate Levine’s defintion of voice: “people channel from their hearts directly to their words.”

However, these on-line conversations, especially in the business world, need to have authentic human voices. Doc Searls and David Weinberger note in Chapter 4 that PR is often seen as a synonym for BS. Advertising isn’t much of an improvement. When researching a product or finding information about a movie or television show, I enjoy reading reviews. I’m not just talking about reviews from professional critics for a publication or Web site, though. If possible, I try to read reviews from fellow consumers (or, should I say, fellow human beings). I like reading customer reviews because I can receive insight from an average Joe or Jane who has already purchased the product or seen the film. Writing a review for a Web site is a contribution and can lead to conversations. For instance, at Amazon.com, people can rate whether a certain customer review is helpful or not. Recently, I noticed that people can also comment on other people’s reviews and start threads in discussion boards for products. On one hand, people are expressing themselves and using their voices by writing reviews. On the other hand, “the community” can benefit from them.

Chapter 5 mentions a literal, if not exactly tangible, form of connection: hyperlinks, which connect Web pages (and people) together as part of the World Wide Web. Before reading about this, I had never considered hyperlinks as revolutionary, but David Weinberger put them in a different light for me. In relation to hyperlinks, he sometimes mentions the Web, which is an appropriate word. Just like a spider weaving strands of silk together to create its web, with hyperlinks we too weave a web, tangled or otherwise- the traditional sense of hierarchy and order is not necessary. After all, this is a community. To continue the rest of Donne’s poem, “every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Chapters Three Through Five

Chapter Three is likely the most dated of this trio.  Two of Levine’s main points, mailing lists and newsgroups, are already retro, old-guard Internet institutions.  A lot of people now view newsgroup programs like Usenet with some mirth, seeing it as a kitsch proving grounds for weird hobbies (not a totally inaccurate claim).  This is the chapter i’d most like to see an updated version of, taking into account everything that’s elapsed since the end of the 90s: RSS, YouTube and Google in particular.

In Chapter Four, Searls mentions “Metcalfe’s Law” which states that “the value of a network increases as the square of the number of users connected to it multiply exponentially.”  I’m interested to know how this law applies to the current trend of Internet-capable cellular phones and almost any other handheld electronic knick-knack.  Blackberries, Sidekicks and the rest of those things have satellite access to the Internet virtually anywhere and from the little i’ve seen of them hands-on, they seem to be quickly closing the technology gap between handhelds and computers.  On a related note, I recently read an article stating that while overall Internet usage in Japan is steadily rising, the level of computer proficiency amongst the youth demographic was actually plummeting due to more people using their cellphones, with more limited abilities, to access the Internet.

Chapter Five still rings true in my opinion.  The issue of decentralization is the 21st Century begins to fully differentiate itself from the 20th.  Corporations are still drooling uncontrollably at the concept of restructuring the Internet to be a massive pay-to-play platform of TV-style media controlled by them.