Posts Tagged ‘Internet’
Short takes — The changing face of social media (2)
Image via CrunchBase
The much-hyped inevitable demise of MySpace may not be the done deal that many commentators are presuming. MySpace has carved out a niche for musicians that may not be easily replaced. Contradicting much of what has been written on the site lately, Bruce Houghton of Hypebot offers 6 Reasons Not To Quit MySpace:
1. Eyeballs
Nearly 60 million unique visitors viewed 500 million pages on MySpace last month. Those numbers may be smaller than a year ago, but they are are still significant. And I don’t buy the argument that most of them are other musicians.
2. Search Rank
Search for most bands and MySpace will usually appear as one of the top 5 results. Can you afford to have fans click on that link and find a dead or out of date MySpace page?
3. MySpace Is Still Mostly About Music
There are some good music add-ons for Facebook, but MySpace is still about music at its core. A place about music attracts fans and bands should want to be where fans are.
4. It’s Easy
MySpace not be pretty, but it is easy. Services like Hoote Sutie to Sonicbid’s ArtistData make it simple to keep multiple social networks up to date simultaneously.
5. If Other’s Aren’t There…
Be a contrarian. If some artists are quiting MySpace or leaving pages unattended, that decreases the competition for those 60 million pairs of eyes.
6. The Makeover
MySpace is in the middle of a major makeover. I’m as skeptical as you are that it won’t help. (Check out their absurd new logo). But is it smart to delete your account before we find out?
And David Harrell of Music Think Tank offers a nuts-and-bolts analysis of #2 — why MySpace has and will probably maintain its high search result rank for music acts: MySpace Still Rules Google Search Results for Music Acts
- ‘New MySpace’ takes cue from MTV (theglobeandmail.com)
- Steve Rosenbaum: MySpace is Reborn as Social Curation (huffingtonpost.com)
- MySpace Abandons Social Networking (socialtimes.com)
- MySpace Launches Massive Overhaul (dailyfinance.com)
- MySpace Admits Defeat, Goes Niche (businesspundit.com)
- 6 Lessons Learned From the Demise of MySpace (convinceandconvert.com)
- The MySpace redesign: Voice of a generation – or dressed up to sell? (guardian.co.uk)
A “REMIXhibition” experiment — online media as social objects
Andrew Dubber of the Interactive Cultures research centre at the Birmingham School of Media at Birmingham City University in the U.K. is inviting bloggers and creative artists to take an image, slogan or sign and respond to it. Based on the idea that people use online media as “social objects” upon which to base online conversation, Dubber is posting photos and video online to spur dialogue. Dubber’s article Fight the Power: The Art of Protest and the Theory of Social Objects is well worth reading for its access to this “remix” experiment, its theoretical exposition and its discussion of the Fight The Power REMIXhibition of Punch Records at the Custard Factory in Birmingham (in the heart of that city’s new arts & media quarter).
The internet is not a broadcast medium – and nor is it a ‘revolutionized’ older medium. It is instead a conversational space – and there are two main categories of object within that space: the conversation, and the things about which the conversation is taking place. By repositioning exhibited works and media artefacts that spring from that exhibition as individual and decontextualised social objects, the aim is to provoke conversation within that space. (to read the rest).
Deciphering Culture
Deciphering Culture 