I think the biggest thing I’ve discovered over this course is that I have so much to learn.  I’ve never taken a new media class before, but I still considered myself pretty well-versed in the workings of the web.  Au contraire.  I didn’t even know who Tim Berners-Lee was before this class, and now he’s my hero. From day 1 it was clear that there is so much more out there that I’m quickly becoming aware of.  This class reignited my curiosity, and is pushing me to dabble in new areas that will give me an advantage in the workplace.

For example, even though I’m not involved (or even interested really) in journalism, the discussion about how hopeful journalists should have experience with data (HTML, Excel, etc.) really hit home with me.  Basically anyone looking for a career involving media should have experience with these programs and with interpreting data, including me.  I am excited to start learning new programs and experimenting with new technology (if Foursquare, Gowalla, or other location-based services are the future of social media, you better believe I’ll be signing myself up).  I no longer think ‘programming is for programmers’, or that I will be able to focus solely on the areas I have experience in.  I need to be exposed to anything and everything related to my field, that way if it’s thrown at me in a job setting I won’t be totally blindsided.

I still feel like my brain is trying to absorb the immense amount of information that has been thrown at it in the past few weeks, but I have really enjoyed every topic we covered in class.  The only additional thing I can think of that might be relevant to the course would be comparing technology adoption or dependence in different cultures (ex: U.S. vs China vs Europe’s social media use).  But besides that, I’m ready to keep the ball rolling in class next semester.

While I am not a (and never was) a journalism student, I have a few friends that have been through the process.  These are all young students, recent graduates, who are trying to find a job in their field and are discovering that they are missing a major piece of experience.  While they are well-versed in the traditions of journalism that have held strong for so long, they have no experience in utilizing data.  In Laura Ruel’s article outlining which skills are important for landing journalism jobs, she suggests job applicants have experience with everything from audio/video/image editing to web development in order to be seen as valuable to potential employers.  Cindy Royal also points out the necessity of being tech-savvy when working in journalism, arguing that data interpretation has always been important in the field, and pointing to the success of Aron Pilhofer (New York Times) as an example of the benefits of embracing these ideas.  However, students fresh from Journalism school are noticing that these facets of the industry have been largely ignored during their schooling.

This is where I think the greatest amount of change needs to come from when preparing for the amplified role of data in journalism.  Equipping college graduates with skills such as these will put them one giant pace ahead of journalists who do not understand or have experience with such programs when job hunting.  Not only will they be more likely to be hired, but they will be able to use these tools and contribute to this changing landscape.  If the importance of data is ignored, however, ‘qualified’ journalists will become obsolete, and the average Joe with an understanding of data will take over.

RQ 1:  How much does a positive product review encourage a consumer to buy a product?

RQ 2:  How much does a negative product review discourage a consumer to buy a product?

RQ 3:  How dependent are consumers on product reviews when contemplating an online purchase?

Method:  Survey of college students that use the internet to make purchases

I would first ask students whether or not they check product reviews when making online purchases, and how often they check them (using a scale from Never to Almost Always).  Then I would have them fill out Likert scale questions asking how much they agree with each statement, such as:

• I frequently check product reviews before making online purchases.
• I rarely check product reviews before making online purchases.
• One negative review discourages me completely from purchasing the product.
• Several negative reviews discourage me completely from purchasing the product.
• One Positive review is enough to make me purchase the product.  (Etc., etc…)

I’m not sure which theory I would be able to apply here, but I’m interested in investigating it.  Instant access to product reviews could become standard in the near future, and I would like to know how much positive and negative reviews actually affect people’s purchasing decisions.

In “The Long Tail,” Anderson points out the most significant change in the commercial world:  we have gone from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance.  With media sites like iTunes, Netflix, or Rhapsody, consumers are no longer constrained by the options provided by record labels or video stores.  While reading this, I kept thinking back to iTunes and how closely modeled their music store is to Anderson’s suggestions.  When I look up an artist on iTunes, for example, the ‘Genius’ sidebar suggests artists that are similar to the one I am searching for.  If I click on these similar artists, more similar artists appear, leading me further away from my original search, but keeping with my musical tastes.  This is how ‘The Long Tail’ works.  Rather than being exposed to only what is deemed ‘popular,’ we are able to look further down ‘The Long Tail’ and discover more artists or films that interest us.

Additionally, online retailers like iTunes don’t have the same problem as traditional retailers, who have to reserve shelf space for ‘hits’ that will sell enough to be worth their rental space.  Digital media allows unlimited copies of all music/films/games to be available at all times, without occupying any physical space.  This equalizes the value of ‘hits’ and ‘misses’.  For example, when iTunes charged $.99 for each track (regardless of popularity), a track by CocoRosie was just as valuable as a track by Britney Spears.  Now, iTunes has implemented a three-tier pricing strategy very similar to the one suggested by Anderson in this article, with the idea that pricing tracks that are less popular lower will boost the number of sales of that track.

In essence, where retail choices were once limited, now almost everything is worth selling.  Since production, manufacturing, and distributing costs are sliced so drastically with digital media, even something that sells just a few copies is worth it.  Anderson suggests executing this by 1) Making everything available, 2) Cutting the price in half, and then lowering it again, and 3) Help consumers find it.

Step 2′s suggestion:  ’Cut the price in half…Now lower it,” seems like a precursor for the ideas put forth in Anderson’s article “Free!”  Here, Anderson outlines how making products or services free to consumers is a successful business model, and suggests that this method will soon be seen from every company.  Where giving products away ‘free’ to consumers was once a temporary gimmick, it has now become a legitimate business strategy.  Let’s look at music again, for example.  Artists who release their music for free are not making money off of music sales, clearly.  However, their overall popularity increases and their music becomes more widely distributed, leading to bigger crowds at live shows, more endorsements or paid appearances, and other forms of revenue.  So, by giving up one portion of their income (record sales), they are boosting all of their other income sources.

Companies like Google and Yahoo! have also employed this strategy, making their services and products free, and finding income from other sources.  Since consumers are paying nothing for using Google, we are much more happy with it and more likely to use it than a paid search engine.  Anderson points out that “The psychology of ‘free’ is powerful indeed,’ the second you charge anything for the service, no matter how close to 0 that amount is, it loses the positive association it had when it was ‘free’.

The ideas put forth in these two articles contrast radically to the ‘traditional’ business models of the previous decades.  Rather than allowing popular taste to be determined by a few powerful companies, the consumers are provided with unlimited access and choice, leveling the playing field between ‘hits’ and ‘misses’.  This increases the scale and amount of information available to consumers exponentially.  Similarly, marketing products as ‘free’ and finding other ways to produce income will drastically change the business models of emerging companies.  Proof?  The companies that have embraced these concepts (Google, iTunes, Rhapsody, Netflix, etc.) have flourished, while others have faltered.

But it has also developed into a legitimate learning tool.  Educational (‘how to’) videos are uploaded regularly on the site, allowing users to watch as people demonstrate tasks.  While many of these tutorials are meant purely for entertainment, there are some that actually provide educational content.  Cooking videos, for example, are a useful alternative to reading out of a recipe book for new cooks.  You might now know what ‘mince’ means when you read it, but you could watch a YouTube tutorial showing you exactly how to hold your knife and what the finished product should look like.  I tried to think of other videos that might come in handy, and I came across an instructional CPR video.  Now THAT is useful.

While hopefully I will never be in a situation where CPR is necessary, it’s a little comforting to know that if I ever have to use it, I can have a CPR tutorial on my phone in a few seconds, walking me through the steps.  I think things like this make YouTube an effective way of distributing educational materials not only because of the value of having a visual demonstration rather than a written instruction manual, but also because of the speed with which these tutorials can be found.

Take Facebook, for example.  The social networking site was not the first attempt at creating an online network of friends.  It was preceded by sites like Friendster and MySpace, which encouraged you to ‘meet’ new people online and keep in contact with these new friends.  While Facebook’s goal of connecting people was not new, the philosophy behind the site was completely different than its predecessors.  As Stephen Levy points out, Facebook focused on creating a virtual map of an individual’s existing connections rather than encouraging users to ‘find’ friends on the web.  Facebook’s creator Mark Zuckerberg realized that people already have connections to friends, family, and work people in their lives, and to make these connections tangible online would be much more valuable to users.  In the “Facebook Grows Up…” article, Zuckerberg explains this by saying “People already have their friends, acquaintances, and business connections…so rather than building new connections, what we are doing is just mapping them out.”

That’s exactly why Facebook has had more longevity and user attraction than previous sites like MySpace.  Facebook was designed to be an online space where users can actually be themselves, and connect with people they actually know.  This idea of transparency and true identity on the internet has become the new way people use the internet, which is starkly different from the anonymity and lack of identity that had previously characterized the web.  And that’s where social media has continued to go:  toward building an online identity that supplements, rather than hides, your identity in the physical world.

Twitter has also add to users’ online identities, allowing them to ‘follow’ friends and family, as well as celebrities and news sources.  Through this, people are able to see what their friends are talking about, receive recommendations on everything from new music to which restaurants to try in their city.  Twitter and Facebook allow people to get information from the people they care about and trust the most, rather than from third-party news cites that offer no personal connection.  As mentioned in the “Great Wall of Facebook…” article, this exemplifies the push towards a “more personalized, humanized Web.”

In my opinion, this is where social media will continue to go.  People are shifting their personal networks online, and want to feel like the Web is more personal.  I think that networks such as Facebook and Twitter will eventually be intertwined, allowing a user to compile their different accounts into an all-encompassing site that contains their entire ‘social network.’  The features from sites like Facebook and Twitter will be integrated with one another, and extended into every aspect of a user’s online experience.  When they ‘like’ an article, it will appear on their Twitter and Facebook feeds, or they will leave comments on the article directly from their Facebook account.  While some of this has actually been realized already (you can comment on articles on many websites and link it to your Facebook or Twitter account), I think that  these individual sites (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc.) will all eventually be combined into a social media universe; a one-stop-shop for people to access their entire social network.

Advertising, of course.  Just like other media outlets and search engines, Google makes almost all  (97%) of its money through ad sales.  The difference between Google and other companies, however, is the auction-style sale of Adwords to advertisers.  Rather than have advertisers pay a set price for an ad, Google has advertisers bid on these Adwords (keywords), with the highest bidder’s ad being placed highest on the page.  The higher up on the page, the more clicks the ad is likely to get.

For example, if I were to search “Refrigerator Repair” in Google, the first few cites listed would be links for the repair shops that had paid Google for the search ‘refrigerator repair’.  Being placed higher up on this list brings in a substantially more ‘clicks’ on the ad, making it a coveted position for advertisers.  They are willing to pay top dollar for these prime positions because it actually makes a difference.  And, since Google has advertisers bid on different keywords, the more frequently a keyword is searched, the higher the price for your sponsored link to show up when searched.

Advertisers are drawn to Google primarily because of its size and widespread use.  According to Stephen Levy, Google holds 65% of the market share, and “is the only company whose name is synonymous with the verb search.”  Google had made Adwords successful because of its dominance and popularity, but also because these sponsored links are not arbitrary – each link that appears is related to the search performed.  Wired’s ‘Googlenomics’ article talks about how Google wants ads to be helpful rather than annoying.  So, when I search “Refrigerator Repair,” the first few links will lead me to repair shops in my area, saving me the hassle of weeding through all of the results.

So, could this system work for other sites?  Honestly, I’m not sure.  While it seems obvious that different companies that base their revenues on advertising should adopt this business format because of how successful it is for Google, I don’t think they could use it as effectively.  First of all, Google is too huge.  It is used in about 2/3 of U.S. searches.  No other search engine compares (right now).  Advertisers have so much faith in the success of Google that I don’t think they would be willing to take the majority of their business elsewhere.  Also, Google’s sponsored links are subtly worked in with other links in a way that makes many people forget they are clicking on an advertisement.  Since they incorporate information gathered about users through gmail and other Google programs, advertisements seem to become more personal based on the user’s tastes.  I don’t think other companies could achieve this perceived personalization as well as Google has.  But, you never really know.  Bing or some other competitor might just sneak up with their own genius ad program and take over Google’s top search engine position.  Only time (and money) will tell.

According to Rafaeli’s revised definition (1997), interactivity describes how related messages in a sequence are to one another (and especially how newer messages relate to older ones).  This definition emphasizes the sequential aspect of communication, and suggests that these messages relate to each other, the more ‘interactive’ the exchange is.  Rogers and Steur, however, argue that in order for a communication process to be considered interactive, the users or participants must have control over their discourse and their environment.  Steur even takes it a step further, offering that interactivity requires this modification to happen in ‘real time.’

Downes & McMillan (2000) provide 5 fundamental dimensions of interactivity:  1) The communication must be two-way (at least); one-way communication is not interactive, 2) Timing of the communication must be flexible, 3) The communication environment provides a sense of ‘place,’ 4) The participants have control over the communication and the environment, and 5) The communication is seen as ‘responsive.’  These dimensions help narrow the concept of ‘interactivity’ by eliminating communication processes that do not meet all criteria.

Kiousis (2002) offers an alternative definition, claiming that interactivity is:  ”…the degree to which a communication technology can create a mediated environment in which participants can communicate (one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many), both synchronously and asynchronously, and participate in reciprocal message exchanges (third-order dependency.”

After sorting through these different takes on interactivity, the aspect that I think is most important in considering whether something is ‘interactive’ or not is feedback.  If a channel of communication only goes one-way (ex: television, writing in a diary, etc.), it can’t be interactive because there is no feedback or response.  Taking all of these previous definitions into account (and choosing pieces from many of them), I consider ‘interactivity’ to be a medium or application’s ability to allow participants to send messages and receive feedback, to switch roles between sender and receiver, and how quickly the transfer of messages can be fulfilled.  While this is by no means an earth-shatteringly original definition, I feel that these three aspects pointed out by previous authors are the most important ones when I think of what ‘interactive’ means.

One example of a highly interactive application according to this definition is (of course) Twitter.  Twitter allows its users to send messages to their followers in (almost) real time, and to respond to others just as quickly.  Users are able to receive feedback, switch between being a sender and receiver, and send messages back and forth almost instantaneously.  However, while I consider Twitter to be an example of a highly interactive program right now, I realize that somewhere down the line, the definition of interactivity will shift in order to encompass newer technologies.  That’s how it will always be…things will become more and more ‘interactive,’ until the definition of interactive itself changes.  It’s a little overwhelming!

In Bush’s “As We May Think,” he points to the limited effectiveness provided by the technology of the time.  In his opinion, information processing and selection was much too slow to be useful in a universal way at that point.  He argues that the compression of information would not only decrease the costs associated with sharing information, but also increase the speed of information transfer and the depth of its storage.  What I thought was particularly interesting about his article was not just that he pointed to devices or advancements that have come to fruition in more recent times (such as the portability and speed of photography), but that he also touched on things we are still striving to achieve even 65 years later.  We have been discussing the idea of this ‘semantic web’ or linking ideas based on association rather than indexing in class, acknowledging that it is sort of the ‘future’ of technology and the Web.  I think it’s pretty darn impressive that Bush could touch on this concept so long ago with some of the same predictions we are mentioning today.

Similar to Bush, Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect” focuses on the positive effects that the advancement in information sharing could have on solving societal problems.  He asserts that technology can increase the problem-solving capability of each individual, allowing each person to have more of a positive impact on society.

While Bush and Engelbart focus on how technology can supplement human knowledge and provide a more expansive catalog of information for each individual, McLuhan instead turns to the idea that the medium through which we communicate determines the message that is transferred.  In his “Understanding Media” piece, McLuhan shoots down the idea that people construct meanings and transfer these meanings through a medium.  Instead, he argues that the medium we choose determines what our message will be because the content of a message is dependent upon which mode of delivery is chosen.  While all three articles acknowledge or predict the intertwining of human knowledge with the advancement of technology, Bush and Engelhart discuss how to use a medium to get meaning across more effectively and efficiently, while McLuhan argues that the medium itself provides meaning.

Right now I’m between jobs and on the hunt for a new one, and I’m starting to get a little frustrated.  But like we said in class today, there are so many different opportunities out there for people with skills and knowledge in New Media, I just have to be patient and keep looking.  In the meantime, I’m looking forward to learning more about the world of New Media, and I’m hoping by the end of this course I will know how to take better advantage of all of the resources available to me.

To me, New Media encompasses all of the forms of media that emerge as culture and technology continue to develop.  While the term ‘New Media’ seems to suggest originality and revolution, I think these new ideas are dependent upon old ones.  This is exemplified in the introduction of Manovich’s “New Media:  A User’s Guide,” through the story of the Analytic Engine being created based an older invention, and later as the stages of media evolution are described.  We touched on this as well in class, when discussing how everything on the Web today can be traced back to Tim Berners-Lee and his idea for the World Wide Web.  So, while I believe ‘New Media’ refers to any new means (or the advancement of current means) of communicating, I realize that ‘new’ does not mean it is completely original.  Everything is built off of what came before it.