Wiki so far

As of today, I have created my profile on wiki called bio and contributed to Marketing and Advertising using New Media. I have created a new section which is Advertising in video-streaming sites. After doing my research on video-streaming websites and advertising features of online media; I used You Tube and Hulu.com as an example for this entry. I reviewed both sites and how their advertising aspects differ. I also uploaded some pictures showing the example of online advertising in new media. Enjoy reading it :-) Click here.

As an editor Marketing and Advertising using New Media I will also be working on making necessary adjustment to the entries already submitted by contributors.

The next new thing

If I could suggest new media that doesn't exist yet it would be another type of social networking web site, sort of Twitter, but with one difference. People instead of tweeting using text would update their status and make some posts just by uploading short video. The text input would be limited to only 50 words per video and the video would be max only 3min long. So for example, if you are out there and would like to update your status or just share your view or location with other people you would just simply take a short video of the place, upload to the website and put very brief description of what it is that you recorded, etc. Nowadays, everyone has a cell phone with a camera, even Ipod Nano can take very good quality videos. So actually recording a short clip would not be a problem for anyone. All is needed is a nicely designed social website that would make it very easy for members to upload the picture straight from their devices to the web page and view the videos instantly on their phone, etc. We live in the age when the text is slowly replaced by the image. We all know that sometimes thousand words can not describe one single picture. That is why video twitter would be a great idea, I believe. :-)

Summary of my paper

I wrote my reasearch paper about video streaming web sites such us Youtube.com, Hulu.com, Netflix.com and their influences on our everyday life. I researched this topic by reading different kinds of articles about emerging video websites. I was surprised how much information is available out there. It would take a huge amount of time to sort through all of the material. But I was lucky to find couple very interesting scholar paper about this subject. I also watched a very interesting Youtube videos of anthropology professor from Kansas University who spoke about the YouTube phenomenon and what benefits it brings to the society. I also looked into a book that I have previously purchase (but never had a chance to read until now:-) about YouTube. I read some articles on internet about video streaming websites and that gave me pretty good overview on what it is and how really video streaming websites work. I think writing this paper made me realize how young the YouTube and other video streaming websites are. For example YouTube was lounched in December 2005, and only couple months later was worth 1.65 billions of dollars.It is definitively very fast growing industry. I was really shocked when I read the statistics saying that in Sept. 2009 users spent almost 1.2 billion hours videos on YouTube!!!. I believe this is a very interesting topic to write about. We are basically witnessing the beginning of new YouTube era, where the users like you and me are the creators of the content.

Privacy & Confidentiality

There are many issues related to being able to protect privacy and confidentiality in social media. Facebook, myspace, YouTube have revised their privacy policies couple of times already. However, as a users we should be concerned about what we post or what kind of information we share with other web users. The more active we are on the social networking sites, the higher the risk of losing the confidentially. We might think that only our friends can see what we post but in reality everyone can access it and maybe use it against us in the future. Some for profit agencies search the social web sites to target market young people. They try to find out what you like, what kind of music you listen to, what style of clothes you wear and based on that they send you advertisements, promotions, marketing offers, etc.On internet it is really hard to be confidential. Recently, MIT students performed a research study on facebook users. After that reasearch they were able to come up with a way to find out the sexual orientation of facebook users based on what kind of friends they have, what kind of posts they make, what pictures they post, etc. Simply, internet is a huge data mine. It is really almost impossible to be active in social networking websites and at the same time being able to fully control and protect our privacy. Each and every action we take on internet is traceable and recorded if we want it or not.

Advice to Baruch College

In a short amount of time, web technologies have changed our world from how we do shopping to how we read newspapers or learn new things. Surely, the first adopters of this new technologies are young people like students. As a new hired person I will advise Baruch College to use Virtual World to construct an alternative educational facility in Second Life platform. Students who missed the lecture or are unable to come to the class could log in to Virtual Baruch College, find their class, sit down in a nicely design room and listen to the lectures. I think that would be also a great solution for students who work full time and don't have time to come to school.

My another suggestion for Baruch is to post some of the lectures done by professors of Baruch on youtube.com. This way students who don't know what class to take as an elective or are not sure if this subject will interest them can see the actual preview how the class will look like on line. In addition to that, college can use Twitter as a way to remind students about certain deadlines or social event that are going on in the school.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual world technologies are becoming more and more popular, and not only from the point of view of entertainment. Many big corporations like IBM, educational institutions and even government and military agencies are using virtual world tools in everyday operations. According to Mark Tutton’s article from Cnn.com Going to the virtual office in a Second Life, “companies are increasingly seeking innovative ways of bringing employees together for conferences and meetings remotely.” First of all, using those tools of communication between people from different parts of the globe is much cheaper. Instead of organizing conferences that are very costly, the employees can have a productive “meeting” and discussions with other colleagues without having to leave the comfort of their own homes. Another benefit of virtual world technologies used in a corporate world is that some people don’t even have to come to work but instead they can do their work from home. I think that is a great solution for single parents who would like to work but can’t leave their children home without supervision. Virtual technologies also help people to be creative and use their imagination in designing cloths or interior. It also helps people to think in abstractive and more creative way. Virtual worlds like Second Life or Sometime 3D(by IBM) are developed and upgraded on the daily basis. There are new innovations and approaches to make this tool more useful in everyday life. However, as every networking tool has some disadvantages, so does virtual world. It definitively limits the interaction with people because instead of seeing your coworkers in your office you are limited to interacting with their “avatars-animated alter-egos”as well named by Mark Tutton in his article. Another dangerous side of the Second Life is that people who spend too much time in this created, perfect world may become addicted to this surreal world. Just like the people who spend hours and hours in front of computer playing games tend to forget about other important thing in their life. For example shopaholics in virtual world may spend fortunes on shoe-shopping without worrying that they may not be able to afford it. The last but not the least thing that we should be concern about is the future of the human interaction and communication. Let’s just hope that in the future, people will not turn themselves completely into virtual world and that there will still be room for the face-to-face conversation.

Social Networking

One of many social benefits of online networking technologies were presented to us during this presidential campaign when Barack Obama used social media such us Facebook, Youtube as a mean to communicate its ideas with wide range of internet users, especially the younger generation of Americans. In New York Times article, David Carr summarizes the effects of social networking used in Obama’s campaign in the following words, “by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote.”

Another example of using social media technologies in politics is tweetering. For example, in Iran during the elections young people used the tweeter.com to communicate with the rest of the world to show their disapproval of the outcome of the elections.

Businesses use blogs, facebook and any other possible social media to advertise, promote their services and products.

Networking technologies are more often used by the employers as a help in hiring people. According to Frank Lengfitt and his article Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting, “Professional recruiters have started hunting for job candidates using social networking technology.” Creating the right profile including interests, achievements, education and professional ideas can lead to being noticed by the future employer.

As with everything else, there is a good and bad side of everything. We benefit from social networking in a big scale, but at the same time we give up some rights. As soon as we post a picture or upload a video on Facebook it becomes the property of Facebook. It happens very often that social sites enable profile pictures to advertisers and marketers, without an announcement to users.

The actual lack of control over your personal content can bring some serious issues. However, we have to remember that with every newly developed technology there are people who will use it not in the way it was initially designed for but for the personal gain.

I believe the social networking sites will keep attracting more and more people of different age. I also believe that gradually people will start to realize that for the benefits of having hundreds of “friends” they will have to give up some personal rights such as right to their online content and most importantly the right to privacy.