Blogs vs. Wikis

Blog, also known as weblog is a personal site where individual can post journal entries, headlines or short stories. Blogs also allow visitors to comment on the content. Some technology sites says that there were about 112,000,000 blogs as of December 2007. Since then the number of blogs in the Blogosphere has dramatically increased. But the truth is that nobody can really count those.

Blogs are the simplest way for an individual to express themselves. You don't need any web development or design skills to be able to blog.


According to Margaret Locher from April 17, 2008 posted on www.cio.com (click here to access the article) Wiki "allows groups of users to create, edit and comment on online documents—so that each team member could contribute and access up-to-date information on the project." Therefore, Wikis are the entries created by different users in different times on one particular subject on one platform. In contrast to blogs, wikis are the work of team, therefore the wiki platform allows different users to write and read. However, to be able to create wikis, users need some basic html or css knowledge. Also, the platform limits some of the features to be able to keep the platform neat.

In today's networked World, wikis and the blogs attribute each other. Linking to a wiki from a blog or linking another blog on a blog can be given as example.

New vs. Old

Once Radio was new media. So was TV. Today, when we talk about New Media we talk about 2.0 web technologies that enabling us to connect to media in a very different way than it is used to be. The new media technologies enable the audiences to participate in the conversation, collaborate with members of the online community and lets individuals to express their creativity. Facebook, blogs, wikis, You Tube are some of the samples of new media platforms. How this new technology is converging the current old media?
Old Media, also can be called as push up media. The source pushes the content at certain time, in certain format to certain receiver. For example, HBO (source) pushes an episode of some series (content) at 9:00 EST on cable networks. If you are not there at the right time and the right place, you can't watch the episode of your favorite series.
New Media is called pull up media. Without any restriction, the audience can pull up the material from the source. For example, you can watch theepisode of your favirote series on iTunes store whenever it's convenient to you.

Old media also doesn't allow you to contribute. The source has authority on the content and the content is only to "Read". For example, The New York Times website in 2002, didn't allow users to post readers comment on the news, share with friends or post on forum sites.

Contrast to old media, New media is called Read and Write platform, users of the media are not only the readers but also contributors.

WHAT IS NEW MEDIA?

New Media, also known as Web 2.0 includes communication technologies like blogs (blogger.com), wikis (wikipedia.com), social networking sites (Facebook. com), video streaming websites (youtube.com), social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us) and many other social media forms. Those new technologies, according to Linda Friedman and Hershey Friedman and their work The New Media Technologies: Overview and Research Framework, "empower users and this- far from stifling web-related activities- actually stimulate innovation and growth." Thanks to new media ordinary people like you and me are not anymore solely users of the internet but also valuable contributors. Websites like Wikipedia.com permits everyone to share their knowledge and information with others. Creating personal blog allows us to express ourselves, our ideas about certain issues, etc. Blogs also allow us to make comments and therefore be a part of the discussion about particular subject (just like in journalism)
How important is the internet to new media?
Internet is the engine of all new technologies. It is the crucial part of the development and proper functioning of Web 2.0. It looks like without the revolution of Internet there would be no progress. With the growing number of internet users comes the expansion and progress of the new technologies. And likewise, the progress of new technologies attracts more and more internet users.

How does new media influenced so called old media (radio, television, newspaper, etc.)?
Instead of totally replacing old media, new media technologies are constantly forcing old media to change the structure, improve the availability and adjust to the new standards. For example, newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times or New York Daily News, besides traditional printed issues provide on-line versions of the news that are free of charge and are updated several times a day.
Radio, also significantly challenged by the new media phenomenon, started to release podcasts. For example WNYC Radio, in addition to the traditional AM FM radio broadcasting has its own website http://www.wnyc.org with available podcast from the daily shows.
Television channels more often make the episodes of their most popular series available on their website. If we missed our favorite episode all we need to do is go-online and watch it instantly at any time of the day we want.
Old media with the evolution of internet and Web 2.0 technologies is facing difficult changes. The only way for old media to survive its existance is to go with the flow and be able to adjust to those changes by combining new technologies with the traditional way of doing things.

My Term Paper

I would like to write my term research paper about:
Video streaming web sites such as Youtube.com, Hulu.com, Netflix.com and their influences on our everyday life. I would like to discuss them from the multiple educational and anthropological perspectives. In my research paper I will also focus on the social aspect of this kind of new media.
I have a little video for you to watch. I think this clip is pretty awesome. It really opened my eyes on what is the new youtube.com phenomenon. I hope you will enjoy watching it. Please click here to watch it.