Text is not Dead

If we continue with Courtney’s earlier notion, which we discussed in class, that browsing the internet is akin to window shopping, then video is a website’s window display. Corey Lopardi makes the very interesting point that video on websites is far more powerful than any other kind of advertising because it’s interactive.

Unlike commercials on television, which are a passive form of advertising, viewers see web videos because they choose to watch them. This makes them more receptive to your message. By clicking on your video they’re giving you the permission to inform and entertain them. Video is a great way to explain important or complicated procedures in a simple visual manner that your customers can understand.

Though in thinking of a hyperlocal website, the idea of being able to “explain important or complicated” or even advertise as a whole may not necessarily be a priority… or is it. News is a product. Many people are selling it; some are giving it away, but one cannot escape the fact that it is a commodity. If people like the product they will return for more because they trust the brand. Being a person’s main source of news is as important for a company to have a loyal customer. So, I think it’s important to continually think of the readers of the news as consumers, consumers who we want to return.

One of the most important things for a company to first establish is traffic to the store, or in our case, the site. Video is not only entertaining, but also, it provides the site with a far higher likelihood of being picked up by a search agent. Let’s face it, if the site isn’t coming up on a Google search, it may as well not exist. Lopardi explains this effect of video:

Web videos also help to insure that your website will be seen by others. Most search engines now include web video in their evaluating of a websites value, which directly relates to the site’s search engine placement. Like photos, blogs, and text, web video now weighs in heavily when search engines decide how high in their placement to list a site. Videos can also be placed on hosting sites like YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo and others to drive potential customers all over the world to your website.

A blog on Outerbox Design points out that having video on a site will sometimes “double the time a visitor spends on that page.” He explains how this will inevitable increase the site’s conversion rate. Now, the customer has become more than someone who browsed the window displays. He or she has come into the store and has been intrigued enough to look through the inventory.

One may ask how much video should a news site have, especially one that aims to be taken seriously. Journalism.org looked at three major, highly rated, news sites and studied their home pages for two hours. CNN had 29 video links, 20 were recorded and edited site videos, 2 were user generated, and 7 were live videos. MSNBC had 45, all of which were recorded and edited. And, Fox News had 31; 25 of them were recorded and edited, and 6 were live feeds. These numbers do not even take into consideration podcasts. This is not my way of saying, well, other sites are doing it too! But… they are. While these mammoth sites are not the direct competition of the hyperlocal ones, they do set a standard and become a model of what people want and expect when they search for news online.

Ever since people have gone to the internet for news, they have desired for it to be more entertaining. The internet was such an excitingly different platform from newsprint. The web content, the quality of the writing, the efficiency of the layout are all extremely important to the success of a site, but video gets them in the door and entices them to stay a little while.

As we have been reading about whether online news media can fill the void inevitably left by the dying industry of print news, I have concluded that one of the most important steps new media can take in doing so is to first acknowledge that a void exists. I think one of the major fallbacks of new media is  its  notion that one technology is simply replacing another.  A surprisingly unsubstantial article likens the change to going from horse and buggies to automobiles.  However, someone who commented on the post made the very good point that we are not seeing the evolution of vinyl to CD.

New media is not simply a different platform for the same quality of news found in newspapers.  So, the void is in the level of journalism, such as investigative reporting, not usually found in blogs.  The desired and thriving platform is one that provides immediate, remarkably current information, access to as many different sources as a person could click on, and abundance.

In asking myself if the two will meet, I, without having to search too far, found Google FastFlip. It’s Google’s answer to having the best of both worlds. And, while I am beginning to have concerns over Google’s monopoly over the internet and information in general, I have to admit, it’s a pretty good site- damn.

Everyone knows what is causing the dilemma the newspaper industry is currently facing, especially small, local papers. Few people will pay for news that they can get for free. Makes sense to me. A lot of news sites offer, with varying degrees of value, local news.

CTCentral and Topix are some that offer news of central Connecticut. However, CTCentral more or less refers readers to the local papers by offering the links to them on one side and little or no original content (not from the paper). Topix does a fair job of showing the major news stories of any specific town. The interesting thing about this site is that while newspaper sites will close articles for comments after a certain amount of time, Topix doesn’t do that. The result is news stories that have become discussions, nearly creating a hybrid of Twitter and the local newspaper website. Nixle functions entirely differently. It’s free, and people can register, submit their location, and receive alerts in the form of text messages. Typically, the alerts are from the local police department, so immediately, and by phone, someone can know about a nearby traffic accident or criminal activity.

The Raw Story features an article that discusses possible strategies for newspaper survival. One recommendation is that they use hyperlocal sites as potential models. The article has a quote from an opinion piece, which appeared in the New York Times, by David Swenson:

In a recent opinion piece in the Times, David Swensen, the chief investment officer at Yale University, and Michael Schmidt, a financial analyst, argued that US newspapers should be turned into “nonprofit, endowed institutions — like colleges and universities.”

On the other hand, The Chicago Tribune will be implementing an entirely different strategy. For a week, the paper plans to not run AP articles to test readers desire for them. This experiment will apply to only print newspapers. I wonder about the effectiveness of this test because few people will subscribe or unsubscribe to a paper based on one week’s worth a issues. To me, this situation seems like an injured person using anything, any scrap of cloth, to stop heavy, heavy bleeding. I feel bad for the newspaper industry- not bad enough to subscribe to a paper- but bad. However, the paper is demonstrating desperation and a severe laps in judgement. If something is failing, why remove one of the most valuable and desired aspects? Why lessen the quality just to see if the readers notice enough to cancel a subscription?

The future of local news really exists in the smaller, non-profit , or hyerlocal sites. Now, it’s up to that industry to grab the reigns and produce something worthy of replacing the print paper.

In 2005, Dave Taylor said the following about Meetup beginning to charge a fee for its service:

When your business is a commodity service, how do you survive the transition from free to paid without sweetening the transaction? The answer: You don’t.

And that’s sad, because Meetup.com was a fascinating little company.

I joined Meetup in 2007, and I admit that I have a different perspective because I did not know it when it was completely free. However, I find the “commodity service” to a rather intelligent business design. Firstly, a person can register with the site, join multiple groups, attend the “meetings,” comment on the group’s page, and send direct messages to the other members and the organizer for free. The site doesn’t charge someone until that person decides to create his or her own meetup group. And as someone who has done this, I can say that the fee is quite reasonable ($15 a month for 3 months- the price, of course, decreases if more months are purchased at a time).

In any case, I find that the fee does a number of things: allows Meetup to continue to function successfully, weeds out the people who just want to start a group thus leaving people who are at least serious enough about their subject to spend the money, and keeps the site from being completely overrun with a ridiculous amount of groups who have very few members. And, in the two years that I have been using the site, with increasing frequency, I have not encountered any advertising or signs that the site has sold my email. Suffice to say, I am fairly pleased with the platform and feel that Taylor was incorrectly presumptuous in thinking that charging for the service was company suicide.

Clay Shirky addresses the Meetup phenomenon in Chapter 8 of Here Comes Everybody.

By registering people’s interests and location, Meetup can identify latent groups and help them come together. Heiferman bet that all over the United States (and later, the world) latent groups would be happy to get together if someone solved the coordination problem.

I completely agree. Meetup serves a growing sect of the population- people who have too little time to cultivate groups around them, keep them alive, and find others with common interests. And, while I’m sure the list of popular groups listed on page 197, which range from witches to Tori Amos, is accurate for 2008, I find that groups are forming as more social communities where the people share a very generalized interest (such as dining out) or as business networking opportunities.

I had a great deal of apprehension when the internet became so popular that people spent more time with their computers than interacting with 3-dimensional people. However, as Shirky continually points out, the internet is becoming an enormous platform for groups and communities to interact. Meetup took the notion of bringing people with commonalities together to a level that is accessible to all and functions- so far- rather smoothly. Altering its system from free to fee-based didn’t destroy it: it put a value to it.

This is an interesting video about Meetup, a bit odd, but pretty good.

As I finish Shirky’s book, I am intrigued by the simplicity of one of his final explanations for a workable formula for success, specifically the success of certain social networking platforms, but the formula is useful enough to be applied to multiple companies.

In Chapter 11, he breaks it down into three basic elements: promise, tool, and bargain. In elaborating on his point, Shirky says,

The promise is the essential piece, the thing that convinces a potential user to become an actual user. Everyone already has enough to do, every day, and no matter what you think of those choices, those choices are theirs to make.

He goes on to compare “promise” to traditional marketing, which is why I find it so powerful. He cited Wikipedia as one successful example because people get to edit articles or create new ones. A platform for near limitless self-promotion is one of the most effective promises. This thought drew me think of another incredibly successful (and growing) platform- You Tube. Not only can a person watch and be freely entertained for hours with movie clips, show episodes, videos created by “amateurs,” etc, but also, if he or she is so inclined, a person can upload a video. I find that the ability for people to share pictures, videos, or their own words is a strong draw. Essentially, people love to talk about themselves- it’s in our nature. Sites that allow free, unlimited ease of use in self-promotion is going to be successful. That “promise” is an important one.

This site is really interesting. It shows a table of video sharing sites, their characteristic, and their reviews. No surprise- YouTube is #1.

Below is a short clip of Skirky, in a radio interview, addressing the authority and “power of one.” This video brings a different perspective to the idea of self-publishing. He points out that Wikipedia is a great example of the power of one voice, especially when that voice speaks for the value of speaking, not for money.

The notion of self publishing is something very interesting to me because it’s wonderful and controversial at the same time. It’s a revolution of communication and a devolution of the ivory tower industry of publishing which used to be the authority on what was worthy to be published. I’ve always been a firm believer that the canon of mass-published texts is far from representative of the best work writers have produced and submitted. The canon is what the powers that be have decided would sell.

However, now that some barriers have crumbled, anyone’s work can be self-published. So, a writer has the choice to either submit to the publishing companies, which may never deem the work valuable enough- or worse, publish it with the caveat that the company puts its own interpretation to it. Or, a writer can enter the arena of total equality among artists, no barriers, and no strict standards. The appeal of the latter is obvious; however, if I had the choice to have my work published by Random House or iUniverse, I would not dwell too long over my decision.

In Chapter 3 of Here Comes Everybody. Clay Shirky says the following:

As they surveyed the growing amount of self-published content on the internet, many media companies correctly understood that the trustworthiness of each outlet was lower than that of the established outlets like The New York Times.

However, he contrasts that point with another comment:

… the effortlessness of publishing means that there are many more outlets. The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets.

He was speaking more specifically to the idea of journalism. However, I feel the same could be true of pieces of larger texts writers are aiming to self-publish. A writer can cultivate an audience online and tease them with excerpts on Facebook, Twitter, his or her own blog, and other platforms. This thought brings me back to the conversation we had in class about the power of a few passionate followers vs. a multitude of apathetic ones. The internet is a source of power for a person to market his or herself.

The question remains if the power is available to all, does that dilute its meaning and effect. What makes a self-published work special if anyone can do it? Again, I’ll point to Shirky’s comments:

In a world where publishing is effortless, the decision to publish something isn’t terribly momentous… For a generation that is growing up without the scarcity that made publishing such a serious-minded pursuit, the written word has no special value in an of itself.

I have come to no clear conclusion- only more questions. I love the direction technology has taken society in terms of communication, speed, efficiency, abundance of information and knowledge, and versatility. However, a part of me grows slowly sad over the idea that someday, books, real books with ink, and pages, and cover art, may be a thing of the past. Is there a way to be a part of the revolution without losing touch with certain elements of the past?

While reading Wikipedia’s articles on itself and on using it as a research tool, I’ve found that it has an elevated sense of its contributors and users.

Wikipedia has certain advantages over other reference works. Being web -based and having a very large number of active writers and editors, it provides fast coverage of many topics and provides hyperlinking, unavailable in traditional media.

Also, it often provides access to subject matter that is otherwise inaccessible in non-native languages. Since English Wikipedia editors come from all around the world, the relative lack of non-Western topics found in many Western publications is significantly less noticeable on Wikipedia.

In comparison with most other web-based resources, Wikipedia’s open approach tremendously increases the chances that any particular factual error or misleading statement will be promptly corrected. As Wikipedia is a collaborative, ongoing project, one may also ask questions of an article’s authors. And thanks to its extensive hyperlinks and external links usage wiki can be an excellent guide to other related material, both on and off Wiki.

While it cites problems of accuracy and recommends ways to understand an article and assess its value in research, if someone were to use it as a research tool or even cite it in a paper, I am doubtful that that person would have read the article pertaining to how to do so. It suggests examining an article’s history, time in existence, and how many sources it cites. However, the vicious cycle is that an article’s reliability is strongly reliant on the topic’s popularity and the Wikipedia community’s attention to keeping it accurate and, as Wikipedia would say, unbiased.

I find Wikipedia to be a quick and convenient way to double check something I already think to be true, such as the birthplace of a certain writer, the year a movie was made, the symbol for a Greek god, if zinc helps vitamin c get absorbed or is it magnesium that aids with calcium, etc. I do not use it to further understand the issues in Afganistan, the case with the Yale killing, or wether the balloon boy story was a hoax. However, Wikipedia upholds its accuracy on such types of current events.

Wikipedia often produces excellent articles about newsworthy events within days of their occurrence, such as the 2007 Wimbledon Championships, Lal Masjid siege, Kidnapping of Alan Johnston or the Benoit family tragedy . Similarly, it is one of the few sites on the web even attempting neutral, objective, encyclopedic coverage of popular culture, including television series or science fiction. It is also developing across-the-board global coverage of subject areas where for one reason or another existing sources are highly fragmented, including sports such as football/soccer and golf.

I noticed the words, neutral and objective in the above quote. Really? People’s whose careers are to provide the public with information are often accused of biasness; however, Wikipedia users are supposed to feel it’s a more objective news source than NY Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, etc. How do less experienced researchers and less avid followers of current events learn to differentiate between an editable, fallable source and a vetted one? Wikipedia puts its integrity in the hands of the general public, and the users trust it . Wikipedia itself cannot even remain consitent on its value as a research tool. It asserts that it should not be cited accademically but goes on to explain how one can determine the worthiness of the information for research purposes. One question prevails: how do I use this thing?

I think this video is great.  He says, “reality has become a commodity.”

Wikipedia, like Google, thrives on it’s accessibility and convenience. Just like food that’s unhealthy, people eat it because it’s easy, less expensive (in the case of Wikipedia-free), and everywhere. To eat a healthy diet, a person has to know that special section of the grocery store, the brands that actually are healthy versus the ones that claim to be, and be willing to spend the extra money on vegetables and lean meats. I promise that the metaphor is over and that I had a point in making it.

As a source, Wikipedia is easy, so easy to search, use, and read. As a format to contribute to, I find it less so, but that’s a whole other post. A flaw that everyone seems to be aware of but bothers few is its check and balance system (or lack there of), the existence of bias (or even defamatory) entries, and the fact that the readers are the writers. Before Wikipedia, people relied of Webster’s Dictionary, Encyclopedia Britanica, etc. No one would have bought the Encyclopedia of Kasey or Shoemaker’s Thesaurus (except maybe my mother.) The source of information was required to me more reliable, even infallible, and the standard came from the users of the source. The weakness in Wikipedia is the same as its strength. The standards are set by the users, and the content is only as reliable as the system can allow. An article on Physorg.com explains my point.

Traditional media impose a set of practices and institutions that enable consumers to evaluate the trustworthiness of information, says Nunberg. “When I walk into a library, I know everything was screened several times: by editors, publishers, librarians. I assume the writer was someone good enough to have been given a book contract.” The web eliminates those mechanisms, he says, and so “puts more of a burden on the user than the world of print.” Calling that problem a technological one overlooks its complexity, says Nunberg: “You have to have a sense of what’s out there on the web, who put it up, and why they put it up.”

Finding Dulcinia says it a bit more bluntly.

As Wikipedia can be edited by anyone with an Internet connection, it’s subject to changes by users who falsify entries. Wikipedia claims that peer reviewers quickly delete this “vandalism.” However, it’s been shown that for less researched topics, the false information can remain online for extended periods of time. When surfing Wikipedia, take the information you read with a grain of salt. It’s recommended to never cite Wikipedia in any academic work.

Even Wikipedia itself acknowledges, to some extent, its flaws.

Wikipedia acknowledges that it should not be used as a primary source for serious research.^[13] Librarian Philip Bradley stated in an October 2004 interview with The Guardian that the concept behind the site was a “lovely idea,” but, “practically, I wouldn’t use it; and I’m not aware of a single librarian who would. The main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data is reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window.”^[14] Robert McHenry and Paul Vallely similarly noted that readers of Wikipedia can not know who has written the article they are reading - it may or may not have been written by an expert.^[6]

The issues are not secret. The weakness is obvious. What’s the problem? It seems, to me at least, that no one cares. The internet and the entire notion of readily available information has created a general apathy for value and accuracy. When everyone is a contributor, the user has to make more effort to distinguish between the knowledgeable and inaccurate. And, the internet is not typically the place to ask users to make more of an effort than they have to in order to obtain information.