BASIC CRAFT

Just finished reading a column by Andrew Walmsley of i-level in which he holds forth on the ’social revolution’ brought about by online communities. If you are looking for a laugh, this is the article for you. It made me laugh, but it was also diasppointing.

On the basis of stardoll.com (a site where little girls can potter away a few hours making up celebrity wardrobes) and some sweeping statements about Facebook, Walmsley spouts forth a sort of marketing-cum-psuedo-sociological utopian hyperbole that would be more appropriate in the late-Nineties when all this stuff first hit our consciousness.

Walmsley has a narrow understanding of the meaning and manifestation of ‘community’, illustrated by statements like ‘hundreds of millions of people across the globe participate in real communities online… more real and relevant to them than their local ones’. Come on! This suggests that we all lived in a sort of primitive, mundane hunter-gatherer world fluctuating between states of boredom and fear of ‘them next door’ until Mark Zuckerberg came ridin’ in.

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Another shout from this blog to the Economist, this time for its special edition on technology and government.

On the whole a well-written feature which takes in a range of international case studies; the real value of which is to be found in its brevity amidst otherwise verbose analysis.

One aspect I liked was this idea of ‘government in competition’ or, more accurately, government lacking competition that would make it strive for better effectiveness and efficiencies. In the nearby blogosphere, Simon Dickson also raises this facet of the feature and goes along with its conclusions.

I also appreciated this ‘government in competition’ thesis, but was surprised that the author of the feature (or the usually very savvy editors) didn’t take it in a different direction. (more…)

Really enjoyed an article in the most recent Economist.

Of cables and conspiraces provides an account of the disruption to internet connectivity caused by the damage to undersea cables.

Not only is it a fascinating insight into the global telecoms infrastructure; it is also a reminder of the material, earthly nature of our increasingly virtual world(s).

But what I really enjoyed about this lively piece was the digest of conspiracy theories born and raised online as a result of the downtime.

2007 was the year of the online petition.

Downing Street invited the great British public to create and sign petitions on its website. Millions duly did and what an ‘insight’ it was. The media lost interest after a couple of months, but in eDemocracy conferences it was impossible to escape ‘the great petition debate’.

The BBC had a go. They mobilised an e-petition as part of the ‘Free Alan Johnston’ campaign. They got about 200,000 signatures from all over the world.

And even burger punters, McDonalds, had a stab. ChangeTheDefinition.com invited us to help MaccyDees to pressure the UK’s dictionary houses into dropping or rewriting the definition of ‘McJob’, which is apparently not a word with positive connotations. They even had a ad up on the big flashy boards at Piccadilly Circus. Cheeky.

2007 was the year of the online petition. Gawd. (more…)

This week Ofcom released figures to suggest that the British use online social networks more than any other European population. Apparently we spend an average 5.3 hours per month logged into sites like Facebook and MySpace. Some are calling it obsessive.

Obsessions are often explosive and a lot of the analysis would suggest that our take up of social networks has been just that. The media story of networking sites is one that begins in a bedroom, builds up some underground cred, catches the eye of a big brand and within a year of launch is bought up for millions of dollars.

But not so. Sites like Facebook and MySpace are just the latest permutations in a long strain of social networks that have been with us since the beginning of the web. In fact, over the years there has been very little change in their essential components.

Take as a case study VirginStudent.com. VirginStudent was a community site launched in 2000 by no less than one of the UK’s - nay the world’s, most important brands - Virgin. It’s a site close to my heart; I did an internship there over a glorious summer in 2001. (more…)

Spoke to a bloke who chose not use video-sharing sites to promote some (decent) animations he’d made. Because, apparently, it takes too much effort to generate the links and views.

Interesting question this. How much time does it take to tend to your videos?

The answer is none. None time and none money. Or so it would seem.

One year ago I upload two videos to YouTube. One I looked after almost daily for three months; the other got slapped up like canteen grub. The only thing that links them is that no money was spent on either and that they are both on a hideously ‘ip-an-’appening video-sharing website. This is the tale of their contrasting fortunes. (more…)

Before I go into this… there are more good contributions posted to forums than there are bad. Hands down.

But… one of my favourite blogs is based on cutting through that good stuff, and going right to the crap.

Speak you’re branes is based around bona fide comments posted on the ‘have your say’ discussion boards run by our broadcasters and newspapers. The stuff is so fantastic and so inane that you’d think that Speak you’re branes must have faked them. But no.

The author is an excellent editor, a cutting critic and clearly a great social media rapporteur. And I love the domain - ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com.

These days people have started sending stuff in they find on their midday surfs. So, if find a gem, send it their way. Hell, send it my way too.

I occasionally enjoy ‘Imagine‘ - the BBC 1 arts programme presented by culture-jockey, Alan Yentob. This week was a sort of lite-touch expose of the world of art collecting. We found out that art collecting is a boom-to-bust affair, and that some people are worried about the bottom falling out of it, while others fear the saturation of the art world. Of course, the internet was fingered (particularly on the latter point).

And the end of the show, Alan invited viewers to get onto the website to download an exclusive limited-edition set of banknotes defaced by twisted art-bruvs, Jake and Dinos Chapman. They offer up two different designs, each available with 600kb and a 16mb versions. The downloads stop on November 22nd; I’ve attached one if you need it afterwards.

By offering a copy as an attachment does it mean that I am an art dealer now? (more…)