Step One - Generating Topic Ideas for Individual Case Studies:
A study of the impact of new and digital media on Social Networking sites
Step Two: Identifying relevant theories/ issues & debates
| Theorist/ issue or debate | Topic Covered/Meaning | Book/ Publication/ Online source | Key Quotes |
| Pluralism | Audiences are seen as capable of manipulating the media in an infinite variety of ways according to their prior needs and dispositions, and as having access ... | Gurevitch, M. Culture, Society and the Media, Methuen & CO LTD, 1982 | QUOTE 1: ...to what Halloran calls 'the plural values of society' enabling them to 'conform, accommodate, challenge or reject'. (Gurevitch et al. 1982: 1) |
| | QUOTE 2 : McQuail's words the 'relationship is generally entered into voluntarily and on apparently equal terms' | ||
| Marxism By Karl Marx | Marxists view capitalist society as being one of class domination; the media are seen as part of an ideological arena in which various class views are fought out, although within the context of the dominance of certain classes; | | QUOTE 1:”The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it, he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed.” |
| Globalization | The way in which in contemporary society, distant countries are inter-related and connected together by trade, communication and cultural experience. | | Quote 1: Globalization is generally stated as "more than expansion of activities beyond the boundaries of particular nation states" |
| The hypodermic needle | The hypodermic needle assumed media effects were simple and direct, a casual connection existing between what people see, hear and read in the media and their knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. | 166pg Williams, K. Understanding media theory, Swansea university , 1997 | Quote 1: “It suggests that the media injects its messages straight into the passive audience (Croteau, Hoynes 1997). This passive audience is immediately affected by these messages” |
| Two step model | Katz and lazarsfeld(1955) put forward their ‘two step model’, which advances the view the media by themselves are not powerful in influencing people, arguing people are influenced by members of their family, friends..etc. | Understanding media theory, Swansea university , 1997 | |
| The uses and gratification By Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch's | Uses and Gratifications Theory is an approach to understanding why people actively seek out specific media outlets and content for gratification purposes. The theory discusses how users proactively search for media that will not only meet a given need but enhance knowledge, social interactions and diversion. It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. The theory also holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs. The approach suggests that people use the media to fulfill specific gratifications. This theory would then imply that the media compete against other information sources for viewers' gratification | Understanding media theory, Swansea university , 1997 | Quote 1: According to Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch's research there were 5 components comprising the Uses and Gratifications Model. The components are: · “The audience is conceived as active.” · “In the mass communication process much initiative in linking gratification and media choice lies with the audience member.” · “The media compete with other sources of satisfaction.” · “Methodologically speaking, many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by individual audience members themselves.” · “Value judgments about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience · Orientations are explored on their own terms.” Quote 2: "The nature of the theory underlying Uses and Gratifications research is not totally clear," (Blumler, 1979) This makes the line between gratification and satisfaction blurred, calling into question whether or not we only seek what we desire or actually enjoy it. (Palmgreen,P., and Rayburn,J.D., 1985) |
| | Quote 3: “It presents the use of media in terms of the gratification of social or psychological needs of the individual” (Blumler & Katz 1974). Quote 4: “Blumler & Katz (1974) argued that audience needs have social and psychological origins which generate certain expectations about the mass media” | ||
| Reception theory By Stuart Hall | Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory that emphasizes the reader's reception of a literary text. It is more generally called audience reception in the analysis of communications models. | Understanding media theory, Swansea university , 1997 | Quote1: “Media messages are always open and polysemic (having multiple meanings) and are interpreted according the context and culture of receivers.” Quote 2: “Stuart Hall emphasized the stages of transformation through which any media message passes on the way from its origins to its reception and interpretation.” Quote 3: “For ideological and institutional communicators choose to encode messages for ideological and institutional purposes and manipulate language and media for those ends (media messages are given a preferred reading, or what might now be called spin.” Quote 4: “Hall drew on Semiotic theory to argue that any media content can be regarded as a text that is made up of signs, these signs are structured; that is , they are related to one another in specific ways to make sense of a text- to read a text- you have to be able to interpret the signs and their structure. Example when you read a sentence you must not only decode the individual words but you also need to interpret the over-all structure of the sentence to make sense of the sentence as a whole.” Quote 5: “Hall argued that most texts can be read in several ways but there is generally a preferred or dominant reading that the producers of a message intend when they create a message, as a critical theorist, Hall assumed that most popular media content will have a preferred reading that reinforces the status quo. “ Quote 6: “Audiences for particular genres often comprise “interpretative communities” which share much the same experience, forms of discourse and frameworks for making sense of media. Quote 7: “Audiences are never passive, nor are their members all equal, since some will be more experienced, or more active fans than others.” |
| More Quotes | | | Cherry Turkle :all together We make our technologies, and they, intern, shake us. |
| Keywords/ Media issues and debates | |
| Digital Revolution | Refers to the revolution in the production and distribution of media texts, which now rely on the digital codes used by computers and the internet. |
| Moral Panic | Media- generated public outcry against a group, community or practice considered threatening and/or dangerous. |
| Polymeric | Texts that are open to a range of different readings and interpretation. |
| Technological determinist | Argue that technology dictates or determines the nature of society. |
| | |
Step Three: Choosing individual topic area and relevant theorists
Write here what your case study will involve. Remember it should be about the impact of new and digital media on.......
The Impact of new and digital media on social networking sites;
· How new digital media such as the social networking sites declined newspapers
· How are audiences becoming more powerful using social network sites?
·
Explain why you have chosen this topic and why you think this will be a rich area for study.
I chose this case study because I could talk about range examples, e.g. Face book, Twitter, Myspace etc. The impact of new digital media on social networking site is most talked about issue at this moment as technologies are improving and anyone can access the news via new digital technologies through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Identify at least three media texts/ products that you will use as your primary sources of evidence to demonstrate the impact of new and digital media in your topic area.
| TEXT | PLATFORM (broadcast, print, e-media) | YEAR OF PRODUCTION |
| Facebook | E-Media | February 2004 |
| Twitter | E-Media | July 2006 |
| MySpace | E-Media | August 2003 |
List here the theorists you have identified in your research table above that you will need to refer to for your study:
· Pluralism
· Globalization
· The hypodermic needle
· Reception theory
Next steps:
1. Has new and digital media had an impact upon ownership and control of the media institution(s) involved in your case study area? Explain in detail any impact and what exactly has changed.
An impact upon ownership and control of the media institution….
Research :
| Facebook | Founded by : Mark Zurkerburg Advertising : Banners ads, Referring Marketing, Casual Games Privacy (Wikipedia)According to comScore, an internet marketing research company, Facebook collects as much data from its visitors as Google and Microsoft, but considerably less than Yahoo!. In 2010, the security team began expanding its efforts to reduce the risks to users' privacy,[ but privacy concerns remain. On November 6, 2007, Facebook launched Facebook Beacon, which was an ultimately failed attempt to advertise to friends of users using the knowledge of what purchases friends made. |
| Twitter | Founded by: Jack Dorsey Quotes: “It has been described as "the SMS of the Internet." “Twitter moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second” Privacy and securityTwitter messages are public but users can also send private messages. Twitter collects personally identifiable information about its users and shares it with third parties. The service reserves the right to sell this information as an asset if the company changes hands. While Twitter displays no advertising, advertisers can target users based on their history of tweets and may quote tweets in ads[129] directed specifically to the user. |
| MySpace | Founded by: Santa Monica Owner: Specific Media LLC Myspace was founded in 2003 and was acquired by News Corporation in July 2005 for $580 million.[10] From 2005 until early 2008, Myspace was the most visited social networking site in the world, and in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States.[11][12] In April 2008, Myspace was overtaken by Facebook in the number of unique worldwide visitors, and was surpassed in the number of unique U.S. visitors in May 2009.[13][14] Since then, the number of Myspace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns.[15] As of December 2011, Myspace was ranked 138th by total web traffic.[3] In June 2009, Myspace employed approximately 1,600 workers.[16] Since then the company has undergone several rounds of layoffs and by June 2011, Myspace had reduced its staff to around 200[2] On June 29, 2011, Myspace was sold to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for approximately $35 million. Activist group MoveOn.org has criticized MySpace, claiming that the website practices censorship by not showing anti-media ads, removing fake profiles for high-profile media executives like Rupert Murdoch and attempting to force users away from using certain third-party Flash applications on their profiles |
1. Has new and digital media had an impact upon ownership and control of the media institution(s) involved in your case study area? Explain in detail any impact and what exactly has changed.
With the development and audience engagement with Facebook has become a very powerful company. As the most the popular of all the social networks Facebook has gained a lot of power and control over a lot of the internet. Websites which make use of Facebook’s ‘Like’ buttons or any form of Facebook Connect allow Facebook to track which users are browsing those websites, regardless of whether they interact with the content or not. These connections primarily appear to be a form of sharing for the user. Twitter has been in control of the news nowadays for example the London riots in summer 2011; well known new broadcasters such as the BBC get updated by twitter. This shows that twitter is in control of the news. Furthermore MySpace owned by Santa Monica is still running MySpace however with new features. "There are multiple, independent, sometimes competing sources of authority over our lives."(Liberal Pluralism)
2. What impact has there been on the way in which the audience now consume the media products/ texts involved in your case study? How does it differ from what went before? Consider (SHEP)
New technologies such as the internet and upgraded mobile phones makes it easier for the audience to consume the media products whereas before audience don’t really have a say init. People now use new technologies such as their Iphone’s and other smart phones to access and interact with news. Due to the effects of globalisation and citizen journalism, audiences are now playing an active role in becoming the producers as well as the consumers of media. Traditionally people get gossips and news by simply talking to someone face to face whereas, now people can get updated with news and gossips by social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition prints and broadcast have improved as well as we can now get news and gossips by 24 hours television channels, radio, magazines,etc. People can also share news and gossips to other people which makes consuming the media a lot easier than it used to be. “Today’s audiences expect to be able to choose what they read, and most believe they should be able to contribute content and opinions”
However, before all these development audience played a passive role in consuming media, absorbing what they heard or read without being able to listen to other people thoughts and ideas about it. However now audiences are more active, as they can create their own blogs gets their views across to the media to get their voice heard. People can also comment on the blogs too. "[Web 2.0 is] ...the second generation of the web, which enables people with no specialised technical knowledge to create their own websites, to self publish, create and upload." This challenges the traditional media with newspapers and magazines no longer being an essential part of their audience’s lifestyles as they can consume the same information more easily and quickly through new and digital technologies.
3. What impact has there been on how the media institution now has to produce the texts and the way in which the texts/ products are distributed and exhibited? This should involve a detailed textual analysis of at least 3 texts to demonstrate the point.
Twitter and Facebook is now available in mobile phone device. “Facebook for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone, Nokia, and other mobile devices” “Twitter allows users the ability to update their profile by using their mobile phone either by text messaging or by apps released for certain smart phones / tablets.” Similarly, Facebook now has Video chats, which enables people to see each other while chatting. In addition Twitter enables people to add images to their profiles. In addition, MySpace, turned into search engine with enables to people search and share information. MySpace latterly suffered decline as Facebook and twitter took over it.
WWW.TWITTER.CO.UK
Mobile App
Facebook.co.uk Mobile App
Myspace.co.uk Mobile App
4. Is the size of the audience any different now than before the impact of new and digital media (or has the pattern of usage changed)? E.G. consider for the impact of new and digital media on TV broadcasting the change in audience ratings for programmes as a consequence of the deregulation of TV. (Prior to deregulation audience figures could be 20m+ for Eastenders etc to a situation today where, due to the massive number of channels now available, audiences are vastly reduced and fragmented).
The size of the audience has varied since the growth of new media. The image beside illustrates the growth of social networking websites. You can tell graph that from February 2009 to August 2010 Facebook had a rapid growth of new users. Hence, during that period of time is when the new and digital media impacted mostly and caused many changes. Although it increases Audience for Facebook, MySpace went through decline as audience that using Facebook instead. MySpace declined in August 2009 onwards leading to only 40,000 new visitors whereas Facebook gained about 160 000 new users.
Twitter for example, the target audience of it being the mid youth market, there is more chance for them to get involved in the shows they watch and the things they read and allows them to respond to it in a way that wasn’t available with traditional media. Institutions such as Twitter now allow people to share the things that they like, such as a particular news story they read or a show that they enjoyed, letting others also do those things as well. This will mean that more people will see that media text, particularly if it shared by someone famous or in Twitter’s case, with a large number of followers.
People can now plays games, upload or share videos…etc. MySpace now changed into music site like YouTube, it allows people to download and share files, it’s more of an entertainment site than a social networking site. New digital media such as the new mobile apps, makes it easier to use the social networking sites.
5. 
Who are the primary target audience now and has this changed? Who was it before and how do you know?
Who are the primary target audience now and has this changed? Who was it before and how do you know? Like the size of the audience changes the target audience changed with it due to the impact of new and digital media.
The Table shows the age distribution on Social networking sites. Information from the table:
| Social network Sites | 0-17 | 18-24 | 25-34 | 35-44 | 45-54 | 55-64 |
| MySpace | 32% | 10% | 13% | 15% | 20% | 5% |
| Twitter | 11% | 9% | 15% | 30% | 20% | 10% |
| Facebook | 18% | 5% | 14% | 22% | 25% | 10% |
Users used to be younger and people with higher salary who can get and touch with new and digital media. However now anyone can use it, its more accessabe than before.
| Text | Current Target Audience | Original Target Audience | How do you know? |
| Facebook | | | |
| Twitter | | | |
| MySpace | | | |
6. How have the audience responded to the changes? Is there more customer choice? Is there evidence of a more pluralistic model? What evidence do you have to support this?
Audience used to just consume the text and is not able to make get their opinion through (Hypodermic needle). Audience are now becoming more powerful, they can get their opinion and message through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace..Etc. the rise of websites such Facebook and Twitter in particular have had a big impact on how this is now done. The growth of social media have allowed audiences to share anything they want from anywhere they want to anyone they want. Twitter promotes the use of sharing to anyone in the world with its ‘open’ view of it; in that everyone’s Twitter profile is public by default. This is an effect of globalization in that the world is a lot smaller and so information can be spread quicker from person to person.. There is a wide amount of choice for consumers in terms of where they go and share their information. As mentioned, Twitter encourages this, but many others also do with a selection of buttons on various websites. This includes Face book’s ‘like’ button this is how traditional media is getting involved with the growth of sharing around the internet. This definitely shows evidence of a more Pluralistic model of society, in the fact that we, the consumers are now actively sharing whatever we want to other people within society and shows that we aren’t a passive audience at all
7. What concerns/ considerations are there (if any) for the media institutions involved in your case study as a result of the impact of new and digital media? (e.g. deskilling or multi-skilling of the workforce/ decline in workforce etc)
One of concerns of Facebook is Privacy; they have privacy setting which enables people to share pictures, videos, status to certain people and are able to block other people from seeing their information. However, Facebook introduced another feature which post/updates information’s on what are other people are doing this keeps others up to date with other people. Facebook also states which location you in at the moment this can be dangerous as anyone could see these information.
8. What are the political and social implications of the new technologies and the methods of their consumption? E.g. moral panics etc?
Social impact
Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people in various ways. Especially with its availability on many mobile devices, Facebook allows users to continuously stay in touch with friends, relatives and other acquaintances wherever they are in the world, as long as there is access to the Internet. It can also unite people with common interests and/or beliefs through groups and other pages, and has been known to reunite lost family members and friends. One such reunion was between John Watson and the daughter he had been seeking for 20 years. They met after Watson found her Facebook profile.[185] Another father-daughter reunion was between Tony Macnauton and Frances Simpson, who had not seen each other for nearly 48 years.[186]
Some argue that Facebook is beneficial to one's social life because they can continuously stay in contact with their friends and relatives, while others say that it can cause increased antisocial tendencies because people are not directly communicating with each other. Some studies have named Facebook as a source of problems in relationships. Several news stories have suggested that using Facebook causes divorce andinfidelity, but the claims have been questioned and refuted by other commentators.[187][188]
Political impact
Facebook's role in the American political process was demonstrated in January 2008, shortly before the New Hampshire primary, when Facebook teamed up with ABC and Saint Anselm College to allow users to give live feedback about the "back to back" January 5 Republican and Democratic debates.[193][194][195] Charles Gibson moderated both debates, held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College. Facebook users took part in debate groups organized around specific topics, register to vote, and message questions.[196]
Over a million people installed the Facebook application "US politics" in order to take part, and the application measured users' responses to specific comments made by the debating candidates.[197] This debate showed the broader community what many young students had already experienced: Facebook was a popular and powerful new way to interact and voice opinions. An article by Michelle Sullivan of Uwire.com illustrates how the "facebook effect" has affected youth voting rates, support by youth of political candidates, and general involvement by the youth population in the 2008 election.[198]
In February 2008, a Facebook group called "One Million Voices Against FARC" organized an event in which hundreds of thousands of Colombians marched in protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC (from the group's Spanish name).[199] In August 2010, one of North Korea's official government Web sites and the official news agency of the country, Uriminzokkiri, joined Facebook.[200]
In 2010 an English director of public health, whose staff was researching syphilis, linked and attributed a rise in cases of the disease in areas of Britain to Facebook. The reports of this research were rebuked by Facebook as "ignoring the difference between correlation and causation".[201]
In 2011 a controversial ruling by French government to uphold a 1992 decree which stipulates that commercial enterprises should not be promoted on news programs. President Nicolas Sarkozy's colleagues have agreed has said that it will enforce a law so that the word "Facebook" will not be allowed to be spoken on the television or on the radio.[202]
In 2011, Facebook filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to form a political action committee under the name FB PAC.[203] In an email to The Hill, a spokesman for Facebook said "FB PAC will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected."[204]
Use and social impact
Twitter has been used for a variety of purposes in many different industries and scenarios. For example, it has been used to organize protests, sometimes referred to as "Twitter Revolutions" and which include the 2011 Egyptian revolution, 2010–2011 Tunisian protests, 2009–2010 Iranian election protests, and 2009 Moldova civil unrest.[164]The governments of Iran and Egypt blocked the service in retaliation.[165][166] The service is also used as a form of civil disobedience: in 2010, users expressed outrage over the Twitter Joke Trial by making obvious jokes about terrorism;[167] and in the British privacy injunction debate in the same country a year later, where several celebrities that had taken out anonymised injunctions, most notably the Manchester United player Ryan Giggs, were identified by thousands of users in protest to traditional journalism being censored.[168]
Twitter is also increasingly used for making TV more interactive and social.[169] This effect is sometimes referred to as the "virtual watercooler" or social television. Twitter has been used successfully to encourage people to watch live TV events, such as the Oscars, the Super Bowl[170] and the MTV Video Music Awards; this strategy has however proven less effective with regularly scheduled TV shows.[171] Such direct cross-promotions have been banned from French television due to regulations against secret advertising.[172]
In May 2008, The Wall Street Journal wrote that social networking services such as Twitter "elicit mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel 'too' connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they're having for dinner."[173]
Tech writer Bruce Sterling opined in 2007 that using Twitter for "literate communication" is "about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite the Iliad".[174] In September 2008, the journalist Clive Thompson mused in a The New York Times Magazine editorial that the service had expanded narcissism into "a new, supermetabolic extreme—the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world."[175] Conversely, Vancouver Sun columnist Steve Dotto opined that part of Twitter's appeal is the challenge of trying to publish such messages in tight constraints,[176] and Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School, said that "the qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful".[177]
In 2009, Nielsen Online reported that Twitter has a user retention rate of forty percent. Many people stop using the service after a month, therefore the site may potentially reach only about ten percent of all Internet users.[178] In 2009, Twitter won the "Breakout of the Year" Webby Award.[179][180] During a February 2009 discussion on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, the journalist Daniel Schorr stated that Twitter accounts of events lacked rigorous fact-checking and other editorial improvements. In response, Andy Carvin gave Schorr two examples of breaking news stories that played out on Twitter and said users wanted first-hand accounts and sometimes debunked stories.[181] Time magazine acknowledged growing level of influence in its 2010 Time 100; to determine the influence of people, it used a formula based on famous social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook. The list ranges from Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey to Lady Gaga and Ashton Kutcher.[182]
After claims in the media that the hashtags #wikileaks and #occupywallstreet were being censored because they did not show up on the site's list of trending topics, Twitter responded by stating that it does not censor hashtags unless they contain obscenities.[183][184][185]
9. Consider the effects so far, and possible effects in the future, on media institutions involved in your case study (media production).
More people will be using Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace...ETC. There may be new inventions of social media sites. There might be a possibility of Facebook user percentage fallings, as people can get bored easily as the technologies are improving. Furthermore, peoples personal details might be easier to gather, there might be less censorship and less privacy. Facebook might turn into a music video search engine if people stopped using it.
10. What issues may there be regarding media effects and /or regulation/ censorship as a result of changes due to new and digital media?
Twitter messages are public but users can also send private messages. Twitter collects personally identifiable information about its users and shares it with third parties. The service reserves the right to sell this information as an asset if the company changes hands. While Twitter displays no advertising, advertisers can target users based on their history of tweets and may quote tweets in ads[131] directed specifically to the user.
A security vulnerability was reported on April 7, 2007, by Nitesh Dhanjani and Rujith. Since Twitter used the phone number of the sender of an SMS message as authentication, malicious users could update someone else's status page by using SMS spoofing.[132] The vulnerability could be used if the spoofer knew the phone number registered to their victim's account. Within a few weeks of this discovery Twitter introduced an optional personal identification number (PIN) that its users could use to authenticate their SMS-originating messages.[133]
On January 5, 2009, 33 high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised after a Twitter administrator's password was guessed by a dictionary attack.[134] Falsified tweets — including sexually explicit and drug-related messages — were sent from these accounts.[135]
Twitter launched the beta version of their "Verified Accounts" service on June 11, 2009, allowing famous or notable people to announce their Twitter account name. The home pages of these accounts display a badge indicating their status.[136]
In May 2010, a bug was discovered by İnci Sözlük users that allowed Twitter users to force others to follow them without the other users' consent or knowledge. For example, comedian Conan O'Brien's account, which had been set to follow only one person, was changed to receive nearly 200 malicious subscriptions.[137]
In response to Twitter's security breaches, the Federal Trade Commission brought charges against the service which were settled on June 24, 2010. This was the first time the FTC had taken action against a social network for security lapses. The settlement requires Twitter to take a number of steps to secure users' private information, including maintenance of a "comprehensive information security program" to be independently audited biannually.[138]
On December 14, 2010, the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena directing Twitter to provide information for accounts registered to or associated with WikiLeaks.[139] Twitter decided to notify its users and said in a statement, "...it's our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so".[129]
A "MouseOver" exploit occurred on September 21, 2010, when an XSS Worm became active on Twitter. When an account user held the mouse cursor over blacked out parts of a tweet, the worm within the script would automatically open links and re-post itself on the reader's account.[140] The exploit was then re-used to post pop-up ads and links to pornographic sites. The origin is unclear but Pearce H. Delphin (known on Twitter as @zzap) and a Scandinavian developer, Magnus Holm, both claim to have modified the exploit of a user, possibly Masato Kinugawa, who was using it to create coloured Tweets.[141] Kinugawa, a Japanese developer, reported the XSS vulnerability to Twitter on August 14. Later, when he found it was exploitable again, he created the account 'RainbowTwtr' and used it to post coloured messages.[141] Delphin says he exposed the security flaw by tweeting a JavaScript function for "onMouseOver",[141] and Holm later created and posted the XSS Worm that automatically re-tweeted itself.[140] Security firm Sophos reported the virus was spread by people doing it for "fun and games", but noted it could be exploited by cybercriminals.[140] Twitter issued a statement on their status blog at 13:50 UTC that "The exploit is fully patched".[140][142] Twitter representative Carolyn Penner said no charges would be pressed.[143]
In May 2011, a claimant known as "CTB" (subsequently identified as Ryan Giggs) in the case of CTB v Twitter Inc., Persons Unknown took legal action at the High Court of Justice in London against Twitter.,[144]requesting that Twitter release details of account holders. This followed gossip posted on Twitter about Giggs' private life, causing conflict relating to privacy injunctions.[145][146] Tony Wang, the head of Twitter in Europe, said that people who do "bad things" on the site would need to defend themselves under the laws of their own jurisdiction in the event of controversy, and that the site would hand over information about users to the authorities when it was legally required to do so.[147] He also suggested that Twitter would accede to a UK court order to divulge names of users responsible for "illegal activity" on the site.[148]
On May 29, 2011, it was reported that South Tyneside council in England had successfully taken legal action against Twitter in a court in California, which forced Twitter to reveal the details of five user accounts. The council was trying to discover the identity of a blogger called "Mr Monkey"[149] who allegedly posted libellous statements about three local councillors.[150]
On January 23, 2012, it was reported that Twitter will be acquiring Dasient, a startup that offers malware protection for businesses. Twitter hopes that Dasient will help remove hateful advertisers on the website. [151]
On January 26, 2012, Twitter began offering a feature which would allow tweets to be removed selectively by country. Twitter cited France and Germany as examples, where pro-Nazi content is illegal. Previously, deleted tweets were removed in all countries.[152][153]
On February 20, 2012, a third-party public-key encryption app (written in Python and partially funded by a grant from the Shuttleworth Foundation[154]) for direct messaging in Twitter, CrypTweet, was released.[155
11. Are there any cross-cultural factors and /or effects of globalisation involved in the impact of new technology on your case study? E.g. the internet has been said to be ‘globalising culture’ through its promotion of the English language.
12. Consider theoretical perspectives in relation to the impact of new/ digital media in your case study. E.g. Representation of certain groups as a result of changes, Marxism & Hegemony, Liberal Pluralism, colonialism, audience theories etc.
Pictures:
Websites:
Articles: MySpace's Android application goes live
Dong NgoOctober 21, 2008 8:00 AM PDT
(Credit: MySpace)
Last Friday, days before the official launch of the Google Android-based phone, the T-Mobile G1, MySpace announced the availability of its MySpace Mobile application for the phone.
The company said that the the app has been live for those who already have an Android phone and will be made "officially" available on Wednesday to all users when the device is launched.
The MySpace app for Android's features include:
* Instant photo uploading from Android to a MySpace profile
* Check out tour schedules on band profiles
* View and comment on photos, profiles, and bulletins
* Search and add new friends
* Send and read messages
* Update and view mood and status
The app is also integrated with Shazam, a music discovering engine that allows users to identify music and connect to the artist's MySpace page.
This is the third major platform that MySpace has developed applications for, apart from the Sidekick and the iPhone. The company says that it's currently developing a similar application for the Blackberry.
Market share
| Worldwide | Unique Visitors (000) | Percentage |
| Facebook.com | 792,999 | 55.1 % |
| Twitter.com | 167,903 | 11.7 % |
| Linkedln.com | 94,823 | 6.6 % |
| Google Plus | 66,756 | 4.6 % |
| MySpace | 61,037 | 4.2 % |
| Others | 255.539 | 17.8 % |
| Total | 1,438,877 | 100 % |
“This difference is one of the reasons the online dating industry is seeing a massive decrease in revenue due to many users opting to use social networking services instead. Many popular online dating services such as Match.com, Yahoo Personals, and eHarmony.com are seeing a decrease in users, where social networks like MySpace and Facebook are experiencing an increase in users”
Facebook expected to be valued at $100bn in stock market flotation
Mark Zuckerberg, the site's 27-year-old founder, hopes investors will accept firm will one day be worth 27 times current revenue
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasised in a letter to investors the importance of the 'hacker way', coders who get the job done. Photograph: Paul Sakuma/AP
Status update: going public. Valuation up to $100bn.It started in a single Harvard dorm room as a way to connect often lonely students, then spread rapidly across Ivy League universities from a house in Palo Alto, before becoming the subject of a Hollywood hit film. Now the social network believes it has become so important to so many that it describes itself as a "social utility" without which, it is hoping, its worldwide total of 845 million users cannot function.
Facebook, created in 2004 by the then teenage Mark Zuckerberg, is now planning to float on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq. It hopes it is worth $100bn – easily more than Barclays Bank or BAE Systems – an extraordinary sum of money for a business that was founded so few years ago. Its revenues may be an impressive-sounding $3.7bn in 2011, but the impending share offering demands that willing investors accept it is worth a stratospheric 27 times that revenue, a figure Rupert Murdoch has reckoned would make Apple "look really cheap".
The assumption is that Facebook will one day generate revenues to reach the $100bn mark, and in this game there can be only one comparison: Google. The world's favourite search engine went public in 2004, and delivered on the promise. In the year before its flotation, its revenues were just $961m, and its valuation demanded at the time was $23bn – at 24 times, similar to Facebook now. Today Google generates nearly $10bn a quarter, and its shares priced at $85 at issue are now $583.
If Facebook can repeat Google's trick it will demonstrate that for all the talk about the rise of India and China, it is still Silicon Valley that creates the most lucrative and innovative companies on the planet. And, while Facebook may exist only on desktops, tablets and mobile phones, the internet is the frontier of our times, the place where fortunes of the size of Zuckerberg's paper $28bn can be made in the time it once may have taken to travel to and from the New World. Assuming, that is, Zuckerberg can meet the expectations placed upon him.
Brent Hoberman, who floated Lastminute.com in 2000, knows a little about the pressures of a highly priced float. When asked at the time if he was happy to get his company on to the London stock market, Hoberman was equivocal. "It was quite stressful really," he said. "We were valued for perfection, which put an incredible pressure on us." Lastminute's shares fell by as much 95% at the worst point, a reminder that the buzz of the moment is never enough if the underlying financial model does not convince.
Facebook starts with some advantages that a company like Lastminute did not have. It is already profitable, making $1bn after tax last year, and has amassed a cash pile of about $3.9bn. It has long won the battle to be the world's leading social network, and continues to grow financially, with revenues expected by some to hit $7bn in 2012. But while Google is the dominant player in a new advertising category, internet search, Facebook is competing in a melee for display advertising in which newspapers, broadcasters and a range of other popular websites chase revenue.
Its advocates argue that Facebook has the potential to become a force for change, developing in directions not immediately foreseen. The social network had developed its own currency, Facebook credits, and has become the host environment for other media, for Farmville and other games (which provide at least 12% of revenues), for Spotify in music and even the Guardian in news media.
It has the capacity, Hoberman argues, to be a "disruptive force" in industries ranging from games to payments, new areas such as telecommunications, and advertising, where the company is only beginning to exploit some of the possibilities of selling personally targeted ads. The challenge is whether it can do so without infringing users' privacy, although Hoberman argues that "people who think young people worry about that are out of touch".
More importantly, arguably, are the key personalities. Its success will depend a great deal on Zuckerberg. His letter to investors eulogised the importance of the "hacker way", a corporate republic based on coders who get things done, and his partnership with chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, the former Clinton era junior politico who handles the speaking, political and regulatory issues that the shy, geeky Zuckerberg does not. Success in the US technology industry depends to a surprising degree on the energy and vision of the founders – from the late Steve Jobs to Larry Page at Google demonstrating what can be achieved to the failure of Jerry Yang, who recently quit the long struggling Yahoo.
Popular knowledge of Zuckerberg – whose 28% personal stake plus control of votes from associates gives him control of his own destiny – derives largely from a script by Aaron Sorkin, whose Social Network film grossed $225m, rather modest by Facebook standards. It portrays a driven and somewhat ruthless executive whose masterwork is a response to being jilted by his girlfriend and who is prepared to drop his closest friend, Eduardo Saverin, as he gets ahead. It is not until the end do we learn that Zuckerberg and Saverin settled their dispute, with the Facebook founder helping ensure that he was left with a lucrative near-$5bn stake in yesterday's money. Not everybody can reward former friends so well.
The real Zuckerberg will have his own part to play. His success or otherwise in matching the $100bn of expectations will set the overall narrative for the next internet generation. In other words, the next five years.
Facebook, MySpace and Twitter chide Google with 'Don't be evil' add-on
Browser bookmarklet will show US users how search results should look if Google's changes – which artificially push Google+ results up rankings – are reversed
Google+: Facebook, Myspace and Twitter say that the dominant search engine is giving undue prominence to its nascent social network
Facebook, Twitter and Myspace engineers have devised a software add-on for browsers which negates the effect of Google's alteration of its search results to favour its own Google+ social network – with a piece of code they call "Don't be evil".The move intensifies the increasingly bitter war of words between Google, which is trying to push the "social" element of searches, and the major social networks, which assert that the search engine is polluting its own search results and diverging from its core purpose of giving the user the best possible search by downgrading them in results.
Google is also being accused by external commentators of betraying its original aims, which were to give the broadest view of the most popular links on the web, in order to boost Google+ artificially.
The "Don't be evil" bookmarklet, which can be put into browser menus, will allow the user to see how a search result page would look using Google's pure organic search results. It is available from a site called "Focus on the User" – and created by a team from the three big social networks.
The name is a reference to "Don't be evil", Google's first unofficial motto, devised by Paul Buchheit, the creator of Google Mail early in the past decade. He has since left the company, but "you can make money without doing evil" remains in Google's philosphy – ranking sixth, behind its top rule, "focus on the user and all else will follow".
The aim of the bookmarklet – a piece of code, generally Javascript, which adds some function to a web page, by carrying out a calculation or search – is to negate the effects of Google's "Search Plus Your World" update made earlier this month.
Google said it would have the effect of "bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search … we're transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships".
But Twitter called foul on the changes, saying they artificially inflate Google+ above its natural position if measured by popularity around the web, and demotes their own.
The site's creators say that: "We wanted to see how much better social search could be for consumers if Google chose to use all of the information already in its index. We think the results speak for themselves."
They emphasise that: "All of the information in this demo comes from Google itself, and all of the ranking decisions are made by Google's own algorithms. No other services or APIs are accessed."
The changes in results can be dramatic, with Google+ results for US users – the only region where the update has been implemented – falling from their new prominence.
Google's chairman Eric Schmidt previously insisted to search engine analyst Danny Sullivan that Facebook and Twitter did not allow sufficient access to their sites for Google to be able to integrate results from them into its search, and that Google+ was not being favoured.
But in a lengthy analysis, Sullivan shows that the new "Don't be evil" tool offers what seems objectively a far more accurate reflection of the popularity of different pages on the web – which was the founding principle for Google.
Commentators including Sullivan and journalist John Battelle say that the content, people and relationships that the "new" Google seemed to understand best was that inside its own Google+ service, while that on the larger and more-visited networks was downgraded.
The functionality is only available in the US, where Google has about 65% of search share, and has not yet been rolled out to Europe, where its share is around 90%. Google spokespeople have not given any date when the new features might be rolled out beyond the US.
"Search Plus Your World" – which Sullivan calls more simply "Search Plus" – is most effective when users are logged into Google with a Google account. But Sullivan has shown that its effect on results, such as the promotion of Google+ pages above their position in Google's own organic search results, occurs even when users are logged out.
Battelle explains that the tool, which he saw demonstrated at the weekend,
weave[s] a number of Google's own tools – including its "rich snippet" webmaster tool and its own organic search listings, to re-order not only the search engine results, but also the results of the promotional Google+ boxes on the right side of the results, as well as the "typeahead" results that now feature only Google+ accounts.
He shows two examples. In the first, as US users of Google would see, a search on his name turns up his Google Plus page as the first suggestion.
John Battelle: search for his name using Google US results. His Google+ profile appears first. Click for larger version. Source: battellemedia.com 
John Battelle: search for his name using Google US results. His Twitter profile now appears first. Click for larger version. Source: battellemedia.com Others have pointed to Google chief executive Larry Page's interview with Playboy magazine in 2004 shortly before the company was floated on the stock market, when he said:
Most portals show their own content above content elsewhere on the web. We feel that's a conflict of interest, analogous to taking money for search results. Their search engine doesn't necessarily provide the best results; it provides the portal's results. Google conscientiously tries to stay away from that. We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible. It's a very different model."
Google, it is argued, is now acting like one of those portals by pushing its own results, rather than the best ones.
The code was created by Blake Ross, director of product at Facebook, with help from Twitter and Myspace. Battelle suggested that the project would have required Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's approval.
Facebook declined to comment on whether Zuckerberg had indeed approved it: "We aren't commenting on detail of this project aside from pointing people to the public site," said a representative.
Focus on the user: runthrough of the effects of the code, which uses Google data
Google had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.Why Sky News and the BBC are wrong about Twitter
In trying to keep journalists on message, Sky News and the BBC could make their message so boring no one wants to read it
Twitter helps journalists aggregate the overwhelming volume of news for those who don't have time to look at everything. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
The beauty of Twitter is that, like Soylent Green, it's made of people. The best tweeters have personalities, providing more than just a bland regurgitation of the latest headlines. A good journalist on Twitter adds value to the news.But at some organisations that's now under threat. On Tuesday, Sky News announced new social media rules, limiting what their reporters can tweet. On Wednesday the BBC refreshed its own guidelines.
Sky's key restrictions include a ban on retweeting "information posted by other journalists or people on Twitter", and its journalists have been told to "stick to your own beat" and "always pass breaking news lines to the news desk before posting". The BBC says although their systems sometimes allow reporters to file and tweet simultaneously "our first priority remains ensuring that important information reaches BBC colleagues … and certainly not after it reaches Twitter".
The broadcasters are understandably worried about their brands, about accuracy, about competition and perhaps about the law. But in trying to make sure their journalists stay "on message", they are in danger of making their message so boring that no one wants to read it.
In recent months, Sky News's employees have been particularly impressive at using Twitter. Their high-profile reporters and producers, such as Martin Brunt (@SkyMartinBrunt) and Mark Stone (@Stone_SkyNews), have tens of thousands of followers and heavily influence other reporters and commentators. Other Sky journalists use Twitter to poll opinion on subjects, retweeting a range of responses.
The BBC's Robert Peston (@Peston), meanwhile, often breaks stories on Twitter before he publishes them on his blog – and both can appear long before a major BBC news bulletin. Thanks to social media, the BBC "owns" Peston's stories even if they get everywhere before News at Ten rolls around.
What kind of competitive advantage are the BBC and Sky in danger of giving up? Here's an example from this week: when Fabio Capello resigned as England manager, Martyn Ziegler (@MartynZiegler), the Press Association's chief sports reporter, broke the story on Twitter just a few seconds before the FA tweeted it. If a Sky News or BBC journalist had that story first they might have been busy letting their news desk know about it – while everyone else was reading it on Twitter.
The microblogging service has made breaking news more democratic – the wire service Reuters now breaks stories on its Twitter account before they "drop" on the feed to which most news organisations subscribe.
Meanwhile, here at the Guardian, we engage with our readers every day and ask for their feedback through the #opennews hashtag and our Newsdesk Live blog. We say which reporters are working on which stories, and give their Twitter handles so people can get in touch with them, or indeed any of us on the desk. This shapes our coverage – we believe for the better.
Our reporters also tweet live from events. We use those messages in our coverage, and we've written stories from them before – it can be quicker and more practical to assemble a story from a reporter's tweets than for them to break off and file a write-through piece. Our Twitter audience can see the bare bones of our coverage as it's being put together, if they want to and why not?
For good reasons, not all news should break on Twitter. Some stories are the result of a reporter's hard digging, for example – and with exclusives, there isn't the same race to be first. Other stories have legal restrictions, or embargoes agreed by convention.
But journalists, particularly those working for big organisations such as the BBC and Sky, are grown-ups. They should be aware of the broadcasting code, libel laws and so on – and when (rare) corrections or clarifications are needed, these can be done transparently through Twitter too.
Part of the role of journalists in the internet age is to aggregate the overwhelming volume of news for those who don't have the time or inclination to look at everything. On our site we have Brian Whitaker's best of blogs from around the web alongside our Middle East live blog and Andrew Sparrow does a daily reading list of other politics stories. It should be the same on Twitter as on our site.
When I tweet a brilliant Telegraph splash, for example, I feel I'm giving my followers something they want. To only tweet Guardian content does them a disservice. The more interesting my twitter feed is, the more I'm engaging with the Guardian's audience and drawing them into the conversation we want to have about the news.
However well meaning, these new guidelines by Sky News and the BBC risk turning their reporters and producers into glorified RSS feeds. This is in danger of isolating both organisations, and diminishing them. And Twitter too will be all the poorer for it.
The broadcasters need to learn what plenty of their producers and reporters already know: it's good to share.
Reception
In 2006, when Twitter launched under the name "Twttr", Michael Arrington of TechCrunch commented that although he liked the service, he also noted that he felt uncomfortable with the fact that every user's Twitter page is available to the public.[182]Change of focus
On November 22, 2010, Biz Stone, a cofounder of the company, expressed for the first time the idea of a Twitter news network,[186] a concept of wire-like news service he has been working on for years.[187]
Users may subscribe to other users' tweets – this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers[49] or tweeps (Twitter + peeps).[50] The users can also check the people who are un-subscribing them on Twitter better known as unfollowing via various services.[51]
Twitter allows users the ability to update their profile by using their mobile phone either by text messaging or by apps released for certain smartphones / tablets.[52]
Twitter has been compared to a web-based Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client.[53] In a 2009 Time essay, technology author Steven Johnson described the basic mechanics of Twitter as "remarkably simple":[54]
As a social network, Twitter revolves around the principle of followers. When you choose to follow another Twitter user, that user's tweets appear in reverse chronological order on your main Twitter page. If you follow 20 people, you'll see a mix of tweets scrolling down the page: breakfast-cereal updates, interesting new links, music recommendations, even musings on the future of education.
In June 2008, Twitter launched a verification program, allowing celebrities to get their accounts verified.[55] Originally intended to help users verify which celebrity accounts were created by the celebrities themselves (and therefore are not fake), they have since been used to verify accounts of businesses and accounts for public figures who may not actually tweet but still wish to maintain control over the account that bears their name - for example, the Dalai Lama. Verified accounts can be identified by a white check in a blue background, known as a verification badge, next to the user's full name, on the profile itself or next to the name in search results.Messages
Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of hashtags – words or phrases prefixed with a "#" sign. Similarly, the "@" sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users.[56] To repost a message from another Twitter user, and share it with one's own followers, the retweet function is symbolized by "RT" in the message.In late 2009, the "Twitter Lists" feature was added, making it possible for users to follow (as well as mention and reply to) ad-hoc lists of authors instead of individual authors.[49][57]
Through SMS, users can communicate with Twitter through five gateway numbers: short codes for the United States, Canada, India, New Zealand, and an Isle of Man-based number for international use. There is also a short code in the United Kingdom which is only accessible to those on the Vodafone, O2[58] and Orange[59] networks. In India, since Twitter only supports tweets from Bharti Airtel,[60] an alternative platform called smsTweet[61] was set up by a user to work on all networks.[62] A similar platform called GladlyCast[63] exists for mobile phone users in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The messages were initially set to 140-character limit for compatibility with SMS messaging, introducing the shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140-character limit has also increased the usage of URL shortening services such as bit.ly, goo.gl, and tr.im, and content-hosting services, such as Twitpic, memozu.com and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters. Twitter uses its own t.co domain for automatic shortening of all URLs posted on its website.[64]
Integrated photo-sharing service
On June 1, 2011, Twitter announced its own integrated photo-sharing service that enables users to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet right from Twitter.com.[157] Users now also have the ability to add pictures to Twitter's search by adding hashtags to the tweet.[158] Twitter also plans to provide photo galleries designed to gather and syndicate all photos that a user has uploaded on Twitter and third-party services such as TwitPic.[158]Many traditional and non-traditional media outlets report and comment on how the Internet and social media, especially social networking, have begun to seriously affect news organizations and how they operate. Although newspapers currently face a crisis on how to make the news profitable in the digital age, that isn’t this report’s main focus. How papers will make money has been talked to death. So, instead, this report will focus on how social media, especially social networking sites like Twitter, has begun to affect the news organizations and changed — for better or worse — how journalists perform their jobs every day.
The main purpose of this report is to learn how the social media revolution has changed and will continue to change journalism and news organizations. To understand social media and its effects, one must read and analyze information gathered through journal articles, interviews and observations as this report has done. The report is broken into subtopics: a summary of the current state of traditional media; definitions and background information on what social media and social journalism are; social media tools professionals use and why; current event case studies in which social media played a role in reporting the news; ethical issues surrounding the social media shift; and how the future of the news media might look as a result of social media.The report will respond to one simple, yet rather complex, question: What impact has social media had on news organizations? A question like this cannot be answered straightforward but must instead be explored. While the report will focus on what has already occurred, it will also look to the future and will consider whether public opinions of the mainstream media have helped spawn and accelerate the birth of the social media revolution. Results will lead the report to offer three areas within journalism that social media has significantly touched: the public’s trust of the news media in relation to social media; the relationship between local news organizations and social media; and how news is and will be covered using social media tools.
Eight Key Concepts for Media Literacy
| John Pungente, S.J. |
1. All media are constructionThe media do not present simple reflections of external reality. Rather, they present carefully crafted constructions that reflect many decisions and result from many determining factors. Media Literacy works towards deconstructing these constructions, taking them apart to show how they are made.
2. The media construct reality
The media are responsible for the majority of the observations and experiences from which we build up our personal understandings of the world and how it works. Much of our view of reality is based on media messages that have been pre-constructed and have attitudes, interpretations and conclusions already built in. The media, to a great extent, give us our sense of reality.
The media are responsible for the majority of the observations and experiences from which we build up our personal understandings of the world and how it works. Much of our view of reality is based on media messages that have been pre-constructed and have attitudes, interpretations and conclusions already built in. The media, to a great extent, give us our sense of reality.
3. Audiences negotiate meaning in the media
The media provide us with much of the material upon which we build our picture of reality, and we all "negotiate" meaning according to individual factors: personal needs and anxieties, the pleasures or troubles of the day, racial and sexual attitudes, family and cultural background, and so forth.
The media provide us with much of the material upon which we build our picture of reality, and we all "negotiate" meaning according to individual factors: personal needs and anxieties, the pleasures or troubles of the day, racial and sexual attitudes, family and cultural background, and so forth.
4. Media have commercial implications
Media Literacy aims to encourage an awareness of how the media are influenced by commercial considerations, and how these affect content, technique and distribution. Most media production is a business, and must therefore make a profit. Questions of ownership and control are central: a relatively small number of individuals control what we watch, read and hear in the media.
Media Literacy aims to encourage an awareness of how the media are influenced by commercial considerations, and how these affect content, technique and distribution. Most media production is a business, and must therefore make a profit. Questions of ownership and control are central: a relatively small number of individuals control what we watch, read and hear in the media.
5. Media contain ideological and value messages
All media products are advertising, in some sense, in that they proclaim values and ways of life. Explicitly or implicitly, the mainstream media convey ideological messages about such issues as the nature of the good life, the virtue of consumerism, the role of women, the acceptance of authority, and unquestioning patriotism.
All media products are advertising, in some sense, in that they proclaim values and ways of life. Explicitly or implicitly, the mainstream media convey ideological messages about such issues as the nature of the good life, the virtue of consumerism, the role of women, the acceptance of authority, and unquestioning patriotism.
6. Media have social and political implications
The media have great influence on politics and on forming social change. Television can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image. The media involve us in concerns such as civil rights issues, famines in Africa, and the AIDS epidemic. They give us an intimate sense of national issues and global concerns, so that we become citizens of Marshall McLuhan's "Global Village."
The media have great influence on politics and on forming social change. Television can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image. The media involve us in concerns such as civil rights issues, famines in Africa, and the AIDS epidemic. They give us an intimate sense of national issues and global concerns, so that we become citizens of Marshall McLuhan's "Global Village."
7. Form and content are closely related in the media
As Marshall McLuhan noted, each medium has its own grammar and codifies reality in its own particular way. Different media will report the same event, but create different impressions and messages.
As Marshall McLuhan noted, each medium has its own grammar and codifies reality in its own particular way. Different media will report the same event, but create different impressions and messages.
8. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form
Just as we notice the pleasing rhythms of certain pieces of poetry or prose, so we ought to be able to enjoy the pleasing forms and effects of the different media.
Companies boosting digital marketing budgetsJust as we notice the pleasing rhythms of certain pieces of poetry or prose, so we ought to be able to enjoy the pleasing forms and effects of the different media.
According to Econsultancy’s Marketing Budgets 2012 Report, companies are looking to boost budgets for their 2012 digital marketing strategies. The growth is fairly significant with 68% are increasing their digital budgets in 2012 compared to compared to 45% of companies increasing overall marketing budgets.
Corporate blogging declines as newer tools rule
A study on the usage of social media in Inc. 500 corporations shows fewer of them are using blogging, message/bulletin boards, online video, podcasting and MySpace and more are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Foursquare.
The platform most utilized by the Inc. 500 is Facebook, with 74% of companies using it. Virtually tied at 73% is the adoption of the professional network, LinkedIn. The use of corporate blogs dropped to 37% from 50% in 2010, as this mature tool evolves into other forms or is replaced by communication through Facebook or Twitter.
Social media tools are seen as important for company goals. Ninety percent of responding executives report that social media tools are important for brand awareness and company reputation. Eighty-eight percent see these tools as important for generating web traffic while 81% find them important for lead generation. Seventy-three percent say that social media tools are important for customer support programs.
India is Now Facebook’s No. 2 Nation Behind the U.S.
India moved from sixth to second place on the global leaderboard for total number of Facebook users in January. It’s still got a considerable way to go to overthrow the US which continues to be the No. 1 Facebook nation in the world.
Colombia was measured as having the fastest user growth on Facebook and Brazil and Indonesia, alongside India, were marked as countries to watch. Looking to Europe, in one month alone Germany and Poland grew a respective 500k and 300k users and they’ve got even more room to grow. Japan have also had strong growth this month.
Facebook Files for IPO; Reveals $1 Billion in 2011 Profit
Facebook’s IPO filing this week has revealed:
- Facebook’s total ad revenue in 2011: $3.15 billion
- Share of revenue attributed to advertising: 83%
- Share of revenue that was advertising at the beginning of 2010: 99%
- Percentage of sales in the U.S.: 56%
- Amount of revenue sourced from Zynga: 12%
- Facebook 2011 profit: $1 billion
- Revenue generated from virtual goods: $557 million
- Global monthly active users: 845 million
- Daily likes and comments: 2.7 billion
- Likely Facebook market valuation: $75 to $100 billion
- Mr. Zuckerberg’s ownership stake: 28.2%
- Mr. Zuckerberg’s voting power: 56.9%
Agencies: 89% Facebook, 39% Twitter, 18% Google+
There is no doubt that Facebook will play the dominant role in 2012. 89% of agencies plan to utilize the medium for their clients in the future, with 39% using Twitter, 36% wanting YouTube and 21% choosing Linkedin, and a surprisingly high 18% for Google+.
Facebook ‘likely to roll out mobile ads in weeks’
Given recent IPO filing admitting it was weak on mobile advertising, its unsurprising that its plan is to bring out mobile ads within the next couple of weeks in order to generate advertising revenues. January 2012 saw featured stories within users’ news feeds for the first time so it makes sense that mobile ads would be the next logical step forward. In December it claimed to have 425 million monthly active users using its mobile products, which is around half of its total monthly active users, and 21% growth from September’s 300 million figure.
Facebook groups get Timeline-like cover photos
Facebook groups now have cover photos which are consistent with the Timeline design – you have the options to change the cover photo but the group wall has been kept the same.
Top 20 countries on TwitterSemiocast have relased detailed statistics on global twitter usage:
The Next Web highlighted the interesting takeaways from the report – namely, how different countries use Twitter:
In the period from September 1st to November 30th, 30% of Japanese accounts posted at least once, while in Brazil the number slipped to 25%. For both countries, the number is surprisingly low, meaning that at least 70% of those millions of accounts were dormant for at least 3 months, if not more. The country with the highest percentage of active accounts is the Netherlands, with 33% of the accounts posting in the 3 month period. The most active countries on Twitter include Spain, the US and Indonesia.
Twitter opens enhanced profile page beta trial to UK brands
Twitter last week launched enhanced beta trials of profile pages to certain UK brands, with Asda, Sky, EA Sports Fifa and Cadbury the first brands given the opportunity to try out live brand pages.
Twitter and LinkedIn’s revenues: an updateWith the release of Facebook’s detailed figures, it worth comparing them to those of LinkedIn and Twitter. Where Facebook made $3,150,000,000, Twitter managed a paltry $139,500,000 – over 20 times less:
LinkedIn fared little better with $154,600,000:
Google+ passes 100 million users
Paul Allen has been doing his usual research into Google+ user figures, and according to him, the site has grown by more than 10% between January 19th and February 1st, passing 100 million users. If these growth rates continues, marketers will be unable to ignore Google+.
Pinterest drives incredible referral traffic
According to Shareaholic, Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined, and is also showing impressive growth month-on-month:
Superbowl hits record for Tweets per second
Last night’s Superbowl broke a record for the most Tweets per second (TPS) for a sporting event. According to Twitter, the average TPS was 10,000, with the peak hit at 12,333 TPS. The way records like these keep on falling, we can only speculate what, say, the 2014 World Cup final will be like.
Something useful from Foursquare!
The Superbowl also produced something useful from Foursquare – many Americans order pizza for their Superbowl parties, and if they checked in on Foursquare, they got $5 off their order, providing they paid via American Express.
KLM launch ‘Meet and Seat’
KLM have launched Meet and Seat, a new social way of flying. Essentially, when checking in online, customers can link up their social profiles, so fellow passengers can see their interests and what they look like and choose to sit next to them accordingly. Clever.
KLM reach a million fans, release video
In more KLM news, they recently reached a million Facebook fans – and celebrated with a video from many of their staff members saying thanks. It’s a really simple but it’s, er, taken off quite well.
Heineken launches Facebook app as part of wider Valentine’s push
Beer brand Heineken have launched a Facebook app as part of a wider push to make the brand appeal to younger men. The ‘Serenade’ app lets fans send one of 640 songs in 20 languages as a date invite to their Valentine. To determine what song is sent using the Serenade app, participants must answer five questions including, “who they would like to take on a date” and “why their chosen date should step out with them”. Ten out of ten.
Another hashtag campaign gone wrong
RIM, the makers of BlackBerry launched a social media campaign last week around a squad of cartoon characters called the Bold Team, together with the hashtag #BeBold. Just like the McDonalds fail of a few weeks ago, the negative sentiment towards RIM was taken up by the masses, with the hashtag abused to (somewhat) amusing effect…
Toyota spams Twitter around the Superbowl
The year is 2012. 2012. 2012, remember that. Because if in 2008 Toyota’s fail around this weekend’s Superbowl might have been forgivable, it’s not now. Essentially, they spammed everyone tweeting on hashtags around the Superbowl with tweets about winning a car. Before suspending the accounts when The Next Web pointed out how bad it was. And it really was very, very, very bad.
More than half of all UK MPs are now on Twitter
Of the 650 elected MPs of the British Parliament, 331 are now on Twitter, meaning more than 50% are using the micro-blogging site. A truly momentous occasion which will go down in history.
Facebook users’ views up in lights in Times Square
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, with the 2012 US Presidential Election now just months away, a new Facebook app has been launched which tracks users emotions towards certain issues and put thems up in lights. The app, called 2012 Matters: What Matters Most will poll users, with questions in their news feeds asking them which of two issues matters more — say, the economy or the environment. When a user answers the question, the result will show up on that user’s personal news feed and on friends’ news feeds. The friends also will be prompted to take the poll.
Once the app is installed, they can rank the three issues that are most important to them and opt in to having the results, including their Facebook profile photos, broadcast on the Reuters billboards, including in Times Square.
Facebook and Twitter do not need anti-piracy software, says court
European court rules social networking sites do not require filtering system in copyright case brought by music royalties firmFacebook, Twitter and other social networking sites will not be required to have anti-piracy filtering systems, a European court has ruled. Photograph: Oleksiy Maksymenko Photography //Alamy
Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter cannot be required to install an anti-piracy filtering system, the European court of justice has ruled.
Europe's top court has made the ruling in a case brought by Belgian music royalties firm Sabam against the website Netlog.
Sabam wanted the court to declare that Netlog and other social networks should actively monitor music and video posted by users to ensure that it does not infringe copyright.
However, the ECJ ruled that requiring social networks to install anti-piracy filtering software would fall foul of the existing e-commerce directive.
The ruling was welcomed by online advocacy groups, who have warned that unfettered use of the internet is under threat from the controversial anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (Acta).
Netlog has tens of millions of users each day, according to the court. Sabam claimed that some of its users illicitly shared copyright music and videos on the website.
The ECJ ruled that an anti-piracy filter would require social networks to carry out "active observation" of information shared by users.
"Accordingly, such an injunction would result in a serious infringement of the freedom of the hosting service provider to conduct its business since it would require that hosting service provider to install a complicated, costly, permanent computer system at its own expense," the ECJ said in the judgment.
"[The] injunction could potentially undermine freedom of information, since that system might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content, with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications."
The judgment will be used as legal precedent in courts across the EU where this aspect of European law is in question.
Peter Bradwell, the Open Rights Group campaigner, welcomed the ruling. He said: "It's good to see courts promoting our rights by swatting away plans to snoop on people's use of social networks. It is especially timely because, as seen in agreements like ACTA, policymakers everywhere find it much harder to respect our rights when makingintellectual property policy."
Twitter, Facebook and app scams: who cares about fake followers?"
Preventing scams is critical for social networks – but no one seems very interested in indentifying bogus fans or followers
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False friends: how many of brands' Twitter followers or Facebook fans are bogus? Photograph: Sarah LeeHere is the latest Twitter scam I've heard this week. Consider two fictitious media, the Gazette and the Tribune operating on the same market, targeting the same demographics, competing fort the same online eyeballs (and the brains behind those). Our two online papers rely on four key traffic drivers:
• Their own editorial efforts, aimed at building the brand and establishing a trusted relationship with the readers. Essential but, by itself, insufficient to reach the critical mass needed to lure advertisers.
• Getting in bed with Google, with twin-track tactics: search engine optimisation (SEO), which helps climb to the top of search results page; and search engine marketing (SEM), in which a brand buys keywords to position its ads in the best possible context.
• An audience acquisition strategy that will artificially grow page views as well as the unique visitor count. Some sites will aggregate audiences that are remotely related to their core product, but that will better dress them up for the advertising market (more on this in a forthcoming column).
• An intelligent use of social medias such Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the apps ecosystem.
• Their own editorial efforts, aimed at building the brand and establishing a trusted relationship with the readers. Essential but, by itself, insufficient to reach the critical mass needed to lure advertisers.
• Getting in bed with Google, with twin-track tactics: search engine optimisation (SEO), which helps climb to the top of search results page; and search engine marketing (SEM), in which a brand buys keywords to position its ads in the best possible context.
• An audience acquisition strategy that will artificially grow page views as well as the unique visitor count. Some sites will aggregate audiences that are remotely related to their core product, but that will better dress them up for the advertising market (more on this in a forthcoming column).
• An intelligent use of social medias such Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the apps ecosystem.
Coming back to the Tribune v Gazette competition, let's see how they deal with the latter item.
For both, Twitter is a reasonable source of audience, worth a few percentage points. More importantly, Twitter is a strong promotional vehicle. With 27,850 followers, the Tribune lags behind the Gazette and its 40,000 followers. Something must be done. The Tribune decides to work with a social media specialist. Over a couple of months, the firm gets to the Tribune to follow (in the Twitter sense) most of the individuals who already are Gazette followers. This mechanically translates into a "follow-back" effect powered by implicit flattery: "Wow, I've been spotted by the Tribune, I must have voice on some sort…" In doing so, the Tribune will be able to vacuum up about a quarter or a third – that's a credible rate of follow-back – of the Gazette followers. Later, the Tribune will "unfollow" the defectors to cover its tracks.
Compared with other more juvenile shenanigans, that's a rather sophisticated scam. After all, in our example, one media is exploiting its competitor's audience the way it would buy a database of prospects. It's not ethical, but it's not illegal. And it's effective: a significant part of the the followers so "converted" to the Tribune are likely stick to it as the two media do cover the same beat.
Sometimes, only size matters. Last December, the French bloggerCyroul (also a digital media consultant) uncovered a scam performed by Fred & Farid, one of the hippest advertising advertising agencies. In his post (in French) Cyroul explained how the ad agency got 5,000 followers in a matter of five days. As in the previous example, the technique is based on the "mass following" technique but, this time, it has nothing to do with recruiting some form of "qualified" audience. Fred & Farid arranged to follow robots that, in turn, follow their account. The result is a large number of new followers from Japan or China, all sharing the same characteristic: the ratio between following/followed is about one, which is, Cyroul say, the signature of bots-driven mass following. Pathetic indeed. His conclusion:
One day, your "influence" will be measured against real followers or fans as opposed to bots-induced accounts or artificial ones. Then, brands will weep as their fan pages will be worth nothing; ad agencies will cry as well when they realise that Twitter is worth nothing.
But wait, there are higher numbers on the crudeness scale: If you type "increase Facebook fans" in Google, you'll get swamped with offers. Wading through the search results, I spotted one carrying a wide range of products: 10,000 views on YouTube for €189; 2,000 Facebook "likes" for €159; 10,000 followers on Twitter for €890, etc. You provide your URL, you pay on a secure server, it stays anonymous and the goods are delivered between five and 30 days.
The private sector is now allocating huge resources to fight the growing business of internet scams. Sometimes, it has to be done in a opaque way. One of the reasons why Google is not saying much about its ranking algorithm is – also – to prevent fraud.
As for Apple, its application ecosystem faces the same problem.Over time, its ranking system became questionable as bots and download farms joined the fray. In a nutshell, as for the Facebook fans harvesting, the more you were willing to pay, the more notoriety you got thanks to inflated rankings and bogus reviews. Last week, Apple issued this warning to its developer community:
Adhering to guidelines on third-party marketing services
Feb 6, 2012
Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts. Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership.
Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts. Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership.
Evidently, Apple has a reliability issue on how its half million apps are ranked and evaluated by users. Eventually, it could affect its business as the App Store could become a bazaar in which the true value of a product gets lost in a quagmire of mediocre apps. This, by the way, is a push in favour of an Apple-curated guide described in the Monday Note by Jean-Louis (see "Why Apple should follow Michelin"). In the UK, several print publishers have detected the need for independent reviews; there, newsstands carry a dozen of app review magazines, not only covering Apple, but the Android market as well.
Obviously there is a market for that.
Because they depend heavily on advertising, preventing scams is critical for social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. In Facebook's pre-IPO filing, I saw no mention of scams in the Risk Factors section, except in vaguest of terms. As for Twitter, all we know is the true audience is much smaller than the company says it is: Business Insider calculated that, out of the 175m accounts claimed by Twitter, 90m have zero followers.
For now, the system stills holds up. Brands remain convinced that their notoriety is directly tied to the number of fan/followers they claim – or their ad agency has been able to channel to them. But how truly efficient is this? How large is the proportion of bogus audiences? Today there appears to be no reliable metric to assess the value of a fan or a follower. And if there is, no one wants to know.
FBI to step up monitoring of social media sites amid privacy concerns
Agency to build app that will constantly monitor Twitter and Facebook, following law enforcement trend of increased reliance
Last year, the justice department demanded Twitter release private data, which it sought as part of its investigation into WikiLeaks. Photograph: guardiannews.com
The FBI plans to step up the monitoring of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and has asked for help building an app to constantly monitor the sites.
Earlier this month the FBI quietly published a request for information (RFI) looking for companies that might help it build a new social network monitoring system looking at "publicly available" information. Contractors have until 10 February to suggest solutions.
US enforcement agencies have increasingly been using social networks to track crime. Recently over 40 members of two feuding New York gangswere indicted in connection with a series of shootings and killings in Brooklyn after they boasted about their crimes on Twitter.
Gang members boasted of "going to the beach" when they entered rival gang territories and tweeted they had "clapped him off the surfboard," when they shot a rival. In the last 18 months, the gangs were responsible for six homicides and 32 shootings, according to New York police commissioner Ray Kelly.
But the increasing monitoring of social networks has also alarmed privacy advocates. Last year, Twitter disclosed that the justice department had subpoenaed it to get personal records of Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former WikiLeaks aide.
Lillie Coney, associate director of EPIC, a Washington-based privacy group, called the FBI request "ridiculous."
"Get a warrant," she said. "You don't know half the people you communicate with on Twitter. They are going to launch investigations and start looking at all sorts of people that they have no right to be investigating. There is no accountability, no transparency and no oversight."
The RFI calls on companies to develop a "secure, light weight web application" for the FBI's strategic information and operations center (SIOC). "The application must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats."
The product must allow the FBI to keep hold of cached information as well as real time data, and allow that information to be linked to specific locations and easily shared.
The FBI wants the new system to be able to incorporate the information it already has on terrorist networks around the world. It also wants the ability create "spot reports" – "to quickly summarize (ie who, what, when, where, and why) threats/incidents identified and alerted by the application with the geo-coordinates included."
The FBI did not return calls for comment.
"Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations," the FBI states in the RFI.
Facebook's nudity and violence guidelines are laid bare
Nipples are rude but crushed limbs are OK – a document leak has revealed the social network's attitudes to sex and violence
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Facebook's censorship guidelines, dictating what kinds of sex and violence can be depicted in photographs, have been leaked. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Facebook bans images of breastfeeding if nipples are exposed – but allows "graphic images" of animals if shown "in the context of food processing or hunting as it occurs in nature". Equally, pictures of bodily fluids – except semen – are allowed as long as no human is included in the picture; but "deep flesh wounds" and "crushed heads, limbs" are OK ("as long as no insides are showing"), as are images of people using marijuana but not those of "drunk or unconscious" people.
The strange world of Facebook's image and post approval system has been laid bare by a document leaked from the outsourcing company oDesk to the Gawker website, which indicates that the sometimes arbitrary nature of picture and post approval actually has a meticulous – if faintly gore-friendly and nipple-unfriendly – approach.
For the giant social network, which has 800 million users worldwide and recently set out plans for a stock market flotation which could value it at up to $100bn (£63bn), it is a glimpse of its inner workings – and odd prejudices about sex – that emphasise its American origins.
Facebook has previously faced an outcry from breastfeeding mothersover its treatment of images showing them with their babies. The issue has rumbled on, and now seems to have been embedded in its "Abuse Standards Violations", which states that banned items include "breastfeeding photos showing other nudity, or nipple clearly exposed". It also bans "naked private parts" including "female nipple bulges and naked butt cracks" - though "male nipples are OK".
The guidelines, which have been set out in full, depict a world where sex is banned but gore is acceptable. Obvious sexual activity, even if "naked parts" are hidden, people "using the bathroom", and "sexual fetishes in any form" are all also banned. The company also bans slurs or racial comments "of any kind" and "support for organisations and people primarily known for violence". Also banned is anyone who shows "approval, delight, involvement etc in animal or human torture".
The 13-page manual, which is continually updated, is the bible for workers for oDesk who are deployed to police the posts and images that are sent to them any time somebody on the huge network clicks on a "Report" button. An early version was released last Thursday by a disgruntled employee of Odesk, Amine Derkaoui, a 21-year-old Moroccan who told Gawker that he was paid $1 per hour to trawl through the reports and determine whether they should be removed from the site or not.
"It's humiliating. They are just exploiting the third world," he told Gawker.
The site pointed out that Facebook's banning of some content - often with sexual overtones - has drawn the ire of users. Besides protests from "lactivists" over breastfeeding photos, it has had to contend with anger from art lovers over the removal of a nude drawing (the new guidelines say explicitly "Art nudity OK" - though "digital/cartoon nudity" is not) and in April 2011 censored a picture of a gay kiss.
A Facebook spokesperson said: "In an effort to quickly and efficiently process the millions of reports we receive every day, we have found it helpful to contract third parties to provide precursory classification of a small proportion of reported content. These contractors are subject to rigorous quality controls and we have implemented several layers of safeguards to protect the data of those using our service. Additionally, no user information beyond the content in question and the source of the report is shared. We have, and will continue, to escalate the most serious reports internally, and all decisions made by contractors are subject to extensive audits.
"We are constantly improving our processes and review our contractors on an ongoing basis. This document provides a snapshot in time of our standards with regards to one of those contractors, for the most up to date information please visit our Community Standards page ."
Yahoo and Facebook: battle looms over patent rights
Yahoo asserts claims on patents that include technical mechanisms in Facebook's ads, privacy controls and news feed
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Yahoo has indicated it would not flinch at taking Facebook to court over its patents. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Yahoo has demanded licensing fees from Facebook for the use of its technology, potentially engulfing social media in the patent battles and lawsuits raging across much of the tech sector.
Yahoo has asserted claims on patents that include the technical mechanisms in Facebook's ads, privacy controls, news feed and messaging service, according to a source briefed on the matter.
Representatives from the two companies met on Monday to discuss up to 20 of Yahoo's patents, according to a source, who was not aware of what specific dollar demands Yahoo may have made for licenses.
Yahoo did not elaborate in an emailed statement on details of its discussions with Facebook, but indicated it would not flinch at taking the social networking giant to court.
Yahoo said other companies have already licensed some of the technologies at issue, and that it would act unilaterally if Facebook refused to pay for a patent license.
"Yahoo has a responsibility to its shareholders, employees and other stakeholders to protect its intellectual property," the company said.
The meeting between the two companies was first reported by the New York Times.
A Facebook spokesman said: "Yahoo contacted us at the same time they called the New York Times and so we haven't had the opportunity to fully evaluate their claims."
Should Yahoo end up suing Facebook, it would mark the first major legal battle among technology giants in the social media sphere and a major escalation of patent litigation that has already swept up the smartphone and tablet sectors and high-tech stalwarts such as Apple, Microsoft and Motorola Mobility.
Yahoo's patent claims follow Facebook's announcement of plans for an initial public offering that could value the company at about $100bn.
Several social networking companies, including Facebook, have seen an rise in patent claims asserted against them as they move through the IPO process.
However, most of those lawsuits have been filed by patent aggregators that buy up intellectual property to squeeze value from it via licensing deals, and none by a large tech company such as Yahoo.
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