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Annotated Digital Culture Links: February 4th 2009
Links for February 2nd 2009 through February 4th 2009:
- How Natalie became Australia’s queen of YouTube [The Age] – “From her parents’ home in western Sydney, Natalie Tran, Australia’s queen of YouTube, has proven time and again that titillation is not a prerequisite to internet fame. With more than 150,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, Tran, 22, is easily the most subscribed YouTube user in Australia, while globally she ranks 37th. The 118 videos she’s created over two years have amassed 64 million views, making her also the most viewed Australian YouTube user of all time – more popular on the site than even AC/DC, whose videos have attracted 53 million views. But while some female web stars such as Obama Girl have used their sexuality to amass scores of drooling fanboys, Tran has eschewed titillation in favour of comedic skits about her everyday life.” (She’s very funny and has impressive production values for this sort of talking-from-my-bedroom cam style.)
- MySpace purges 90,000 sex offenders [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “MySpace has identified and barred some 90,000 registered sex offenders from using the site over the last two years, the online networking site revealed to a US investigative task force on Tuesday. The “shocking” number was 40,000 more than MySpace had previously acknowledged, according to Connecticut Attorney-General Richard Blumenthal, a co-chairman of the task force of state attorneys-general looking into sex offenders’ use of social networking. MySpace disclosed the figures to the task force in response to a subpoena. “This shocking revelation, resulting from our subpoena, provides compelling proof that social networking sites remain rife with sexual predators,” Mr Blumenthal said in a statement.” (Blumenthal sees this figure as evidence that MySpace should only allow “real” identities and use age-verification; I see this as evidence that we should be educating young people from an early age about how to deal with unwanted attention, predators and so forth, whatever the medium!)
- Virtual gold broker “sells” for $10 million [Boing Boing] – Cory Doctorow: “My MMO Inc., has purchased MyMMOShop.com for $10,000,000 — MyMMOShop being a company that buys and sells virtual gold, prestige items, and other virtual wealth. My MMO is a privately held company, so it’s impossible to say whether 10 million actual dollars left one bank account and entered another (as opposed to a stock swap or other “sale”), but this is still pretty whacky news. I’m working on a novel about gold farming and I spent most of the last year talking to farmers, brokers, players, academics, game-runners, moderators and others who follow the field, and I’ve concluded that it’s possibly the weirdest grey market in the world.”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: February 2nd 2009
Links for February 2nd 2009:
- Researcher: No Link Between Violent Games & School Shootings [GamePolitics] – “A researcher at Texas A&M International University has concluded that there is “no significant relationship” between school shootings and playing violent video games. Writing for the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Prof. Christopher Ferguson criticizes the methodology used in earlier research linking games to violence and aggression. He also points out that no evidence of violent game play was found in recent high-profile incidents such as the Virginia Tech massacre, the Utah Trolley Stop mall shooting and the February, 2008 shooting on the campus of Northern Illinois University.”
- Internet users worldwide surpass 1 billion | Digital Media [CNET News] – “Global Internet usage reached more than 1 billion unique visitors in December, with 41.3 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report released Friday by ComScore. The study looked at Internet users over the age of 15 who accessed the Net from their home or work computers. Europe grabbed the next largest slice of the global Internet audience, with 28 percent, followed by the United States, with an 18.4 percent slice. But Latin America, while comprising just 7.4 percent of the global Internet audience, is the region to watch, noted Jamie Gavin, a ComScore senior analyst. “
- YouTube – 2009 Oscars Interactive Photo Hunt! – “A new genre? YouTube user Copyrighthater has created a game using YouTube’s in-video links and annotation tools. In each video (a.k.a. game level) you’re presented with two images from an Oscar movie and you have to find the difference and click it. If you’re right, you get to the next level.” (Thanks, Jill!)
- The Pope on YouTube [Official Google Blog] – “Today we’re delighted to announce that the Vatican has launched a dedicated YouTube channel. To find out more about why the Pope has taken the decision to interact with YouTube on a regular basis, here is a short introduction from Father Federico Lombardi, S.I., Director of Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Centre and the Holy See Press Office.”
- Video games thrash movies and DVDs [WA Today] – “The video games industry is now double the size of the box office and more than 40 per cent larger than the movie disc industry in Australia, thanks to explosive growth in social games that allow the whole family to play. The Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA) today released figures showing games industry revenue was $1.96 billion in calendar year 2008, an increase of 47 per cent from the previous year. Box office takings for the same period were up 6 per cent to $946 million, the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia said. Total revenue for movies sold on disc grew 5 per cent to $1.4 billion, the Australian Visual Software Distributors Association (AVSDA) said.”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 20th 2009
Links for January 19th 2009 through January 20th 2009:
- “Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics” by danah boyd (Phd Thesis, 2.1Mb PDF) – “Abstract: As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices – gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens’ engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices – self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society.”
- Facebook irked by ‘burger for friends’ campaign [The Age] – “Burger King said Friday that pressure from Facebook has caused it to yank an application that gave members of the hot social networking website a Whopper for every 10 friends they dumped. Before the Whopper Sacrifice Campaign was halted, 233,906 friends were “sacrificed” by Facebook users more interested in relationships with the global fast-food chain’s specialty hamburgers, according to Burger King. … Changes sought by Facebook reportedly included ditching an application feature that sent deleted friends messages informing them that an online pal preferred a hamburger over them.”
- The Boxxy Story – From the 4chan meme factory, the story of Boxxy, whose hyperactive YouTube antics caused a hormone-driven civil war, taking her from a micro-meme to the Queen /b/
Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 18th 2009
Links for January 16th 2009 through January 18th 2009:
- At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool [NYTimes.com] – YouTube as #2 search engine? Googlopoly clearly progressing according to plan: “The explosion of all types of video content on YouTube and other sites is quickly transforming online video from a medium strictly for entertainment and news into one that is also a reference tool. As a result, video search, on YouTube and across other sites, is rapidly morphing into a new entry point into the Web, one that could rival mainstream search for many types of queries. … And now YouTube, conceived as a video hosting and sharing site, has become a bona fide search tool. Searches on it in the United States recently edged out those on Yahoo, which had long been the No. 2 search engine, behind Google. (Google, incidentally, owns YouTube.) In November, Americans conducted nearly 2.8 billion searches on YouTube, about 200 million more than on Yahoo, according to comScore.”
- Hudson River plane crash [Kottke] – Detailed wrapu-up of the citizen journalist (and some mainstream media) responses to teh Hudson River plan crash. Twitter and Flickr excel. [Via BBoing]
- U.S. Airways Crash Rescue Picture: Citizen Journalism, Twitter At Work [Slicon Valley Insider] – Twitter as a citizen journalism platform: “Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida posts the first photo of U.S. Airways flight 1549 on Twitter from his iPhone. Thirty-four minutes after Janis posted his photo, MSNBC interviewed him live on TV as a witness …”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 13th 2009
Links for January 11th 2009 through January 13th 2009:
- The Evolution of Dance 2 Proves You Can’t Go Home Again [YouTube Reviewed] – “That guy who has done arguably the worst job in the history of the internet capitalizing on one of the most widely viewed viral videos ever is back (and, of course, featured on the front page of YouTube) with Evolution of Dance 2. While the original was kind of fun because it seemed like one of those really cool moments that just happened to be captured on film, the corporately co-opted sequel reeks of a coordinated production trying way too hard to look like a spontaneous moment caught on tape.
- Twitter’s Massive 2008: 752 Percent Growth [Mashable] – “There’s little doubt that Twitter was one of the most talked about startups over the past year. But just how much did it grow in 2008? The final numbers are in, and according to Compete, they’re astounding: 752%, for a total of 4.43 million unique visitors in December. After starting the year with only around 500,000 unique monthly visitors, Twitter saw its most dramatic growth in the back half of ’08, picking up more than one million additional visitors in December alone. And that’s all just in the US.”
- The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button: Possible “Benjamin Button” Snub Proves Oscars Hate Science Fiction [io9] – “Variety reports that the Oscars are considering passing over Brad Pitt’s performance in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button for a Best Actor nod, because his acting was enhanced by special effects. Especially in the early scenes where he’s an old-man infant, some critics say he’s more of an animated Gollum-esque figure than an actual actor. Variety wonders whether Paramount did too good a job of exposing the movie’s makeup and CG wizardry in the promotional campaign, and that biased Pitt’s critics against the role.”
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