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Digital Culture Links: June 6th 2011
Links for May 31st 2011 through June 6th 2011:
- Parents using Facebook to attack school staff, Principals Federation says [Perth Now] – “Parents are using Facebook and other social networks to attack principals and teachers they dislike or believe have wronged them or their children. The growing practice of raging against school staff online has sparked calls for the Education Department to step in. “These forums can also fuel the sort of misplaced anger and hatred that can end in physical confrontations and school lockdowns,” Australian Principals Federation president Chris Cotching said. Lawyers acting for the federation have warned the department it could be legally culpable if it continued to ignore online campaigns against staff.”
- Palin Fans Trying to Edit Wikipedia Paul Revere Page [Little Green Footballs] – Interesting case study on Wikipedia’s accuracy – after Sarah Palin gets history wrong, her supporteres try and edit Wikipedia to make the Palin version; drama and editorial warfare ensue: “Man, you’ve gotta almost admire the sheer blind dedication of Sarah Palin’s wingnut acolytes. Now they’re trying like crazy to edit the Wikipedia page for “Paul Revere” to make it match Palin’s botched version of history. Here’s the Revision history of Paul Revere; check out the edits that are being reversed. Also see the discussion page for an entertaining exchange between Wikipedia editors and a would-be revisionist.”
- Google Chrome: Lady Gaga [YouTube] – Clever ad for Google Chrome featuring Lady Gaga (and simultaneously a Lady Gaga ad featuring Chrome!) which really highlights how she’s deeply engaging with her fanbase via social media.
- Google’s YouTube policy for Android users is copyright extremism [guardian.co.uk] – Cory Doctorow laments Google’s copyright-driven philosophical contradictions: “The news that Android users who have jailbroken their phones will be denied access to the new commercial YouTube pay-per-view service is as neat an example of copyright extremism as you could hope for. Android, of course, is Google’s wildly popular alternative to Apple’s iOS (the operating system found on iPhones and iPads). Android is free and open – it costs nothing to copy, it can be legally modified and those modifications can be legally distributed […] unless you’re running a very specific version of Google’s software on your phone or tablet, you can’t “rent” movies on YouTube. Google – the vendor – and the studios – the rights holders – are using copyright to control something much more profound than mere copying. In this version of copyright, making a movie gives you the right to specify what kind of device can play the movie back, and how that device must be configured.”
The Old Spice Super Fan and Insanely Clever Marketing (Updated)
You probably remember last year’s amazing Old Spice social media campaign (details here and here) in which the man from the ads started replying to people’s comments on YouTube. It was incredibly well put together and the most endearing and genuine use of social media for marketing to date. In a really clever move, after announcing that newly crafted ads were coming soon, the marketing team decided the best way to share the first new ad would be to give the link to just one fan and let them decide how/when/if to share it. Here’s Isaiah Mustafa in his Old Spice Guy persona looking for his Super Fan:
And here’s the just announced winning reply, a very endearing parody from teenager Chris Gatewood (@chrisscross):
Having a teenage winner is a slick move, since it really targets the aging Old Spice brand at a youthful demographic. It’s also a little risky, but acknowledging the importance and power of Old Spice’s fans (fans of the videos, and thus fans of the brand, even if not yet prominent users) is important and will endear the brand even further. The risk, and probably reward, comes in giving Chris Gatewood the only link to the new Old Spice advertisement, which a lot of people are waiting to see. If Chris uses this opportunity, it’ll certainly drive traffic to his twitter page and elsewhere. For the Old Spice folks, it really empowers one fan and encourages others to see Old Spice once again as truly interacting with their fans/consumers rather than just talking at them (as 90% of online brands tend to do).
Now, it’s certainly true that the largest single audience will be when the Old Spice ad plays during the US Superbowl (which is the peak ratings event in the US, and also where their most expensive ads usually debut), but reaching out to the online fans first is still a clever move. Here’s the hilariously kitsch video of the Old Spice Man calling Chris to tell him he’s going to posses the only link to the new Old Spice video in the entire universe for the next three days:
And if you want to see the new Old Spice ad … I guess you’ll have to follow Chris Gatewood on Twitter and wait for him to share a link. 🙂
Update: Chris has shared the link, so here’s the brand new Old Spice ad “Scent Vacation”:
Digital Culture Links: September 8th 2010
Links for September 6th 2010 through September 8th 2010:
- In ‘Bed Intruder Song,’ Gregory Brothers Have Billboard Hit [NYTimes.com] – “Viral videos tend to have a short lifespan online. […] But in one of the stranger twists in recent pop-music history, a musical remake of a local news clip transcended YouTube fame and reached the Billboard Hot 100 chart in August. It was a rare case of a product of Web culture jumping the species barrier and becoming a pop hit. The song’s source material could not have been more unlikely: A local TV news report from Huntsville, Ala., about an intruder who climbed into a woman’s bed and tried to assault her. But with some clever editing and the use of software that can turn speech into singing, the Gregory Brothers, a quartet of musicians living in Brooklyn, transformed an animated and angry rant by the victim’s brother into something genuinely catchy. The resulting track, “Bed Intruder Song,” has sold more than 91,000 copies on iTunes, and last week it was at No. 39 on the iTunes singles chart. Its video has been viewed more than 16 million times on YouTube.” The background to this meme:
- Avatar activism [Le Monde diplomatique] – Henry Jenkins on the mobilisation of popular cultural in protest movements: “Five Palestinian, Israeli and international activists painted themselves blue to resemble the Na’vi from James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar (1) in February, and marched through the occupied village of Bil’in. The Israeli military used tear gas and sound bombs on the azure-skinned protestors, who wore traditional keffiyahs with their Na’vi tails and pointy ears. The camcorder footage of the incident was juxtaposed with borrowed shots from the film and circulated on YouTube. We hear the movie characters proclaim: “We will show the Sky People that they can not take whatever they want! This, this is our land!” The event is a reminder of how people around the world are mobilising icons and myths from popular culture as resources for political speech, which we can call Avatar activism.”
- Reputation bankruptcy :[The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It] – Should we be able to purge our online reputation record and declare reputation bankruptcy? Jonathan Zittrain: “As real identity grows in importance on the Net, the intermediaries demanding it ought to consider making available a form of reputation bankruptcy. Like personal financial bankruptcy, or the way in which a state often seals a juvenile criminal record and gives a child a “fresh start” as an adult, we ought to consider how to implement the idea of a second or third chance into our digital spaces. People ought to be able to express a choice to de-emphasize if not entirely delete older information that has been generated about them by and through various systems: political preferences, activities, youthful likes and dislikes. If every action ends up on one’s “permanent record,” the press conference effect can set in. Reputation bankruptcy has the potential to facilitate desirably experimental social behavior and break up the monotony of static communities online and offline.”
- What Are BP, Apple, Amazon, and Others Spending on Google Advertising? [Fast Company] – A peak into adword spending: “Google is typically very secretive about the specifics of its search revenue. I can’t actually recall any other leak quite like this one, in which the budgets of specific companies are laid out–kudos to AdAge for snagging the internal document with such rarely seen information. Much of the list, which covers the month of June 2010, will be of no surprise to anyone that uses Google Search regularly (which is pretty much everyone): AT&T spends ridiculous amounts of money, as do Apollo Group (which owns the University of Phoenix), Amazon, and Expedia. It’s worthwhile to note that some of AT&T’s $8.08 million budget was probably due to the launch of the wireless carrier’s biggest product of the year, the Apple iPhone 4. Apple itself spent slightly less than $1 million, which puts the company in the upper echelon of Google spending but not all that close to the top. 47 companies spent over $1 million, so Apple was, at best, in the top 50.”
- On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography [booktwo.org] – A fantastic way to illustrate the importance of Wikipedia histories: “… Wikipedia is a useful subset of the entire internet, and as such a subset of all human culture. It’s not only a resource for collating all human knowledge, but a framework for understanding how that knowledge came to be and to be understood; what was allowed to stand and what was not; what we agree on, and what we cannot. As is my wont, I made a book to illustrate this. Physical objects are useful props in debates like this: immediately illustrative, and useful to hang an argument and peoples’ attention on. This particular book—or rather, set of books—is every edit made to a single Wikipedia article, The Iraq War, during the five years between the article’s inception in December 2004 and November 2009, a total of 12,000 changes and almost 7,000 pages.”
Lost (without Twitter)
There were more than 400,000 tweets during the Lost season finale; I didn’t make any of them, or read any of them in real-time, but not for a lack of interest. Rather, as I write this post (on Tuesday, 25 May) Australia has still not screened the Lost finale; it’s scheduled for Wednesday night on Seven. While Seven have reduced the delay between US screenings and Australian broadcast times, as was noted in yesterday’s links, the finale was simulcast live in the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Turkey, and Canada but that was not the case down under. To add insult to injury, Seven couched this decision as service to Australian Lost fans:
Channel Seven will not screen the 2½-hour finale until 8.30pm Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the station said a Monday afternoon simulcast was considered, but it was felt fans would find the show more easily in its current timeslot – although the finale has been upgraded from digital channel 7TWO to Seven. […] ‘Ridiculous,” says comedian Wil Anderson, a Lost die-hard. ”If I was going to watch it on Wednesday, I could not go on the internet at all for two days. I will definitely have watched it by Wednesday.”
Better to have said nothing, or spoken plainly that they’ve decided the ratings boost from the Lost finale would be insufficient to justify tinkering with their Monday line-up, but to have Seven claim that the delay is to make things easier for Lost fans in Australia is really pretty offensive.
On the 400,000+ tweets made during the Lost finale by those who could see it live:
“And that is a conservative estimate,” said Mark Ghuneim, chief executive [of WiredSet]. That beat the show’s average of 27,000 tweets during the season, but was still a smaller volume overall than an event like the Oscars, said Mr. Ghuneim. “We tracked about 780,000 tweets during the Oscars,” Mr. Ghuneim said. “But it’s still an impressive number.” In addition, he said, tweets about the show peaked during commercials. “Instead of running to the fridge during commercial breaks, people were running to their laptops and phones,” he said.
From those comments, Twitter is a boon to commercial television: a social media tool which encourages real-time viewing, which actually justifies the ad breaks as times to reflect, comment and connect with other fans (with the ads still blaring away rather than risk missing the opening of next act), rather than skipping the commercials altogether. For so many Lost fans, that sense of shared viewing made the finale much more meaningful event television, whether you loved it, or hated it. Spreading that conversation across North America and sizable chunk of Europe made it even richer, but those riches were denied Australians. What Seven fails to understand, is that a delay of just over two days may as well be two decades; most people I know in Australia have already seen Lost via means which aren’t legal, be that a peer to peer download, or circumventing the geographic restrictions for an online replay-service like Hulu. Lost succeeded admirably in creating dedicated fans across the web; Seven succeeded admirably in forcing them to look elsewhere.
Perhaps the greatest irony, and the surest sign that Seven doesn’t understand social media, is the fact that there will be a “Live Blog” on the official Seven Lost pages on Wednesday night. On the web, live means live globally, not live in an arbitrary national sales region bounded by water. Besides which, I live in Perth, on the west coast of Australia, and the live blog wouldn’t even be live here anyway; were I watching Lost in Australia, it’d still be one giant spoiler thanks to Perth being 2-hours behind the East coast.
I’ve written about the tyranny of digital distance before which, in a nut-shell, occurs when the real-time nature of digital information sharing isn’t fulfilled due to historical, political and commercial boundaries which were largely established before the internet, before the web. Not being able to participate in the Lost finale’s global commentary is a poignant example of the tyranny of digital distance in action, and has done nothing for my relationship with commercial broadcasting in Australia. In an era where the immediacy and real-time nature of commentary can add so much to the shared viewing experience, the boundaries which prevent that fan experience can be all the more disappointing and distancing.
For the record: I’ve now seen the finale, and I loved it.
Digital Culture Links: March 9th 2010
Links for March 9th 2010:
- Mapping the growth of the internet [BBC News] – Useful flash-powered world map from the BBC visually demonstrating the growth in internet use across the globe from 1998 to 2008. (Quite a lot of growth to be seen!)
- Return of the natives by Slavoj Zizek [New Statesman] – Slavoj Zizek gets stuck into Avatar: “So where is Cameron’s film here? Nowhere: in Orissa, there are no noble princesses waiting for white heroes to seduce them and help their people, just the Maoists organising the starving farmers. The film enables us to practise a typical ideological division: sympathising with the idealised aborigines while rejecting their actual struggle. The same people who enjoy the film and admire its aboriginal rebels would in all probability turn away in horror from the Naxalites, dismissing them as murderous terrorists. The true avatar is thus Avatar itself – the film substituting for reality.”
- Adventures in the Wild, Wild West: Media140 Perth [media140.org] – Official wrap-up post for Perth Media 140 (Feb 2010), including links to pretty much everyone involved and a snappy little video summarising some of the key themes (if you watch closely you can see what 10 seconds of my talking head looks like after presenting a talk in a room which is warmer that 40 degrees Celsius!).
- Study: Ages of social network users [Royal Pingdom] – A really useful breakdown of social networking websites by age, including these stats:
“* Bebo appeals to a much younger audience than the other sites with 44% of its users being aged 17 or less. For MySpace, this number is also large; 33%.
* Classmates.com has the largest share of users being aged 65 or more, 8%, and 78% are 35 or older.
* 64% of Twitter’s users are aged 35 or older.
* 61% of Facebooks’s users are aged 35 or older. […]
* The average social network user is 37 years old.
* LinkedIn, with its business focus, has a predictably high average user age; 44.
* The average Twitter user is 39 years old.
* The average Facebook user is 38 years old.
* The average MySpace user is 31 years old.
* Bebo has by far the youngest users, as witnessed earlier, with an average age of 28.” - Twitter Hits 10 Billion Tweets [Mashable] – “It’s official: Twitter has surpassed 10 billion tweets. […] you can tell by the actual tweet ID numbers that we have crossed the magical threshold. The milestone shows that Twitter’s still growing at a rapid pace: it broke 1 billion tweets in November 2008 and 5 billion tweets just four months ago.”
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