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On the Importance of Dating Felicia Day’s Avatar in Australia!
If you’ve glanced at YouTube, or your iTunes store, or Twitter, or even Facebook in the last few days you may very well have noticed people talking about and linking to this video:
What you might not have realised if you’ve only just heard of The Guild or Felicia Day, is that this little video represents something of a leap forward in terms of indie-based web productions finding a way to make a healthy amount of money while still giving away their content predominantly for free. For those of you who’ve not come across The Guild before, it’s a comedy web series created and written by Felicia Day (of Dr Horrible and Buffy fame), looking at the ‘real’ lives of six MMO (videogame) players. The ‘game’ is never explicitly named, but the characters and situations are largely based on play in and around World of Warcraft.
Anyway, one of the most important things is that after the first season of The Guild, Day very cleverly managed to strike a deal with Microsoft which would allow them to co-produce The Guild and thus season two was initially, exclusively available via the Xbox Live, MSN and Zune websites. Significantly, Day retained all intellectual property regarding The Guild, meaning that the show remains under her ownership and control (about which Day is rightly proud). Indeed, just striking that deal is a significant business move for an indie web media creator. Of course, Day ensured that episodes also appeared on YouTube and other venues after a period of time, ensuring fans could access The Guild in whichever manner they preferred. The Guild has built a very healthy following (as has Day herself, with over a million Twitter followers) and after initially being available for free, Day released DVDs of season one
However, the music video which I’m focusing on today is The Guild’s ‘(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar’ which was written by Felicia Day, features the cast of The Guild, and was directed by Jed Whedon (one of Joss’ brothers, who also co-wrote Dr Horrible). Initially revealed at Comic-Con, the music video playfully engages with pretty much every stereotype that there is about gamers, electronically dancing a fine line between knowing parody and unadulterated fandom. Following the deal with Microsoft, ‘Avatar’ was available exclusively on the Xbox and Zune websites for a week, before hitting the rest of the web both for free on YouTube and as paid download via iTunes stores, Amazon and elsewhere. And that’s where the story gets impressive, as the music video has hit number one on the US iTunes store and on Amazon as an mp3 download. More to the point, Day has learnt from the successes and problems that Dr Horrible hit last year.
While Dr Horrible was a huge hit in the US iTunes store, there were problems even viewing Dr Horrible outside of the US for the first few days, and it took months before Australians had a legal option to purchase Dr Horrible online
. In contrast, Day seems acutely aware that The Guild’s fans are spread all across the globe and that all ‘national’ versions of the iTunes store (all of which have separate licensing agreements) should be ready to spread The Guild’s musical talents. [Update: To distribute the mp3 versions, Day used the Tunecore service which lets artists release their mp3s across a range of international stores simultaneously for a small fee.] The image visible on the left shows today’s Top Music Videos in the Australian iTunes store, with (Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar [feat. Felicia Day] sitting proudly at the top of the charts; it also topped the UK iTunes store (and elsewhere across the globe, too, I’m sure). While there was a delay of a day or so getting some versions of the music video or mp3 into particular national online stores, Day has no doubt affirmed the loyalty of fans across the globe by ensuring they have access to ‘Avatar’ for free, or to buy, on exactly the same terms as fans in the US. While we may never know exactly how much ‘Avatar’ earns (or even what the music video cost to make) even the $2.59 a pop for the music video in Australia, or $1.69 for the mp3 single, will surely combine with sales across the globe to make a very respectable amount. Indeed, I’d guess it could make more than a full season of The Guild webisodes!
Most importantly, though, Felicia Day has shown the sort of foresight that comes from being a clever media creator in the digital era: rather than bowing to the tyranny of digital distance, and letting the globe be arbitrarily cut into different regions in which different media companies can license and re-sell content, Day clearly views her loyal fans as a truly global, participative audience who all deserve equal access to the highly enjoyable media she creates! Felicia Day is someone who understands that digital media can, and should, also mean global media.
Now, after all that, if you’ve not done so already, stop listening to me, and check out ‘(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar’!
Privacy, Power, Permanence & Politics!
One of the reasons I’ve been so quiet is that in the past few weeks I’ve started teaching two new units here at Curtin. Both of these units have been completely redeveloped and this is their first run in the new form. I’ll talk about Web Communications 101 another day, but I wanted to point out how much I’m enjoying teaching our new Internet Politics and Power unit. The unit has a healthy dose of thinking from people like Lessig and Zittrain and really tackles many of the big issues for digital culture today. So I’m now required to stay on top of many of those issues I like to blog about, like privacy and copyright, rather than having to steal a hour here or there! 🙂 There are so many issues that are relevant today, but one area which is really getting me thinking is the way that Apple, Google, Facebook and others are creating their own bounded realms of control!
A recent example that really highlights the complexity of these issues is the policing of Apple’s application store for the iPhone. Recently there was a a fairly heated discussion after Apple rejected the Ninjawords: iPhone Dictionary application ostensibly for offensive words (but words which are present in many other apps). It turns out Apple had more complex reasoning which was, among other things, wrapped up with new parental controls being introduced for apps. While this rationale is less bizzare, John Gruber still makes the very important point that the biggest issue is there needs to be "fairness, consistency, and common sense in the App Store review process" and that consistency is, thus far, sorely lacking.
Apple’s app store has also been under fire for rejecting a Google app which would allow many users to access cheaper calls and services. Elisabeth Oppenheimer, writing at Zittrain’s Future of the Internet blog, notes that Apple claimed that they rejected Google’s app since it "duplicates iPhone functionality" but in real terms many people suspect it was rejected since it threatened the monopoly AT&T have enjoyed in being the exclusive iPhone service provider in the US. Oppenheimer is "hopeful that killing Google Voice will be the one step too far that inspires consumers and regulators to sit up and work to get sensible open-access rules" but I’m not necessarily that optimistic.
Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch is demanding Amazon hand over the details of Kindle users who subscribe to media from Murdoch’s vast empire. So far Amazon has not complied, but I wonder if they’re willing to risk their relationship with Newscorp in the long run? Along similar lines, this week Facebook purchased Friendfeed which potentially adds even more information to Facebook’s vast array of user information that they manage in, at times, curiously questionable ways.
While not quite an app, on another front the permanence of archives has come under threat from another third-party tool. While there have been concerns for a while about URL-shortening services, the upcoming closure of tr.im is the first one that I know of to go under. These services have become extremely popular, allowing people to create tiny web page addresses that can fit alongside a tweet and still fit Twitter’s 140 character limit. However, what will happen to all of the tweets which contain tr.im address? They’ll go dead, effectively making those tweets useless. While tr.im is not really to blame (really, what is the business model for a URL-shortener?), our reliance on these services leaves our tweets and related links fragile and vulnerable when a company or service collapses under the weight of their own popularity. This is less a privacy issue than an issue of utility: relying on third-party tools with no real backup function leaves the usefulness of our personal and collective archives in the hands of folks who, ultimately, may not have the resources to run these services forever!
Update: On the tr.im font there appears to be a happy ending, with the announcement that tr.im is becoming a community-developed open source project.
Update 2: Apple claim that they “did not reject an iPhone application submitted by Google and that it was still studying it, in part because of privacy concerns.”
Digital Culture Links: July 30th 2009
Links for July 24th 2009 through July 30th 2009:
- Law 2.0 – Law 2.0: The Challenge of User-generated and Peer-produced Networks, Content & Culture [Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ] – Peter Black’s primer on the changing legal landscape in the ‘Web 2.0’ era. Pitched at legal educators, but a really useful overview for anyone interested. [Talk on Vimeo] [Powerpoint Slides]
- Microsoft and Yahoo Reach Search Agreement [NYTimes.com] – “Microsoft and Yahoo announced a partnership in Internet search and advertising on Wednesday morning intended to create a stronger rival to the industry powerhouse Google. Under the pact, Microsoft will provide the underlying search technology on Yahoo’s popular Web sites. The deal provides a lift for Microsoft’s recent overhaul of its search engine, renamed Bing, which has won praise and favorable reviews, after years of falling further and further behind Google. Running such a search system proves expensive, and Microsoft can now filter more searches through the Bing technology infrastructure. It expects to deliver better answers to search queries over time as well by learning from more peoples’ queries.” Yacrosoft or Mihoo! ?
- Would the real social network please stand up? [apophenia] – Some useful thoughts about social networks and their differences from danah boyd and Bernie Hogan: “The truth of the matter is that there is no “real” social network. It all depends on what you’re trying to measure, what you’re trying to do with those measurements. We do ourselves an intellectual disservice when we assume that these different types of networks are interchangeable or that studying one automatically tells us about another. Most scholars get this, even when they’re quoted out of context by journalists to suggest otherwise (see Cameron Marlow). But I get the sense that a lot of journalists, marketers, advertisers, politicians, and everyday folks don’t. This is a problem.”
- China now has 338m internet users [News.com.au] – “The number of internet users in China is now greater than the entire population of the United States, after rising to 338 million by the end of June, state media reported today. China’s online population, the largest in the world, rose by 40 million in the first six months of 2009, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing a report by the China Internet Network Information Centre. The number of broadband internet connections rose by 10 million to 93.5 million in the first half of the year, the report said.”
- 6 Gorgeous Twitter Visualizations [Mashable] – Cool visualisation tools for Twitter – useful for explaining the potentially global conversations going on.
- Movie studios try to harness Twitter effect | Technology [Internet | Reuters] – “Box office watchers say Twitter, a micro-blogging service that allows anyone to post on-the-fly wisecracks for all the world to see, is the latest weapon in an arsenal of cell phones and computers that audiences use to critique films quickly, often when they are still sitting in theaters. Such word-of-mouth publicity from fan to fan can boost, or bomb, ticket sales. “Has everything speeded up? The answer is yes,” said Adam Fogelson, Universal’s president of marketing and distribution. “Depending on how big your opening day audience is, word-of-mouth starts playing a factor immediately,” he said.”
News & the Net: Two Steps Backwards …
Local citizen journalism evangelist, Bronwen Clune, often describes the news media corporations and mechanisms as ‘control media’. While this is certainly a striking expression, and no doubt fair when thinking about the likes of Rupert Murdoch, I’ve wondered if it’s at times a bit of a harsh brush with which to paint the news media in general . However, the Associated Press (AP) seems to be doing out its way to take the idea of control media literally, which has not been embraced by the interwebs at large; AP recently described a system of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to police the uses of its news content online. Their explanatory graphic and been, how shall we say, reinterpreted by the public they’re expecting to pay for AP’s services:
[Source for the top half of the image: AP’s Press Release “Associated Press to build news registry to protect content”; source for the full image: “What the AP really meant to convey”. Via Boing Boing]
At the same time, Chris Anderson on the promotion trail for his new book Free, has been enjoying himself by being as provocative as possible in interviews (conducted, oddly enough, by journalists). For example:
In the past, the media was a full-time job. But maybe the media is going to be a part-time job. Maybe media won’t be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby. There is no law that says that industries have to remain at any given size. Once there were blacksmiths and there were steelworkers, but things change. The question is not should journalists have jobs. The question is can people get the information they want, the way they want it? The marketplace will sort this out. If we continue to add value to the Internet we’ll find a way to make money. But not everything we do has to make money.
While change is definitely in the air, suggesting that journalism is a redundant profession is going too far. We need good journalism; we need people who are willing to take risks and invest huge amounts of time into investigative reporting; and they need to be paid. I’m not suggesting the status quo even means anything any more, and the last few years have definitely forced the news industry to decide whether it’s just an entertainment business or something more, but amongst all of that I think we need to try and figure out sustainable models that support journalism (but not sensationalism). I think unpaid citizen journalism and random acts of journalism by netizens will definitely play a significant role in the news media landscape that’s developing, but I don’t every think the culmination of citizen journalism will ever be enough by itself. I can’t live without the ABC or SBS, and I’m delighted they’re mainly government funded, but I know that’s not the only answer. And I also realise that answers aren’t readily available yet. We should, however, be looking for them. While the news industry is definitely having a rough time, and the future is uncertain, I also don’t think AP’s approach hard core ‘lock it all up’ approach, or Anderson’s dismissive suggestion the all journalists need to get real jobs and write news as a hobby, are really helping the debate. Not one little bit.
Twitter thoughts and blog neglect
I realised today that this blog has been rather neglected and while there are the usual way-too-busy reasons (all of which remain true!) I’ve noticed I’m spending more and more time looking at Twitter and less and less actually writing anything here; actually, I’m a fairly tweet-low Twitterer, too, I think – I read a lot more than I write. As I was pondering this, the core value of Twitter – it’s immediacy – really hit home as I found out about the major earthquake off the cost of New Zealand’s South Island (near Dunedin, where I was born and where my grandparents still live) via Twitter, and the ensuing Tsunami Warning (which makes an earthquake seem a lot scarier!). It took any mainstream news media, or blogs, that I read more than half an hour, and more than an hour for most, to break this story. By then, I’d had my little worried moment, reassured myself that the Tsunami (which, thankfully, never happened) wouldn’t hit my grandparents since they live up a hill, and returned to work. By then ‘New Zealand’ and ‘Tsunami Warning’ were both Trending Topics, second only to Harry Potter on the back of the film debut of the sixth feature. Of course, following the links from the Trending Topics, I also accidentally hit spoilers regarding tonight’s episode of the Master Chef finals; time to go Justine, it seems (like the US, the East Coast of Australia, is 2 hours ahead those of us in the West, so Twitter is a rather potent spoiler source).
In turn, I suspect Twitter is rapidly becoming normalised as part of the everyday conversation for all sorts of folks, not just social media addicts. Indeed, I was amused to read Melissa Gregg’s post about an episode of Desperate Housewives including a character who fails to get a job due to their lack of Twitter-knowledge! Perhaps in a future episode said character might change their fortune by stumbling across this useful History(ish) of Twitter diagram. In the mean time, I’ll see if I can work out a better balance between the lifestreaming deluge of Twitter and my neglected but still loved blog.
Annotated Digital Culture Links: July 14th 2009
Links for July 10th 2009 through July 14th 2009:
- ‘Bruno’: Did Twitter Reviews Hurt Movie at Box Office? [TIME, 13 July 2009] – “In the old days — like, until yesterday — movie studios judged the success of their big pictures by how much they grossed on the opening weekend. But in the age of Twitter, electronic word-of-mouth is immediate, as early moviegoers tweet their opinions on a film to millions of “followers.” Instant-messaging can make or break a film within 24 hours. Friday is the new weekend. … Brüno’s box-office decline from Friday to Saturday indicates that the film’s brand of outrage was not the sort to please most moviegoers — and that their tut-tutting got around fast. Brüno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter effect.” (Can bad word of mouth, amplified and aggregated by Twitter, will a new movie in hours rather than the usual week for bad reviews?)
- I want my cyborg life [apophenia] – danah boyd’s thoughts on backchannels, the potential omnipresence of searchable information and the presumption that technologies tend to fragment attention rather than foster it.
- PingWire – A public feed of the latest Twitpic pictures. Hypnotic windows on everyday life and popular culture, but as the warning says: “Evidently, there are people who post photos which may be inappropriate for viewers under 18 years of age. You’ve been warned.”
- Flic.kr Greasemonkey Script – Useful little Greasemonkey Script to make use of Flickr’s URL-shortening service (Flic.kr). Great for using Flickr with Twitter and the like.
- Find Creative Commons images with Image Search [Official Google Blog] – Google’s Image Search adds support for Creative Commons licenses. Searching for CC material continues to get easier and easier! Just click on Advanced Search.
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