Baruch New Media - Our Class Wiki - So Far

Unfortunately, I have not submit any work into the class wiki yet but definitely will. My job is to contribute to the business portion of new media, specifically Marketing and Advertising. People use a variety of techniques and applications from New Media in the Marketing and Advertising industry. I am currently reading a book that describes how marketers use American Idol as a stand to promote their products (Coca Cola, Ford, AT&T). These companies saw that the show was very successful and they as sponsors want to collaborate with the producers to promote their name. This was a very interesting study that eventually got out of hand when the producers decide to rig the show thinking that they can get more voters to participate. One thing led to another and it ultimately affect not only their viewers but their sponsors as well.

Blogs vs. Wikis

I'm pretty sure that many people out there assume that blogs and wikis are similar applications...although, there are some differences! Blogs are usually use by a single author who wants to express his/her ideas or thoughts in journal form. I experienced an example of a type of blog when I used Xanga.com to customize my own Xanga webpage. I update my Xanga by posting new entries every now and then and then so people who reads my entries can comment on it. But it is dead now since I haven't use it for years. As for wikis, they are use by more than one author (aka. collaborators or contributors) who wants to expresses addition ideas and thoughts or make changes to certain information. Blogs are usually a more personal form of writing and wikis are more impersonal because other people have permission to changes the writing. As for the information that are given in these writings, blogs are more vague and opinionated where as wikis are more accurate and informative. For research purpose, it is easier to obtain information from a wiki than a blog because the information is put together all in one place. But blogs can be use for collaborations as well when interest groups get together to promote ideas/products. A group of people with the same views in a blog can give its readers a stronger sense to join the group or persuade them buy the product. I found a very interesting quote from the article "An Internal Wiki That’s Not Classified" by Noam Cohen from the New York Times: "someone has to be prepared to be the first to write something, and deal with having those words changed by a complete stranger." This is the problem with wikis, there has to be people out there that take initiatives to write something that can be overwrite by someone else. How many people are willing to do that? How many people are open to the fact that their hard work can be easily erased and rewritten?

Convergence is important in today's networked world because it brings different people with different views, opinions, and thoughts together (aka. collective intelligence). From this idea of collective intelligence, people can put together innovative ways of networking that can be suit their interests better. New and old ideas need to come together or intersect at some point of time for something better to evolve.

My New Media Class - So Far

There are numerous new technologies that can be consider new media. One of the biggest one is probably the World Wide Web and all the networks within it. Billions of people visit the Internet on a daily basis. People can interact with each other within seconds across networks (AIM, virtual worlds, & social networks). In the article "What's Next? Your Future in Social Networking" Chuck Hamilton said "Virtual worlds are quickly becoming a powerful tool and a driving force to what many are calling the 3D Internet – one that is open, immersive, innovative, and social." With these different applications, people saves money and time in their hectic schedule to do other things. This makes the Internet a very important contribution to the new media because of the massive number of participants/users and their active role in creating the Internet. The world would be in total chaos if the Internet shut down all of a sudden one day. Another new technology would be television that contains cable. Viewers have a larger variety of channels to switch among beyond the broadcast channels (NBC & ABC).

New media is enhancing old media in both positive and negative ways. On a positive note, people are using collective intelligence to come up with new technologies and applications to improve their quality of life. With new technologies, people are able to work on tasks faster and effectively. On negative note, people take advantage of new technologies and take easy way out of everthing.