All your favourite www.s in your place?

Everyone knows the Internet is about sharing – words, pictures and a little of your personality if we’re talking Facebook – you get the drift. Now how about your favourite websites/blogs all on just one website? I think that’s pretty cool and it’s what Glam Media are all about. The company is essentially an online model based on a shared network of content.

Started in the US in 2005, Glam Media’s so called “vertical network” provides users access to around 1300 quality sites and attracts a mammoth 110 million unique users per month. It has currently has three networks – Glam.com is dedicated to women’s lifestyle – so we’re talking fashion, tips, opinion. There’s one solely dedicated to the gents as well called Brash.com which covers all things male from fashion to sport to gadgets. And then there is Tinker.com which enables real-time conversations using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as well as facilitating blogging.

A snapshot of Glam.com's homepage

Glam.com, Glam Media’s flagship site, recently overtook NBC Universal’s iVillage to become the highest ranking women’s network in the US and UK.

The company gets a highly deserved feature article in today’s Guardian Media. According to The Guardian, Glam Media’s founder, Samir Arora, owes their success to their perfection of what the target audience really want:

“There’s no regard to the brand of media company: I don’t care if it comes from the New York Times or someone you don’t know. Instead of launching a property and driving users to it, we look at what the needs of consumers are and where they want to go. We reverse the sequence of publishing. We look at all the places with high-quality content and make these people part of our network.”

-  Samir Arora, founder, Glam Media

Arora elaborates to say that with the changing role of the media – institutions need to realise that merely extending a

A snapshot of Brash.com's homepage

print publication online will not necessarily drive the same size of consumers there. He gives the example of Vogue who enjoys a 4 million circulation yet only drive a mere 400, 000 users to their website. What we have here then is a situation where media organizations need to capitalize on the growing demands of the online user. Glam Media seems to do all the hard work that pleases everyone – users, publishers and advertisers.

I’m certainly sold on Glam.com and will give Brash.com a spy for the sports but what do you think? Does Glam.com, Brash.com or Tinker.com get a thumbs-up?

The digital native learner

I sent my Dad the link to my blog a few weeks ago to which he sent me an email back saying “Wow, I didn’t know you could publish your own writing like this online”. Bless him. A couple of days ago he sent me a link on jobs that exist now that didn’t before – and bloggers and social media directors were amongst them. This got me thinking – it isn’t just the general public, media, businesses that have to keep on their technology toes but universities too have to gear their courses towards the digital native student who will go on into the digitally evolving workforce.

Indeed, there is a rise in the number of digital vacancies in the job market as Danielle Long for New Media Age reports. Long writes:

“New Media Age is increasingly seeing huge growth in agencies desperately seeking new staff. The mantra ‘There are still good jobs for good people’ has been bandied around a lot this year and, by the look of the growing number of job ads, it’s only becoming truer”.

With this increase in the number of digital jobs, and bearing in mind the wavering economic atmosphere – it is hard to imagine students not being attracted to degree courses that are keeping up with the digital change.

But what are universities doing to keep up? And can they really keep up? By the time, students graduate from the usual three year undergraduate course, hasn’t technology just moved on and left their learning lying a little stale?

In an article entitled The Impending Demise of the University, Don Tapscott argues that “the digital revolution will challenge many fundamental aspects of the University”.  For Tapscott, it is not only the content of degree courses that need to be re-thought but also the way in which they are taught. This is primarily due to the changing mindset of today’s students:

“Growing up at a time when cell phones, the Internet, texting and Facebook are as normal as the refrigerator. This interactive media immersion at a formative stage of life has affected their brain development and consequently the way they think and learn”.

Last week, Griffiths University in Brisbane announced that they are the first in the country to assess their journalism students based on interaction on social networking site Twitter. According to News.com.au, Griffiths University lecturer Dr. Jacqui Ewart commented:

“We thought it was important to introduce it because increasingly employers are asking employees to use these kind of (social networking) mechanisms and marketing and promotional devices”.

Do you think using Twitter as part of academic assessment is a step too far or fitting taking into account the changing face of the digital workplace?

Surfs up for Google Wave?

So what’s the latest technology buzzword? Seems to be Google Wave – but does it deserve all the hype?

Described as “an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration”, Google introduced Wave on a public trial for 100,000 users at the end of September. Google Wave combines email, instant messaging and wiki-style editing in one comprehensive tool that seems bound to challenge our favourite online media like Twitter, Facebook, MSN etc.

The creator, Lars Rasmussen, based Wave on the notion that if email was built today – this is what it would look like.

One of the functional aspects of Wave, as the BBC reports, is its “real-time typing”. A user can see a fellow Waver’s typing even before a message is sent. I personally would find this highly annoying but Rasmussen seems to think it will save time, an aspect which is becoming increasingly important to the impatient digital natives of the world.

The BBC’s review also highlights the impressiveness of Wave’s “wiki-style editing tools”. Therefore not only text but pictures and even movies, games and maps can be shared on Wave. Time magazine can’t seem to get enough of the Wave hype and its review makes this clear:

“Google Wave is, in short, a remarkably full-featured collaboration and communication tool, powerful enough for enterprise customers and easy enough for civilians.” – Lev Grossman, Time Magazine, 2009

But not all reviewers lucky enough to get an invite to trial Wave are raving about it. Eweek’s Chris Boulton provides a comprehensive lowdown on why Wave is not quite the hottest thing in town. For instance, Wave’s chaotic presentation is highlighted alongside its difficulty to use.

I’ll spare you Google’s 1 hour 20 minute video on its prize baby but have a look at this fun video by EpipheoStudios.com which breaks the concept down a little more.

What are your thoughts on Google Wave? Will it create an online revolution or is it just another fad that will get washed over?

Food for thought

Manjoo, F. (2009) ‘It’s just fancy talk’, in Slate

LeBlanc, D. and B. Mosher (2009) ‘Can Google Wave change the future of content management?’, in CMS Wire.

The publishing citizen

I have to admit that I am loving owning a blog. I was sceptical when I first started Global Village but it really has become a place where I can introduce a little of my personality, views on what it’s important to me and hopefully it’s been marginally interesting too!

Starting my own blog got me thinking about the power of us as online writers and this era of citizen journalism that we are entering into. Jay Rosen’s article The People Formerly Known as the Audience is certainly insightful to the role citizen journalists can play. A robust writing back to the media, Rosen states: “the people formerly known as the audience wish to inform media people of our existence, and of a shift in power that goes with the platform shift you’ve heard all about” (Rosen, 2006).

Here are my argument picks from Rosen’s article that encapsulates not only the increasing power of citizen journalists but the challenges today’s media face:

• “Once they were your printing presses; now that humble device, the blog, has given the press to us. That’s why blogs have been called little First Amendment machines. They extend freedom of the press to more actors.
• Shooting, editing and distributing video once belonged to you, Big Media. Only you could afford to reach a TV audience built in your own image. Now video is coming into the user’s hands, and audience-building by former members of the audience is alive and well on the Web.
• You were once (exclusively) the editors of the news, choosing what ran on the front page. Now we can edit the news, and our choices send items to our own front pages.”

Jay Rosen, 2006

Time magazine did an interesting interview in July with Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of Salon.com and one of the pioneer bloggers, entitled The Evolution of Blogging. Check it out and while you’re on there, look at Time’s 25 best blogs of 2009 to see if your favourites are amongst those picked.

While doing my daily surfing on The Guardian website I came across a blog post on their PDA: The Digital Content Blog on how “social media…shows we live in a publishing society”. It introduces Gary Hayes’ Social Media Count which caught my eye. Gary Hayes formerly worked for the BBC as a senior producer for their internet, interactive TV and emerging platforms department. He now works for the Laboratory of Advanced Media Production in Sydney as a Director. Gary has developed a pretty fun flash application on the interaction of users on online media based on research gathered from a range of social media sources. Gary promises to keep it updated and here it is below for you. A fun way of letting us know how powerful online media really is.

 

 

 

Food for thought

Gilmor, D. (2004) ‘The Former Audience Joins the Party’ in We the Media – Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People

Sachs, A. (2008) ‘Blogging for Dummies’ in Time Magazine

Media hooked by the iPhone application fad

I touched on the topic of media convergence and the changing landscape of journalism in my previous ‘Globalization: infectious connectivity’ blog entry. An article in yesterday’s Media Guardian entitled ‘Media organisations turn to mobile phone applications to raise revenue’ spurred me to explore media convergence a little more closely and in particular the escalating power of the mobile phone in the media.

The discussion of media attraction to mobile phone applications such as the ones the iPhone sports comes hot on the heels of Murdoch’s announcement and subsequent debate by the press on the commencement of charging for online content – a debate that I mused on in my blog entry ‘Commercial media walking the tight rope?’. 

In research on the attitudes towards multimedia journalism and the changing trends of the press, Mark Deuze comments that “multimedia newsrooms are becoming increasingly part of the vocabulary of contemporary journalism” (139: 2004). Five years on and the practice of journalism has certainly clinched the idea of a multimedia newsroom.

The Guardian article reports that news channel applications are increasingly proving popular “amid all the downloadable games, maps, pint-glass emulators and fart generators” (Wray, 2009). Indeed, the media are more than keen to capitalize on this popularity as was revealed in last week’s Association of Online Publishers’ 2009 Census report. The AOP’s report shows that “mobile internet development was the biggest trend expected in the next 12 months…[w]hile 83% of AOP members said that the iPhone has transformed the opportunity for mobile internet” (AOP, 2009).

The AOP Census report also reveals that “56% of respondents expected to develop ‘paid for’ downloadable apps” (AOP, 2009). Although this figure is not fully convincing, The Guardian quotes the general manager consumer media of Reuters, Tim Faircliff, who says: “Part of the reason many in the media hope they can persuade mobile consumers to part with some cash, even though they expect to get everything for free when using the internet, is that consumers are already used to paying for lots of things on their mobile” (Wray, 2009). Therefore, because the public is already paying for ringtones, wallpapers and what nots; the media have the opportunity to capitalize on the already established mobile phone consumer culture.

The media jumping on the iPhone application bandwagon is great and why not? Its popularity is without a doubt as is seen in Time magazine who put New York Times in its top 10 iPhone applications of 2009. But what does this really mean for the practice of journalism which is evolving at an immensely rapid rate? Does the embrace of mobile phone technology simply add new fuel to the journalism “dumbing down” debate? Or can it merely be viewed as a beneficial two-way street for consumers and the press and a result of the changing times?

Food for thought

Grossman, L. (2009) ‘Invention of the year: The iPhone’, Time magazine

Ursell, G. (2001) ‘Dumbing down or shaping up? New technologies, new media, new journalism’ Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 2 (2): 175-96 http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/2/175

Deuze, M. (2004) ‘What is multimedia journalism?’ Journalism studies 5 (2) 139-152. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/218391177-89363431/content~content=a713704861~db=all#

The rise of India across the globe

As I have mentioned elsewhere, when we explore the impact of globalization we often focus on the hegemonic role of the West and what is commonly referred to by academics as “Cocacolonization”. In recent years however the debate has shifted to one surrounding the increase in cultural globalization of the East. This is easy to contemplate with the rise of the dynamic economies of India and China.

Anthony Giddens is one critic who comments on the decline of a wholly Westernized outlook of globalization. He argues: “globalization today can no longer be spoken of only as a matter of one-way imperialism” (1994: 96). In a more recent discussion, Giddens develops this notion further when he says: “it is fundamental to [his] argument that globalization today is only partly Westernization” (1999: 16). For Giddens then it is careless to ignore the effects of globalization in non-Western countries. Giddens defines the ever-increasing globalization of the non-West as “reverse colonization” which he describes as the influence of the non-West on the West (1999: 16).

Indeed as pointed out before, it is difficult to ignore the escalating supreme of India and China. I’d like to focus on the cultural globalization of India in particular and how the nation’s culture has assimilated on to the global platform.

India has, alongside China, emerged as one of the globe’s most influential economic powerhouses over the last few decades. Dietmar Rothermund, in the opening pages of a book dedicated to the power of India, argues that the start of the country’s economic power is owing to its instigation of IT development which subsequently resulted in “a head start in the ‘knowledge economy’ of the new century” (2008: xii).  He comments that: “[f]inally India broke out of this charmed circle of isolation and boldly faced the challenge of globalization” (2008: xii). Tulasi Srinivas seconds this opinion. He argues: “what is happening in India today with regard to economic liberalization and cultural globalization is in fact yet another tryst with destiny for India, one that gives India the chance to enter the global stage” (2007: 89). There is no doubt then of the power India has in today’s modern society and this seemingly only marks the beginning of the nation’s global cultural impact.

The media have also reflected on the growing cultural dominance of India. In July 2006, Time magazine ran a feature on India entitled: ‘India Inc.: Why the world’s biggest democracy is the next great economic superpower – and what it means for America’ [cover pictured below]. Not only does this title recognize the economic rise of India, it also hints at a possible threat to American cultural hegemony. The primary article, aptly titled ‘India Awakens’, leads with: “Even if you have never gone to India – never wrapped your food in a piping-hot naan or had your eyeballs singed by a Bollywood spectacular – there is a good chance you encounter some piece of it every day of your life”. This lead encapsulates the globalization of Indian culture and suggests that the country’s economic boom has also resulted in an emancipation of its culture to the society of the world.

Globalization has thus given wings to former colonized nations and cultures that were once heavily influenced by the imperialist as we see in the case of India. India has successfully assimilated aspects of its culture from food to film onto the global platform. Additionally, its IT superstardom continues to challenge the West. While other Third World countries may be far from challenging the development of the West, it is undoubtedly interesting to see how we can experience aspects of different cultures in our day to day lives like never before – and globalization has had much to do with that.

Below is a fascinating video by the ABC on India Rising. As the narrator on the video reminds us we should look at India’s “chaos not with pity but respect and fear because this is the training ground of the next wave of global titans”.