Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Week 4: Media 2.0

The past 5 years has a brought about a wave of user-generated technology aptly named media 2.0 by those who study it. I am not a person who studies the new media phenomenon, but am one who is slowly adapting to it and integrating it into my life. I find the difference in these two to be read-only vs. user-generated.
I feel that media 1.0 was based off of a read-only platform. Information was filtered through search engines such as Dogpile, Ask.com, Yahoo, and Google, to name a few. Results came from the official websites of what you had searched for, and somewhere within the results, several Geocities pages popped up. This was also back in the day when there weren’t banner ads and online advertisements filling up whatever white space was available.
Nowadays, search engines are way more refined and in tune with what I’m looking for. I blame cookies for my computer running slow, but love that Google and Amazon remember my likes and dislikes. Media 2.0 is predominantly based off of user-generated content. Internet consumers have at their hands, via Smartphones and PDA’s, the ability to buy and sell, search, shop, review and recommend, organize and share. It seems as if anyone with an opinion, thought, or comment on any subject can post it to any website they’d like. And if there isn’t a website that they like, well, then they can create a blog and then link it to a particular site.
I think that it’s important for consumers to have the ability to create web content because it has the ability to reach their particular network or community, which was its original purpose. As internet technology gradually creeps into my life, I still find it hard to always find what it is that I am looking for, as there is so much to take in! For example, if I were to Google “Pittsburgh Steelers stats,” results from the official NFL website, Yahoo! Sports, Fanbase, and various other sites pop up. I have to decide which provider has the most accurate numbers, best play-by-play recall, best photos, interviews, etc. I came in for one thing but come out with so much more than I had planned, which reminds me of those cleverly placed end caps at Target and Kroger.
I am a reader, a consumer, and it seems as if every website wants me to create something or to comment on something. This new media is still a bit much for me. Through this class, my participation with the outside world has increased via Blogger.com. My friend Sara, who is several years younger than me, keeps trying to rope me into the social benefits of Twitter and MySpace. I gave MySpace a whirl but was not too happy when I received so many random messages and wall posts from strangers wanting to be my friend. A few phone calls to Sara later, I learned how to adjust my privacy settings in order to block out strangers. Even though I have a Blogger account, I keep it limited to academic assignments instead of personal thoughts and rants. For future reference though, I am glad that I’ve taken this class and am amazed at how Google has streamlined it search platform into a daily-life organizer. In the meantime, I rely on my laptop’s broadband connection to get the latest in sports stats, cars, and weather. As of now, Sara is my only MySpace friend.

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