Tasha Harrison

Last Monday I went to see For Neda, a documentary about a girl who was shot dead during the Iranian demonstrations last year after the election. The footage of her last moments were captured on video camera and posted on Youtube. This extremely shocking and incredibly sad video highlighted the horror of the government’s repression and helped to unite the country behind a single figure.

The incredible nature of the internet meant that news was being posted online during the events. Videos and images were captured on people’s phones, several Twitter accounts were set up to keep people up to date. Journalists were able to monitor events through these chanels, helping to spread the news. The film tells of how Twitter changed their planned maintenance time to coincide with Iranian nighttime, enabling people to update during the day.

The documentary describes this as citizen journalism. People recording the news as it happens. This changes the way that news is distributed and changes the emphasis on who controls it. The Iranian government has made many efforts to alter the story of Neda’s death, making their own documentary and even claiming that the CIA were responsible. The weight of evidence coming from the actual protestors makes it extremely difficult for these stories to be believable.

The notion of who controls our media is at the heart of the internet. Pre-internet it was more difficult to be published, to distribute your own views and thoughts and to have a say in how events were portrayed. The events in Iran show how much more difficult it is to hide the truth.

You can download and watch the film here: http://www.thisisforneda.com/

The music industry is dying, slowly but surely, as every year record labels lose more and more money. This doesn’t mean, though, that music is dying. In fact, for all the reasons that record labels are dying – file sharing, social media, MySpace etc – smaller bands, who previously would have struggled to get signed, are building their own reputations.

I was reading the blog of Sean Murricane, a member of the band March of Dimes and @seaneeboy,  whose latest blog post explains the importance of Spotify and MySpace for bands. The key point he makes is, “if we’re more likely to be listened to we’re more likely to be liked by more people”. Then more people will go their gigs and they can make money from selling EPs and, possibly, merchandise.

This is the big lesson for the music industry. Instead of trying to rely on their traditional revenue streams, which they are constantly trying to protect by shutting down file sharing sites and lobbying governments to pass draconian internet laws, they should be looking for new opportunities. It’s difficult to have sympathy for the industry when they can’t move forward and embrace the huge social changes that the internet has caused. By continuing to fight the losing battle, they are ruining the industry.

The other key problem is that the big bands and artists won’t make as much money. The money will be spread throughout the industry, meaning that smaller bands won’t have to sign ridiculous contracts to have a chance of being heard. They will be responsible for their own distribution and marketing, operating as SMEs in their own right. We will also see a lot more smaller record labels doing a lot better. They will no longer lose their best bands to the bigger record labels, because if their music is good enough and available in the right places they will get the fans they need.

Further reading:

Labels may be losing money, but artists are making more than ever

Creating the virtual experience of being at an exhibition is a concept I was initially a little skeptical about. There is no substitute for a real life experience – or so I thought.

Maslaha, an organisation which promotes and increases understanding of Islam, built a real life exhibition in Bethnal Green Library. They then created an online version. Called ‘Evliya Celebi – The Book of Travels’, it tells the story of the travels of Evliya Celebi through the Ottoman Empire. It shows the cultural impact of the empire on the whole of Europe and all the way to London.

Creating online exhibitions is the ultimate test of connecting technology with the community, one of the many ways Maslaha uses media to communicate Isamic culture and break down barriers.

Visit the site http://www.thebookoftravels.org and let me know what you think – it’s certainly a fantastic exhibition.

Once the two darlings of the web 2.0 world, Facebook and Digg, in their own ways, are demonstrating that this new world of media is not as lovely as many hoped it would be. The former is controlled and stifled by its owners, the latter by its users.

Facebook

When Facebook first began it was a way for people at University to keep in touch. Initially only available to Harvard students, it gradually expanded and in 2006 it was opened to everyone.

At first the site was a breadth of fresh air after MySpace became a horror of a social networking site. Users left in droves and discovered that all their friends were now on Facebook. For years people have happily uploaded all of their photos onto the site, detailed many personal aspects of their lives and generally used it as the online version of their life. (Within my own social circle every event and meet up is organised via Facebook.)

Then Facebook realised that they needed to make money to survive, just like every business. But this went against everything their users had bought into. And here lies the crux of the problem – how do they monetize the site without irritating and losing their users?

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about the changes Facebook have made to their pages, which sums a lot of what they’re getting wrong. They are trying too hard, making too many little changes and not addressing the key problems of privacy and advertsing.

Digg

Digg became popular due to its simplicity and ease of use. When I started using the site it was to find interesting and useful articles, about technology, politics, news etc. I discovered some brilliant sites, started to make friends who gave me brilliant recommendations via the ‘Shout’ function. It gave me the kind of optimistic love I now have for Twitter – it’s why people make the internet great. They build these fantastic social sites and fantastic people find them and create great content.

Now Digg has become just another place where social media super users and spammers control the content. The most popular things online are not necessarily the best – cats dancing, a panda sneezing etc etc. This has led to Digg becoming controlled by a few sites offering similar content. You can still find gems, but this shift in emphasis has meant that many of the users that made it great are now gone.

General Trend

The internet is at a tipping point. With so many people now on Facebook the potential control is scary and they are going to have to be even more careful now that their privacy is being scrutinised and users are losing patience. While sites that aggregate content are going to have to find ways to prevent super users driving away everyone else.

Facebook have decided to take over the world. They watched Google do it and now they want a piece. They also watched Twitter rise from nothing and they want to reclaim their dominance.  If you are a Facebook user I’m sure you’ve noticed how many things have changed over the past year. It feels like everytime you get the hang of where everything is you have to learn it all over again.

Constantly Changing

In the more recent change I couldn’t find the pages I am a fan of. I could find groups and events, but I was having to search for each page separately. Eventually I found a list in my actual profile, under Info. How could Facebook have forgotten to make it easy for users to find pages?

Pages are essentially the way that Facebook could separate an ordinary user’s profile from a business or celebrity profile. This was great for businesses, because they now had much of the functionality of a group, but with their own profile. People became a ‘fan’, which enabled them to show their appreciation for a brand, while at the same time feeling like they belonged to the page.

I Don’t Want to Just ‘Like’ My Favourite Brands

In the most recent changes you no longer ‘Become a Fan’ of a page, but you ‘Like’ the page. Just as you ‘Like’ it when someone posts a picture of a cat standing on its hind legs. The sense of belonging is lost. Functionality is the same, syntax has ruined the effect.

These changes have made Facebook Pages, potentially a lot less effective. It makes it more difficult to give the impression of forming a longterm relationship with a brand. A user will still see updates in their news items, but I think they will be less inclined to contribute to the page, adding comments, photos and even video. ‘Like’ is a kind of take or leave it word, it has lost the emotion of ‘Fan’, it has ruined Facebook Pages.

Further reading:
Facebook Limits Fan Pages and Introduces Community Pages
Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better?