From a digital cradle to a digital grave

There have been many debates about privacy and user data recently, not least given the rewriting of Google’s terms of service and questions over who is generating the value in Facebook’s IPO price.  I’ve tangentially been thinking about the legacy of data a result. 1. Can a person reinvent themselves in the social media era? [...]

Technology changes quickly, people change more slowly

Last February I asked whether social media could become a mass media. It’s one of the more considered posts on this blog, so if you haven’t yet read it I would recommend it. The general crux was that social media could only become mass when it moved away from super-serving the tech savvy, and more [...]

Mediatel Media Playground 2011

My previous blog post covered my notes on Broadcast in a Multi-Platform World, which I felt was the best session of the day. Below are my notes from the other 3 sessions (I didn’t take any notes during the bonus Olympics session) The data debate Chaired by Torin Douglas, Media Correspondent for the BBC Speakers: [...]

Can our opinions exist without us?

This article from Jeff Jarvis got me thinking about the evolution of content and opinion over time. Extrapolating past patterns could lead to some bizarre scenarios in future. (NOTE: the remainder of this blog post is incoherent speculation). Broadly, the past evolution of storytelling roughly covers four ages Oral stage Hand-written stage Printed stage Multimedia stage [...]

Social media dichotomies

I’ve been having a think about the different types of social media services. Structurally, different services can be very different. Below are a few bipolar scales that different services can find themselves upon Structure Public <——————-> Private Permanent <————-> Transient Centralised <————-> Decentralised Hierarchical<————> Non-hierarchical Automatic <————–> Manual Exclusive <—————> Inclusive Zero-sum <—————> Shared gain [...]

Be nice

I’ve just returned home from a week’s break in Berlin – my first visit to the city since 1990, shortly after the Wall came down and when there were street vendors selling fragments of it (I have a piece somewhere). I saw many great things, ate some good food and drank some even better beer. [...]

The disrupters in the crowd

Last weekend I went to the Latitude festival, in Suffolk. It’s billed as a family-friendly arts festival (it has comedy, theatre, film, literary and poetry stages in addition to music) and the programme was fantastic. While I personally had a great time (The National, Laura Marling and Rodrigo y Gabriela being my musical highlights), the [...]

Recommended reading – March 19th 2010

As well as reading material, I also recommend viewing this 5 minute video on a near future social media storm, which is extremely well done: Mob (a near-future science fiction story) by Tom Scott from hurryonhome on Vimeo. In addition, I would recommend reading: Neil Perkin has a fantastic overview of the case for agile [...]

Recommended reading – 14th March 2010

“Time to start taking the internet seriously” by David Gelertner. Sample thought: “No moment in technology history has ever been more exciting or dangerous than “now.” As we learn more about now, we know less about then” “The database of intentions is far larger than I thought” by John Battelle. Sample thought: “I’ve often said [...]

Can social media become a mass media?

My short answer is “Yes, if it continues to evolve”. But there are numerous challenges to overcome within this evolution process. SIDENOTE: Throughout this blog, I’ll be referring to social media in the singular. I know that technically media denotes plurality, but, to me at least, phrases such as “social media aren’t mass” sounds weird. [...]