In The Zone
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Friday, November 13, 2015
Have we become TOO dependent on technology?
Nomophobia.
The fear of being out of mobile contact is something that we all (while embarrassing)
have experienced some time or another. According to the Psychology Today, it
says on their website that the word is an abbreviation for “no-mobile-phone
phobia”, a term that was coined during a 2010 study by the UK Post Office. The
study found that 53 percent of mobile phone users in Britain felt worried or
anxious when they lost their phones according to the study that sampled 2,163
people.
But let’s take it even further, what if humans started to become so dependent
on our phones that we relied on it to do simple every day task. Task such as making
to do list, setting up alarm’s or even using it to send a text message. A great example of this dependency would be the widely popular Siri.
Siri
is as a type of technology (generally associated with the company Apple) that
acts as a virtual personal assistant that responds to the human voice commands.
Some of its features include making phone calls, browsing the web and even
looking up the nearest pizza place in your city. The possibilities of the
innovative technology are endless but many there have been many questions
asking if we have become too dependent on the technology.
Siri was first developed at SRI (Stanford
Research Institute) in the early 2000’s. According to the Stanford Research
Institute’s website the technology was developed “through the SRI-led Cognitive
Assistant that Learns and Organizes (CALO) project within DARPAS’s Personalized
Assistant that Learns (PAL) program”, the largest-known artificial intelligence
project in American history. (Siri, 2015). In 2007, Siri, Inc. was introduced
to the public and raised $24 million in two rounds of financing. Apple
eventually acquired Siri in 2010 and later debuted the software on their iPhone
4S in 2014. An article on the HuffingPost says that the phone company Verizon
was actually slated to sign a deal with Siri to make it apart of the Android
phones in 2009, but Apple later bought Siri and “insisted on making the
assistant exclusive to Apple devices.” (Bosker, 2013).
While
Siri’s technology allows for users to automate simple task through its
technology some are concerned with whether it may make humans too dependent on
the technology.
Watch
the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé
Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology talk about how are dependency on technology is
affecting the way that we communicate.
Friday, October 23, 2015
“Give The People What They Want, Not What They Need”
The title of this blog
speaks to the very issue that many “traditional” news organizations are facing
when it comes to providing content to cater to their audience. Some of the
oldest media corporations have been stuck in between a rock and a hard place
simply because their content and way of presenting news is on the brink of
becoming outdated, thanks to the invention of the internet and influx of social
media sites.
Sites
such as BuzzFeed have taken the opposite approach than most news stations when
it comes to how they believe that can capture their audience through the new
innovations of technology and personalized content. Something that we learned
in class this week that has helped give BuzzFeed somewhat of an edge over their
predecessors is that it is able to generate revenue through what is called
native advertising. Native advertising in laymen’s terms is an advertisement
that is presented through an article to promote a product. An August 2015
article by BusinessInsider says a
large portion of BuzsFeed’s business model uses Facebook and other social media
to promote their “native” ads which helps to drive traffic to their site
(Weinberger, Aug. 2015). The TechTimes writes that BuzzFeed “charges clients set fees for
creating custom content aimed at that client’s customer base” (Gallagher, March
2015).
Most of
the native advertising on BuzzFeed consist of silly videos or
pictures that center around a good pun to not only make viewers laugh or scoff
but to grab their attention making the audience more willing to share it. I
mean, who doesn’t like a good laugh every once in a while? For BuzzFeed, these sort of “click-bait” ads are currently what are
driving traffic to the site which now hones about 150 million unique visitors
per month (Gallagher, March 2015). Not too bad for a site started nearly 10
years ago.
An article on Business
Insider in May this year discusses the benefits of native advertisments for
media companies. “Native ads have also proven effective, drawing higher click
rates than traditional banner ads, particularly on mobile devices” (Hoelzel,
May 2015). That same articles provides stats from the BI Intelligence that
spending on native ads will be close to $7.9 billion in this year alone and
will continue to rise to about $21 billion in 2018 (Hoelzel, May 2015). I think
those stats alone show the future of native advertising for media companies and
how important it will be for those who haven’t started to start incorporating them
onto their platforms.
In my
personal opinion I think that is what makes BuzzFeed so relevant as a media
organization because it knows how to adapt to their resources (by use of social
media and creating their own content) and cater to their audience. Many people
today including myself do not have time to search for news day in and day out
and out of pure laziness would rather the news come to us. I think it is coming
to the point to now we sort of expect the news that we consume to be given to
us directly at all times and find it a hassle to have to wait for homepages of
news organizations to load and buffer just to be faced with a page full of
words. I know that I am more willing to read an article that is shared on
social media by my friends. This could be due to the fact that most people who are friends tend to have some of the same interest making it more likely for them to delve more into the article.
I think it will be interesting to see what new heights sites such as BuzzFeed will reach in the next few years and will the company continue to be innovative enough to stay on top.
Friday, October 2, 2015
News Media at a Crossroads
The influence that social
media has on the world today is something that can be somewhat attributed to
the amount of time that we spend on these social media sites. According to an
article on Adweek.com titled “28% of
Time Spent Online is Social Networking” it says that the “average user logs
1.72 hours per day on social platforms.” (Bennett, 2015). The article goes into
the statistics of how that constitutes to 1.72 hours per day on just social
media alone, not accounting time spent on the internet which in 2014 was over
six hours per day. That means that over one-fourth of our day is being spent by
our eyes glued to either our computer screens or our phones.
(GlobalWebIndex 2012-2014).
With the surge of social media in the past decade, many
big new corporations as well as local are starting to come to a seemingly
bitter crossroads with whether to ride the wave of the social media train or
continue to find new ways to generate traffic to their websites without selling
out. A 2015 article by Matthew Ingram on gigaom titled “Nick Denton says the traffic game
is over, and Buzzfeed has won” discusses how Gawker founder, Nick Denton plans
to shift Gawker’s focus from the amount of traffic a story to the likes of the
views of their news-editor-in-chief Tommy Craggs. (Ingram, Jan. 2015). Many people know Gawker for their controversial
headlines and the traffic from those types of stories has been a large part of
the success of Gawker. Buzzfeed, which is an internet news media site prides
itself on being able to cater to a broad audience with its colorful
user-interface and daily content. While both Gawker and Buzzfeed generate traffic through people visiting their site via online browsers, Buzzfeed is more actively viewed through shared links on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
(Courtesy of thegermblog.wordpress.com,
2012).
An article by Business Insider
editor Alyson Shontell titled “The Story of How Jonah Peretti Built The Web’s
Most Beloved New Media Brand” says that Buzzfeed’s founder Jonah Peretti rather
prefer readers of the site to “tweet out an article than actually click on it.”
(Shontell, 2012). He also says in the article that “People are what spreads the
media, and that’s a stronger and better signal than a media company could
[build alone].” (Shontell, 2012). I feel that this is a huge part of Buzzfeed’s
success because I think of how often I go to a .com site in my browser to read
news versus me scrolling on my timeline and clicking on the links in a tweet or
on Facebook to keep up with the news. In regards to Gawker deciding to change
its attitude of how it views the traffic of a story to a more “newsworthy”
approach I think that it may have some effect what content Gawker will produce
in the future, but I don’t think that their audience will drop anytime soon due
to it being such a huge force news media.
Friday, September 18, 2015
The shift from traditional newspapers to online-based content
This week in class we
continued our discussion on the transition of print media to the web and how
companies have continued to extend their brand onto online media.
In Wednesday’s class I
asked a question regarding whether or not there will be a need for newspapers,
radio or television in the future seeing that everything seems to be becoming
more online-based. While that thought is still up for debate, Mark Briggs, author
of the book Entrepreneurial Journalism suggest that the idea
of news organizations needing to hire large staffs are becoming a thing of the
past. “In the near future, instead of a daily newspaper with 150 journalist, a
small city might have 20 digital news operations, each with a handful of
journalist and each working in a clearly defined content and audience niche.”
(Briggs, pg. 12).
This shift will most
likely be to the due to the digital age of media where most of the news content
will be posted online and allow for news consumers to “customize” their news
experience when deciding which niche suits their needs. In my opinion,
traditional newspapers do not offer consumers the type of flexibility when it
comes to letting consumers choose the news that they want to see versus sites
such as Buzzfeed.com that provides a user-interface much more diverse for news
consumers to enjoy their content and getting a more rich experience while
reading news.
Social media apps such
as Facebook, Snapchat and Periscope are also providing their users with the
ability to view news through their sites according to their liking. Below are
just a few of the options that Snapchat users can enjoy if they want to get a
quick update on news.
While online-based news and social media
sites can offer more to consumers to take over the need for traditional newspapers
and reporting, the next concern would be how to keep them from monopolizing the
market.
Friday, September 4, 2015
The Internet and Its Impact on Journalism
Open to the public in 1991, the internet has become one
of the most important and popular forms of media that journalist use today. It
has left many other media’s such as newspapers, televisions, radio trailing far
behind in terms of its reach to the public. A 2014 article written by David
Carr says “Newspapers continue to generate cash and solid earnings, but those
results are not enough to satisfy investors.” While the internet is still a
fairly new industry compared to the other types of media, the impact that it
has had on my other fields, specifically journalism and how we receive how news
is staggering leaving news organizations wondering how to make a profit.
For my generation and beyond, I believe that some of
us have become so accustomed to using the internet (and now social media) for
our news that we tend to take newspapers and radio for granted. In the future
could eventually cause those forms of media to become extinct due to the internet
having everything we need all in one. Amy Mitchell states in the 2014 article “State
of the News Media 2014” that “Full-time professional newsroom employment
declined another 6.4% in 2012 with more losses expected for 2013.” (Mitchell,
2014). The transition of news organizations to more online-based content has
both pros and cons and adapting to the internet could be the decision that can
help save the company from collapsing.
One pro being that news organizations have become so competitive
in getting a story out first, the internet allows for them to post news articles
within a few minutes or even less versus having to spend long hours developing
a newspaper. This method is not always the best because rushing to get a story
out first could lead to fact errors which could ruin the credibility of that
journalist. Another pro being that posting content strictly online saves paper
which could mean more money to put into other things such as advertising and
things of that sort, though for some people this could be an issue. In class I
remember one student bringing up a great point stating that he and many others still
believe in having access to tangible newspapers to read their news. Reading the
Sunday paper is a tradition for many families in America and taking that
experience away can leave a bad taste in many people’s mouths causing news
organizations to lose readers.
Many people feel that the internet is
making it harder for news organizations to make a profit for their companies
because they would then have to depend on strictly advertising and clicks to
make money. In my opinion I think it would be beneficial for companies to be
more creative in terms of making money because the world is constantly evolving
with new technologies and I am excited to see how the next generation will
expand upon these technologies.
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