The Good, The Bad and The Emo

Many, many years ago a great creator known as Yahoo bought a gaping black hole known as Geocites. This cancerous tumor on the metaphorical brain of the internet allowed almost any user to maintain their own website. This meant you, your sister, your cat, anything with internet connection and a keyboard could create their own web-page. The results were catastrophic.

Luckily for the champions of the internet in 2009 Geocites was permanently taken off the internet. For the days following the incident the average IQ of internet users jumped a staggering 25% . 

In honor of Geocites' destruction I present to you five awful websites that would put geocites to shame:

http://www.myotaku.com/users/scarredswordheart : I'm sure that this emo kid has a terrible life that they're just dying to whine about. Unfortunately their interesting taste in text and wall paper makes this website virtually unreadable. 

http://www.myotaku.com/users/worst_nightmare : Yet another emo kid but this one was at least kind enough to give us their name. Under the “real name” section the website proudly reads: "u are a fuckin ass hole". Apparently the word “asshole” is now “ass hole” which is apparently a name. Who knew? Also the site brilliantly proclaims this using lime green against a white background. For all of it's simplicity this site actually takes a hideously long time to load. Which gives the viewer plenty of time to consider navigating away.

http://www.1112.net/lastpage.html : I hope the person who made this site was joking . . . It's cold outside! Also the award for the least amount of creativity goes to this guy! This page is literally blank, with a few sentences centered in the middle. I guess I should be glad they are centered.

http://www.sixtiespress.co.uk/ : This UK website makes me think of a bill, an overdue bill by a very angry company. The letters bolded in white with black highlights form a rainbow of colorful text that is about as ascetically pleasing as it is readable. I know the sixties was a time of experimentation but I think the person who made this site had too much LSD.

http://www.valweb.org/ : This color cyan is atrocious all on it's own. It's not teal. It's not light blue. No, it is cyan like the color your printer prints when it's out of ink. What's borderline pathetic is that this site is some type of art exchange. The two alien characters on the black banner are supposed to be art apparently.

Actual good websites are hard to find in a world where Web 2.0 dictates comments from random internet denizens have as much right to be posted as actual content but here are five websites I think are actually worth your time.

http://tosh.comedycentral.com/blog/ : No matter how bad my life is this man always gets me to laugh. His website is as funny as it is cool and interactive. Every week they do hilarious “caption this” contests and everyday they post funny/creepy pictures. The site has a pretty easy navigation four main categories line the top banner and the small banner above that connects the user back to comedy central. I liked this design because it was very interactive and it helped draw in a great audience which the Tosh.0 brand now gets to advertise products to. I also like that it's a dark background.

http://www.livejournal.com/ : I always liked the way live journal was set up. They never bothered you if a post was increditably long. In fact you can pretty much write a novel in post form. You can make groups and communities pretty easily too. I think this would be a good way to post an online portfolio too.

http://www.cnn.com/ : I always felt this website had a good mix of adds and content. The adds are usually the things on the farthest to either side. The content and navigation is in the center which makes the website look very direct and current.

http://vimeo.com/ : As far as video formatting and flash graphic goes I liked Vimeo the moment we did that project on it. The little sun in the corner that dances ever so subtly, the crisp modern colors and a sleek smooth design are all graphics I would like in my personal website, just a little darker.

http://www.redirectdigital.com.br/ : I openly admit there is no way my site could ever be as awesome as this site. Rather than simple scrolling down to see a box this website incorporates some really cool abstract line art into the design of its website layout. Literally the entire page looks like something that strolled out of the Albright Knox art gallery, on a skateboard, wearing an awesome t-shirt. 

Following

There are a lot of organizations doing interesting things out there but it takes something really special to get my attention! Yeah, that was a flat out lie. Here are five organizations I chose to follow and why:

Erie County SPCA: This organization saves the lives of the fuzzy creatures that make my existence on this planet livable. To add to this the SPCA holds all sorts of fundraisers and awareness programs that they can advertise through Twitter.

PETA: This organization helps free animals trapped in labs and makes sure perpetrators of animal cruelty face the full extent of the law. This organization also blows the whistle on animal cruelty that goes under the radar. PETA is a good group to follow because they are always looking for new stories and are never short of articles.

Metallica: While calling Metallica an organization is a bit of a stretch I believe Metallica has a huge following and now that they're on tour I'm sure they'll be some pretty cool pictures posted! Metallica also has a new album coming out so it will be interesting to see if anything get leaked over twitter.

WWE: Technically, this is an organization by the way. Wrestling is the greatest thing on television so it has to be pretty cool on twitter. Well, it's still a million times better than the Kardashians. Tell me what could be better then a bunch of angry guys slapping each other around? Nothing. In addition to re-tweeting everything the wrestlers say, WWE also sponsors this anti-bullying program called “Be a Star” that has some pretty cool programs.

Game Informer: This monthly magazine is pretty much the hypnotic advertisement that drives me to Gamestop every month. Game Informer is actually an independent Gaming magazine so I'm sure they will have interesting tweets of press screenings and sneak peeks of games. 

The World of Micro-Blogging

Micro-Blogging is very different than traditional blogging. Blogging is like making a flyer and handing it out on a street corner to people who you think might care. Blogging is as precise and proof-read as it is formal. Blogs are expected to be decorative with pictures and graphics as well as thoughtful and interactive content.

Micro-Blogging is like sending a shot 140 word text message to everyone on twitter. As Marc, writer for Technology Bloggers, writes: “Most days bloggers write nothing at all because the sheer pressure of creating a masterpiece of a post is just too overwhelming. But on Twitter, one snarky tweet can say it all with less.” Micro-Blogging is a new medium that explores communication with a less is more mentality.

Micro-Blogging is also different than social networking. Facebook posts are only seen by friends, or people stalking your profile. Twitter tweets, by contrast, can be seen by anyone who logs onto the site. Twitter is far more archaic and crazy but creates an entirely different flow of information light-years faster than Facebook.

Doug Gross, writer for CNN also notes this very useful feature of the site. “As a result, news spreads faster than ever,” he writes, “Twitter's real-time news flow has been cited as a tool in citizen uprisings in Iran and Egypt and as invaluable for fundraising efforts for crisis situations like last year's floods in Haiti.” While this spread of information can be rumors or flat-out lies it can just as likely be truth. According to Tania Branigan, writer for The Guardian, “Microblogs have spread news of protests, exposed scandals and became the locus of public outrage at the high-speed rail crash in Wenzhou this summer.” Another example can be seen the the Arab Spring and uprisings in the Middle East.

When I personally use Twitter it is for a lot less of a cause. I use Twitter to stalk guys that don't know I exist, usually celebrities. As far as use for the site Twitter makes it pretty easy to stalk any celebrity or person with an account. Twitter proudly posts the number of your followers like it's some type of contest and anyone can follow you unless you dig deep into the settings. While I do follow a few organizations I find it much more interesting to follow people. As seen with the Kony 2012 video that spread so quickly through Twitter by posting first on celebrity Twitters, the number of followers can become an unstoppable web of information.

While the potential for amazing communication is there, just like on social networking sites power seems to be wasted on the irrelevant. Twitter has the potential to be millions of headlines from across the globe or insight from people hundreds of miles away that could affect the minds of viewers everywhere. Rather than breaking news our Twitter feeds are clogged up with postings about some irrelevant person's horrible day waiting in line at the DMV, or me, just re-blogging something cool some guy who will never know I exist said.

My Twitter account for this class can be viewed here: https://twitter.com/#!/KatherineGuenth

Facebook: The Final Boss Battle

The first time I used Facebook, like all my pointless misadventures, it was to try and talk to a guy that didn't know I existed. I got about twenty emails from other classmates before I got the email from him that changed my internet experience. I didn't know it at the time but my email from him was from an automated system that ran through a users email address book searching for people to invite. The younger version of myself took it as a personal invite rather than spam. Like a Trojan virus that infects an inbox when I joined Facebook it did the same thing to me. Facebook uses the same effective strategy that teenagers use at parties: peer pressure.

According to the authors of A World I Don’t Inhabit: Disquiet and Identity In Second Life and Facebook, Stuart Boon and Christine Sinclair this type of marketing campaign is what made Facebook grow into the huge network it is now. “As such, the application’s reach is global,” the article reads, “and its method is viral: you might not be looking for Facebook, but Facebook is likely looking for you.” It was this very strategy that first drew me in.

Currently, I now use Facebook to keep in touch with friends from High school and play another addicting game called the Sims social. I find that Facebook's networking ability is what draws me back to it. I used to struggle to keep a few close friends that I talked to daily now I find it easy to manage a network of hundred of friends by simply liking comments.

Despite my lack of exploration of the site, Facebook offers many mediums for companies and celebrities. For companies group pages can be a great way to meet together and discuss policies or changes in the company. Company public pages can also be a great place to offer deals to consumers or get consumers excited about a particular event. Since getting a follower is as simple as getting a customer to click “like” companies can amass a large following of potential customers in a few short days.

Public relations is another benefit of Facebook. According to TopRank Online Marketing's article, Why Use Social Media for Public Relations, the personal appeal of social media is what makes it so potent for PR. “We crave authenticity – and digital channels reward it higher than traditional,” the article reads, “This is because they are personal versus the fact that traditional channels produce content as the result of a polished, refined process.” In short, Rihanna's tweet about her new puppy is a personal appeal to her audience. “Look at me! I'm just like you; I have a dog,” this message implies to the viewer. This indirectly effects her record sales as it changes Rihanna from untouchable pop sensation to “that-woman-I-follow-on-twitter-with-the-nice-dog”. The same can be said for companies as well. Burger King is no longer just a franchise of restaurants but a “Facebook friend” who posts the “Burger King Prank of the Week” to make you laugh every weekend.

Given all the resources on Facebook I can see why our professor wanted us to make separate accounts. Facebook is a lot less fun without friends but a lot less distracting. However, I do feel like my projects would have been more interesting if I had my friends to add to my group pages.

For my personal Facebook page I set much of it to public simply because I don't feel I post anything interesting anyway. However, according to Joy Peluchette and Katherine Karl, authors of Examining Students’ Intended Image on Facebook:“What Were They Thinking?!”, this idea is more of a generational question. “Although some studies suggest that users’ comfort with revealing intimate details about themselves comes in part from a perception that their postings are somewhat private (Lupsa, 2006),” the article reads, “others have suggested that young people today have a “willingness, bordering on compulsion, to broadcast the details of their private lives to the general public” (St. John, 2006, Section 9, p. 8).” I find this idea really fascinating. It seems especially true for me and my friends. If it didn't get posted on Facebook afterwards, it's like it never happened.

That being said while I believe Facebook has no rules I do believe there are some rules of etiquette that site users SHOULD follow. Firstly, profile information should be true and realistic. Setting your employment history to say, “Death Star Janitorial Service” is only funny the first time someone reads it. If that person is trying to identify you this information is just irrelevant. The same can be said for being married to your best friend Grandma, and dog and listing every member of your cheer squad as your sister. It's just weird and it takes up space on the news feed. Speaking of news feed, another rule should be that if you have to post a semi-nude photo of yourself with the caption: “Am I Pretty or Ugly, Tell Me the Truth” you are a hideous ogre with nothing to look forward too in life but the cold embrace of death. On the subject of death trolling should be something responsible users abstain from. Yes it's fun to be a bully but it's not fun to be bullied. Another rule should be that Facebook games should be illegal. They're like being addicted to Heroin and will ruin your friendships as people get sick of the constant posting asking for “help”. Facebook should ask when you first create an account if you actually have a computer. Users who use Facebook solely from a cell phone and then complain when they get trapped in a Facebook conversation application they can't get out of because they “don't have a computer” are a cancer that deserves to be cured before AIDS and world hunger. The final rule that should exist for Facebook etiquette is that you should never say anything online you wouldn't say in person. Trust me, if more people accepted this rule internet drama would decrease tenfold.

That being said there are no etiquette rules on Facebook because they are impossible to enforce. In fact, even if someone posts a naked photo with a bong and a gun outside of an elementary school chances are that photo will never be taken down because there is simply too much information for anyone to enforce.

Communication and Facebook

Part of the fun with anything online is that you can pretend to be anyone. With this Facebook assignment I pretended to represent three organizations I had only barely heard of. One would think this task would be hard but it was surprisingly easy considering all the information available on the web. This made me really consider how important communication is on Facebook. Anyone can make a page but without an audience one's group or event is nothing but a post no one will see. Communication can get your web page out there and seen. A well put together page is interesting but in order to get page views for a group or event one must network and communicate with other Facebook users. Communication also shapes the way a group looks online. The first thing a potential customer or reader sees on Facebook are the pictures and graphics. Thus, pictures on Facebook have to be unique and professional. A simple logo ripped off Google images would make one's page seem shady and unofficial. Graphics and descriptions must be unique enough to seem like they came from the original owner but not so casual that they seem like the work of some ten year-old in a basement.

Communication is also pivotal to the success of events. Facebook allows users to invite friends to events through Facebook. While this seems fool-proof a lot goes into making sure the user doesn't simply dismiss the message. The wording of the invitation can not be so long as to have the reader skip it but descriptive enough to make the reader want to attend.

Another important aspect of communication is maintenance. The Facebook page of one's group or event must be well maintained. A Facebook page that looks inactive or abandoned is likely to draw viewers away. In short communication is pivotal to Facebook because it draws in the audience.

My new Facebook Page can be viewed here: http://www.facebook.com/comm336student

Screens Restaurant can be viewed here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/215051835269192/

SPCA at Eastern Hills Mall can be viewed here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/202582486514893/

Clarence High School can be viewed here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/278137125595713/

Facebook

Well, I already had a Facebook so I made a new one for my ferret!

http://www.facebook.com/odintheferret

Here are five Organizations that don’t have a Facebook Presence

1.       Club Infinity – well this technically has a page it just doesn’t have anything on it. This is a concert venue and night club. It’s a pretty cool local business that caters to the younger crowd so a Facebook page would defiantly help advertise the business.   

2.       SPCA at the Eastern Hills Mall – This one sort of has a page too but it doesn’t have any pictures or descriptions. Having a Facebook would defiantly help with adoptions. Look how well Pet Pardons does on Facebook.

3.       Main & Transit Burger King – This is the specific Burger King I work at, thus it should be a national landmark. While Burger King the corporation has a page my specific Burger King doesn’t. It would help with all the work gossip if we all had a Facebook page. Wait, actually, no it wouldn’t . . . this is a horrible idea.

4.       Screens – this is a bar/concert venue spot in Williamsville. It doesn’t have a Facebook page at all but it could definitely use one. Screens is a really cool bar with a gaming room and multiple local concerts. A Facebook would defiantly help connect them with the younger audience.

5.       Clarence Senior High School – I went to school here; it was a pretty funny place. There is a page for this but it has no pictures and is really god awful. So god awful only 50 people have liked it and I defiantly remember going to school with more than 50 people. I would like to make a group specifically for my senior year as kind of a reunion over Facebook type page. I think it would really help people connect and booster the opinion of the school.

Makin' Movies

I got a new camera last Christmas and I told everyone I was going to start making movies with it as soon as I opened the box. Months later, I finally finished one with my fellow directors Tyeisha (http://priorcom336.blogspot.com/) and Tony (http://amconstantino.blogspot.com/).

Separation - Class Project from Katherine Guenther on Vimeo.
Going into this movie making experience I was really expecting a lot more 'technical difficulties' than what happened. Having been a die-hard PC user all my life I was really leery about using I-movie. Horrible flash backs of the Mac computers in high school with their virus infected hard drives and lack of memory filled my mind as I started the editing process. However, I found I-movie to be a really simple and glitch-less program. The set-up of the time line was a little different than what I was used to but for all my complaining I felt I-movie really had my back during this project. The transitions were easy to instal and the few special effects we used were really easy to find and use.

In fact the only really technical difficulty we had was on my part. I never realized my camera was set to HD record so it took a little under an hour to import my footage into I-movie. At first I was extremely annoyed but after I realized what happened I'm just glad it imported them at all!

The filming process was a little hard at first but it got better when I began filming with my group. I struggled with some of the self-portrait filming because it was hard to film and act at the same time. I ended up doing a lot more, “stuff in static” than I originally hoped for. However, all my “stuff in static” actually helped me to establish a theme. The objects and personal effects that represented me stayed stationary as I rushed through life separated from the outside world.

I know you said in class not to sound fake by saying your group worked perfectly, but I don't know what to tell you. We really got along great. We agreed to meet outside of class to film together, we all equally contributed to the editing process and we came up with great ideas. In fact, if my group were to have one problem it is that we had too many ideas and not enough ways to work them all in. One of the ideas we came up with was to tone the color scheme down to a gray-ish tan color and make certain colors pop out to sort of enforce the separation theme color wise as well. However, it turned out there wasn't a really effective way of doing this in I-movie so we ended up scrapping the idea.

One of the themes we came up with that I felt really worked was the idea of video games separating us, but being the common thread bringing us all together. Over the course of working together we found out we really do have a lot in common and although we are separated from each other by our different paths we still have something other than this class to bring us together.

On the subject of Vimeo and YouTube I find myself more attracted to Vimeo over Youtube. People hardly ever say anything nice over the internet so the less places people have to complain and the less people to complain, the better. Also, Vimeo had less advertisements plastered all over the place to I felt like it was a better medium for video sharing. I would much rather YouTube adopt this policy rather than have two minute long un-skipable Disney's “John Carter” trailers before everything. I am a little worried however that our video will be taken down for copyright infringement as it uses music from different bands we have no written consent from. Hopefully this link will work for grading purposes though:

http://vimeo.com/38385879

Overall, I had a lot of fun working on this project and I hope our ideas have come together to form a good group portrait of our separate lives.

You Tube Vs Vimeo

Videos are a great benefit for a website. They keep viewers and potential customers on the page for longer and offer incentive to watch an advertisement. Groupings of videos liked by a user can also help an advertiser narrow down the field and choose specific users to advertise too. In the world of Web 2.0 there are two major websites that offer streaming video: YouTube and Vimeo.

YouTube:

With it's user base far greater than Vimeo the popularity of YouTube is a major strength. Anyone familiar with YouTube will be familiar with it's slogan, “broadcast yourself.” The major popularity of YouTube is that users can do just that – they can post almost anything. This can be a problem for video makers as one YouTube video will have to compete with a sea of other videos in order to be found if it is ever found at all.

The other major benefit of YouTube is that it is completely free. Users will never have to pay a dime to have full accesses to all of YouTube's features which include unlimited HD uploads (as long as the video is one Gigabyte or less and does not exceed ten minutes.) However, because YouTube's service is free YouTube can at anytime drop in an advertisement before your video. These indiscriminate advertisements can turn off viewers and do not benefit the video creator, only YouTube.

YouTube also offers many ways to communicate with the video creator. Such as comments (posted on the forum), messages (sent like an email to the creator) and likes/dislikes. These Web 2.0 features offer a lot of user feedback and allow for “video replies” as well. YouTube is also very user friendly allowing for video embedding on Twitter and Facebook at the simple push of a button. However, this is not without flaws. Rather than offer constructive criticism the feedback options of many videos are permanently clogged with trolls and spammers. Rather than use feed back as a tool it is mostly abused in many videos as a place for people to start internet fights.

Vimeo:

It doesn't bore well for vimeo's user base that before this project I had never heard of it. However, despite it's fewer users Vimeo has some pretty cool features. Vimeo advertises itself as, “a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make,” right on the home page. Vimeo tries to market itself as a Youtube alternative for the struggling artist. Vimeo offers all sorts of customization for personal websites or Facebook without the fear of having an advertisement for bleach pop up before the video.

However, because Vimeo does not get a lot of revenue from advertisements Vimeo limits some of it's features for non-paid members. Vimeo offers Vimeo Plus and Vimeo Pro for users who need more than the 1 upload a week under 500 MB offered to free users. The price for extended service can be pricey – almost $60 pricey.

Although debatable, Vimeos imbedded videos look “cleaner” than YouTube's, from personal comparisons between the two video players I found Vimeo's videos had a lot more glitches.

This strange white box is my self/separation video. Enjoy!