iPad vs. publishing

In the last couple of moths iPad seems to be the center of gadget universe. While waiting for the release scheduled for April 3, 2010 (Wi-Fi model) or better late April 2010 (Wi-Fi + 3G model), many speculations regarding the use and implications of this tablet computer arose. Although it seems that critics are not nearly unified, iPad could (or better should) in turn affect existing publishing practices, especially in the sphere of newspapers, as Joe Zeff suggests in his post.

When released, the iPad will include the iBooks application, which displays books and other ePub-format content downloaded from the iBookstore. Five of the US’ six largest publishers (Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Penguin) have already reached deals with Apple to sell their books through iBookstore, reported the New York Times. In an interview Condé Nast Publications representative said they will have available iPad subscriptions for its GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, The New Yorker and Glamour magazines by June.

What about newspapers? For now it seems that newspapers will be read as (free) on-line versions (using Safari) But will this suffice? Not necessarily, because this could mean that newspapers are not competitive enough to follow current trends. As Joe Zeff wrote:

"Newspapers are challenged to deliver a product that surpasses their print, mobile and online editions. Otherwise, what’s the point of reading an iPad edition, let alone paying for one? It needs to offer something not found in the traditional version already in your briefcase and the up-to-the-second version already in your pocket."

He also poses some interesting suggestions such as content with less time-sensitivity and greater multimedia potential could shift into apps, and on the other hand »news you can use«: Like a newspaper, the iPad becomes a tool, which helps a user find a new house by showing him property values, school information etc.

Perhaps newspapers should consider adapting to new circumstances in the media landscape, because outlook of the near future suggests that iPad could become a widely used appliance and not just a gadget for the technophiles and Apple fans. Newspapers could see iPads as a niche and present themselves in new, even more interactive form, attracting the expectedly large population of users-to-be.

photo: www.apple.com

Twitter users not so social after all?

Many articles can be found on social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter. Steve Thornton provides a great description and systematic comparison of both of their pros and cons. Last week Jernej wrote an interesting post on this topic, where he argued that Twitter and Facebook differ significantly considering their target audiences. He states that:

"Facebook is more about connecting with friends you know, Twitter is connecting with people you might want to know - exchanging information."

While (in my opinion) most of (us) Twitter and Facebook users agree with this assessments, especially Twitter being about knowledge, an interesting article on Twitter confirms this providing statistical data. As Paul Judge, author of the report, put it:

"As of December 2009, only 21% of Twitter account holders were defined as "true users," meaning someone who has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and has tweeted at least 10 times. /.../ [This means that most Twitter users] came online to follow their favorite celebrities, not to interact with their buddies the way they would on Facebook or MySpace."

I can agree on that, but I think that these statistics need some further explanations. What I observed, is that a lot of technophils mostly prefer Twitter to Facebook and probably represent a large segment of those 21% of “true users”, although they are not using it primarily to follow their favorite celebrities. They usually emphasize abilities such as rapid responsiveness, interactivity, extensible messaging platforms and less “cluster” made by applications and the like. So they could count as social users.

And another observation: A lot of people sign up for Twitter, because they heard a lot about it from their friends or read about it, find it to confusing, don't want to deal with figuring out how it works and never come back again. Their first post is most likely to sound something like: "This thing is so confusing" or "I can't figure this thing out, how does it work?" etc. So I am not surprised, that nearly 80% of Twitter accounts don't count as true/really active users, because they are not really users.

What do you think?

Global collaboratory?

There are different definitions but collaboratory could simply be described as a (virtual) environment where participants make use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to access shared instruments and data. In the article From Shared Databases to Communities of Practice: A Taxonomy of Collaboratories Bos, Zimmermann, Olson et al. propose a typology of collaboratories, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses and the purpose of collaboration - is it established just for aggregation (enabling accessibility, but at the expense of synchronous communication) or is it intended to facilitate co-creating (communication among participants is tighter). Of course, any kind of collaboration is dependent on the participants and on-line communication is no exception. An extensive research regarding what motivates and sustains adoption, what prevents individual scholars or groups of scholars to adopt e-Research tools is provided by Ralph Schroeder and Dimitrina Spencer (2009).

Prima facie collaboratories are used as a means of collaborations inside the academic field. Scholars engage in such collaborations in order to facilitate working on a common project. But accessibility of new technologies (to those on the right side of the “digital divide”) enables also less formal, and more provisional collaboratories outside the academic filed.

I saw a video the other day about the impact of the Internet age on dance evolution and it occurred to me, that what Jon Chus, the LXD representative is talking about is actually an informal global collaboratory.

In his short introductory speech, Jon Chus states:

"Dancers never had a better friend than technology. [Using] on-line videos and social networking [sites] dancers have created a whole global laboratory on-line for dance work. Kids in Japan are taking moves from YouTube videos created in Detroit, building on it within days and releasing a new video, while teenagers in California are taking the Japanese video and remixing it to create a whole new dance style in itself."

Of course this form of collaboratory lacks organization and using Schroeder's and Spencer's term “politics”. It is hard to categorize it, since there is no definite goal they are trying to achieve. It could be categorized as co-creating collaboratory but in my opinion, it is more of an aggregation type: "participants" are scattered all over the globe, their coupling is loose and the nature of communication is asynchronous. Nevertheless they are effective, because all “participans” are (more or less voluntarily) working toward a common goal (in this case getting new ideas for choreographies) using accessible ICT's. It would be interesting to analyze such informal collaborations and mutatis mutandis compare the resaults with existing research in academic collaboratories. I would expect atleast inertia and recalcitrance to turn out as less significant factors than in the Schroeder and Spencer (2009) case.

Welcome!

I created this (academic) blog with a (noble) intention of sharing my thoughts, critique and other contributions related to the field of new media. My posts will be part of the New Media & Society course held at our faculty.

Last year I graduated in Media and Communication studies at Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. My thesis was on personalization of politics in Slovenian on-line space, where I examined the degree of personalized presentations of Slovenian politicians that joined social network sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

In this seminar I would like to expand my knowledge of new media and get a more systematic overview of the field. I hope to find this course of my benefit to the masters degree research (where I am focusing on the infrastructure of communication in European public sphere) by getting new ideas and perspectives.

Since new media have the potential to establish and facilitate new forms of publics and public spheres that efficiently transgress the boundaries of space and time, I am also interested in the democratic and rebellious potential that seems inherent to the new media, a great example being the Moldova's Twitter Revolution in 2009.