A mass market of niches? The 80/20 model. We pay for first in line, or do we?

This week there were several main points that I'd like to capitalise on.

It's amazing really, that I can sit through a lecture attempting to figure out every next step using logical induction, yet there is always some way for digital media and communication to overthrow my logical thinking.

The 80/20 or "power law" model, for example. You'd think that a company producing content to appeal to the mass market side would always succeed and beat the niche market. It just makes sense. As said in the lecture, Transformers will always have the upper hand against some romance journey film made in another language. Sure, people might like romance journeys, but the majority will appeal to Transformers.

This is why I was mindblown with how Amazon approached the matter. A mass market of niches. Appeal not only to the mass market, but have enough supply to attract the niche markets too. Store front? Who needs them? Why spend time on making the face value of your company pretty by sacrificing storage space? No, just buy a warehouse or ten, fill them to the ceiling with books and become one of the biggest book distributors in the world.

I also would like to stress on the attention vs content changeover after the amateurization of the Internet began. Before, there were high profiled publishers writing articles and stories with quality and flair. Now, we have millions of publishers writing blog posts and stories with just flair (okay, and some quality). Before it was the content that was scarce - those who were good writers were worshipped. But now, the attention is scarce. There are so many "writers" on the internet nowadays screaming for attention. Digital evolution on a social scale, eh?

Lastly I'd like to pose a question: do we always pay for what's first in line? Google charge a fee per month to give you live updates on stock prices. People pay money for a book before it gets digitally publicised. But what about things like torrented movies? It's not rare to get your hands on a HD film before it is released on DVD.. but is that why people pay to see a movie in the cinemas?

Thanks for reading and I'll see you all next week :).

Last week's catch up! Have you ever read an entire EULA? Radiohead's 2008 decision.

This week I caught up on the material I missed out on in week 5 whilst I was overseas. Whilst wading through the relevant lecture and reading sources, I realised what the statement "Information wants to be free" really means. It is information that not only wants to be free of charge, but free of restriction and limitation.

I ended up being extremely amazed that the Happy Birthday song is actually owned by a company, and that filmmakers must pay to use it in their scenes. Could you imagine a family sitting around a table with a birthday cake and singing the song, only to have the Warner Police bust through their window and arrest the family for infringement?

I was also surprised that every single account in existence on World of Warcraft is owned by Blizzard. How is this possible? That hundreds of thousands of players have spent months, if not years, accumulating currency and character gear which is still not theirs. I think it's tricky of companies to include such statements in a way that is so visually unappealing to read, yet they can argue that its the only right and 'legal' way for them to distribute the EULA. I can confess that out of the hundreds of times I have opened the World of Warcraft client, I have never once read a word of their mandatory pre-game EULA.

I personally think more bands need to act as aggressively as Radiohead, who decided to slap a "Pay What You Want" option on their recent album In Rainbows in 2008. Although the stats say three fifths of their fanbase chose to pay nothing, their profits still exceeded those of their previous album. I admire Radiohead's ability to make bold moves like these - they chose to realise the magnitude of the copyright problem and embrace it rather than fight it. Although their success was mainly due to their pre-In_Rainbows large fan community (thus allowing them to gamble their money like this), it shows that true inspiration still exists, and not every intelligent-content producer is a smug caterpillar wrapped in a cocoon of copyright armour.

Thanks for the read and let me know what you think!

Converdex. Deuze still doesn't cut it. What is grassroots media?

Convergence: the word that has been popping up all week.

Many of Ted's points this week really struck a chord. Honourable mentions go to media platform extinction/mutation, as well as the evolution of how we perceive text.

Platform extinction was the main topic that caught my attention. It was a way of organising how different information carriers have boomed and died throughout the media timeline. From vinyl records to cassette tapes to compact-disks to mp3 files. The practical implications of each level were clear in their context, yet a new form of data-holding physicality has inevitably emerged. What's even more interesting though is the mutation of old platforms: the vinyl turned into an art of disc jamming (ie DJ'ing) for a whole new outlook on the production of sound.

Papyrus scroll to "codex" to web hypertext also gets a mention. Again, the physical organisation of words on a flat surface has evolved throughout time until we now have access to multiple texts in an order we choose. Also the fact that the name "codex" far outshines "book". Why did we ever ditch that term? Think about it, guys:
'Hey man, are you excited for the Harry Potter movie?'
'Yeah, I've already gone through my entire Harry Potter codex collection!'

With regards to the readings, some of you may know I'm not much a fan of Deuze. Again, he was too verbose, and it's hard to express my thoughts on his reading because he covered so many issues in the one article. I will say that I did like his point on how news corporations these days rely somewhat on public feedback (polls, hotlines and amateur photos/videos) in order to relay much of their information, rather than the old style of playing media filters.

Jenkins managed to make me laugh when he told the story of trying to find a phone that wasn't a "Swiss army knife equivalent". It was also great to understand the importance of individual blogging as a way to distribute immediate information about current affairs. One term I'm not quite sure about is "grassroots media" - does anyone want to explain this one to me?

Thanks for reading!

Deuze a bit delusional, but Gregg saves the day. What's up, infographs?

I'll get straight to the point on this one. Deuze, although informing, didn't really cut it for me in this week's paper. For the first few pages I was pretty intrigued in what he was trying to say, but for some reason his constant use of too many examples got on my nerve.

"With a divorce rate of roughly 50% in most capitalist economies, a growing recognition of the normalcy of gay and lesbian lifestyles, the exponential increase among city dwellers of predominantly childless peoples like recent immigrants, aging babyboomers, and empty nesters..."

"Media professionals – those employed in journalism, marketing communications, advertising, public relations, game design, television and the movie industry..."


To me, it were as if he threw as many examples as he could think of in there to rack up his word count. Not to mention how verbose the entire paper was, though you'd expect that from academics anyway. Oh, he also referenced himself a few times in his own paper.

Onto the actual content though; like I said before, it was informing, insightful, and a great outline as to how work has changed (and is still changing) between cultures and time periods. Contrary to my dislike of his writing style, Deuze did gain some respect by his identifying of the media "responsible for cookiecutter-style McDonaldization, as well as the main agent in affecting social, technological and economical change". See, to me, this is great expression. Simple yet effective use of words to emphasise the impacts of media on several levels of macro-based interactions.

Moving on to Gregg's reading, I liked his section on the acceleration of work. I found myself thinking 'yes, yes, he's right' as he explained how work has evolved from writing on a blackboard to being overwhelmed with emails or becoming "fixated on the computer screen". What's even better though, is that Gregg was able to pick particular cases where these problems have been handled by those with better time or space management, revealing a nice door of hope to those who think the future of the digital working world is going to mess.

Finally, I'd like to all direct you to the final slide of Ted's prezi slides this week and point out how amazing the mobile workstyle infograph is. Not only because its simple and effective, but enlightening to how mobile work is changing with the swarm of smartphones and tablet devices hitting the streets. I guarantee you will be surprised at least once if you absorb the entire image.

Thanks for the read and I'll see you in a couple of weeks :)

Online utopia? Kelly's reading proves intriguing. I'm off to the snow!

This week Ted covered the idea of what the internet was planned out to be by people of high stature, and compared this to what the internet is today. I liked how the importance of free speech within an unregulated society was outlined in the lectures. This, of course, differs from reality, such as the censorship of entire websites in China, or that time the internet was shut down in Egypt by their respective government.

I was on either side with regards to the two readings this week. Barlow's text seemed to be some kind of rant about how governments cannot rule the cyberworld due to its lack of physical characteristics, and rather the government should stay ruling the physical world whilst letting cyberdwellers to mediate their own space. To be quite honest, I saw the whole reading as some passive aggressive blog post as if some fourteen year old had his modem taken away by his mother.

"We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world..."

Does anyone else feel this way?

On the contrary, Kelly's reading really shone new perspectives on the matter. I found it fascinating when he highlighted the differences of economy by trade (moving atoms from one place to another) compared to the economy of online sources (no atoms moved unless energy is activated). The reading was quite long but I found myself agreeing with basically the entire text. As a result, I'll just let you know it was a good read, rather than quoting everything I found gratifying.

Anyway, that's all for this week. I'm off to the snow for the weekend but hopefully I won't be too tired to come to the lecture on Monday. Thanks for reading and stay safe!

Future of economy in online gaming

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen a link I posted about Blizzard's announcement for one of their upcoming, long-awaited games.

Diablo III, which is yet to be released (currently in alpha or beta play as far as I know) is an MMORPG. Whether or not its gameplay or aesthetics will defeat Blizzard's previous ultimate success (World of Warcraft), the developers have recently released a statement that changes their game's economy drastically.

A few days ago, Blizzard announced that Diablo III may contain an in-game auction house that buys and sells items with real money. Naturally, an uproar from much of the player base erupted about how these implementations are unnecessary. There is already a dominance of (illegal) real-money trading in World of Warcraft run by Chinese industries, and the prediction is that the Chinese will do the same for Diablo III.

What intrigues me though is Blizzard's decision to harness the idea of in-game trading rather than attempting to ban it like in World of Warcraft. Shortly after reading the relevant article, I wondered how this would change the status of a gamer in the not too distant future. Soon enough, gamers will be able to earn an income purely from in-game economy engines.

What intrigues me further is the fact that this now blurs the line between work and play. Naturally we would see games to be a tool for play - one we can settle down in a comfortable computer chair and get a kick out of playing. Now with the ability to earn income, it is possible for a gamer to balance both work and play in-game. Suddenly, this changes the field of action. Instead of going out, travelling to our workplace, earning an income then travelling back home to spend the rest of the day relaxing (say, by playing games), one can spend  their time acquiring in-game items of value, selling them in-game for real income, then spend the rest of the day on the same game relaxing / having fun.

Whether this is ethically right or wrong, however, is a different story.

Thanks for the read and I'll see you all next week :)

note: sorry nothing had to do with the week's lecture material or readings but I really felt I needed to blog about this. hope you don't mind!

DIGC202 virgin blog no more! Concept visualisation & infographs. Did you enjoy Castell's reading?

I am already intrigued by the majority of introductory subject content. Although not too much core information was provided, it's good to know a rough (yet concise) outline of what we're expected to analyse over the coming semester. I have to say, I'm pretty excited for the Apple vs Google mobile device case study in the latter weeks. Who knows, maybe we'll get some chairs thrown or tables flipped when the two sides use their opinions to throw punches.

One thing that catches my attention is the way we're being presented with the concepts. It seems that a mind-map format for visualising ideas such as the types of network structure as well as Ted's Prezi slides themselves (would you even call them slides?) proves to be an efficient way of explaining the branching of information. Personally, I enjoy how data or concepts can be represented in one single image (infographs, anyone?). I'd like to see a lot more of this format/technique later on in lectures or even lab tutorials.

With regards to the group research project, I'm hoping I can work on something to do with the gaming category. This area proves to be extremely diverse with regards to ethics, marketing and future sporting events (read: e-sports). Off the top of my head I can already imagine researching the World of Warcraft gold farming industry in China, or the international tournaments held for StarCraft and StarCraft 2 over in Korea.

Castell's reading didn't provide me much information, whether or not it was because I didn't tentatively read the entire document (that many full stops felt like running into a brick wall every four seconds), he seemed to be too interested in examples of networks in the past & present, and finished off with a pretty weak conclusion. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see how networks apply on global sociological level as well as any microsystem in today's communicative society. It's important to remember what networking was like before the mobile/internet explosion, such as theories like the six degrees of separation.

Judgments aside, I am looking forward to next week's round of content and hope my readers can provide constructive criticism on my blog. Good luck with your research projects!