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Relationships 2.0: Social media – taking the distance out of long distance relationships

Relationships 2.0: Social media – taking the distance out of long distance relationships

Social media has drastically changed the way we go about our daily business – this has been firmly established by now. Media scholars are exploiting (in a good way) all the possibilities and data the exciting platforms provide for...

Eagerness to share our lives with the others — where are the online boundaries?

More and more often I find on Facebook things which I would rather never want to find. Sonograms of unborn children of people who I know from high school and didn’t talk to them since then, tomographies of their...

Master New Media; a logical choice.

The first week at the Master New Media was interesting and it gave a good view of what we will do in the upcoming year. It is nice to see that the classes consist of so many students from...

The like button: Something mutual, nothing too personal

An interview with an average net user about the role of the virtual in her life.

Social Media are taking over our identity, for better or for worse.

With Facebook now claiming to have over 750 million active users,  along with a 100 million tweeters traceable through the current 22 million checkins of 725.000 Foursquare users , it is safe to argue that one out of 9...

True Blood invades virtual reality

The development of new communication means in recent years has turned into a genuine PR and advertising opportunity. The rise of the Internet together with the changes in the behavior of the media consumer triggered a special interest in...
Twitter brings New Media student on stage with Imogen Heap

Twitter brings New Media student on stage with Imogen Heap

media.hum.uva.nl/2010/11/25/16331/">media.hum.uva.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Imogen-Heap-Janice-Wong-cello.jpg" alt="Imogen Heap & Janice Wong (cello)" width="75" />Thanks to Twitter, I (Janice Wong - cellist and New Media student at the UvA) was given a great opportunity...
Online to Offline: review of TS2AS party in Amsterdam

Online to Offline: review of TS2AS party in Amsterdam

Three weeks ago I blogged about Justus Bruns and the concept behind Times Square to Art Square (TS2AS). Last night was the first offline event, held in MuzyQ, Amsterdam, where Justus explained the story behind his idea, “to turn...
Truthy: Policing Misinformation, One Meme-ing Tweet At a Time

Truthy: Policing Misinformation, One Meme-ing Tweet At a Time

“Swiftboaters beware!” The battle to control Congress is on and this election year the truth is about to get Truthier. Twitter – the social media network, twenty-four-hour news site, conversation and blogging platform, wedding and death announcement site, gossip...
What’s got the Greater Manchester Police all aTwitter today?

What’s got the Greater Manchester Police all aTwitter today?

Discard your police scanner, since 5am this morning and for 24 hours only, the Greater Manchester Police have been logging every incident live on Twitter. What’s got them all atwitter? According to their website they want to raise...
Pecha Kucha Night @Mediamatic, Amsterdam

Pecha Kucha Night @Mediamatic, Amsterdam

Here I am, sitting on a couple of pillows in the front row of Mediamatic’s jam-packed main room. In just a few minutes, the Pecha Kucha Night Amsterdam Volume 15 will start. 12 presentations given at lightning speed (20...
Tweet, Tweet, Twitter Journalism

Tweet, Tweet, Twitter Journalism

The role of the journalist has been changed, or some would argue that it is not there anymore. How is democracy functioning with all the social media around us? Twitter is a powerful tool for politicians to get in...

Twitter: what are you feeling?

What if our words had no hidden meaning? What if we didn’t play the mind games that we play in deconstructing and (over-)analyzing every sentence or word or gesture and we would have to look no further than the...
Research Twitter, Predict the Future

Research Twitter, Predict the Future

Twitter, for many critics, is seen as the platform on which a lot ‘irrelevant’ information, whether personal or not, is shared. Arguments of the presupposed irrelevance of Twitter are paralleled by critics who argue the possible predictive potential of...

New Media drives project: Times Square to Art Square

Times Square to Art Square is a project to turn all billboards on Times Square into art. At the opening party of Dutchproblogger’s book Sex, Blogs & Rock ‘n’ Roll I was fortunate to meet Justus Bruns, one...

Social Media Is Not Social

Last week I saw this TEDx presentation by David Armano. In this inspring 16 minutes he talks about how social media itself, is not social. Armano says that it is the people itself that are social. It is time...
Online Activism, Offline Passivism?

Online Activism, Offline Passivism?

media.hum.uva.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Jyllands-Posten_1726637c.jpg" alt="Jyllands Posten" width="211" height="168" /> Social media and Web 2.0 have radically changed the way we communicate with each other. Blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter let us...

Shift in power

If you google “social media” or “social networksites” you will receive tons of links. Everybody seems to use social networksites and you need to be involved soon. Most of the links use a kind of paranoia, to make you...
MIN(D)ING Your Data

MIN(D)ING Your Data

Last week, ‘surveillance and control’ was the theme the Masters of Media-students were debating about. Theorists as Michel Foucault, Deleuze, Galloway and Thacker and Chun passed the revue. With the articles of the last three theorist there was some...
Facebook Confessions: Pastoral Power in New Media Practices

Facebook Confessions: Pastoral Power in New Media Practices

Facebook, as a tool to connect, communicate, share, link, network and socialize, has become omnipresent in the Internet landscape. Its history starts in 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg launched the network at Harvard University. It has since reached over 500 million...
Virtually Yours! The Meteoric Rise of Virtual Game Goods

Virtually Yours! The Meteoric Rise of Virtual Game Goods

In the space of just over a decade, virtual game goods have gone from being a black market cottage industry to an extremely successful business model for gaming and social networking virtual goods industries. This evolution, caused by player...
False Predictions of the Future of Social Media

False Predictions of the Future of Social Media

Perhaps it’s my dissatisfaction with social media hypes, and especially the ones that are ignited by marketing guru’s, but I can’t resist the feeling of pseudo science when I read about analyses and predictions about social media on blogs....

Do You ‘Like’ Wikipedia? The Socialization of an Encyclopedia

It’s official: Wikipedia has jumped on the social media bandwagon. The online encyclopedia recently announced the introduction of an article feedback tool currently being tested on 400 articles pertaining to the WikiProject on United States Public Policy. (Melanson, 23...
Harvest your crops, feed your dog, serve the dishes… socialize!

Harvest your crops, feed your dog, serve the dishes… socialize!

Let me get this straight. I don't have a pet. I never felt like growing pumkins. My cooking skills are below average. Does that make me socially "incompatible" with the millions of people playing Pet Society, Farmville, Cafe World...