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Is micro blogging the future for writers?

Micro blogging gained a lot of success over the past few years. With the arrival of web 2.0 there was a need for a new form of writing. Long articles and ongoing features were not what people wanted anymore....

The Customer is Always Right (or at least able to convince the Internet masses they are)

With the dominance of social networking, user generated content, and the ability to comment on just about anything, web 2.0 has changed the way consumers interact with corporations, especially when they are pissed off. Many corporations are performing the...

Dissemination of Social Network Sites

Social network sites are very popular within media studies. They are common research subjects. How often did you refer to Facebook or LinkedIn when writing an article? There is not one way to explore the universe of social media....

The Arab media revolution

Since there have been inventions for the use of communication amongst the human race there have been institutions, governments and corporations trying to control them. As Noam Chomsky cites: 'Unless people are controlled, they are going to challenge power'....

Using Twitter To Support 3FM’s ‘Serious Request’ Campaign

Using Facebook, Youtube, Hyves and Twitter in particular for the good cause? It's possible in the coming weeks with Serious Retweets. The site www.seriousretweets.nl supports the yearly 3FM campaign 'Het glazen huis'...

Blog-art

A Few weeks ago I attended the Blog-art Festival in The Hague. I was eager to see how they interpreted the concept of ‘blog-art’, but as it turned out they did not interpreted it at all.

The Anti-Googlization: How Alternative Search Engines Find Their Way on the Web

On the website googlizationofeverything.com, theorist Siva Vaidhyanathan states that the current web is dominated in several ways by search engine Google. Google related sites and ‘Googleware’ like Google Books and Google Earth and the video channel YouTube. In a...

Twitter as a marketing tool

For marketers using new media strategies is becoming popular. Direct mailing is a popular tool which is already used for many years. Social networks have taken over email in terms of popularity. Twitter is a very popular one. Businesses...

Commercial twitter: or how to get a lot from a little

Almost every new media form undergoes different levels of different uses. Some new media is invented with a certain goal, take for instance a heavily used tool for communication as internet. This medium was invented in order to establish...

Twitter and The Remediation of Short Texts

Aphorisms, Haiku’s, SMS, Twitter “What are you doing?” This basic question of Twitter can easily be answered in the limited 140 characters a ‘tweet offers. They key characteristic of the famous microblogging site, it’s short message length, actually isn’t...

Implications of Twitter: Crime 2.0

Sept. 30, 2008. White man about 20 years of age, wearing a blue shirt, yellow vest, safety goggle and a respirator mask. An ordinary road-worker going to work you might think. No you’re wrong, this is the story of...

Is Twitter Gonna Kill Us?

“Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.” – Jean...

Aphoristic message (overload?) by a CMC world

Communication is as old as humans (or humanoids) itself, from a grunt, a shout to a simple gesture – we have always had the ability to convey messages to others around us – whether we’re correctly understood is a...

The significance of Twitter

Since its start in 2006 people have speculated about the significance of Twitter. Twitter has often been criticized for it's lack of content, but is also praised for the empowering possibilities it offers us. I question both these...

Twitter and the Vertical Stacking

In Politics of the Very Worst (1999) and Information Bomb (2000) Paul Virilio argues that ‘speed’ historically has been a source of power in all societies (from horsemanship, to railway transportation, naval power, flight and finally information technology). ‘Speed’...

The Uses of Twitteracy

Why do I tweet?. Because I’m a narcissist?, because I want to start a revolution?, because I want to share my activities?, because I want my aphorism in the Twitter Wit book?, or simply because everyone’s doing it?. Honestly...

Twitter and the Rise of Impersonal Communication

Before the rise of twitter there already existed older -digital- communication devices that shared the same idea: short and fast communication between people. Those were mainly writing, faxing, emailing, chatting and later sms text messaging. In the case of...

Twitter: Public Space or Public Sphere?

Internet kills writing? According to Andrea Lunsford, researcher at the Stanford University, it is totally the other way around. There is an immense increase of people starting to write and digital writing is the biggest revolution in writing since...
Why are we using Twitter anyway?

Why are we using Twitter anyway?

The last couple of years online communities have been developing applications for users to share daily updates about their life, thoughts and whereabouts. Hyves provides a ‘WieWatWaar’ and Facebook has it’s own ‘Wall’ where users can update their friends....

Design your network. What has become of Twitter aesthetics?

“My nephew has HDADD: Hi-Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely pay attention, but when he does it’s unbelievably clear.” – Steven Wright Since Twitter came out it was pretty obvious it was something else. Its minimal, quasi-zen approach...

In search for universal language

Umberto Eco, a cultural critic, semiotician, and a writer said that we live in an age where the “diminutive, the brief and the simple are highly prized in communication” (Thurlow & Brown). New communication technologies can empower young people...
@MOM, twitter #addmeaning or #losemeaning?

@MOM, twitter #addmeaning or #losemeaning?

Last week we read Vannevar Bush’s essay “As we may think” and one aspect I truly found fascinating was the purpose for what he came up with the idea of the memex: an effort to arrange a mechanism to...

The Paradox of Choice on Twitter

Even though I have spent a large portion of my life connected to the internet, I have noticed my attention span waning in the past few years. The first year I went to University in 2003, I walked into...
Txtng news in 140 characters

Txtng news in 140 characters

It is no news to us that text messaging is morphing our modern culture. In 2008, the British scholar David Crystal has observed how text messages in mobile phones and IMs can influence our live technologically, sociologically, psychologically, commercially, and...