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Yeey I’m on Facebook! :s

With 500 million active users spending over 700 billion minutes per month, Facebook is gaining more and more traffic each single day. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. With these...

Surfing the Web of Trust: Couchsurfing

Social networks come in a wide variety on the World Wide Web. There’s the generic social network focusing on sharing info and multimedia with your friends (like facebook), professional sites (LinkedIn), forums, collaborative blogs and so on. Most of...

Is Crowd Funding Viable? Best and Worst Practices

During PICNIC 2010 last week I attended the session Crowdfunding: The Financial Solution for the Creative Industry, it was an interesting presentation/discussion with crowdfunding experts who shared their best practices and visions of the future. Discussions emerged on how...

Don’t Feed the Trolls

Back in 2006 when Ze Frank was still running The Show, he asked his viewers to help him find the creator of a funny audio clip that had been floating around on the Web. Frank’s community, his Sportsracers as...
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...

The Changing Power of Parents

Being present on a social network once was a way to escape parents’ attention. For many teens, home is a highly regulated space with rules and norms that are strictly controlled by adults. The...

Web 2.0+ User=♥? An ANT approach to User-Web relationships.

In reviewing the Digital Folklore Reader last week, I came across Olia Lialina’s essay Vernacular Web 2, in which she argues that the void caused by the demise of the playful, cheeky and, most importantly, personal homepage has been...

Be free. Don’t adjust your Facebook privacy settings

Chun states that we, the users, perceive new media, in particular the Internet, to be free, democratic and save. We think we are in control of our content, but just like with other technologies, we can never have total...
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...
How Social Tagging can improve Digitized Cultural Heritage

How Social Tagging can improve Digitized Cultural Heritage

The Internet has in recent years paved the way for the social web. This is a development to the so called Web 2.0. In this manifestation the web finally distanced itself from traditional websites in the old media tradition....
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...
Thou shall not lie (on your online profile)

Thou shall not lie (on your online profile)

(Untrustworthy) Online Identities in Web 2.0 The example of Facebook As new media history is being written at present time, the discourse keeps revolving around the notion of online identity and “personal privacy” issues that are connected to the...
Review: Anne Friedberg’s “The Virtual Window”

Review: Anne Friedberg’s “The Virtual Window”

book coverIn The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (2006, MIT Press), (the late) Anne Friedberg traces the history of the relationship between the window...

Social Networks and Multicultural Societies

After the web crash in the 90’s a new way of thinking about the internet arose. This lead to a brand new composition of the internet, often referred to as web 2.0. The term does not refer to any...

MUSIC: Is MySpace more important than an Official Website?

MySpace Music has become an easy way for musicians (solo artists and bands) to get exposure. Through Web 2.0 and the MySpace community means fans can connect to comment, put your song on their personal profile, and add you...
Storytelling as a captivating business model

Storytelling as a captivating business model

Last week Dutch artist Dennis Sibeijn found out that someone had used his work ‘Truth’ (left) in a competition in Taiwan and actually won. The Taiwanese student who stole the image had not even bothered to edit it...

Campaigning and advocacy via social network sites, are social movements on the right path?

I do believe the Web 2.0 is shaping our societies, and much more the way users relate to each other. Social movements are adopting very fast social media technologies in their communication strategy. They use social network sites mostly...
Does Facebook Rule? Ideas For The Future.

Does Facebook Rule? Ideas For The Future.

Facebook is everywhere. It connects 500 millions of people around the world. No doubts, it is an effect of purposeful endeavours of those who stay behind the success of the platform. It is becoming more and more interconnected into...

Online Identity on Facebook becoming more and more complex

‘Sharing information about ones Identity on the net is a process of self-portrayal’ (Baier et al. 2003: p. 3). A couple of years ago the world of social network sites was quite clear. There was facebook for students, linkedIn...

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...
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....
Advantages of having a ‘Second Life’ – a short essay on how MMO Games may change the World

Advantages of having a ‘Second Life’ – a short essay on how MMO Games may change the World

What are MMO games? Massively Multiplayer Online games are a fresh genre to the gaming industry, as all of them require a strong and stable Internet connection. This particular branch of gaming is becoming more and more popular due...

Social Networks and Frameworks of Activism

For nearly ten years now, media analysts and commentators like Tim O’Reilly have sung the praises of Web 2.0 and social media. The new World Wide Web, characterised by its writerly, inclusive and connective nature, was to democratize the...

Y this Generation?

To start understanding social networks and their ceaseless popularity it’s important to understand the people who use them most. Although it’s a mistake to generalize about an entire generation there are unquestionably some central themes that apply to Generation...