About Ineke Scheffers
Hi, I'm Ineke. I'm a social media, internet and television addict. When somebody tells me about a trip the first question that comes to my geeky mind is: "How was the WiFi?" rather than "How was the weather?". Instead of admitting to my infobesitas, I decided to make this new media addiction my life by studying it and hopefully making it (part of) my job someday. That's why I chose for this Master: New Media & Digital Cultures. Last year I graduated my BA in Media & Culture from the University of Amsterdam. I wrote my thesis on ACTA and it was called 'You Can't Squeeze Blood From a Stone. Why ACTA Isn’t Beneficial for the Media Industry Either.'. I believe in the 'sharing is caring'-internet and like to see the ones in power to treat this space appropriately. So not by criminalizing, blocking and censoring content using the old traditional media model, but by embracing this 'new' techniques and developing a fitting new media approach. During this summer I decided it was time for an internship and I ended up as an internet editor at
Merge Media in The Hague. I was lucky, this company gets it! Just like me they don't see the 'social, downloading, peer to peer sharing, pirating'-internet as a threat to commercial businesses, but they see it as a site of great opportunities. They believe by giving the consumer something worthy (not necessarily for the world, but for the target audience), your brand will get something worthy back: A loyal sincere passionate evangelizing consumer. At Merge I got the chance to blog; copy write; vent my thoughts about social media; create, analyze and give advice on Facebook and Google Adwords campaigns and create my very own engagement program for Merge itself. At the moment I combine this Master with (very) part time blogging at Merge.
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Websitehttp://inekescheffers.com
The project The Social Catwork is based on the initial concept of Facebook, where the users were asked to pick which person out of two pictures they find more attractive. Our version, however, gives the user a choice of two cat images. The website is aiming at both providing people with a place to get their daily dose of catness, as well as gathering metrics on the amount of time people spend looking at cats, the general preference pro le (what kind of cats are most popular) and where does the tra ffic originate from (Google, social media, blogs, direct URL).
At the same time we envisioned the website as a sort of a critique on the objecti cation and judging of
people on the web and in social networks. This is why we reference heavily to Facebook (color, font, Face-
Mash structure).
The sections of the website include “Infocats”, where the user can find more information about the project
and its creators, “Catstistics” is the section for statistical data on the usage of the site, “Topcats” is where the top 10 most voted on cats are, and “Catastrophics” is the place for the least voted on cats.
Check it out and use your vote!
Founders: Alex Maat, Bozhan Chipev, Ferdy Looijen, Robert Silvis, Stijn van Wonderen and Ineke Scheffers.
