Tag: Internet

Posted on

Before Twitter, Whisper and Snapchat there was the Blog – the platform that made it possible for non-techies to publish on the internet. And if you grew up in the 90s, chances are you probably had one at some point – a Livejournal, a Blogger, a WordPress or Diaryland.

This year, the Blog turns 20. To mark the anniversary of the medium, we asked three blogging pioneers to look back on the transformation of the medium over the past two decades, and share their thoughts on new platforms like Snapchat and Twitter.

As someone whose first online platform was on Diaryland, I am surprisingly happy to see it get its proper mention in this Guardian piece. It was my first online community! It’s where I met my wife!
Posted on

The company said that the website, the first dedicated site the Sunday People has had, did not hit the traffic targets that had been expected over the three months since launch.

People.co.uk, a multi-million pound digital offering dubbed “Buzzfeed for grown-ups”, went live on 5 November… The Daily Mirror publisher has previously said that its digital projects, such as the successful UsVsTh3m, have to produce results or they will not continue to be backed.

“Our aim is to become one of the UK’s leading multi-media publishers and we will only achieve this by experimenting with new digital ideas,” added [Trinity Mirror chief executive Simon] Fox.

Trinity Mirror closes People.co.uk after just three months, citing failure to hit traffic projections. Three months. That’s insane.
Posted on

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of “leaky” smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users’ private information across the internet, according to top secret documents.

The fact that the villains were pigs should have been enough of a hint, man.

(From here.)

Posted on

There are a lot of different ways the established media doesn’t seem to be getting young people today. It’s this idea that The Economist reader is fundamentally different from the person who enjoys cartoons. That’s a concept media is holding onto. That’s not something young people are holding onto. They enjoy a 5,000-word article on Syria and funny stuff. Young people don’t feel like that because most of their content comes from Facebook and Twitter. They’re used to seeing a breaking news video alongside cat GIFs. Media has been very snooty.

From here.

File under food for thought, for now.

Posted on

So I said, great, let’s look through the last five together. And not all of them were in the public domain. So, I said, “How do you think about the use of these images?”

“Photographers are welcome to file a complaint with Twitter, as long as they provide proof. Twitter contacts me and I’d be happy to remove it,” he said. “I’m sure the majority of photographers would be glad to have their work seen by the massives.”

I pressed him on this point. Shouldn’t the onus be on him and Cameron to get those rights from the photographers they assume would be grateful?

“It would not be practical,” he said. “The majority of the photographers are deceased. Or hard to find who took the images.”

Thought #1: Paying/crediting people who create your content? Pshaw! Playing by the rules generally doesn’t result in people having stories written about them in the Atlantic, especially not stories about them being disruptive influences to the traditional business model.

Thought #2: I should be neither surprised nor saddened by the idea that New Buzz Thing Online Doesn’t Care About Content Creators, given the history of the Internet, and yet, somehow I am.

Thought #3: Seeing this kind of behavior be not only accepted, I guess, but rewarded by the wider Internet at large – oh, people may complain about this, but I doubt that History in Pictures will really suffer in any way because of it – is this very demoralizing thing, a reminder that the Internet not only demands NEW CONTENT continually, but continually disregards and devalues said content in the process. Works of quality are less important than quantity of work.

Posted on

Zimmerman’s work is a more extreme version of the new, upside-down dynamic of web publishing. Instead of the publisher’s megaphone guaranteeing its articles an audience, the publisher only has an audience insofar as the articles “go viral.” Tens of thousands of readers see most of the dozen items Zimmerman posts each day, but millions see his blockbusters.

For those hits, the content and the clickbait headline are as important as the timing. He describes “going viral” like surfing: boarding a wave at the earliest possible point. “You don’t want to wait too long because you’ll miss that initial cresting,” he says. “It’s a race against everyone else.”

From this fascinating piece on Internet viral material, and why audio never goes viral online. Go read.
Posted on

From the beginning, we’ve been very clear that we are not journalists and we are not a journalistic operation. I see how it might be confusing, because our content can overlap with journalistic endeavors and/or have the same look and feel as journalism. Oftentimes, the news focuses on what’s new over what’s important. Upworthy is the opposite: We will always feature issues and content that we feel are the most important, even if they’ve been ongoing issues… But we are an editorial operation—you can think of our curators as editors, and we’re completely dedicated to fantastic storytelling.

Sara Critchfield, editorial director of Upworthy, explains the aim of the site – and you’ll be AMAZED by what happens next, etc. etc. Surprised to find out that there’s a bunch of former Onion workers over there, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.
Posted on

“You Do It in Secret”

I look at it like this: we have access to all of information, and yet we’re still separated. I find it fascinating, that people hide behind false names – that’s the only way a lot of young people can communicate with each other. I believe it’s to do with advertising: people are presented as gods and goddesses, beautiful and perfect. We’re just not like that. So how do you communicate with others if they are expecting you to be perfect? You do it in secret.

Terry Gilliam, from an interview with the Guardian.

Posted on

The Internet Really Is Bad For You

Questions about the Internet’s deleterious effects on the mind are at least as old as hyperlinks. But even among Web skeptics, the idea that a new technology might influence how we think and feel—let alone contribute to a great American crack-up—was considered silly and naive, like waving a cane at electric light or blaming the television for kids these days. Instead, the Internet was seen as just another medium, a delivery system, not a diabolical machine. It made people happier and more productive. And where was the proof otherwise?

Now, however, the proof is starting to pile up. The first good, peer-reviewed research is emerging, and the picture is much gloomier than the trumpet blasts of Web utopians have allowed. The current incarnation of the Internet—portable, social, accelerated, and all-pervasive—may be making us not just dumber or lonelier but more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, even outright psychotic. Our digitized minds can scan like those of drug addicts, and normal people are breaking down in sad and seemingly new ways.

– From “Is The Web Driving Us Mad?,” here. Reading this, I was reminded of this recent study from the UK, which makes the same point; the Internet is/can be bad for us. Depressingly, I’m not surprised; I have found myself having that very described anxiety and “need” to check the Internet and see what’s happening, and I tell myself that I need to for my job, even though I know that’s not exactly what’s going on. It’s why I’ve started to try to remain unplugged during the weekends, or at least as unplugged as possible. Redirecting that desire to read things and learn things, and instead looking for other experiences to fill up that part of me.