Blogscapes

In earlier posts, I’d talked about how politicians have been jumping on the new media wagon and exploiting it to get a feel of the ground and further their popularity.  For instance, there was a Facebook standoff between Hillary, Obama and McCain some months back.

The politicians in neighbouring Malaysia have also realised the impact of new media, and the ruling party has taken an about turn on its view on new media. From disregarding it, they are now encouraging party members to keep blogs. Of course, by now, everyone has probably heard of and/or read Mahathir’s blog.

In Singapore, our local politicians have also started to use new media to reach out to the public. First there was George Yeo who was the face of PAP’s new media user, who blogged about his experiences. Now, more and more of the PAP’s members have started to adopt new media as part of their communications strategy. Teo Ser Luck is on Facebook and Vivian Balakhrishnan keeps his own blog.

According to the Today article, PAP MP Lam Pin Min (Ang Mio Kio GRC) said that, “The power of the Internet as a political tool must not be underestimated as demonstrated by the experience of the recent elections in our neighbouring countries. The party understands this and takes the feedback from netizens very seriously.”

Of course, new media shouldn’t just be used for the sake of using it. To be meaningful, it should serve as a platform for open discussion and feedback, and not a channel for propaganda.

Well, do share your thoughts about what you hope to see being used and done in new media by our local politicians.

I wrote about the singer and star of WE WILL ROCK YOU, MiG Ayesa and his clever use of new media a couple of weeks back. As mentioned then, MiG is on Facebook, Youtube, MySpace - you name it, he’s on it.

Of course, he’s not alone in this. You look at the Facebook pages, and you will see anyone and everyone from David Beckham to Carrie Underwood having their pages and fansites there.

And of course, no person is more of a whiz at drumming up support than a politician! Take a look at the Facebook pages and you will see more links to their other websites, MySpace pages, and more.

Perhaps, not surprising, Obama’s page is ranked number 1 on Facebook, with 772,905 fans as of 15 minutes ago.

Hillary was a few positions lower with 146,816 fans and much lower down is McCain with 112,940 fans.

Hm… I wonder if these pages and the figures represent a microcosm of the larger voting public of America…

obama-vs-hillary-vs-mccain-on-facebook

A few days ago, I blogged about how blogging could be bad for your health. In a way, I have come to realise how true some of the health risks mentioned about blogging are.

On a few occasions recently, I have been online for a few hours straight, blogging, Facebooking, MySpacing, Youtubing and all, and you know when you are online, some times the time just flies by! And sometimes when that happens, I don’t realise that I’ve been stuck in the same position, and you guessed it, major cramps and backache!

And I’m sure that doesn’t even come close to what professional bloggers experience, esp the two bloggers, Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant, who died of heart attacks.

There’s good reason for bloggers to take note of blogging hazards and take care.

And that reminds me, time for a vision break and the laptop is starting to cramp my thighs!

 I received an interesting comment from 2ton, with whom I’ve had a communication of sorts via our blogs and sites stemming from our shared interest in MiG and WWRY!

We both agree that MiG is such a whiz at using New Media. He’s on every social networking site (btw, I facebooked him and wrote on his facebook wall!), he’s got his own Youtube channel, he’s got multiple websites, not to mention those created for him by his many fans across the world! These will only help to spread his name and music around, through viral marketing via new media.

2ton writes:

“Just a thought on the subject of blogging and the internet. I notice that some musicians (and bloggers too) seem to gather lots of fans just by a big internet presence, while others do not seem to be able to go viral. I suppose it’s not just the quality of their music, but perhaps the type of fans they have. Some fan groups are just not as much into the internet as others. Like me, I am the only one in my circle of personal friends and family that is an internet junkie, or that even have a blog…I am sure they think I am a bit odd. But my grandkids, all their friends are online all the time, not only interacting with each other but blogging, using social networks, finding music, videos and such. So basically, I am thinking that age, economic,social, and personality groups have a lot to do with the internet community statistics at this point in time. And that this has a big effect on blogging, who blogs and what they blog about. Reading your column brought this idea into my head…that people who use the internet for promotion need to think about this.’

Thanks for the comment, 2ton, and it’s great that you are taking your passions and interests online!

You are right, a lot of thought needs to go into the target audience in order to reap the rewards of such online marketing methods via new media. Sometimes, it’s best to just stick to traditional media if your target audience doesn’t go online much. But then again, using new media as a promotional channel is pretty economical, practically free (but does require much time and effort for monitoring and updating), and is something that many today can’t afford not to have as well as part of their marketing mix.

The seductive thing about using new media for promotional means is that it’s less obvious, as people don’t really feel that they are at the receiving end of things as they get to participate in it too! And it’s great fun, like when I get to discuss common interests with others, like with you! And I also get to hear from others and read what they say like Sophia’s comment:

 “But there was one disappointment though, after Bohemian Rhapsody, we wanted more! It would have been great to continue the energy with a few more songs! Producers, are you reading this?”Ha! I love it…it was so much like a rock concert that you wanted an encore!!! LOVE IT!!! Great blog…I have posted it on MiGNation Information Portal at http://www.mignation.com with a link to your blog. It’s great to here from fans along the WWRY tour!! Thanks, Sophia

Thanks for your comment, too, Sophia.

Are we not creating links and communicating with each other? I mean, we are literally worlds apart, and if not for new media, we would unlikely be communicating with each other. And are we not also promoting MiG and WWRY at the same time? Well, I guess that’s the power of New Media and the age of participation!

Cheers, I hope to continue to hear from you, and from others too!

 To launch its newest product, the Windows Server 2008, Microsoft used new media as part of its marketing tools. For the first time, Microsoft used Facebook and blogs to help spread word about its latest product and product launch. Of course, Microsoft’s interest in Facebook is not something new. Nevertheless, it’s about time that such company giants join in on new media too.

I came across another interesting way of advertising. It’s a fundraising blog called 1001 Blogs for a charity in the UK. With a 5 pound donation, you can place a link on the site to your blog, so in a way, it’s like a form of advertising for your blog!

In my previous blog posting, I talked about how the Queen has switched to using new media to connect with the people. Not too long after, the Japanese PM was also announced to have used Youtube to give his new year message.

It certainly looks like many politicians and public figures are turning to new forms of media to reach to the masses, especially the younger ones. You can read more about this in the following blog: http://paperstapler.livejournal.com/

In my previous posting, I also talked about new ’IT’ or ‘new media’ words being included into the dictionary, thus legitimising their usage as mainstream words in everyday vocabulary. Now, the Collins English Dictionary has said that it would include ‘Facebook’ in its list of words. ‘Facebook’ will be indicated as a trademarked noun to mean “a popular social networking website” as well as a verb to mean “to search on a person’s profile on the Facebook website” such as in the sentence “I thought he would make the perfect boyfriend until I facebooked him”. 

So, it looks like we will have many people ‘facebooking’ each other and getting ‘facebooked’ in return!

These past two days have been spent at the new Republic Poly campus attending the ICET 2007. This year’s themes is “Rethinking Pedagogies: Creating Possibilities Through Digital, Interactive and Media” and the focus was on how ”innovations in ICT like gaming and interactive digital media have created a new environment for teaching and learning in the new century.”

Indeed, the keynote addresses as well as the many speakers there spoke on new methods of teaching and learning such as those using game-based learning as well as Web 2.0 technologies. 

Going by the vendors there, SMART classrooms seem the way to go! Don’t think I have seen that many different types of interactive whiteboards in the same place!

Just some quick thoughts on some of the areas discussed at the Conference:

-there was quite an interesting video shown which was a video by Microsoft, a kind of “devil wears Prada” parody

-virtual worlds like Second Life and gaming such as World of Warcraft can have interesting and myriad educational benefits (hm.. while I do agree that there are some benefits in gaming, I wonder how much of the learning can be transferred to real life contexts. I mean, sure, a gamer can exhibit good leadership skills being the Guild leader and directing a raid, but can he or she also exhibit the same leadership skills in real life? I mean, how many gamers, techies, etc out there are good communicators? and gaming is supposed to cultivate communication skills…

- learning needs to be fun and engaging….hm.. but won;t it be a bore if everything is all fun and games? Also, real life is not all fun and games. If students fed on a diet of highly stimulating environments go out into the world, will they be disappointed? Worse, will they be able to cope with the mundane everyday world, where work can be gasp, actually tiresome and tedious?! 

- there’s an increasing closing gap between virtual and real worlds. Much has been done to recreate the real world in a virtual setting..with that, where is the room for one’s imagination?

- gaming addiction - incidentally, I was just watching Tab TV and the topic tonight was on cyber addiction.

Clearly, while educators explore the use of IDM in teaching and learning, let’s hope people don;t just all get carried away by the technology. As shown at the Conference too, technology can sometime let you down too. I can’t quite keep count of the number of times the Internet connection went off, or Ppt slides were not loaded properly, or files not saved properly.

But it’s good to know that questions have been raised and educators will continue to see what ways can best be used to help people learn and enjoy learning.

I know I have been writing a lot about Facebook in my recent postings. In a way, I can’t quite help it. Facebook keeps getting into the news these days!

The latest news is that Facebook is starting a new advertising avenue for advertisers to target its online users more directly. It plans to let advertisers use profiles of people who have bought stuff online and then use that person’s photo or info in an online ad targetted at his friends in his social network.

Doing this would allow advertisers to masquerade ads as online friendship links. Unsuspecting users would also be more open to receiving such info. Well, that’s what Facebook is hoping for.

 However, some people are already questioning such tactics by advertisers as there could be breach in personal privacy and security.

Well, what do the people are Facebook say to such fears of online users? It seems they will try it out until people complain. For them, there’s no harm in launching this new method of raking in advertiser dollars…until their users make noise. So, it looks like it’s up to online users to decide how they would like Facebook to be used.

Just as Facebook has served many users as a good form of communication amongst friends in social networks, it has also served the likes of thieves and fraudsters. According to BBC’s consumer rights TV programme, Watchdog, thieves and fraudsters are able to use information put on personal profiles by other users and open online bank accounts and apply for credit cards successfully.

When it did an experiment of sending out invitations to other users by a fictitious user, many responded even though they had no clue of who the person was! Not only that, they openly shared their personal information in their profiles.

Perhaps, the anonymity of it all, and the lack of face-to-face contact lead to a false sense of security, like hey, we are all friends here and you are a friend of a friend so you must be okay - cool! Also, many unwittingly scrawl personal messages on the walls of other users, forgetting that whatever is written on the wall is plain for all to see.

All this makes it easier for identity theft to take place, and with Facebook’s decision to list its members’ profiles publicly on search engines, it looks like online fraud is likely to increase, unless users exercise due precaution and common sense.

In two blog posts made last week, I wrote about the popularity of Facebook and how its creator Mark Zuckerberg turned down a good offer by Yahoo last year. Now, we know why…Mr Zuckerberg was just waiting for the next big offer! And it came a last week from none other than IT giant company Microsoft!

Cyberspace has been busy screaming ‘Microsoft buys into Facebook’ since the announcement was made last Wednesday. Microsoft paid a whopping amount of US$240 million for just 1.6% stakein Facebook, putting the value of Facebook at a staggering US$15 billion! No wonder Mark Zuckerberg can’t stop smiling!

Microsoft’s purchase is an endorsement of the growing popularity of Facebook, and how true, with 200, 000 signing up as members each day, Facebook looks set to be the most popular social networking site around!