Class assignment was to talk about our favorite sites and especially reference multimedia online, listing the reasons we thought some were effective and some not.
As I got to thinking about multimedia "sites" I realized I didn't know many. Yet I pay attention to so much multimedia online - communications of all sorts. I watch videos. I listen to interviews. I read blogs. I read - and write - as here. I twitter on several accounts and also start new networks of people on sites of their own. I am pretty involved.
Why was I not able to really think of my favorite multimedia "sites"?
I realized it was because I usually do not go to web sites to engage. I get into the cloud. I enter "The Space."
Let me explain a bit. Last fall in the same Georgetown program the present class is in, I took another class called "Web Soup." It was taught by Bill Allman, who is a Web pioneer. He was the one who first launched US News and World Report online (on CompuServe - pre-internet) and then launched the Discovery Channel sites and much more.
I well remember the first class. Bill said the Net had changed. It had become "a cloud." Our job was to enter the cloud. Sites could no longer be defined as "sites." The whole Web was becoming like one big Web site. Google is the home page. YouTube is one of the multimedia pages. Amazon is the shopping cart..etc. Oversimplification? yes. I thought so at the time. I agreed with him, in part, but still had a pretty site-centric undestanding of the Web - perhaps because my profession was building sites and getting traffic to them.
Then this assignment came along. Favorite sites? Hmmmm -- twitter search. Not a site - a way to find tweets out there in the cloud. Google Earth - a place to find maps of the places I liked. Not a web site. A tool. Technorati - a way to search Blog content. Quantcast.com - a place to see what millions are doing in the Web 'space' across many sites.
I did not really have any real "sites" that were favorite.
The realization stunned me.
I was lost in the cloud.
Bill would be pleased.
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3 years ago
Hi Alan. Good point. Web savvy users typically use tools like those you mentioned and others to get to source information on topics of their interest, essentially "covering politics" for themselves. But, really no favorite sites? I would have expected you'd have one or two.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting observation. Getting lost in the "cloud" is what makes many people incapable of remembering which site gave them a particular piece of information. It also presents complications for news organizations. If I read a great story "out there somewhere" but can't remember the particular site, has that news organization progressed in its efforts to extend its brand? If it's all a nebulous cloud, how do news organizations make their brand stand out online?
ReplyDeleteCarlos - thanks for weighing in. You may remember in my post Watching Giants Struggle I made the statement "People are not reading newspapers, in print or online. They are reading news stories."
ReplyDeleteThat statement came in part from my experience at The Capital and all the metrics studies I have done, part from all the people I know who use the Internet and observations - especially lately - of how aggregation is exploding.
A newspaper's editors are being replaced by outside "editors" who aggregate for my reading: bloggers, family members who forward me links, Twitterers who compress the url and send it out to their followers, Google News, Google alerts, etc. On it goes. This is the part of the Internet that is skyrocketing in traffic.
News organizations have to start branding their work story by story. Writers have to start branding theimselves and their name - not just their byline, but their online persona. Thus the facebook question and public presence question. Food for thought!
Alan, I'm there with you lost in the cloud. I do have some favorite sites I check on a regular basis, but most of what I read online is through links from search tools. Even when I buy something online, I rarely go to one store firt. I google it, I read reviews, compare prices, etc. and even sometimes change my mind about something. After I'm done, sometimes I don't even remember where I bought things.
ReplyDeleteSame with the news. Many times I google a topic I listened to on the radio or saw on TV before leaving home. So, for the most part, I never know where I am, I'm just interested in the content, and then good-bye.
I see your point in saying that news organizations and writers have to start branding their work story by story. Good post.