Bill Bowman

Ram Dass’s House

Bill Bowman — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 05:48:20 +0000

Hyper-Personalized Media Consumption & Its Effects

Bill Bowman — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:33:45 +0000

Gone are the days of mass media. Today, with massive amounts of news and information available in the media and journalism landscape, people can pick and choose what they will consume and what they can ignore. This raises some important issues for journalists, the creators of news and viewers, the consumers of news and the advertisers who pay to have their name attached to news and content. The most important question is how the personalized and segmented news and information landscape affects the quality of news produced and the intelligence of the news consumer.

Thirty years ago, the news landscape was relatively homogenous. There were publications and magazines devoted to a myriad of topics but the central news gathering source was the traditional newspapers, television and radio news. Accessing fringe information or niche information was a complicated process and most people where content to be informed by the massive traditional media and their monotone message.

The tidal shift away from one message all started to change in 1980 when CNN was founded. That was the genesis of the 24-hour streaming news cycle. CNN smashed the old model of newspapers in the morning and nightly news. Now, information and news was available streaming and at the fingertips to anyone with a television and an interest.

To diagnose the effects and meaning of what is happening, it is important to know exactly what is going on. According to a study by the Pew Center for the People and the Press, the amount of news that people consume nowadays is at its highest amount in recent years. I believe this is because news is so personalized and thus more interesting to readers. People spend 70 minutes consuming news every day. The people surveyed got news from a combination of sources. Television news is number one with 32 percent of people getting news there. Another important finding was that people “graze” for news, meaning they pick up news here and there, rather than at specific times. This could lead to more informal news consumption across a variety of sources.

Not surprisingly, the Pew studies showed online sources of news are growing in popularity. RSS feeds and other similar technologies allow users to pull in their news rather than have news networks push it out to you. RSS feeds, or Real Simple Syndication feeds have been around since the late 90s but gained popularity in 2004 to 2005. Today, there are 546,069 feeds serving millions of people.

RSS feeds lead having what you want in one place. Other similar technologies like iGoogle and other personalized homepages accomplish the same thing. They give you all the news you need in one location and consequently ignore news that doesn’t effect you.

There are some case studies to look at to see the success and effects of hyper-personalized news. EveryBlock is a news website that as the name implies gives local information for the block or neighborhood that they are on. Giving the citizens control of news leads personalized news, because that person could be your neighbor. This creates a broader description of what news is. The creator, Adrian Holatvy said in his New York Times interview that “We have a very liberal definition of what is news. We think it’s something that happens in your neighborhood.” This definition encompasses blogs, local citizen journalists and everyone in between. Using sites like EveryBlock or similar sites gives readers a more personal local but also possibly less professional product. This is because there is less editing between the word being written by the journalist and being read by the reader.

Twitter, a social platform originally intended to update friends on the mundane everyday events or thoughts has evolved into a strong news platform. Users choose whom they follow and get updates from so this is the personification of personal news. Its affect was seen during the shootings at UT on September 27^th. People followed each other and local outlets to get a more complete view of information than if they would have followed a mass media company like CNN or CBS. In the Pew Study, it showed that over 60 percent of people have gotten news from social networking, so this informal linking of people is an important news conduit.

Blogs provides much of the content for personalized news. In Journalism Next, Mark Briggs describes the process for creating a blog and why it has become so popular for some. He says that a more personal tone and clear topics make blogs succeed. The most important part of a blog is looking at what the readers want. This pull of information rather than the push of information is important. In previous years we got what the news was from the big networks. Now, readers decide what is news and what they will consume.

It is critical to look at the consequences of personalized news. The proliferation of entertainment news is prime consequence of the personalization of news gone wild. Entertainment sites often get more viewers than hard news. The number of searches on Google in the United States for Lady Gaga is more than for Barack Obama according to the Google Hot Trend comparison that I created. The number of news stories regarding the two still favors Obama but looking at the chart shows that the difference is getting smaller over time. This is just one small example, but the trend could be extrapolated to the culture on the whole.

The personalization of news could affect civic journalism. If no one’s personalized feed or news as the city council on it, there might not be money to pay reporters to cover it. This could in turn lead to more politician malfeasance because with no watchdog, those in power could act without consequence. Could Watergate have been uncovered if Woodward and Bernstein did not have the support both financially and professionally to cover the story? Maybe so, but that support for civic journalism could erode as funds for traditional news media diminish and personalized news coverage takes hold.

The United States has never been very interested in international news. Personalized news exacerbates this. A prime example is the Pakistan flood. There was little citizen interest because the disaster is happening so far and away and so little coverage. In the article by Mira Veda, she points that because of this, there has been insufficient aid from the US to help in relief efforts in Pakistan’s flood-hit regions.

On the other side, personalized news can give people more information about topics that the mass media may not think the public wants. This is shown in another Pew Study that showed blogs covering science more than traditional news. Blogs fill in the gaps and give people personalized and niche news that mass sources might miss. This positive side of personalization is echoed in the overall completeness of the news consuming experience. In previous decades, stories could have been missed by the whole and then seen by few. Now, the news landscape allows stories to be forever present and always available.

In the end, it is all about choice. Journalists should not dictate to the viewers what they should read. It should happen in an organic, cyclical process. Quality journalism should stoke interest and action, and interest should promote journalism. Personalized news does not need to be the death of news but rather a reinvention of what news is. With ever expanding information, journalists are in a prime position to capture the public attention and inform.

References

Americans spending more time following the news. Pew Research Center for People

and the Press, n.d. Web. 4 Oct. 2010.

652/>.

Google. “Google Trends.” Google Trends. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.

trends?q=barack+obama%2C+lady+gaga&ctab=0&geo=us&date=all&sort=0>.

Briggs, Mark. JournalismNext. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Miller, Claire. “‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers.” New

York Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. < http://www.nytimes.com/2009/

04/13/technology/start-ups/13hyperlocal.html?_r=1>.

New Media Old Media. http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/

new_media_old_media. Pew Research Center’s Project For Excellence in

Journalism, 23 May 2010. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.

analysis_report/new_media_old_media>.

Pew Center for Civic Journalism. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.

“RSS Advisory Board.” RSS History. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Oct. 2010.

Sha, Yu. “CNN changed news – for better or worse.” Taipei Times. N.p., n.d. Web.

1 Oct. 2010. < http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2005/

05/31/2003257358 >.

Veda, Mira. “Lack of Media Coverage for Pakistan Floods = Lack of Aid.”

Huffington Post. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.

lack-of-media-coverage-fo_b_689380.html>.

My Newish Blogging Location

Bill Bowman — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:58:00 +0000

I have not been actively posting anything recently mainly because I am blogging for Study Breaks Magazine. My posts have been light-hearted and full of non-serious, inconsequential content So keep that in mind while perusing.

Geolocation

Bill Bowman — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:00:13 +0000

In a decade, everybody will know where everybody is. Weird isn’t it? Geolocation is making this possible.

Currently, people can voluntarily share their location with others via Gowalla, Fourquare and other GPS-based social platforms. It amounts to a game of sorts. Friends check in around the city and earn titles and badges to show their adventurousness. Of course, behind the façade of play there is a tangible advertising and marketing aspect to this advance. Companies can know where you go and how to market to you.

Looking to the future, Geolocation technologies could bring about a number of things. In Minority Report and other Sci-Fi movies people where tracked via their retinas. The cell phone will replace the retina in these dystrophic futures. Here are a few possible consquences of Geolocation.

Tailoring billboards and physical signs to the desires of those who frequent that area.
Analysts will be able to track the movement of people, to spot trends.
Law Enforcement will be able to know where people are and use that to pinpoint people during crimes.
Google Goggles times a thousand. The augmented reality seen in Google Goggles and other graphic overlays of cell phone cameras will become more and more sophisticated. Simply looking at an object will reveal details about. In the near future, pointing the camera to a face could bring up a facebook profile or Google search of that person.

Google, please stop finishing my sentences.

Bill Bowman — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:53:51 +0000

Google’s autocomplete (aka autofill and autosuggest) feature makes me feel like I am a member of the Borg. Sure, it provides quicker results to the internet, but it makes me feel like everything I think (and then search) is cliche and been done before.

I was curious as to how it works. Based on my own observations, it seems to factor in my geography and possibly my previous search history. I Googled how it works (it that ironic?) and didn’t find too much relevant or recent information, not even from google themselves.I did find that it uses javascript, AJAX and XHTML, but I am not smart enough to understand their inner workings, so I will just say that Google autocomplete is magic.

Back to the implications for the ordinary user. Is this autocomplete and future variants of it leading to us having hive mind of information and thought patterns? Probably not, but if I type something in Google and it isn’t autocompleted I do feel special.

On the lighter side, Google autocomplete does lead to sometimes baffling and funny results.

Flamingo Door

Bill Bowman — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:34:03 +0000

Got a new camera this weekend so of course the first photo I will post is a flamingo on a door. That makes sense, right?

There is a Family of Flamingos Inside

Look out for more random photos of absurd street art and graffiti in the future. If you want a first hand view of this flamingo, go here.

Archaic Insults

Bill Bowman — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 05:37:52 +0000

Watched Seventh Seal because Netflix would not stop suggesting it to me and now I have a renewed appreciation for Swedish cinema. More importantly, I realized the difference between Ingrid Bergman and Ingmar Bergman. Below is a memorable line.

Want more Shakespearean insults?

The Site-Less Internet

Bill Bowman — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:36:09 +0000

In this post, I will ask you to recall the internet 10 or 15 years ago. Back to the mid to late 90s era internet. Everything was pushed at you. Websites existed and they were self-sufficient. The website was the be all and end all. Today, the concept of actual webpages is being changed into something wholly different from what it was a decade ago. We are entering into the era of the “site-less internet” where people pull in whatever content they desire.

The evidence of this is present everywhere. In commercials, it is as common to see a plug for a companies’ Facebook page rather than a static company page.

The flow of information in this new landscape is different. Information is made on one platform and is trickled down to others and flow through the internet via RSS readers, link aggregation sites, twitter and others.

Of course, some sites exist as stand-alone behemoths, but I believe to be a successful content creator or organization making content available, easily transferable and open is vital. Having a Facebook fan page or twitter with followers allows companies to “manage” their followers or fans and communicate with their fans on the fan’s own terms with a system that they trust and are comfortable with.

I googled site-less internet and found just a few other people that recognized and commented on this phenomena. This change will not be realized over night, but one day we will look around and see that what we first imagined the internet to be will have changed.

New Technology and Face-to-Face Interactions

Bill Bowman — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:44:23 +0000

I was on Chat Roulette at work the other day and we randomly talked to a person from Holland. He commented on our office and we small talked for several minutes. This random interaction, made possible by technology made me ponder what effect Chat Roulette and other socially based technologies have on human interactions. Here are my off the cuff ideas about what is happening.

Facebook

Everyone now has an augmented personality. You are no longer the sum of your personality, but rather the sum of what your profile says. That was hyperbole, but facebook’s importance in understanding who a person is cannot be understated. People will look at what pictures are available and the info page to make a snap judgment about a person.

I think I read in Wired a few months ago (sorry no citation) that secret agents are having trouble forging identities in today’s age. A person has a built-in “resume” of their life, complete with video and images of past. No longer can a forged passport or ID give someone a new identity. Your identity for the majority of people will be linked to a digital body of “work” and networks that are more difficult if impossible to truly recreate.

Twitter

The modern, professional view of twitter is not life-casting, but mainly mind-casting (thanks Jay Rosen). Personally, I do comment on some mundane events in my life but I usually try to include links to the topics if others are interested in doing similar things. I also try to mind-cast by sharing my ideas and information.

People understand each other based on relevance of information shared. The leveraging of your ability to be an information maven makes a person relevant. A celebrity will get followers on twitter, but for a normal person to do this, they must connect and share information and ideas.

Chat Roulette

There have been webcams and chat since the inception of the internet. Connecting random people all over the world is a simple, but amazing idea (when people aren’t just masturbating using it). Exposing people to new ideas and points of view are what Chat Roulette could create. The technology is new, so I really don’t have anything other than hypothesis to work with.

This post was somewhat rambling and did not stay on topic wholly, but I think I explored some interesting ideas.

SXSW – A Look Back at Muse and Band of Horses

Bill Bowman — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:20:40 +0000

I usually don’t repost content here that I have made for other websites or publications, but in this case I will make an exception. Last week I had the pleasure to cover South by Southwest for Study Breaks Magazine. My two favorite shows were Band of Horses’ and Muse. I saw them both at Stubb’s and recorded some of my favorite songs with a little Flipcam. I think the audio and visual quality came out great, despite the Flipcam’s size.

Muse – Starlight

Muse - Uprising

Muse - Resistance

Muse - Knights of Cydonia

Muse - Supermassive Black Holes

Band of Horses – Is There a Ghost

Band of Horses - No One’s Going to Love You

Band of Horses - Cigarettes and Wedding Bands

Band of Horses - Funeral

Rights to video are exclusively belong Band of Horses/Muse/Stubb’s.