Creating and distributing via social media

Aim: To investigate the impact social media has had on human interaction.

Wikinomics: This theory was developed by Tapscott and Williams in 2006.

It describes how mass collaboration changes everything.

The theory and practice of collaborative innovation. it means people can come together to create value - e.g. creating wikipedia that anyone can edit and share knowledge.

*Video on Tapscott on Wikinomics*

The long Tail Theory:

• Devised by Chris Anderson of Wired magazine
• First published 2004, then as a book in 2009
• Concerns mass vs niche products and audiences

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

One example of this is the theory's prediction that demand for products not available in traditional bricks and mortar stores is potentially as big as for those that are. But the same is true for video not available on broadcast TV on any given day, and songs not played on radio. In other words, the potential aggregate size of the many small markets in goods that don't individually sell well enough for traditional retail and broadcast distribution may someday rival that of the existing large market in goods that do cross that economic bar.

Case study: Casey Pugh:
This is an example of crowdsourcing, when media producers use online technologies to ask for staff or volunteers with specific skillsets to work on a project.

• Uses Vimeo as a social media channel in order to reach fans: encourages fans to contribute to his film project.
• Creates his own website for Star Wars Uncut, in which fans can select the 15s section of the original film they wish to recreate.
• Social media is used by Pugh to gather the footage.
• The footage is shared via the website, and a trailer is also posted on YouTube.
• How did I find out about the film? A quick Google search led me to a Looper video on YouTube entitled 10 Fan Films Better Than big Budget Blockbusters. I selected the Star Wars example from this.

Star Wars Uncut - An example of a fan film. (Casey Pugh)

This is a film created by fans of a particular film, who are not officially commissioned to do so.

This is an example of how online technologies have enabled a ‘participatory culture’ (Henry Jenkins, 2006), in which audiences can now participate (prosume) in the production and meaning of cultural products.

How have online technologies changed the way in which games, music and radio are developed, created, distributed and consumed?

Games:

1970/1980: When Video Games were first being developed, only the companies that made the console platforms made the games compatible for said platforms. The main two being Atari and Nintendo the former of which made the first video game to be sold to a mainstream market to have consoles within their own homes. The reason there was a shortage of home made video games and there being only two mainstream home video games makers was because of the shortage of coders let alone those who specialised in the making of video games. The large majority of whom worked for Nintendo and Atari with very few breaking out to forge their own companies.

The two companies also created arcade games which were not meant to be played in homes due to the low performance of small machines meant to be installed by children because of the low technological capacities of the time. As well as the home devices having low amounts of RAM and slow speeds, the companies’ ideas to appeal to the arcade market came about from the realisation of how expensive their platforms were for the average household and realised that they could increase profits by developing high performing games and charging a reasonable amount per player i.e a quarter to ensure that everyone can play games they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access with the option to have options by having similar high performing machines in the same building: an arcade. The genius of the arcade was that the companies Nintendo and Atari would get assurance that their high powered machines would sell for a large one time fee, that there would be a longing for the product from consumers, that the games would eventually become boring for the consumers and that the arcade would reinvest in new games.

1990: 

By the 90’s, technology has caught up so that the mainstream market can have video game consoles in the comfort of their homes for an affordable price bringing down the amount of people who regularly used arcades causing Nintendo to focus most of their man power to home gaming and Atari losing a large amount of its market share because of the complete and total failure that was ET the Extra Terrestrial Video Games that caused the company to bury its 700,000 games of the stock in the desert. The console giants Sony with their Playstation and Sega with their Dreamcast joined Nintendo with their N64 as the main consoles for the decade. Because of the vast improvements of their technology, Nintendo were able to launch their GameBoy line of consoles which could run low resolution black and white games that required little power to run but had the huge advantage of being portable. 

The development and creating of these games yet were still similar to those of the 1970’s and 1980’s due to the fact that programming was yet to be taught to the public on the mainstream and that a job in coding was rarely taught to young audiences. There were very few games that were developed by companies that weren’t also making the consoles that the games were intended to be played on. The few software developers including LucasArts, CapCom and The Bitmap Brothers.

Despite the small change in the developing and creating of games, the way that customers bought and consumed them changed a large amount mainly due to the technological leap taken in the sense that everyone could now have their own console and that games were starting to be stored on DVDs rather than cartridges due to the much higher storage capabilities of the discs and their portability. Nintendo, however, were yet to add the new feature to their GameBoy and N64 lines.

Music:

Developments in online technologies, in the music world,  have allowed musicians to further their careers. These developments have allowed their work too be developed, created, distributed and consumed, in a whole manner of ways. These developments can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world. These developments include; Instagram and SoundCloud

Instagram: (Music development and creation) Instagram has enabled people to get in contact with, both famous and lowkey artists,  helping them to create their music, without the trouble of having to spend a large proportion of time looking for the right artist. 

SoundCloud: Soundcloud is a creative music platform which allows users to post their own songs and mixes, for free. It is formally known as an online audio distribution website.

Music development: SoundCloud has a number of different features, that allows artists or aspiring artists, to receive audience feedback, both positive and negative, this can either be through comments, likes or reposts. This feedback allows artists to make changes, and alter their music towards the fans, creating a mutual relationship between them.

Radio:

Radio presentation media. from rubyshefras