Before this class, I could have cared less about editing a Wikipedia article or writing a blog. But today, I see the value in both.

For one thing, I’ve always been thankful that Wikipedia exists. Without it, I would probably have no clue where to start with my research papers, and I would be lost if I had to look something up quickly on my smartphone. But being a content creator and editor of an article (a produser) is a completely different thing. I felt massive responsibility to provide accurate, unbiased, and complete information about my topic. However, I knew that anyone could easily come into my article and alter it for better or for worse. I have yet to see any major changes to my article, which leaves me feeling a little weird about the whole foundation of Wikipedia. Obviously, it works on a large scale, but maybe for smaller subjects, it doesn’t really get the job done in regards to building a collective intelligence. Nevertheless, I do understand how important and valuable a website like this can be. I think we read it earlier in the semester, but Clay Shirky’s idea of cognitive surplus being used for good via social media really made this entire concept stand out for me.

As for writing a blog, I have openly admitted that I have been the owner of a few blogs in the past that I tended to neglect and at some point in time left hanging in the middle of cyberspace. Blogs are another creation of the Internet that I am thankful for, but I just personally haven’t been motivated to take advantage of. That’s why I opted to create two blogs this semester– one for this class and one for my social media theory class. The two blogs are completely different, and I think that has helped me find different voices for each of them and really focus on branding, positioning, and targeting specific audiences. I actually feel pretty good about my Media 2.0 blog at this stage. I’ve been more successful than I thought I could be. Though my numbers aren’t very high, I have been engaging with a lot of people especially on Facebook, which turned out to be the best avenue for attracting viewers. I haven’t had very much success with Twitter, but I am continuing to work on it. One problem that I still have though is feeling like what I’m writing is just a lot of hot air. I want my content to be great if it has my name on it, so I limited the number of posts I made to ones that I thought would be valuable to my audience. I plan on keeping this blog up as long as I still receive interest from what appears to be a thriving community on Facebook.

Last but not least, my favorite topic in this class has been the long tail. As I said before, this whole concept was one of those things where we all knew it existed, but we didn’t know what it was called. This really put a name on it, and I think this is going to play a pivotal role in the development of new businesses from now on. I actually took a class in entrepreneurial journalism last semester, and this concept would have been great to know in order to back up our chosen business model.

So as of now, I think I am pretty familiar with media 2.0 as discussed in this class, including peer production, open source software, the creative commons, 1,000 true fans, pro-ams, etc. This was a great course, and I have definitely learned a lot from it. Thank you!