For my media 2.0 project I created wordpress blog thestreamingrhino.wordpress.com. The blog is a review of various content I have watched via Netflix over the past couple months. I promoted this blog mostly on a twitter acount @streamingrhino where . As of Monday night i followed 72 twitter accounts that shared the same Interest in film and entertainment. I only gained 8 followers :(. However most of the followers were gained as I started to tweet more. I made 37 tweets, trying to tweet at least 2 times a day. Most of my tweets were about other buzz worthy film news. Over the weekend I decided to create a facebook page www.facebook/thestreamingrhino in hopes of drawing more people to my blog. On the page I just created status of all the reviews i posted. I gained another 12 likes on the facebook page. The biggest problem was getting people to read my blog as well as follow me on social media. Part of this was my own fault as I procrastinated with my post.

This class is one of my favorite classes I have taken. Before this class i started thinking about the growing phenomena that is the long tail as my big fan of indie films and music. However this class I did not know how to go about explaining it. I also learn the insides if wikipedia and what it takes to moderate and be a contributor to an collective knowledge. Before this class i would just use wikipedia for quick information, but now i find myself analyzing the articles I search for. As I was writing my Artist profile paper and started to plug in the terms discusses in class, I learned that independent artist do not just get lucky there is a strategy to making a notable presence in the long tail. Before this class i have always wanted to start a blog, this class has forced me to start one for the final project. It was alot harder than expected. Getting people to follow me on twitter and actually read the blog has been challenging.

Its seems this years election lacked in pop culture influence but definitely not in commericals. I have not had  time to watch much TV in the weeks that led up the election but I did notice that both candidates did not make as many television appearances as pervious candidates. From what i read Obama was on the both letterman and Jay leno and even late nite with Jimmy Fallon. He aslo made an appearance at an MTV Forum on the 26th of October. Romney made an appearance on live with kelly and Michael (which i forgot was still around) in September and cancelled his arrival with his wife Ann Romney to The View. Both Obama and Romney seem have appealed to somewhat random viewers. Obama appeals to more by being on both various late night talk show that range in age and Romney seems to appeal to who ever still watches live and kelly and Michael. I  didnt see the TV pazazz this year. Where were the SNL appearances? or Obama playing basketball? or Mitt Romney body boarding with big bird? I just didnt seen the usual use of tv appearances by political candidates.

The movie we watch gave strong insight into what goes into make a  indie video game. The developers undergo grueling work schedules to get these games out to the public. The indie games are unlike mainstream media games, they are created on a personal level by one or a couple of people. The indie games can definitely be labeled as niche games. As we saw in the movie most games were created for nostalgic reasons. Although the games are niche, the games are starting to be noticed with a process described by Napoli called fragmentation. In brief Napoli suggest that fragmentation is broken down into two catagories media fragmentation and audience fragmentation. Media fragmentation is the growth in new techniques of delivering media. In the movie all the games that were created had been featured in the arcade section on xbox live. The indie games are finding there way to new audiences via fragmentation of xbox live.

I Chose the rap group das racist for my project because they are good example of the media topics we have discussed in class. The group is from Brooklyn and gained success from a  youtube video pizza hut and taco bell in 2009. Since then the group has made two mixtapes and an album produced themselves and have earned their way in the top artist to watch list from various indie music blogs and sites. The group would be good for this project because of thier style of rap which is considered joke rap however they have been creating alot of buzz on music blogs and even had an episode on the hulu series A day in the life.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/09/das-racist-hip-hop

http://dasracist.net/

https://twitter.com/dasracist

Jonathan Coulton has found success in the long tail by maintaining a niche audience. His music consist of geek culture therefore his audience consist of geeks. Once one person finds  his music interesting he tell his friends who like the same music and they visit the website that has all of his music and merch for sell. Coulton’s success is also due the ability to produce and distribute his own music, meaning he gets back 100% of revenue there is no one to pay but himself and the monthly internet bill. This means there is more money for him to spend on promoting his new work as well as creating new work. The internet has revolutionized independent music. Anyone can find and maintain success in the long tail. The more niche you are the more likely you will remain relevant. There are many new independent acts that come and go every year and some that last for a while.

I learned alot about the use of wikipedia as well as the show Its always sunny in philadelphia. I have been big fan of the show since the first season and have considered the show to have a lot of information worthy of a long and intensive wikipedia page. The show just started its 9th season which is the longest-running live-action comedy in basic cable history. For a comedy show that is currently on its 9th season i was shocked to find a rather short wikipedia entry. The article could provide so much more information. I tried to add a section that listed the impact the show has had on pop culture with characters as greenman and the nightman. However my edit last a whole three minutes beacuse I included a link to a youtube video and a bot quickly erased my edit. So in the talk page  I discussed how the section should be added as well as a section that includes an episode guide with ratings.

Sturgeon’s law  is a simple observation that “ninety percent of everything is crap”. What he is getting at is that in any media form that only ten percent of stuff created is valuable or holds substance. We the “ninety percent of crap” out there its becoming harder to find the ten percent that we are looking for. Filters as mentioned in class are a tool use to sift out only the “good stuff” or the important stuff we are trying to find. The internet has tons of filters that help narrow or search for content with key words. Also tags on blogs and various social media sites help in the process. For example if wanted to search for best nikon lens in google. The search engine finds articles and websites and highlights the key works BEST, NIKON, LENS. People creating the content on the web usually try to factor in the keys words so people can stumble upon there content and not remain in the 90%.

In class we discussed the various copyright laws and what defines something from breaking the law and being a recreation or Interpretation of an idea already expressed by someone else. Mordern art is notorious for stepping on and crossing the line of copyright infringement. Andy Warhol was the best example. His idea was to recreate an image until it no longer had substance. His ideas have been recreated by more current artist such as Shepard Fairey who became famous for his “Andre the Giant has a Posse”  campaign taken from the Weekly World News. Fairey’s Andre the Giant became an issued trademark of his OBEY brand and  he has sued people for attempting to recreate the image he took from a publication. Futuremore remixes are gaining popularity in the world of music. Greg Gillis also know as Girl Talk has created five albums that include nothing but samples of other peoples works that sounds like an ipod on shuffle. He has released all his albums for free or pay what you want. The albums are also released under the Creative Commons license which gives people the right to share his work, use, and build on the work that he has created.

for my project I chose its always sunny in philadelphia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/its_Always_Sunny_in_Philadelphia I chose the article beacuse iam a big fan and becuase the cult like following the show has gotten over the last couple of seasons