My blog is a fantasy basketball blog that is intended to help and inform beginners to the hobby of fantasy basketball.  I offered some general helpful bog post, and also specific players to target in viewers specific leagues.  I also hoped lend my experience and knowledge of the sport to anyone who I came across on twitter and messege boards in an attempt to market the blog.

I marketed the blog on twitter and  various fantasy basketball message boards throughout the web.  On twitter I searched fantasy basketball and started following people who had been tweeting about it i an attempt to gain followers and ultimately in the hopes of an audience for the blog.  I then began to tweet my blog post along with teasers and information.  I also tweeted directly at people, answering questions, in the hopes of gaining a bigger audience.  On message boards I found people asking questions and gave my opinion on the matter and then asked them to check out my blog and gave them my twitter handle.

Overall, linking the post to tweets was the most productive way to get traffic to my blog.  However, linking my url to direct message board answers was a good way to connect to a potential audience more directly.

url: http://fantasybbb.blogspot.com/

twitter: https://twitter.com/fantasybballnew

Before this class, I didn’t really realize how all the things I do and the decisions I make on how I create and consume media content has evolved very quickly over the past 15 to 20 years. The Long Tail tail is very interesting in that the niche culture has really made the amount of content produced and available to us seemingly unlimited.  The tools of production and distribution are available to everyone and has really benefited us as a consumer in that we can make our own decisions of what to be fans of and what to watch, listen to, and get our information from.

Convergence culture is also a very interesting part of this class.  I really like the idea of collective intelligence and the participatory culture, and the idea of us all sharing our knowledge and experiences to make the information that is available better to us.  Another aspect of the convergence culture is media convergence, and this is something that is very  applicable to my life.  I never realized how fragmented the platforms where I consume media were.

The future of the long tail and the convergence culture are unknown, but I am very excited to see where they may go.  I am very glad I know have a better understanding of how we consume our media and the different things going into our media.

Politics are everywhere this time of year for better or worse.  Whether you are a political junkie or could care less it has been a big part of our lives over the past 3 or 4 months.  For me, where I have noticed the most political content in new media is on Twitter and Facebook. I think this is a good thing for democracy, even if some voices aren’t the most educated or politically correct.  Any way more voices can be heard it is a good thing in the advancement of democracy, and social media outlets offer that.  A good example of the way social media and pop culture can effect politics was the Arab Spring, when many ideas and experiences were shared through social media and lead to gatherings and protests which greatly affected the political landscape of the Middle East.  Overall I think pop culture and in particular social networks are a great way for us to all have a voice and for us to progress and try to give value to peoples points of view no matter if they are a part of real media or involved in government.

I think the Internet might not be good for the hit, top of the long tail artists.  The artists at the top of the long tail, who are signed to record deals, need large record sales to see a return on their work.  However, their are many more artists throughout the long tail who would have never had the opportunity to b heard, and now can make money, although not as much as the hit artists, can now possibly make a career out of being a musician.

Jonathan Coulton is a great example of an artist who 20 years ago would have been buried in the long tail and never could have made a career out of being a musician.  I don’t believe he is just a Snuggie.  There are many artists who have turned themselves into profitable businesses through music with the help of the internet and not a record company.

For my paper, I will be writing about Sketch Empire.  Sketch Empire is a sketch comedy group that does mostly pranks.

http://www.sketchempire.com/SketchEmpire/Home.html

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD9AA9B035E55CF3

http://www.facebook.com/SketchEmpire?fref=ts

https://twitter.com/SketchEmpire

http://sketchempire.spreadshirt.com/

I came into this project with some knowledge of wikipedia.  I frequently go to wikipedia when I have any questions or curiostities on just about any subject, and I never questioned the site and took most of the information I recieved, as fact.  Through working on this project I found myself relieved that the information in my article was mostly all true.  However, I will be a little more careful of accepting all information on wikipedia as fact without checking the references.

Going through this article it really brought to light the concept of social knowing.  Not only can peers contribute to the site with their knowledge, but it is also peers who judge the information.  The traditional authority is absent.

The long-tail has supplied all media creators, both professional and amateur, with a great opportunity to relay their content to the masses.  However, most of this content, according to “Sturgeon’s Law” is crap.  Before the long-tail most of our media was pre-filtered for us, and we got whatever was given to us by the media companies.  Now, with the development of you-tube and other media sharing websites that do not discriminate against the talentless or the pointless anyone is welcome to express themselves anyway they please.

However, even though 90% of everything may be crap, that leaves 10% percent of great media that otherwise would have never been seen.  The long-tail may be an un-filtered mess, but in that mess can be greatness. People have begun to develop websites that filter the long tail for us and bring the cream of the long-tail to the top.  So even if 90% of everything is really crap, it is worth our time and effort to filter through this ourselves and find the good stuff.

Everyone having the power to contribute to mass media is a fairly new phenomena.  It used to be a limited number of professionals in radio, television or newspaper steered and channeled our thoughts and ideas with the limited number of outlets that were available.  Now, with the emergence of the internet everyone has the resources and tools to become a reporter or display their opinion to the masses.  In the reading, it discusses Trent Lott’s comments on Strom Thurmond, and how mass media did no cover the story but it was amateurs who kept the story alive.  This is a perfect example of the amateurization of media.

The internet has also brought us the concept of peer production and social knowing.  These things have decentralized media which has also led to the amateurization of mass media.  Professionals have to command over these ideas, therefore the traditional authority of channeling information is absent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_Your_Enthusiasm

The idea that all of our media would converge into one, big tablet or box has obviously not come to fruition, but our media has definitely converged.  Instead of everything coming together in a big way, it seems to be the exact opposite.  With Apple announcing the iPhone 5 will be the lightest smart phone ever coming in at only 3.7 oz, yet has the almost all the capabilities of a modern day desktop computer.  It seems mobility will be the driving force when it come to the convergence of our media and entertainment in our everyday lives.

The medium v delivery technology is a very interesting way to look at where we’ve come and where we may be going.  By looking at our old delivery methods to the way our media is being delivered today it seems that mobility is also the driving force for how we get our medium and content.  Although, it is impossible to predict our future delivery methods, it is almost certain that they will be smaller and more mobile.