For my blog, as I stated in class, I went through a couple of ideas before I decided on dedicating my blog to pictures of my dog. It’s a blog that no one else will have, because I am the only owner of my dog, and I know that people on the internet love pictures of animals, who became my target audience. I initially had a few different means of promotion but after some had little to no success, I focused my energy on what was successful. I started by setting up a tumblr account, which includes a link to the twitter account, worked on the theme, color scheme, and placement, and then began adding pictures. A day after I had a good amount of content on my page, I created a twitter account for Roscoe and tried to promote through my personal facebook.

My least successful mean was through my personal facebook. I posted a status trying to get people to go to my blog, but only 9 people responded to it- 6 likes and 7 comments- and only a small percentage of people who typed in the web address visited. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be very successful through facebook so I decided to focus more on twitter and through tumblr itself.

I had more success on twitter than I did on facebook. However, I was pessimistic about twitter at first. After I created my account, or Roscoe’s account to be exact, I customized a theme that had the same color scheme as my blog, and included a link to my blog. I then made a tweet, sat for a couple of minutes, and thought “oh yeah I have to have people follow me in order to make any progress”. I began following 1 other dog who had facebook and decided to call it a night and find people to follow the next day. However, the next day I was being followed by 9 dogs, including the dog I was following. It was pretty easy to get people to follow me because all I really did was follow dogs who would in return follow me along with some other people who followed them. At the end, I have 39 followers (29 are dogs, 4 people, and 6 that consist of either dog related products or dog tips), 2 direct messages, 1 dog tweeted to me, and 1 tweet of mine was favorited. I tweeted about 30 times.

Tumblr was very easy to gain an audience and is my most successful tool of promotion. About 87% of the page’s visitors were all directed through tumblr. The rest were either directed from twitter, a google search, and typing in the web address.

It’s really easy to promote yourself and successfully lead people to your page within tumblr. Thanks to tags, people are able to search for certain pictures they want to see which can then lead them to a tumblr page. I chose to do a combination of obvious tags like “dog, puppy, cute” to attract people that are looking for the kinds of pictures I have and tags, like “fall, stairs, goofymovie, snow, socks” that could drive people who weren’t looking for the kind of pictures I posted to my page. I tagged “roscoe” in every picture and I guess that could fall into either category. The more tags I made, no matter what they were, the more different opportunities I had to reach people. Whether someone was interested in pictures involving dogs, seasons, etc., whenever people do a search they will be able to look at my pictures in that tag and go to my page to look at all of the pictures. Each picture had at least 3 tags and the whole page had 57 different tags in total. Every picture used “dog, roscoe, cute” as tags.

It is also easy to post pictures on other people’s pages. One page that Roscoe was very successful on was loyal-2 me. His most successful picture that I submitted was “roscoe caught red handed playing with the yarn”. While that picture only got 2 notes on my tumblr page, the picture got 19 notes- 11 likes and 8 reblogs- on loyal-2 me’s page, which then led people to check out what other pictures I had on my page. I think promoting on tumblr itself was easy because many of the people who have tumblr pages are on there to either share or look at pictures and maybe the occasional video. It isn’t very heavy with text, which is exactly what my page is like. I also sent a few direct messages to loyal-2 me.

My blog had a total of 47 posts, which include 2 reflags, 1 video, and 57 photos (1 post could contain up numerous pictures- 1 of my posts contained 5 pictures). I followed 17 blogs, which all had something to do with cute animals. I gained 5 followers and acquired 14 likes and 1 reblog. Even though I only had 5 followers, I had more people who would go to the site everyday. While the most noted post on my page was “dreaming of a white christmas”, the video I posted of Roscoe howling/singing got the most views.

blog- roscoeworld.tumblr.com

twitter- https://twitter.com/RoscoesWorld

I really enjoyed this class and learned a lot more than I thought I was going to…not because it was going to be a bad class but because I thought that I pretty much knew everything already! The wikipedia paper/project was really interesting because I didn’t know just how much work went into each entry. I didn’t think it was organized at all and only used it for stupid facts. But, actually there are people who fix any edits that are incorrect. Dr. Markman even brought up the wiki page of the haymarket riots…i think?…and how there was this giant debate about a guy who posted about there actually was evidence against the people charged or something? I just thought that was interesting.  I chose The Big Bang Theory and there are so many references and people discussing what information should be used and what shouldn’t.

With our media projects and starting a blog…it was a lot harder than I thought. It pretty much took me 2 seconds to set up a tumblr account, set up a theme, post some entries, and find other accounts to follow that were either very relevant to mine or just things I liked. However, I didn’t really think it would be that hard to promote it…boy was I wrong. We learned about how with the cheap tools, like a computer that can record, edit, and post,  being used today it’s very easy for regular people to become producers. Even people who create blogs can gain a lot of followers and become semi-famous, like kerry and her I love memphis blog. But it is actually really hard to get people to look at what you create! It is pretty exciting however when people “like” your stuff or reblog it. It really makes you feel good that there are people who like or have at least looked at something that you care about and are working hard on. This kind of ties into all the stuff we learned that we tied into our artist profile paper. Sometimes people’s blogs or whatever do get looked at because of luck but there is actually a lot of self-promoting through other mediums.

The main reason I liked this class, besides the wonderful Dr. Markman, was how everything we learned is relevant to what is going on now. Unlike a history class where you learn about some person who did this one little thing that doesn’t really resonate to today, we encounter everything we talked about and examined like wikipedia, people’s blogs, the idea of an increase in streaming videos and less actual tv watching, etc. It was such an interesting class!

Before learning about transmedia storytelling…I never really thought about it as a form of furthering the storytelling, I just thought of it as fun stuff to do. There are many pros and cons for both the audience and the people that are creating and distributing the content. A pro for the audience is that they get to enjoy the story that they are interested in and learn more about it. With Harry Potter (yes I’m referencing it again because I love it!), there are 7 main books, 8 movies, 8 video games for multiple consoles, and books that further explain aspects of the world of harry potter like the harry potter prequel short story, quidditch through the ages, and fantastic beasts and where to find them. This allows a fan to dig past the surface of the basic storyline. Other movies and shows have webisodes and graphic novels. Like I said in our discussion, I think that transmedia content is only really successful with sci-fi/fantasy stories like HP, Trueblood, Walking Dead, etc. I think that these stories are so vivid and complex that there is enough information that can spread across different mediums. Dexter is kind of the exception to this…however he does have visions of a dead person so I guess this is kind of in between the stories I just listed and shows like law and order or csi. Since this kind of stuff can kind of be considered a niche culture and some people think that the fans that get too far into it are nerdy, weird, and turning an interest into an obsession…I wonder if like 20-30 years in the future if the people who simply watch a tv show and don’t use transmedia storytelling will be considered niche and lazy for just watching a show and not using other content.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I really liked the indie game movie because it showed a side of video games that not many people have been exposed to. Fez, Braid, and Super Meat Boy are all games that cater to people who a apart of that niche culture. Unlike mainstream video games, which try to appear more “real” through the graphics and POV (like Call of Duty, Halo), these indie games reach players through a sense of nostalgia. These games also catered to smaller groups or “tribes” like we talked about today and the “specific” aspects of fragmentation. Super Meat Boy for example was for gamers–> indie gamers–> xbox users. Super Meat Boy was available exclusively on xbox marketplace so only it can be classified as a “specific” niche game.

The internet is a wonderful place in the year 2012. Someone like Jonathan Coulton is able to make a lot of money being a musician without being signed to a big record label. On Coulton’s response he says, “Most of my sales are digital, which means there are almost no distribution costs. I have never spent any money on marketing and rely completely on blogs, podcasts and social networks to spread the word. I tour solo with an acoustic guitar (used to anyway), and I only play in cities where I have already ascertained there is going to be an audience. I record by myself at home (again, used to!) using equipment that is not very expensive…”. The internet is a perfect place for a “nobody” to be found and heard. More famous artists like Beyonce would lose money in this case because part of their profit would go to their record company, publicist, marketing company, etc.

I think I have to side with Coulton on this one. On the NPR podcast they make the point that basically Coulton only became famous from his song “Code Monkey”, a geeky, pop-like song, that was on slashdot, a nerd site, but his business model is much more complicated than simply making a song on slashdot. It kind of sounded to me like they’re kind of pushing the internet and nerd culture together, which I don’t think is the case anymore in 2012. The internet has every type of person on it which means that any kind of musician can replicate Coulton’s business model.

For my paper, I will be writing about Shamikah Martinez & Molly Austin of Emotistyle, a fashion advice web series hosted by the 2 comediennes. Their webseries on youtube consists of funny videos about fashion. Their blog uses a lot of audience participation by encouraging people to post questions, comments, and posts.  Their various social media networks also promotes their stand-up and gives information on upcoming shows. Included are links to the youtube page, the emotistyle website, merchandise website, facebook, twitter, and email address:

http://www.youtube.com/user/emotistyle

http://emotistyle.com/

http://www.districtlines.com/emotistyle

http://www.facebook.com/emotistyle

https://twitter.com/emotistyle

emotistyle@gmail.com

I also found websites to the individual girls:

http://www.mollyisfunny.com/#! (with links to her blog, twitter, and facebook)

http://shamikahmartinez.com/

I frequently use wikipedia to look up random things or tv shows but I learned a lot about it from this project. My topic is the tv show The Big Bang Theory and there was a ton of information about the show and over 152 references. This article is a perfect example of “fan fiction”. Fans are passionately talking about the article and arguing over what is deemed important and what is unimportant. For example, there is an ongoing discussion about Sara Gilbert’s character Leslie Winkle and what her character should be classified as (recurring, etc.). Most (probably all) of the references linked to my article that still existed which made me think about how genuine this article was and how accurate. People really must care about this show in order to make sure all of the information is correct and interesting. I learned a lot about social knowing because before this project, I never looked at the talk section or the references to make sure what I was reading was backed up by other articles, however, I never really went to wikipedia for serious things like information for papers…only to look up an actor I couldn’t remember or the name of a song or something.

Earlier today I was doing some online shopping for some boots. I ended up looking on zappos.com, a shopping site that sells shoes, clothing, handbags, beauty supplies, accessories, etc. There are over 7402 boots on the website with the cheapest pair being $28 and the most expensive pair is $2950 (and this is the same for almost every section). On the website to find the specific item you’re looking for, there are filtering options. Since I started out with 7402 freaking options… clearly I needed to use the filters. So I did: Women–>boots–> size 8 (which left me with 6014 options)–>mid-calf, knee high, and ankle–> and then filtered by price…but I still had 852 items available! Even after using 5 different filters. I  didn’t even use all of the filters available…The filters available are: Styles, boot shaft, heel height, color, occasion, brand, price, materials, theme, opening circumference, shaft height, accents, pattern, and heel style. Do I want to sit and scroll through 852 pairs of boots when odds are I’ll only like about 10? Definitely not.  I think this website is a perfect example of how there is so much shit on the internet that even after filtering we’re still left with an overwhelming amount of information that probably isn’t even relevant to what we want at that moment.

I just realized that my post from earlier never actually posted….so anyways… I was really interested in the discussion we had on Tuesday on fan fiction. Anyone can create fan fiction on anything they are a fan of like Harry Potter, Star Wars, Toy Story, videogames, and even individual people. I like to browse pictures, memes, etc on imgur all the time. Usually at night when I get in bed I’ll get on imgur and find myself browsing through for over an hour. This site, which is an image hosting service, is a perfect place for people to share the memes and images theyve created or tweaked. Even if the image is profane, the person who made it might have had a lot of fun making it and thinks that it is amazing. They do it because they love it! Here are two images that I found on imgur– the first is from The Nightmare Before Christmas and a truck with a Star Wars themed name and slogan.

Weinberger’s chapter on Social Knowing discusses the idea of “anonymous authors” and how sites like wikipedia have increased anonymity online. We are able to post anything we want online without the risk of people knowing who we are, where we live, etc. As Weinberger notes on page 135, “Registering at Wikipedia requires making up a nickname– a pseudonym– and a password. That’s all Wikipedia knows about its registered users, and it has no way to identify further”. However, if you don’t register and make an edit or something, your IP address is listed. But, there are ways of faking your IP address…I don’t know how to do it but some people do.

I brought up in class how Matthew Perry’s wiki page had a few hilarious changes like his mother being a ferret and his middle name being “AIDS burger” and this reading made me think if anyone ever found out who did it. The person who posted it could have been a registered user with a fake email account and altered IP address so he could be completely anonymous online.