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.facebook.com/SketchEmpire?fref=ts

Tweets by SketchEmpire

http://sketchempire.spreadshirt.com/

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 will be writing about The Gregory Brothers for the artist profile paper. Most of you probably know this group for its viral YouTube series, Auto-Tune the News, which featured the famous Bed Intruder video. The group has two YouTube channels: schmoyoho and The Gregory Brothers. The group is also on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and all four members have individual accounts as well. From what I have seen so far, the group makes money from songs on iTunes, live events, merchandise, advertising on YouTube, and donations. This group is somewhere between an Internet sensation and a mainstream band, as Bed Intruder landed the group on the Billboard Hot 100. The members have worked with mainstream artists as well, but they primarily became famous because of the group’s music/video distribution online.

I chose Emmanuel and Phillip Hudson. I think  these youn men are very talented and funny.  How they became poplar is very interesting.

http://ephudson.com/

My topic was 90210.

It was very interested how many of the true fans of the former Beverly Hills: 90210 critique it. It was really hard to focus on 90210 without referring back to the original.

My wikipedia experience was okay.  I didn’t love it…I didn’t hate it.  My article went through a few minor changes.  Someone added a hyphen to the word “somatic-cell nuclear transfer.”  The article was vandalized three times. Thank god Bruce1ee was there 2 fix it.

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.

The Wikipedia project was a fun experience for me. At first,  I had trouble finding a stub article that I could contribute useful information to.  I was looking up some information for a friend when I realized that one of my favorite self published authors page had been delted because the information could not be verified.  So I chose to resubmit the article for Tamika Newhouse.  I knew that she was infact an author because I own and have read several of her books.

Since I had never edited or contributed anything to Wikipedia, I looked for a few  stub articles that had mistakes.  I found a few and I made minor changes.  I then read the tutorial on how to resubmit an article. I also read the tutorials about how to use the Sandbox feature and how to cite references.  I then set up my sandbox to create my article. When creating an article you can request help from other users. I activated this function so that I could recieve help from others who were familar with her work.

The next step in my process was to look for information about Tamika Newhouse and find at least five different references. All of the information about her seem to say the same, but I was able to find information that referenced her publishing company, books, awards and interviews that she had done. The next process was to subit the article and wait to see if Wikipedia accepts or rejects the article.

I am still in the waiting process. I believe that I did provide enough references for the article that they will accept it.  However there was a lot of information about her but it all said the same things.  The article may be marked as a stub article that needs more information. I believe the article will grow in time.  The more books she writes and the more awards she wins will help increase the articles information.

I can’t wait to see the outcome.  If It gets rejected again then I will try again.  Over all as I mentioned before It was a great and fun learning experience about collective knowledge.

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.