Trends in new technologies:

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Trends in new technologies
Latest trends in Web 2.0 (user-generated content
technologies) and top tips on how to use them
CWC, Its all about leadership! Communications
Industry Roundtable Luncheon, November 2006
Stuart Jack, Nordicity Group Ltd, Partner Chiara
Cosenza, Nordicity Group Ltd, Consultant
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Overview of the Topic

• New Media
• Web 2.0
• User Generated Content (UGC)
• 3.1 Professional Life
• 3.2 Private Life
• 4. How to start! (top tips)

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New Media

• Definition of New Media
• What Communications/Technologies/Interactive
  Content
• How Through advances in digital computing
• Characteristics Readily Interactive
  conversation/feedback
• The line between New Media and Old Media is
  blurred.
• Old media have been recreated, re-engineered,
  revised, and re-mediated. For example some blogs
  do the job that independent newspapers used to
  do, some authors publish their work on their
  blogs, photographers compete for online
  photography competition sharing their work
  through Flickr, Children visit Wikipedia instead
  of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
• Examples of New Media Web Sites, Blogs, Email,
  CD/DVD, Electronic kiosks
• Interactive Television, Internet Telephony,
  Mobile, Podcast, Web 2.0 are just one part of
  the New Media panorama

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Web 2.0

• Characteristics of web 2.0 (there is not
  universally agreed definition)
• Network effects created by an architecture of
  participation interactivity
• Open-source software
• Leveraging the power of The Long Tail of Chris
  Anderson endless choice
• Web 2.0 websites get transformed in more dynamic
  platforms where users get to communicate and give
  feedback on the content or change the content
  itself
• Many recently-developed concepts and technologies
  are seen as contributing to Web 2.0, including
  Weblogs, linklogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds and
  other forms of many-to-many publishing social
  software, Web APIs, Web standards, online Web
  services, and others.

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User Generated Content

• Definition of UGC
• This term refers to on-line content that is
  produced by users of websites as opposed to
  traditional media producers such as broadcasters
  and production companies.
• Democratization of production media are
  available and affordable

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User Generated Content

• Democratization of production media are
  available and affordable
• Varying degrees of content and networking
• Target different demographics
• Examples
• Flickr (pictures),
• FourDocs (4documentaries) UGC content on
  Channel 4 website,
• YouTube (videos),
• Second Life (virtual world/roles game) and
• Wikipedia
• Friends Reunited (Networking and search through
  universities/colleges attended),
• Linked In
• My Space
• Facebook

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Professional Life

• Opening a Professional Blog
• Benefits
• It gives the writer a visibility in his/her
  working domain
• It helps to stay updated on your working domain,
  as you need to write something on a regular basis
• It benefits your networking activity as readers
  will leave comments or contact you to develop
  further a topic
• Drawbacks
• Once the blog is started, you have to keep it
  running. A static blog would become non
  interesting and maybe a bad promotion of
  yourself.
• A public blog, gives you relative freedom, as you
  will not be able to write everything you want.
  Either because you cant go against your
  employer/your business/your clients interests,
  either because you dont know if that could be
  used against you in the future
• A solution would be to keep an anonym weblog
  where you would give little detail
• about yourself. However, this would take out part
  of the benefit of writing a
• professional weblog.

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Professional Life

• Professional Networking
• UGC sites (e.g. Linkedin) enables professionals
  to
• Maintain contact and share information with other
  professionals
• Work in a collaborative fashion distributed
  work
• Post studies
• Post CVs

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Private Life

• Is there really a private life on the Internet?
  Having stated that in our view a line
• cant really be drawn between private and
  professional life on the internet, we can proceed
  evaluating the structure of the social side of
  the internet
• Networking Platforms.
• Social networking Many websites as My Space,
  Hi5, Orkout and others let people build up their
  descriptive page and get in contact with other
  people (re. six degrees of separation theory)
• Sharing Pictures
• Other websites as flickr, let people and
  families across the World share their pictures
  online. It is also possible to make a link to the
  flickr album on peoples blogs so that everything
  is connected and available to the broad public or
  just to the family
• Sharing Knowledge
• Many people participate building up the
  resources for sites as wikipedia in order to
  promote what they know, correct other peoples
  entries and broaden the collective access to
  knowledge. This can be just for fun on hobby
  topics as well as more professionally on a
  stidy/working field

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How to get started!

• To open a blog
• Follow the link on www.blogger.com. You just
  click on the arrow and the website will guide you
  through an user-friendly way to open a blogger
  account
• To upload a video on YouTube
• You first open an account at http//www.youtube.c
  om/signup?nextmy_account and then upload your
  videos on the my videos page http//www.youtube.
  com/my_videos then upload your video clicking on
  the upload video botton.
• Then follow the steps indicated by the website
• Subscribe to a RSS feed
• Many websites/blogs give the possibility to
  subscribe to their RSS feed. Usually there is
  just a botton to click and follow the
  instructions. Other sites as the Globe and Mail
  have a webpage explaining how to subscribe
  http//www.theglobeandmail.com/rss/

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Food for thought Round table

• SOCIAL IMPACT
• Is it just about too much free time? So much time
  that we were using on a passive way before
  (watching TV) and now we are using on an active
  way (blogging, reading, posting videos, looking
  for videos, etc.)
• Can there be a clear separation between someones
  private and public life on the internet. Once
  someone becomes active on web 2.0 websites, can
  their privacy be respected?
• Is it about the demographics? More people
  connected to the internet, geeks are not the
  losers any more, but the tv-watchers are. Is it
  about the new internet generation?

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Food for thought - Roundtable

• BUSINESS MODEL
• Is web 2.0 a bubble?
• Is it about small companies (web 2.0 start ups)
  against big companies (TV networks)
• What is the business model? Is it just about
  advertisement online? Active advertisement. (Old
  advertisement force users to view, new
  advertisement users willing to click on it)
• Whats the role of publishers on a user generated
  worlds? Whats the new creative value chain? Is
  it publishing changing?
• Do you still need to be a good story-teller to
  publish a story? Is it about discovering talent
  that would stay hidden without the internet?
• Can blogs are becoming media brands?

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Links for a deeper understanding

• What is UGC
• - http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGC
• What is web 2.0
• - Video on what is web 2.0 (24min)
• http//www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/08/web-
  20-the-24-minute-documentary/
• - Wikipedia definition
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
• What is Wiki
• - Wikipedia definition of Wiki
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikis
• RSS Feeds
• http//www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml
  .html

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Basic Web 2.0 Vocabulary

• WebBlog
• A blog is a website where entries are made in
  journal style and displayed in a reverse
  chronological order.
• Linklog
• Social bookmarking is a web based service to
  share Internet bookmarks. The primary purpose of
  bookmarks is to easily catalog and access web
  pages that the web browser user has visited or
  plans to visit, without having to remember the
  page URLs or rely on other computer programs.
  More recently, however, with the advent of social
  bookmarking, bookmarks have become a means for
  users sharing similar interests to locate new
  websites that they might not have otherwise heard
  of, or to store their bookmarks in such a way
  that they are not tied to one specific computer.
• Wiki
• Wiki is a type of Web site that allows the
  visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and
  otherwise edit and change some available content,
  sometimes without the need for registration. This
  ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an
  effective tool for collaborative authoring. A
  good example Wikipedia.
• RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication)
• RSS is a simple system that allows users to
  subscribe to their favorite websites. Using RSS,
  webmasters can put their content into a
  standardized format, which can be viewed and
  organized through RSS-aware software or
  automatically conveyed as new content on another
  website.