Web 2.0

Image Credit: Bill Thompson

This blog is cross-posted here.

One of my students blogged about not being able to watch ABC’s Lost while studying abroad:

 “Interestingly enough, ABC was the first network to set up a deal with iTunes ‘to seek out alterative distribution venues for its show…’ I personally love that you can watch shows on online form ABC.com. Sometimes, I think its even better than watching it when it originally airs because the commercials are only 30 seconds and I can conveniently watch on Mac while I’m cozy in my bed. iTunes is also great though because when I was studying abroad in South Africa I had no television and ABC.com wouldn’t work outside the country, so I had to resort to buying shows online. I loved the fact that after I bought each show they were saved in my library and I could watch them whenever I liked, without any commercials.”

I’ve run into not being able to watch US content in Canada and was really frustrated when there was no legal way to watch shows like season 3 of The Venture Brothers, as they were being aired in the summer of 2008.  {There’s a possible workaround that I mention in my blog comment above.}  Canadian content in the US, such as the Trailer Park Boys (above) is a thornier problem, as one will need a Canadian web proxy for viewing.  Neither of these shows were available for purchase on iTunes when I was wanting to watch them.

I’m often asked, why is web content being geographically restricted?  A big issue has to do with intellectual property (IP) rights.  Here’s an exchange I saw on CBC about why the Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) and the Stanley Cup cannot be available online to overseas web surfers:

“O: I have to ask becuase I have a [l]ot of friends who live overseas…

Every time I talk to them they ask me why they can’t watch the Stanley Cup online

AL: One of our most common complaints, for sure.

O: Oh really?

AL: Sure. Our agreement with the NHL is for Canada only. NBC and Versus wouldn’t like it if someone in Boise was watching an HNIC broadcast online, eating into their customer base. Ditto for someone in Sweden (although I don’t know who’s broadcasting competitively there).

I understand the frust[r]ation, though. We’re sending this online to a population that can watch it on main net and in HD.. why give them online? But it’s the way of the future and our numbers were, I’d say, solid for a first-time, and for games that were played in the evening (not online’s prime time by any means).”

The Balkanized Web

So, if you’re in Sweden & want to watch HNIC, you’re out of luck, despite the fact that you{and hundreds of others} watching in Sweden may have effect on revenues, since there’s nobody broadcasting it.

The contractual obligations are keeping the web content geographically bound, despite the web being decentralized and global.   The marketing limitations are keeping content from being legitimately purchased on iTunes {and sites like it} or through pay-per-view/video-on-demand via the web or cable/satellite means.  Geographic restrictions are frustrating audiences, leaving revenues on the table, and limiting the building of global audiences.

It’s clear that broadcasters are keenly interested in revenue streams, but still don’t get it, in many respects.  This Globe & Mail article really shows a lack of creativity in terms of addressing the “what should be online?” question.

“Even in the U.S., where NBC and Fox launched Hulu.com to showcase their programs online, the ad revenue generated from that business is still a mere fraction of network TV revenues, Mr. Eiley said.

In Canada last year, online advertising revenue from TV shows was about 1.6 per cent of total TV advertising revenue. The trend is troubling for broadcasters, since audiences are increasingly demanding online programming. Mr. Eiley said the networks are left with unattractive options for online content – either pack more commercials into Internet shows or charge for content.”

There are several issues going on.  Content as IP is being treated as an asset that must generate revenues, but what about trying to get more people interested in that asset in order to foster future revenue streams.  The networks aren’t always being creative about using Web 2.0 to help build buzz and audience.  They should be trying to leverage Web 2.0 to build audience, but how can you really do this when so much of what is being produced and aired is pure, mind-numbing kife.  

Over the holidays, I saw CBC really hyping Being Erica {see trailer below}, which {to me}, when I saw it in February was like watching a slightly less neurotic Ally McBeal being inserted in a sort of Coen Brothers-esque time-traveling world of suspended quirky disbelief.  Sort of.  The network used a prequel blog and Facebook, making it seem like they were really pushing to not just get the word out, but to get people hooked on the idea of Erica, because they know her.  Plus, even if you couldn’t watch the shows on CBC online, you could purchase episodes of the entire season on iTunes {above}.  

The ratings are so-so for Canada, high 500Ks down to 511K, and it looks like it will get another season, albeit with fewer episodes.  This type of support is a luxury that wasn’t afforded to Douglas Coupland’s jPod.  Not that I’m bitter, CBC.  Not at all.

1. What are your thoughts on TV content on the web?
2. What are some creative ways to use Web 2.0 to deal with IP issues and revenues?

“There is ONE medium.”

Will that be the forthcoming declarative utterance to end all utterances?  If so, let me be one of the first few to coin it.

There has been a lot of buzz on web versus print with Clay Shirky  (Shoutout to Temporaryversion) discussing the business implications of old models struggling to deal with new ones.  (Here’s an example by Shirky on why newspapers cannot adopt a iTunes-like model).  I see one of the key challenges as culture, in that (North)American culture is one of what I call “quick cuts and remix.”  You see this in talk of convergence culture and Jenkins’s book, which describes instances of the modalities and materialities (Pfeiffer) of media combining.  We see in our everyday lives the Internet is taking over TV viewing time and also offering up viewing of broadcast TV/radio shows.  We can read books online or on handheld devices like Kindle hooked to databases.  Advertising and product placement are becoming more and more ubiquitous, so that this will be not so far-fetched.  [ThickCulture is brought to you by Contexts.  Cutting-edge content provided free of charge by the American Sociological Association]

We “scan” and read “at” things.  If we (or our attention spans) are pinched for time, we get information by reading the Yahoo headlines, not the article.  We are promiscuous in our media habits and don’t want to pay for things we don’t feel we should pay for.

Enter Walter Benjamin & Roger Chartier.  Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction   (full text here) in my opinion is central to understanding what’s going on.  If we look at media content as “art,” a pattern emerges:

“An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.”

Two things.  I think that content isn’t emancipated from ritual, but rather that new rituals and culturally-driven patterns of praxis (i.e., drivers of meaning) are created, often in unpredictable ways.  Media content can now be taken and repurposed.  The mashup is a perfect example, along with user-driven meanings in Web 2.0.  The reference to politics as a basis is a nod to Benjamin’s Marxism.  I believe that media content and art now are squarely in the realm, not of politics, but of the political economy, specifically in terms of inter/actions in markets.  

Roger Chartier in The Order of Books notes that in studying print capitalism, in order to understand it within a cultural context, we need to address (1) the text (content), (2) the book (media), and (3) reading practices.  There has been a lot of attention on the first two, but less solid understanding on the reading of media.  What Jenkins teaches us through his thick description of the current media milieu is that the lines between media are blurring.  We see it in the modes and materialities, but also in the economics.  I feel we are moving towards a singularity of media.  For example, some will say print and broadcast TV are both dead, as both will soon be killed by the web.  That’s the wrong way of thinking.  This assumes a linearity akin to upshifting a manual transmission.

In terms of media praxis, success will often be about creating models of how media can be intertwined to create value.  Take any pop culture figure, such as Lindsay Lohan.  She’s in film, she’s a singer, a celebrity newsmaker and tabloid fodder, and the butt of the satirists’ joke (see left).  The Internet is moving towards collapsing all paths to Lindsay into a single LindsayÜberstraße, a vertitable autobahn of linked Web 2.0 content.

I think it is telling that the Journalism School at CUNY, which is earning a reputation for being on the leading edge, is no longer requiring students to commit to a media track.  Additionally, with integrated market communications (IMC), there will be increasing market-based pressures to view media as one.  A future post will grapple with the Deleuzean idea of singularity and how it applies to media.  I think we need to address how people are “reading” all media in this Web 2.0 age.  Why?  We finally might get a handle on figuring out how the new technologies will specifically transform culture, economics, and society.

Is print dead?  What about the demise of the Fourth estate, perhaps a linchpin of democracy?  Well, someone else said this, not me, but I’m more interested in good journalism than newspapers.  The problem is that newspapers and the  news media are often tied to economic imperatives, which is (in my opinion) a historical trajectory that is by no means set.  We need to think about content in the age of infinite replication, which makes Benjamin such an important figure.

My friend Mimi Zeiger at Loudpaper blogged about the state of print.  I think it’s important to think about the implications of the functions of journalism and publishing and how these will be manifested, as media goes singular.  I personally feel a certain fondness for actual printed work.  It may have more to do with the specific æsthetics of the medium than anything and possibly the tactile experience.

• Do you think it’s useful to think of media as singular?
• What is the future of print?

For those who feel they have something important to say, I’ll leave you with the following, a portrait of Miranda July.

The news has been covering the testy exchange between Obama and CNN’s Ed Henry.  Henry asked a series of questions, including one of why the Obama himself wasn’t immediately outraged about the AIG bonuses.  Barack responded by saying he likes to know what he’s talking about before he speaks.  Sure, the press is covering it, but the press is also covering how Twitterers are reacting to these stories and video clips.

You can see for yourself by searching on Twitter: Obama Ed Henry.  On Wednesday, March 25, as of 11:44 EDT, the responses were trending towards Obama, with many tweets using the term “smackdown.”

There are nuances of communication that are more in the open now more than ever.  The ability for Web 2.0 multimedia to be shared quickly can help to provide context for these exchanges, as well as providing users with a fora for getting their views out there.  I would even argue that these technologies can even gauge the American zeitgeist to a certain extent.

Last night on CNN on Anderson Cooper, Ed Henry gave his side of the exchange on the AIG outrage matter:

I thought it was funny that at the end AC quipped, “you can nurse your wounds tonight, Ed.”

Will these 2.0 technologies (like Twitter) create both challenges and opportunities in future PR battles?  Undoubtedly.  (Will PR turn into pwn relations in certain circles?)  It will be interesting to see how the use of these technologies evolves over time.

So, I just got wise to the basic cable brawl between Jon Stewart and CNBC. I was able to catch up thanks to the convergence of TV & the Internet. My Web 2.0 viewing was sponsored by Bertolli and another view had a Tide commercial before the segment played.  (I also got to see promos for South Park and other Comedy Central shows).  The following is a decent overview of the skirmish.  “Don’t mess with the peacock,” for sure.  

Many of us post to Facebook, perhaps unaware of what can happen to that content and who has rights to it.  All of this came to a head a few days ago, as Facebook’s new terms of service (TOS) came to light and were met with a range of reactions from dismay to outrage.  

I’ve been reading Convergence Culture and being in Jane Jacob’s adopted home, I couldn’t help but think of how the social space of Facebook relates to how social interactions are shaped by governance and polity in online realms, as well as the idea of a commons that is a privatized space, as opposed to a public one.

While I’m resigned to the fact that there is no privacy online and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear that Facebook is being used by collections departments to locate unstealthy credit defaulters (true story), I do bristle at the idea of content being appropriated by companies hosting these web commons.

Why?  I’m using the private space of Facebook, why should I feel that what I post is still my intellectual property?  Am I being unreasonable?  After all, I push the boundaries of fair use quite a bit.

Can social network sites really be sites of democratic action, when they can ultimately be censored, not as a matter of public policy, but rather corporate TOS?  On the other side of the Web 2.0 fence, how much freedom should an organization grant users?

I feel that what any site engaging in Web 2.0 should do if they want to use content posted by users is…to simply ask them for permission.  It’s simple good manners and building of social capital.  I do think privatized social spaces or commons can be used for civic engagement, but I find emerging technologies being developed up here in Canada that allow content to be fed from multiple sites (e.g., MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) into one location to be rather interesting.  More on this in a future post.  I feel the overlap of Web 2.0 with open source will make us all rethink ownership and privacy and force organizations to ponder what intellectual property really means, what the risks are in terms of what the courts are stating, and how to implement processes.  Or not.  That devil inertia.

Earlier, I referenced this Wired article from last year on WikipediaScanner.  The site tracks edits of Wikipedia entries to known IP addresses within firms and organizations.  Wired has compiled a list of notable “salacious” edits from the past.  Here’s a news story discussing the PR and search engine optimization (SEO) implications of WikipediaScanner.

Vandalism And Wikipedia – 

While most edits are innocuous, some raise eyebrows.  

I’m interested in this because I feel that transparency will be increasingly important as Web 2.0 develops and we shift to 3.0, 4.0, etc.  Some of the things I’m working on is the implications of anonymity in social media and how it relates to business/organizational practice.  Some issues that aren’t well defined are:

• Policies regarding transparency versus secrecy (open source versus Apple)
• Managing public perceptions and organizational attitudes towards risk
• What are the proper features/applets (materialities of communication) that foster “collaboration and community” across different contexts?  Should these be staged?
• What are the preconditions for online communities be self-regulating?
• Nuances of online community culture self-reproduction

While anonymity and fluid identity was prevalent in Web 1.0, back when nobody knew you were a dog:

in Web 2.0, users are seeking the experiences of the 4Cs: conversation, community, commons, and collaboration.  I think in many instances that transparency facilitates the 4Cs through building social capital and trust.  Additionally, communitas and shared meaning systems, as well as the materialities of communications (applets, features, etc.), also foster/enable the experiences/practices in the 4Cs, but I don’t think all of these are invariant preconditions in all contexts.  

What are your thoughts on transparency?

Don has a thought-provoking post on the use of Facebook in mass-interpersonal persuasion.  In a post-lection analysis at CLU, José brought up the idea of how Obama created what is tantamount to a social movement using web 2.0 tools.  I was reading a US News article on the use of YouTube in the 2008 campaign and couldn’t help but recall the ParkRidge47 spectacle from early 2007 and the role of viral multimedia in politics and mass-interpersonal interaction.  In this video, the creator, Phil de Vellis, talks about how politicians should inspire content and how his Vote Different mashup went viral despite his posting anonymity.

The rise of political video watching is evident from Pew Research Center figures, going from 24% in December of 2007 to 39% in late October.  What I find interesting is how video is being used by both the public and the candidates.  The USNews article talks about how Obama’s campaign posted on YouTube a rebuttal to clips of Rev. Wright’s inflammatory remarks going viral, which were being used against Barack.  Obama Girl, the Yes We Can video, and Obama Art are all examples of Web 2.0 tools of video sharing and blogs being used to create meaning.  Add into the mix, the fourth estate (the press) with conservative Glenn Beck posting a video on the Obama National Anthem.

José noted how the Obama campaign will be written up as a “how to” guide on Web 2.0 campaigning, but what will the Web 2.0 president look like?  Given the “social movement” created, will this foster a technologically-mediated interactive democracy or will it just be more clutter?  How will meaning and relevance be maintained and how will the Republicans use Web 2.0 to rebuild?