A wiki is an information sharing tool used by people to collaborate and discuss with one another. They are a common place staple of the internet today with the most famous wiki being Wikipedia. The emergence of Wikipedia has shown companies a very effective tool in creating a departmental tool where team members can be aware about the state of projects and contribute towards identifying and fixing problems that might go unnoticed. The ease with which companies have adopted wiki's is due to key factors such as their relative ease of use without needing extensive prior knowledge.
There are some drawbacks to wiki's however. One significant issue that can arise is highlighted by the cio.com article, "More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia" is limiting wiki to each department. A problem that larger wiki's have created is the push back of against moderation, distortion of the original wiki's purpose as well as the need for careful curation and removal of outdated information.
On the other end of the spectrum are blogs. In many ways blogs are the modern day equivalients of journals and diaries that individuals can share with anyone. While a wiki serves a purpose, providing information to people who visit, blogs create a more personal environment where creators can share their experiences and view points. A way to highlight the needs for individuality and a personal identity is the issue of Yahoo and Tumblr. Bought for $990 million, tumblr has its user growth stagnate and plateau. There are a few reasons why this might be the case, growing competition from sites like Buzzfeed but a compelling one is the loss of personal identity. Being so publicly bought by Yahoo, many users being against the corporate take over of the site and subsequently Tumblr has lost the appeal it once had.
Works Cited:
Bercovici, Jeff "Yahoo's Next Problem: Tumblr's Traffic Isn't Growing" https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/01/21/yahoos-next-problem-tumblrs-traffic-isnt-growing/#280ececd5621
Locher Margaret "More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia" https://www.cio.com/article/2436789/more-on-how-to-build-your-own-wikipedia.html
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
The Quest to Monetizing New Media: Loss of Privacy for Revenue.
A really interesting issue that has arisen alongside new media becoming more commonplace is monetization. The old media model of monetizing was pretty simple and straightforward. Products such as newspapers, TV shows as well as certain radio formats like XM and Sirius used subscription models where people would pay monthly. Another method for generating revenue are advertisers buying space and targeting customers. The issues that arose with new media is that in many ways those revenue generating models for the media producers have been severely limited and in many ways incompatible.
My paper elaborates on how new media has adapted to this situation coinciding with the loss of privacy their users experienced. A major event that I will be researching is the Cambridge Analytica scandal where Facebook was found to have sold private data to firms so that advertisements could be personally targeted towards users. This manipulation of handling of user data and how it all arises from the issue of monetizing new media was something that I was really interested about.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)