HTML 5

by: Cliff Tan

Introduction

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Notwithstanding the fact that the topic of HTML 5 has been discussed as part of the course, I hope this blog post will introduce some new features of the improved markup language, offer new perspectives on future developments, and educate everyone on the security issues involved.

The official completion date for HTML5 specification set by W3C is July 2014. But as web developers (or publishers of the web), the completion date does not really matter much since many browser vendors have already begun implementing parts of it. Users of the various browsers tend to update frequently. Plus, even after July 2014, there will still be a need for code that caters to browser incompatibility issues (such as those by Internet Explorer). Since the HTML standard constantly evolves, the best advice for developers is to get in the game early on.

New Features

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The new markup language has gotten smarter in terms of syntax. Developers will enjoy these following conveniences.

No longer required to use self-closing tags:

<img src=”sample.jpeg”/>

<img src=”sample.jpeg”>

No longer required to use quotation marks for attributes:

<img src=”sample.jpeg”>

<img src=sample.jpeg>

Markup is now case insensitive:

<img src=sample.jpeg>

<ImG SrC=sample.jpeg>

There are also new changes for semantic elements as shown in the following images. Sections and parts of a web page layout will more easily and clearly defined.

 

The Google supported html5rocks.com website features multiple demos and example codes for the features of HTML 5. Here is a list of demos which I personally feel will be most impactful and garner most popularity amongst developers.

• Audio & Video demo: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#video-audio
• Canvas 3D(WebGL) demo: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#canvas-3d
• SVG demo: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#svg-example-slide
• Web Font support demo: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#web-fonts
• Speech Input: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#speech-input
• File Drag In and Out: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#drag-in
• Web Storage: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#web-storage
• Application Cache: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#app-cache

How HTML5 might influence future developments

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Flash versus HTML5

Since its early 2010 iterations of phone and tablet devices, Apple has begun omitting support for Adobe Flash for its mobile devices and opted to use HTML 5, CSS and Javascript instead.The late Steve Jobs published a page on Apple's website stating his reasons for doing so. Although Adobe initially maintained its support for flash, it eventually ceased development of its Flash player for mobile devices and instead became focused on creating developer tools for HTML 5.

Although video playback on Youtube requires the Adobe Flash Player plugin to be installed on the user’s browsers, Youtube has begun supporting HTML5 video playback as an experimental feature since 2010. Users can opt-in to join the trial and videos can then be viewed without requirement of the Adobe Flash Player or other plug-in to be installed.

Although it might take many years for Flash to be gradually phased out and for HTML5 developer tools to mature, it is fair to say that HTML5 will be the next standard for developing and delivering interactive and multimedia content.

Native Mobile Applications versus HTML5

My thoughts are that as web developers get familiarised with HTML 5 based technologies, they will shift away from native mobile application development platforms towards building HTML 5 based interactive mobile web applications. Let me explain why is this so.

In August 2011, the Financial Times(FT) withdrew their IOS applications for IPhones and IPads from the IOS App Store after disputes with Apple over ownership of customer data and revenue sharing. Apple insisted that sales (such as subscription fees collected from users from FT) must occur over its App Store - an arrangement that would give Apple ownership of the customer data and a 30% cut of the revenues. For FT, the withdrawal meant a loss of 10% of its digital subscriptions which was generated by its IPad application. In place of IOS applications, FT launched a HTML5 based web application in June 2011 to serve content to their subscribers using IOS devices.

Within ten months of its release, the new web application had attracted more than two million users. This traffic is significantly greater than what the previous native IOS apps had. Managing Director of FT, Rob Grimshaw commented that the key strength of the web app is that it can be rapidly tweaked and launched for new devices when they are brought to market. Through the success of FT’s HTML 5 based web application working as a substitute to its IOS app, it can be seen that HTML5 will continue to significantly have an impact on the future of mobile applications by being an attractive alternative platform.

However at its current level of browser support, HTML 5 is not a bed of roses. Take Facebook for example, one industry analyst from BusinessInsider.com have commented that Facebook’s one billion dollar purchase of Instagram was to undo its bet on HTML 5 - a bet that saw Facebook lose millions of users to the popular photo sharing application due to the poor performance of HTML 5 on which Facebook’s mobile web app was coded with.

Facebook has called for improvements to be made on HTML 5 support on mobile browsers and formed the W3C Community Group. But Apple and Google have refused to join. The reason is simple, if mobile browser support for HTML 5 on the IOS and Android platform lags, end users would have a better consumer experience through native applications available on the respective app stores - which are channels that both vendors use to monetize payments and earn revenue.

Despite Apple and Google’s open commitment to HTML 5, they have a vested interest in seeing HTML 5 lag behind. It still remains to be seen on how the mobile application space will play out in the future.

Windows 8 and HTML5

The next major release of the popular Windows operating system will be Windows 8 which is set to be released by the end of 2012. With the Consumer Preview already released on Feb 29 2012 and another Release Preview slated for early June 2012, early adopters and application developers are already experimenting with the new Metro User Interface - a finger friendly, full screen tablet like operating system.

This all ties back to our topic because Microsoft has built a new development platform based on HTML 5 and Javascript. Developers can now leverage their experience of building for the web to develop new Windows 8 Metro applications. The code for a native Windows 8 Metro "hello world" application is simply:

Over the years, Microsoft developers have invested time, effort and money into the platform. There is a myriad of developer tools and frameworks available. Some of these include Win32 (Windows API), COM (Component Object Model), MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class), ATL (Active Template Library), Visual Basic 6, .NET, WinForms, WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and Silverlight. With the new support for HTML 5 in Windows 8, it will be interesting to see whether Microsoft will still support some of these developer tools and framework.

Take Silverlight for example, with all the HTML 5 evangelism that Microsoft is doing, it is likely that they are trying to wean developers off Silverlight and get more HTML 5 based applications into its Metro app store. The most likely outcome would be for Microsoft to continue supporting Silverlight through new versions of Visual Studios; at least until developer tools for HTML 5 has reached sufficient maturity.

Security Aspects of HTML 5

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HTML 5 is powerful as it provides for new functions to web designers that were previously possible only with Adobe Flash or complicated JavaScripts. As it allows web designers to better exercise their creativity in developing interactive content, it will similarly allow malicious users to get creative with their attacks. Proponents of HTML 5 have highlights how it could potentially boost web security. Since if it is known that the number of plugins installation required is zero, users will be less likely duped into downloading malicious ones. However, other analysts say more needs to be done.

Robert McArdle, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, outlined various new attacks made possible by features in HTML 5. With the new markup language, browser-based botnets and other attacks could be performed by malicious users. When an attack is browser based, multiple platforms ranging from a Windows OS machine to an Apple IOS smartphone will be susceptible to the platform neutral code. Hence, we can expect malware to be much more devastating than it is today.

With web notifications being fully customisable using HTML code in the new standard, new interaction possibilities can give way to enhanced social engineering techniques and attacks. Phishing attacks can also get more sophisticated. Below is an example of how such an attack may be carried out.

Of the many new features associated with HTML 5, a new set of Geolocation APIs are also released. With mobile device technologies underpinning smartphones and tablets being continuously updated, there are no signs of mobile penetration rates slowing. With more people surfing the web from their mobile devices, Geolocation allows web designers to better personalise content which users can match to their surroundings. However this new feature also presents new opportunities for malicious hackers. Since it is browser based, traditional checks and approval mechanisms applied in mobile application stores such as IOS Appstore and Android Marketplace will be futile. Security settings will need to be user based and this rarely works out well. Once permission is granted, a malicious site will not only be able to locate the victim, but also perform real time tracking as the victim moves about throughout the day.

The growing market share of the Apple Mac computer has translated into more malware on the platform. The recent 2012 Flashback malware has infected hundreds of thousands of Macs and has led Eugene Kaspersky - CEO of the Kaspersky security firm, to comment that Apple is ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security. Drawing a parallel to HTML 5, the security challenges will only increase in the future. With HTML 5 being platform agnostic, a security issue might require the joint efforts of different browser vendors to resolve. The scenario of each browser vendor promoting security features as they try to grow their respective user base/market share in the future is also not a far fetched one.

Sources

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FT pulls app over customer data dispute with Apple

Retrieved on April 26 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14734911

The FT web app for iPad and iPhone
Retrieved on April 26 2012 from http://apps.ft.com/ftwebapp/

Financial Times iOS web app tops 350k users since launch

Retrieved on April 26 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/aug/05/financial-times-ipad-mobile-apps

Financial Times passes 2m users for its HTML5 web app

Retrieved on April 26 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/appsblog/2012/apr/24/financial-times-web-app-2m?newsfeed=true

Financial Times app pulled from iOS after compliance dispute

Retrieved on April 26 2012 from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/financial-times-app-pulled-from-ios-after-compliance-dispute/56849

Betting $1 Billion On Instagram, Facebook Backs Away From HTML5

Retrieved on April 29 2012 from http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-09/tech/31311341_1_android-new-apps-iso

Facebook Says “Yo Google and Apple, HTML5 Apps Will Suck Until Your Mobile Browsers Improve” Retrieved on April 29 2012 from http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/20/facebook-google-apple-html5/

Introducing the Mobile W3C Community Group

Retrieved on April 29 2012 from https://developers.facebook.com/html5/blog/post/2012/02/27/introducing-the-mobile-w3c-community-group/

The Web is Reborn

Retrieved on April 20 2012 from http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=26565

Microsoft slates Windows 8 'release preview' for early June

Retrieved on April 21 2012 from http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226514/Microsoft_slates_Windows_8_release_preview_for_early_June

Programming Windows 8: The Sublime To The Strange

Retrieved on April 22 2012 from http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2011/11/29/programming-windows-8-the-sublime-to-the-strange.aspx

Windows 8 HTML5/JS Comment Causes Panic Among Developers

Retrieved on April 23 2012 from http://www.osnews.com/story/24846/Windows_8_HTML5_JS_Comment_Causes_Panci_Among_Developers

Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

Retrieved on April 23 2012 from http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/06/html5-centric-windows-8-leaves-microsoft-developers-horrified.ars

Ghost of HTML5 future: Web browser botnets

Retrieved on April 19 2012 from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/27/html5/

HTML5 - The Bad

Retrieved on April 19 2012 from http://blog.trendmicro.com/html5-the-bad

Pinterest

Critter Taylor

One new development in social media is photo sharing. One of the biggest players in this is Pinterest. Pinterest is a photo-sharing site in which users can create their own themed collections of images, similar to the way one would do with a regular corkboard. Users can share their collections of images with other users and explore other people’s collections or “pinboards”. They can add images from other users’ pinboards to their own by “re-pinning” them. Pinterest also gives you the option to subscribe to other people’s pinboards. Users can also link their images to their Facebook and Twitter accounts in order to share them with friends and followers. Pinterest forms links between people all over the world based on their interests.








Pinterest was launched in March of 2010, founded by Evan Sharp, Paul Sciarra, and Ben Silbermann. For the first year the website was operated out of one of the creators’ apartments. By December 2011 Hitwise data indicated that Pinterest was one of the 10 largest social networking sites and by the start of 2012 Pinterest already had over 11 million users, setting a record by reaching 10 million visitors in less time than any site previously.  Pinterest had no means of making money up until April 6, 2012 when it began to sell the content created by its users. Before this the site had been supported by a group of investors and venture capitalists. So far Pinterest has received over $70 million in outside investments. Pinterest also makes money through doing pay-per-purchase referrals to commercial sites, though revenue from these transactions is small. The future of Pinterest lies in data collection. Pinterest has the potential to be used as a platform for marketing and collecting information pertinent to marketing. The data collected could be sold to marketers for use in analyzing connections between consumers, products and the World Wide Web.





Pinterest has found its niche in a rather strange demographic for an online company. The majority of the users on Pinterest in the United States are women. Over 80% of Pinterest’s American users are women. It is especially popular with women in their late 30’s and early 40’s

Duolingo

Duolingo: Learn A Language While Translating The Web

            Currently, there are over 2 billion internet users. Only 26.8% of these users are English speakers, yet 55.9% of the web content is English. This alienates the 1,657,347,866 people that do not speak English and therefore cannot use these sites. Machine translation is not yet good enough to translate the sites automatically. If you look at translations by a computer, you see that most of the time it is incorrect. Also, how would you be able to identify the few times that the machine translation is correct? Consequently, the best solution right now is to have people complete these translations.   

Duolingo is a recent project started at CMU by Professor Luis Von Ahn and his team that uses crowd-sourcing for text-translation. Their goal is to use people to translate the web. Von Ahn saw two problems with translating the web: there is a lack of bilinguals to do all this work, and there also needs to be motivation for people to do this for free. The team thought of a solution that solves both of these problems. The project would translate the web through education. Duolingo is a way for people to learn a new language. Users are provided with sentences based on their level of proficiency in a language, which they would then have to translate. I will discuss more details of how Duolingo works later.

First, I want to talk about why Von Ahn and his team think that this project has incredible potential to be successful. To translate all of Wikipedia into Spanish would cost about $50 million using professional translators. This feat of translating the web is something that needs to be done by people volunteering their time and have no other costs for it to work. Von Ahn’s previous project was ReCaptcha. This project used the same idea of crowd-sourcing and no other costs in order to have people digitize books as they have to enter Captchas for certain websites.

Figure 1

 (If you do not know what a Captcha is, it is displayed on the right as Figure 1. It is the distorted text images that users have to type to prove that they are not a computer. Captcha is often used when you are trying to register for a specific website. Or another example is when you are buying tickets from Ticketmaster to prevent scalpers from taking advantage of the system.) The ReCaptcha technology uses work that people already have to do and adds value to it. There are many books that are not in good enough conditions for computers to be able to identify the text; whereas humans can still read the words and type what the text is. By combining many responses, ReCaptcha can create fairly accurate digital versions of the text.

This ReCaptcha project has had billions of users and has been extremely successful. Von Ahn hopes that Duolingo will follow this same success and once again have billions of users. Number wise, there are approximately 1.2 billion people that want to learn a foreign language each year. The language software can cost up to $500, making it biased against people that cannot afford it. Duolingo is a free alternative to the software that can attract all of these people. It is similar to ReCaptcha in the sense that it is taking something that people already do, in this case, attempt to learn a new language, and adding more value to it by applying the translations to real content and translating the web.

Now, if we think back to the task of translating Wikipedia into Spanish, with 100,000 users Duolingo would be able to complete this task in just 5 weeks. With 1 million users, this can be done in just 80 hours. The question then becomes how accurate would these translations be? If beginners are translating websites to a language that they have never seen before, their sentences can be entirely incorrect.  In testing, the translations that Duolingo creates are as good as that of professionals without sacrificing speed. This is because it combines many of the users’ translations and has many learning tools.

Next, I want to look more specifically into how Duolingo works. Pretend that you are a user of Duolingo, and I will walk you through the website.  First you are provided with a sentence that fits your language level. Then, you will have the option to see the context that this sentence was taken from. Since all users are translating real content, it makes it more interesting and encourages you to keep learning. It is a practical application of language skills. 

Figure 2

When looking at the specific sentence, you are able to hover over a word if you would like to see other users’ translations for help, illustrated in Figure 2 on the left. Then once you submit a translation, you are given feedback. Duolingo will either congratulate you for being correct, or indicate what is wrong with your translation. For example, if there was a simple typo that it could detect (ex. typing “epro” instead of “pero”), Duolingo will say that your translation was correct, but inform you of the typo. It will also indicate whether there were more significant errors (ex. using a masculine adjective instead of a feminine). Duolingo will also help you understand and memorize the words you do not know and have hovered over with educational examples. You can then vote on the quality of other translations displayed, providing the site with feedback over other users’ efforts.

This feedback feature I just mentioned is also one of the motivating factors for users. Most language learning methods outside of a class cannot give you feedback on your language skills. A workbook cannot tell you that your answer is incorrect when there are so many translations of the same sentences. Other software usually provides feedback for multiple choice questions or single words. According to Von Ahn, feedback is crucial to learning, and Duolingo attempts to provide feedback on entire sentences. Of course, as mentioned there are multiple translations for the same sentences and therefore makes this feedback a very difficult task.

I have discussed some of the background and intentions of Duolingo, but not as much about its results in reality. This is because Duolingo was only privately launched in November of 2011. By January, 45,000 sentences were translated from this private launch, giving a lot of hope for the success of Duolingo in the future. The Spanish and German language options were released in a beta version in March. There is an extremely large waiting list of people that want to receive accounts for the beta version.

There are some blogs from the people that have already been able to obtain these beta version accounts. From what I have researched, people have found the user interface and layout of the lessons to be “flawless and visually appealing” (Classical Bookworm). Regarding the educational functions, the lessons and translations earn you points that allow you to progress to further levels.

Figure 3

 A layout of the lessons is illustrated in Figure 3 on the right. If you make too many mistakes, you are forced to redo the lesson. Duolingo has audio features, images for people that learn better visually, and even social features where you can ask questions for others to answer. Overall, the feedback for Duolingo has been very positive. Duolingo has great potential to impact the web and already has a lot of user interest; I cannot wait to see what the future has in store.

To learn more, watch the Duolingo intro video below, or visit the official site:  http://duolingo.com/

Works Cited

"Classical Bookworm: Duolingo: First Impressions." Classical Bookworm. Web. <http://classical-bookworm.blogspot.com/2012/01/duolingo-first-impressions.html>.

"Duolingo | Learn English, Spanish and German for Free." Duolingo. Web. <http://duolingo.com/>.

Luis Von Ahn -- Duolingo: The Next Chapter in Human Computation. TEDXCMU, 25 Apr. 2011. Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6jUjFjp4>.

"Top Ten Internet Languages - World Internet Statistics." Internet World Stats. Web. <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm>.

"Usage of Content Languages for Websites." Usage Statistics of Content Languages for Websites, April 2012. Web. <http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language/all>.

"World Internet Usage Statistics News and World PopulationStats." Internet World Stats. Web. <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm>.

Threadless

Threadless 
SiYeun Hwang
4/29/2012

Threadless is a Chicago-based company that creates online communities. The website combines an online art community with a highly successful e-commerce business model. Threadless lets anyone create ideas for a t-shirt design and submit their artworks. The artwork is voted on and chosen by over 1 million registered users of the community. Each week, based on the average score using a five-point rating scale and community feedback, the highest-scoring designs or those that display a thought-provoking viewpoint are selected. Those designs are then printed on clothing and other products and sold worldwide through online stores. The contributing designers are paid up to $2,500 for a first run. Threadless keeps rights to the designs on clothing’s and designers keep the rights to their designs on other media. 

In 2000, co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart started Threadless in 2000 with $1,000 of their own money. It began as a t-shirt design competition on dreamless.org, which is now defunct. The founders built a website Threadless.com introducing a voting system using five-point rating scale. By 2002, the founders quit school and started their own web agency called skinny Corp where Threadless was built under. In 2000, Threadless shirts were printed every few months but in 2004 the company started printing new shirts every week. In 2008 Threadless became known as “The Most Innovative Small Company in America.”

In a 2006 Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired Magazine who covers the media and entertainment industry coined the term “Crowdsourcing.” Crowdsourcing is a process where a task or a problem is outsourced to an undefined public rather than a specific body like paid employee. It refers to the way in which humans and computers work together to accomplish tasks or solve problems. It is a type of participative online activity in which a crowdsourcer proposes and broadcast problems to a group of unknown people (solvers) of varying knowledge in a form of an open call for solutions. Users, also known as the crowd, submit solutions. Crowdsourcing may produce solutions from various types of users—from amateurs or volunteers or experts or small businesses. The solutions are then owned by the crowdsourcer. Users are motivated to contribute to crowdsourcing tasks for social contact, financial gain or intellectual satisfaction.

Jeff Howe associated Threadless with crowdsourcing. Threadless encourages idea generation with an ongoing open call for design submissions. It also encourages collaborative production and funding of projects ranging from feature films to business launches to philanthropy to personal fund-raising. Threadless completely blurs the line of who is a producer and who is a consumer. The customers end up playing a critical role of its operations: idea generation, marketing, and sales forecasting.

 

 The Threadless model is simple yet revolutionary. It keeps expanding community-based design opportunities for other organizations. Threadless staffs organize online events to promote causes and raise profits for nonprofits and caused based organizations. They have raised money for earthquake victims in New Zealand and for those affected by the Japanese tsunami and earthquake as well as for the Alzheimer’s Association. The rapid and vibrant engagement of online users has propelled the Threadless community through phenomenal growth to become to a global intellectual economy.

Sources:

Threadless T-Shirts Main Website: http://www.threadless.com/

Alsever, Jennifer. “What is Crowdsourcing?” CBS News. 7 March 2007.  29 April 2012.< http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-51052961/what-is-crowdsourcing/>

Nickel, Jake. Threadless: Ten Years of T-shirts from the World's Most Inspiring Online Design Community. New York: Abrams Image, 2010.  

Myspace

Luke Y.



History
Before Facebook became the behemoth it is today, there was Myspace.

A social network based on music-sharing, Myspace was founded in August 2003 by employees of eUniverse, an internet marketing company.  The founders were encouraged by the potential seen in other online communities, namely Friendster.  

On January 2004, the site officially launched.  After just one month, 1 million people had signed up with the website.  After 10 months, the number of users was at 5 million. Within a year, Myspace had become a force to be reckoned with, showcasing unprecedented adoption rates and high user engagement.

In 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought Myspace’s parent company for $580 million, putting Myspace at a valuation of around $327 million.  Needless to say, Myspace had officially become a very big, very profitable company.  It was fastly becoming the most popular site, a go-to for connecting with friends.

In July 2006, Myspace became the most visited website in the nation, beating out Google and Yahoo.  In fact, it accounted for 80% of all traffic on social networks.  News Corp. was seen as having gotten a great bargain for its $580 million deal the year prior.

Myspace reached its peak in December 2008 with 76 million unique U.S. visitors. However, by 2008, Myspace faced a contender building serious buzz online: Facebook. 

New kid on the block.

After this point, we saw Myspace slowly crumble.  The CEO and co-founder stepped down in April 2009, and the number of users was down about 4 percent from the previous year, showing that people were actually actively leaving the service.  Albeit these warning signs, Myspace was still the largest social network in the U.S. during this time.

Later in 2009, Facebook officially beat out Myspace as the most used platform.  Myspace was losing steam, fast.  With its overly-customized profile pages, Myspace was losing its users to Facebook, a site with incredible minimalist designs and simplicity of use.  While Myspace pages pushed users to customize them and add elements, Facebook gave them much less options for a more streamlined look across the site.  The photo-tagging and event-sharing functions especially helped Facebook take off virally.  To add fuel to the fire, the fact that Facebook had started as a college-only social network made it seem cooler and more exclusive. Because it also made people use their real names, it seemed like a cleaner, safer alternative.

Busy.

Clean.

In January 2011, Myspace was forced to lay off nearly half of its employees, as around 500 people were let go.  Myspace then went “on sale” in April 2011.  It was severely hurting as a company, with its user base dwindling.  Between January and February alone, it had lost 10 million users.  Losses from the last quarter of 2011 summed up to $156 million.

With the company in obvious decline, investors remained skittish.  Although the deadline for bids was May, it wasn’t acquired until June 29.  

In 2011, Myspace sold for $35 million.  More than $500 million lower than it was worth 6 years prior.

Current State
After spending 3 years as the most visited social networking site in the world, it is now a shell of its former self.  Myspace had less than half as many visitors last year as it did when it peaked. While in June 2009 it had 1,600 employees, last year it was down to 200.

Currently, it is in the process of being revamped.  Its new owner Specific Media LLC has partnered with Justin Timberlake to breathe new life into the social network, focusing more on its music aspects.  Considering Myspace started out and flourished as a community based around music, maybe its best future lies in exploring its past.






References:
http://blog.alexa.com/2008/05/facebook-overtakes-myspace_07.html
http://mashable.com/2006/07/11/myspace-americas-number-one/
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-06-29/news-corp-calls-quits-on-myspace-with-specific-media-sale.html
http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/11/technology/myspace_layoffs/index.htm

Vlogging

The Vlogbrothers

The first time I became aware of “vlogging” was on July 18, 2007 when a video titled Accio Deathly Hallows (no spoilers) was featured on the front page of YouTube. The video was a man singing a song he’d written about the final book in the Harry Potter series and the excitement he felt to read the conclusion mixed sadness he felt about the series ending. As a huge Harry Potter fan, I immediately loved the song and was interested to learn more about this person making videos. And that’s how I was introduced to the Vlogbrothers.

The Vlogbrothers (that being their YouTube user name) are two real-life brothers, John and Hank Green. On January 1st of 2007, John and Hank started a year long video-blogging (AKA vlogging) project called Brotherhood 2.0. They ceased all text-based communication in favor of creating videos for each other every weekday. These videos were all posted publicly to YouTube. After Brotherhood 2.0 ended, they continued to make videos (albeit less frequently) and as of April 29, 2012 they have uploaded 957 videos and amassed 217,126,321 video views on their main channel, and created 4 subchannels: SciShow, in which Hank discusses science news, CrashCourse, an educational channel in which John teaches world history and Hank teaches chemistry, HankGames, in which both Hank and John play video games, and TruthOrFail, an online gameshow featuring other YouTubers. The Vlogbrothers are one example of popular video bloggers. With the rise of YouTube, users have been able make a living by creating online video content.

Beginnings of Vlogging and The Show With Ze Frank

Adam Kontras posted the first ever video blog on January 2nd of 2000 alongside a blog post. That video was the first post in the longest running vlog in history. In 2004, Steve Garfield started his own video blog. Shortly after, a video blogging group was created in Yahoo! Groups. In February 2005, three former PayPal employees founded YouTube, and the popularity of vlogging skyrocketed.

Although Kontras technically posted the first vlog, most vloggers today credit Ze Frank with inspiring them to start vlogging. On March 17, 2006, Ze Frank started a video-blogging project called the show with ze frank. The project lasted one year with Frank posting a video about 2-3 minutes in length every weekday (with very few exceptions). During the course of the show, Frank created many projects that got his audience to interact. This including things like asking viewers to dress up their vacuums and send in pictures to be featured on the show. On the May 16th episode of the show he challenged his viewers to create an “Earth Sandwich” by placing pieces of bread directly opposite one another on the globe. Amazingly, the task was completed.

On February 27, 2012, Frank announced that he wanted to start another vlogging project. The project was funded by his audience through crowd fundraising website Kickstarter. On April 9, 2012, Frank debuted his new project, a show on his YouTube channel, zefrank1.

Vloggers Today

charlieissocoollike

JennaMarbles

wheezywaiter

communitychannel

ItsKingsleyBitch

Twitter

Twitter is arguably the most well-known and used social networking engine of our generation. Despite its launch 2 years after the reigning champion, Facebook, it had no issue gaining users and worldwide popularity. Twitter’s influence reaches far beyond the social realm, it has been a key player in political movements, safety notification technologies, and donations in times of crisis.

Twitter emerged from a daylong brainstorming session inspired by the idea of Flickr and SMS codes. When Jack Dorsey came up with the name he was looking for something that expressed the brevity and lightheartedness of the messages. It was launched publicly in July 2006 however didn’t hit its peak until 2007 during the South by Southwest Interactive conference. During this time tweets had increased from about 20,000 tweets a day to 60,000. This was because the conference was using twitter to deliver live updates of events, which were also projected on monitors throughout the hallways of the conference. Seeing the effectiveness of these short messages in action generated many new users for the site.

Its most popular use is still for social purposes but who’s to say that’s not important? By asking the most basic of questions, “What are you doing?” we are able to feel connected to others in our lives. Twitter fills in where email and text messages fail. It would be irrelevant for me to text a friend from back home that I was reading a new book, and the information is too short and unimportant for an email. However my friend may be bored at home and wondering what I am up to, in that case on her own time she can check in on me and have a better sense of what’s going on in my life.  David Carr, a writer for the New York Times, comments on his experience with twitter, “I’m in narrative on more things in a given moment than I ever thought possible, and instead of spending a half-hour surfing in search of illumination, I get a sense of the day’s news and how people are reacting to it in the time that it takes to wait for coffee at Starbucks.”

The writer above is referencing the useful machine that twitter has become. In addition to keeping friends up to date with each other’s lives twitter serves as a news hub with accessibility to millions of people across the world in an instant. Recently the University of Pittsburgh had turned to twitter to keep students up to date on bomb threat evacuations and policies. Email updates would not be able to reach students on their way to class and after a few weeks students were unsubscribing from the EMS text messages because of the volume they received each day. Twitter served as a perfect solution because students could check the status of their buildings on the way to class on their own time. Others have turned to twitter in times of crisis for example to generate donations in times of need. When natural disasters occur and the Red Cross is looking for funding they can tweet links of how to donate, which in turn can be accessed by anyone on a mobile phone or computer. Twitter has been used in countless ways for example: for job applications, campaigning for political offices, product recalls, weather updates, and so much more. The majority of users in fact have no idea of twitter’s capability.

In addition to well-known news services like CNN (@cnni) bloggers such as Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton) and Boston Barstool Sports (@Barstool_Sports) have created quite a twitter following. Users can choose to subscribe to any users they are interested in without the pressure of having to share any of their information or “tweets” in return. This is because the list of people you follow and those who follow you are different and thus are customizable to your choosing. Additionally twitter has “hashtags” build into their online community. Anything that comes after a hashtag in a tweet will appear in a different color and links to all other tweets including that same hashtag. This allows users to browse and discover either by usernames or topics.

Because of the nature of these short messages new services emerge everyday. Accounts exist that keep track of your fuel mileage and rank your success at a “green” lifestyle. Other services can be programmed to turn lights off in your house or send you reminders throughout the day. The usefulness of twitter has not yet been fully explore because to some degree it is still in its infancy. However in the 6 short years it has been around a number of celebrities have found ways to connect with their fans. Lady Gaga, topping the charts with 23,621,657 followers, has released information about new songs and albums exclusively to her twitter followers. Check out the list below and see how your own twitter account stacks up to those most popular on the revolutionary social site.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/weekinreview/03carr.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

http://twittercounter.com/pages/100

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-09/what-can-i-do-twitter