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The Amateur Overtaking The Professional

                Social media is rapidly changing the way people communicate and share ideas. Rather than a static book or website that people merely read and absorb, they now have the power, in multiple ways, to talk, tweet, post, blog, or do a quite a number of other things in response. These powers used to be exclusive to the professional until recent achievements in our constant expansion of communication took hold. Academic disciplines in the form of classification by means of the Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress Classification System have fallen wayside to folksonomies much to the dismay of those in academia. The question remains however: Does the strengthening role of amateurs in social media have a negative impact on our( community)? The answer..   The rise of the amateur in the digital media realm does lead to a necessary devaluation of the professional not unlike the ideas of Karl Marx. The hierarchy is flattening to a Grassroots driven web community where money is decreasing as a factor and bullshit is being exposed.

                The rise of the amateur is creating a grass-roots approach in which the community drives the movement of media. It is a non-traditional power structure, an upheaval against the status quo of only professional creation. Amateurs can participate immediately by merely logging into a number of social networking sites and sharing anything they would like to. Simplicity in many uploading processes has been achieved on websites like Facebook and YouTube.  Not only the data itself but the metadata (data about data) is being produced by amateurs as well in the forms of comments and reviews. Designers and manufacturers can look at the responses and cater to the requests that they see or directly enable a participatory design scheme in which all stakeholders are actively involved to ensure that the product satisfies. On websites like Alltop that gather the most popular news stories from every website and organizes them on one page it is fellow readers, not editors, that are deeming what is most important and interesting. People cycle information through the web in this way at an incredible rate of speed that professionals could never keep up with.  Anyone has been given the capacity to change the world, or to deter someone from buying a faulty camera. (mention mashups?..)

                The professionals are scared, and for good reason. Charles Murray, a seasoned and well-known author, recently complained on the American Enterprise Institute blog that his contribution to the co-op page of the New York Times only earned him $75. Media platforms are beginning to recognize that there are many people who would be happy to produce articles, movies, and photographs and post them all over the internet for free. Many productions make up in character what they lose in professional editing techniques, such as the Bed Intruder song on YouTube. Experiments such as these are less restricted because millions of dollars in production costs are not lost when there is a fluke. Millions of videos are posted and some catch fire. No longer do amateurs pay for the privilege of enjoying professional content. The content is the currency. This does mean that many parties involved are losing money from these sources but there are ways to cash in. A huge part of the new social media is the tracking of what people want and selling them just that. Social networking creates friends, which in turn creates more business partners and customers for companies. Websites to aid with this are also being created, like Spreadfast. Spreadfast is a web-based software that tracks people’s views and interactions on companies pages or blog. This helps companies recognize what the most successful methods are for attracting more attention to their companies.  Professional time and commitment still makes content more valuable and there is definitely still a place for it today. I’m not going to stop attending mind-blowing action films containing Batman realistically scaling buildings to sit at home and watch YouTube videos, and I speak on behalf of many more than myself.

                The new social media is doing the reputable deed of exposing consumers to bullshit....

SOURCES thus far:

The Blurring Line Between Amateur And Professional

Karl Marx

http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html

Folksonomy

Participatory Design

Social Media Transparancy: How realistic is it?

http://alltop.com/

Grassroots

Web 2.0

1. Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??
   
   I think that amateur user-generated content will get better over time because information on how to improve home-produced content will become more and more available through social networking. Users could begin to create applications that assist amateurs in producing media. People still appreciate well-produced content: It is smoother and easier to look at. Amateur web-content is still in its early stages...technology will continue to improve and the technology that is only available to professionals today will become cheaper and more available to the public.
   
   
   
   
2. What social media sites do you find yourself using the most, and why? In your opinion why is Facebook so much more successful than MySpace, and do you think Facebook is "here to stay" for the long term?
   
   The social media sits that I use the most are StumbleUpon and Facebook. StumbleUpon is a social media site because users can share websites that they have deemed "favorites." StumbleUpon links users automatically through facebook friends. I use StumbleUpon because it gives me websites under categories that I have listed under my Interests. It is simple and fast to flip through the different websites, and gives me a variety of topics that I want to read about. I use facebook because it is as addictive as crack, and to keep in touch with friends that are now far away after graduating high school. I like that endless database of pictures that my friends and I have accumulated over time. I also use it for event invitations and to keep track of the different clubs that I am in here at Marist.
   
3. Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?
   
   It is an important concept because a very positive aspect of social media is that people are generally sharing authentic, unpaid opinions for the purpose of serving an enlightening their fellow people, rather than them just being fooled by corporations who are skewing information for money. If the bloggers are now being paid to support businesses or ideas, their postings may include skewed, biased opinions as well. Transparency is necessary so that the people who are reading the blogs or whatever the online media may be know what the motives behind the post were. It is less important in the offline world because it is generally assumed that all the advertisements we see are definitely for money. It is the company themselves making the advertisement, so obviously they are trying to make money.
   
   

Photoshop

McLuhan Photoshop Final Post

 The television is in his studio, painting a portrait of Snooki. There are other paintings on the wall of various images from reality television. Art is something that people look up to and admire;  reality television is giving people new images to look up to, for better or for worse. The message that reality TV gives by constantly flooding the airwaves with trash is that this is what America has become and it is acceptable for people to act that way. The television producers, represented by the evil face, are acting based on the amount of money they are making. The use of the art gallery as the setting reflects the change from paper to digital media.

Medium Is The Message: Project Idea

The television is in his studio, painting a portrait of snooki. There are other paintings on the wall of various images from reality television. Art is something that people look up to and admire, the television is causing people to look up to and imitate reality TV that may not be so admirable.

Reality TV

Reality TV is a genre that has become increasingly popular over the past few years. From the endless amounts of celebrity (and non celebrity) dating shows, to MTV shows such as The Real World and Jersey Shore, in which a bunch of maximum personality strangers are tossed in the same house together to see what drama can be caused, people are being exposed to these "role models" in excessive amounts.

New Media

 Applications on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod are one of the newest media outlets. In a matter of minutes, applications containing information regarding movie times, music, the weather, and even cocktail recipes can be downloaded on to a small device that can be brought anywhere. There are hundreds of applications available currently, and more are being made every day. They are very useful to many companies for advertising purposes and as another way to sell their product. For example, Glamour magazine is now an iPad application that readers can download and bring wherever they go. This media outlet will continue to expand as more companies create applications.

Wikipedia is another new media. Rather than go to the library and see stacks upon stacks of volumes that compose a single encyclopedia, researchers can easily find what they are looking for by typing their subject into a search box. Paper encyclopedias are only as up to date as their published date, while Wikipedia can evolve with the times. The only downside to Wikipedia is that anyone, and I mean ANYONE can update it as they please and put on false information. I couldn't tell you if people do this because they find it amusing or just downright ignorant, but either way it occurs to the extent that teachers don't accept it as a legitimate source.

Digital books are also going very mainstream. From textbooks to novels, paper books are being converted into their digital counterparts. On the iPad, there is a digital library that resembles a bookshelf. You pick what book you would like to read and flip the pages by sliding your finger across the screen. You can bookmark pages, make notes, and easily go back to the table of contents. Even the hassle of finding your page by flipping through it is eliminated. Although I hope people aren't lazy to the extent that that components of books bothered them, at least the weight of a 700 page novel is compressed. And you can carry many books around at once! The convienience of these new digital media outlets are overwhelming!