Creating New Media

An online site for COM491

Is this the next generation smart phone?  If this came to market, who would buy this?

More information about the Seabird here.

Senator Lugar

Today the New York Times features a short profile of long-time Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, who may face Tea Party opposition in the Republican primary here in 2012.  Read the piece to learn a few details of Senator Lugar’s significant career in influencing - and, at times, leading - America’s foreign policy, even when it meant taking on his own party’s leadership, including Ronald Reagan, on issues like freedom for Nelson Mandela and nuclear disarmament.  Tea Party activists here in Indiana now think Lugar is too moderate and want him out of the Senate. 

More on: What’s Next?

Appreciate Andrea’s attention to the question I posted on my blog last week!  Thoughts from the rest of you?

Replying to Maura’s blog post about what’s next in social media and where we categorize people who chose not to participate in social media, I must admit that last night, when I got home from work, I gave in and reactivated my Facebook. Mostly the reasons I did this were personal, but I also decided that it wasn’t something I was going to do forever and over the last week I did learn that if I just hit ‘log out’ on Facebook, instead of sitting there waiting for people to IM me, I’ll probably be more productive. I didn’t end up lasting a month without it like I wanted to, and really, until yesterday I hadn’t missed it… At all. I still am finding a lot of other peoples’ lives completely uninteresting now that I’m back on there. 

I think that in the future, we might see another major social network take over like Facebook has. I don’t think that Myspace will last much longer since it’s seeming to become sort of trashy. 

As for people who choose not to participate in social media… I think that everyone will eventually participate in some form… If they don’t, and I know some people choose not to have cell phones or Facebook or something, but I think that they will just be a little bit behind on the news and such. I think someday people might get sick of Facebook and realize that there’s not really a reason to keep tabs on every person you’ve ever met in your life, but I think that will come with time. I think right now technology is consuming the US public, but that will probably change a little bit when the iPhone and iPad hype dies down.  Right now everything is about being faster, smaller, better, but I think people will get sick of all of that eventually. Some days it’s so nice not to be tied down to my e-mail or Facebook… I think other people will begin to figure that out, too. But until then, welcome to the social media revolution.

“Huffington Post’s Eric Hippeau on making news pay” in this video on the website of Britain’s Telegraph.  Do you agree with what he says about pay walls?  What do you think of the Huffington Post’s twin revenue strategies, social marketing and social commerce?

Groups 3 and 4 - of interest

Slate’s Tim Noah writes about how New York Times readers can avoid paying full price for their subscriptions.  (What a nice service to provide consumers during this era of drain-circling newspaper profits.)  The story details current and upcoming app fee rates for various newspapers - I’d confirm with at least a second source.  What word of a pay wall for regular Internet readers?