I don't know if anyone has seen the commercial for Sterling airlines on television lately - but the song in that video is brilliant and the group behind it is equally brilliant - with a terrible name. The commercial is here by the way. The group is called Bang gang, their from iceland and make really good pop music. I have been listening to them for the past couple of days. Their Myspace is here, where they have four songs that you can stream. I really recommend downloading there latest album.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Discussion: communitys
First of all I would like to start by saying that I will discuss online-communitys in this post and that I have been trying to get this post posted for a while now but I was not able to log in. My own experience in online-communitys is not that good, which has to do with the fact that I do not really like communitys where you have to register to see the material – which leads to the question about the difference between gated and open communitys. As I see it almost all communitys are in some way gated, since there is always some sort of registration. I do not see a big difference in appearance when it comes to gated and open communitys, but there is a difference in the attitude from the user. A user of an open community might be as serious as one in a gated community, but as I see it there is a greater responsibility in a gated community. If for example anyone can write what they want in a forum, then you will have the problem with people spamming and arguing in a sense which is not good for a community. This has a lot to do with how long the user has been in a certain community. Here I see a problem. I have many times felt that I do not want to join a community solely because there is no acceptance for new users. It could for example be so called “Stupid questions” – but as I see you have to have the right to ask these questions before you learn the system. When it comes to quality of course there most likely is a higher quality in gated communitys, but it has more to do with the users than the community itself or even the subject which it surrounds.
When it comes to communitys where you pay to gain access to certain material or to get higher ranking I do feel that these communitys in a one way is better, but there is also a feeling that sometimes people just pay for something which could have been for free. That the users that want to be part of the community have to pay, since this is what the community is all about. For myself I can of course relate to Xbox-live – which is Microsoft’s online platform for games on their gaming system. Thing is that there you have an automatic silver membership, but if you want to gain access to online gaming and download demos and so on you have to pay for a gold membership. As I see it, there really isn’t any reason having a silver or gold membership, since if you want to get the online experience, you need the gold one. Basically if you’re not interested in playing online, then you wouldn’t plug in the broadband cable. Paying for a membership does give the user more motivation, but again it is about the commitment you have for the community that is going to make the difference – whether your commitment is money or anything else.
Now for the quality versus quantity question – it is a bit like asking the question about the meaning of life, there is easy answers and there is extremely deep one’s which would take years to come up with. It all comes down to how you define quality and quantity. It also depend on what you focus is. Is it the interface, is it the people or perhaps the overall experience? For me it is about the overall experience – I can for example not like all the users or even hate some if the experience is right. That is actually the case with Xbox-live. I play with the friends on my friendslist, but apart from that I just don’t care.
When it comes to quantity I personally prefer smaller communitys simply because it is easier to keep track of everyone, but then again it depends on why you are there. Myspace is a good example of a community that is far too big. From the beginning it was more or less an underground community for underground artists. Today it has grown to become a huge community with millions of users. I used to like Myspace, I was there everyday listening to new music and sharing my own. Now days I visit it maybe once a week, just because I feel that I have too. Myspace is dying – not because of its users but by spammers, old profiles and most of all the lack of ability to reborn itself. You still need a Myspace if you’re in the music industry, since it has replaced the demo, but at the same time this is mainly because there isn’t any alternative. I don’t go to Myspace for new music anymore, since there really isn’t easy to browse among the massive amount of profiles. If I may use a cliché: it is like finding a needle in a haystack. It feels like Myspace is a graveyard for old profiles as well as bands that think that just because they’re on Myspace they are destined to make it in the music industry. Now days I found music somewhere else and perhaps go to Myspace to see if there are more songs from a specific artist.
To be able to control a community you have to have rules – it is essential. After that I just feel that any form of reprimand that is necessary to control the community should be used. I do agree with my friend on this one – a combination is probably the most effective.
Online relationships are a tricky question, since they in many ways will lead to relationships which may also be part of your everyday life. I don’t draw a line between online and IRL-relationships – in theory. Since you can always be connected nowadays, online relationships are in a way more real in the sense that many of these relationships can be reached through computers or mobile/cell phones. I suppose that it is also the reason why people feel attractive to them, since you just as easily can disappear by going offline. It is easy to see the person on the other side as just a fictional idea and not a real person. In real life relationships there is a higher form of commitment – you can’t just walk away and even if you can it would hurt more. I ask myself where I cross the line from being in an online relationship to where I consider the relationship to be real. I am not talking about relationships as in a “boy meets girl situation” – I am talking in general terms. My conclusion is that when people I meet online make it from their forum and into my private sphere – such as mobile/cell phones or messaging services – I consider them real, which is kind of ironic since these tools are digital too. I suppose that this is how the future will look, that the higher our connectivity gets the more will the blurry line between real and digital relations become more… blurry.
When it comes to media in these new forums, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life – I do feel that the potential in these markets are great if you figure out how to use them in a clever way. That is from a marketing perspective. I am afraid that it will become like Myspace – that you put too much energy in just being there then on using it right. Say that a company would use World of Warcraft in a commercial way – I think that they would just take advantage of being there first then to use it as a marketing tool and when people understand that it is someone using it use media to further increase the focus. I also think it inevitable that old media has to fuse with new media – since people is not going to abandon new media. Again in the end it is about connectivity.
I have already looked upon Facebook and its rules and regulations. I would like to look on two more communities that I am part of. The first one I have mention – that is Xbox-live. The document clearly states – like any other document of that kind – that it is I as a user that will oblige to any changes in the service and that it is for non-commercial use. Also that it is the user that has the responsibility for the account. This pretty much is what is expected. When it comes to how you leave the service you have to call Microsoft’s support. I have much to say about their support, but I think that’ll be a later post. Let’s just say that all my language knowledge from Xbox-live – especially swearwords – comes in handy when calling there sometimes.
The next segment is even more fun since it involves what you can and can not do while using the service – that is: playing online. Basically it says that you can’t harass anyone online – and my question is: has anyone who wrote this text actually played online? Sure for most parts my online experience has been nothing but good – but that doesn’t mean that there has been harassment and inappropriate language. It happens every time I go online. Most of the time I have also been playing a game which clearly states that you need to be 18 years of age to play – and what do I hear on the other end of my headset? Correct – I hear a swearing, for most part, annoying 7-12 year old that tries to prove something with his gaming by telling everyone how good he is and that the rest of us are idiots. Basically everyone in that particular room should have been banned.
Now to the next community – problem is that its rules have already been discussed in a similar post. Which is really not a problem, but it feels like it would be unnecessary to discuss something that someone else already has written. I am talking about Myspace. Now you can find its rules here. What I found most interesting about Myspace is not the rules itself – but the fact that people do there best to brake them. As I said earlier in this post there are a lot of old and fake profiles, the later controlled with bots. This brings me to a crucial opinion: people are ready brake the rules in order to get seen on a platform that is overfilled with spam and the owners do not do much about it. I think this is sad since Myspace has the potential to grow as a community.
So these are my view on communitys. I will most likely come back to more discussions on Myspace in later posts.
When it comes to communitys where you pay to gain access to certain material or to get higher ranking I do feel that these communitys in a one way is better, but there is also a feeling that sometimes people just pay for something which could have been for free. That the users that want to be part of the community have to pay, since this is what the community is all about. For myself I can of course relate to Xbox-live – which is Microsoft’s online platform for games on their gaming system. Thing is that there you have an automatic silver membership, but if you want to gain access to online gaming and download demos and so on you have to pay for a gold membership. As I see it, there really isn’t any reason having a silver or gold membership, since if you want to get the online experience, you need the gold one. Basically if you’re not interested in playing online, then you wouldn’t plug in the broadband cable. Paying for a membership does give the user more motivation, but again it is about the commitment you have for the community that is going to make the difference – whether your commitment is money or anything else.
Now for the quality versus quantity question – it is a bit like asking the question about the meaning of life, there is easy answers and there is extremely deep one’s which would take years to come up with. It all comes down to how you define quality and quantity. It also depend on what you focus is. Is it the interface, is it the people or perhaps the overall experience? For me it is about the overall experience – I can for example not like all the users or even hate some if the experience is right. That is actually the case with Xbox-live. I play with the friends on my friendslist, but apart from that I just don’t care.
When it comes to quantity I personally prefer smaller communitys simply because it is easier to keep track of everyone, but then again it depends on why you are there. Myspace is a good example of a community that is far too big. From the beginning it was more or less an underground community for underground artists. Today it has grown to become a huge community with millions of users. I used to like Myspace, I was there everyday listening to new music and sharing my own. Now days I visit it maybe once a week, just because I feel that I have too. Myspace is dying – not because of its users but by spammers, old profiles and most of all the lack of ability to reborn itself. You still need a Myspace if you’re in the music industry, since it has replaced the demo, but at the same time this is mainly because there isn’t any alternative. I don’t go to Myspace for new music anymore, since there really isn’t easy to browse among the massive amount of profiles. If I may use a cliché: it is like finding a needle in a haystack. It feels like Myspace is a graveyard for old profiles as well as bands that think that just because they’re on Myspace they are destined to make it in the music industry. Now days I found music somewhere else and perhaps go to Myspace to see if there are more songs from a specific artist.
To be able to control a community you have to have rules – it is essential. After that I just feel that any form of reprimand that is necessary to control the community should be used. I do agree with my friend on this one – a combination is probably the most effective.
Online relationships are a tricky question, since they in many ways will lead to relationships which may also be part of your everyday life. I don’t draw a line between online and IRL-relationships – in theory. Since you can always be connected nowadays, online relationships are in a way more real in the sense that many of these relationships can be reached through computers or mobile/cell phones. I suppose that it is also the reason why people feel attractive to them, since you just as easily can disappear by going offline. It is easy to see the person on the other side as just a fictional idea and not a real person. In real life relationships there is a higher form of commitment – you can’t just walk away and even if you can it would hurt more. I ask myself where I cross the line from being in an online relationship to where I consider the relationship to be real. I am not talking about relationships as in a “boy meets girl situation” – I am talking in general terms. My conclusion is that when people I meet online make it from their forum and into my private sphere – such as mobile/cell phones or messaging services – I consider them real, which is kind of ironic since these tools are digital too. I suppose that this is how the future will look, that the higher our connectivity gets the more will the blurry line between real and digital relations become more… blurry.
When it comes to media in these new forums, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life – I do feel that the potential in these markets are great if you figure out how to use them in a clever way. That is from a marketing perspective. I am afraid that it will become like Myspace – that you put too much energy in just being there then on using it right. Say that a company would use World of Warcraft in a commercial way – I think that they would just take advantage of being there first then to use it as a marketing tool and when people understand that it is someone using it use media to further increase the focus. I also think it inevitable that old media has to fuse with new media – since people is not going to abandon new media. Again in the end it is about connectivity.
I have already looked upon Facebook and its rules and regulations. I would like to look on two more communities that I am part of. The first one I have mention – that is Xbox-live. The document clearly states – like any other document of that kind – that it is I as a user that will oblige to any changes in the service and that it is for non-commercial use. Also that it is the user that has the responsibility for the account. This pretty much is what is expected. When it comes to how you leave the service you have to call Microsoft’s support. I have much to say about their support, but I think that’ll be a later post. Let’s just say that all my language knowledge from Xbox-live – especially swearwords – comes in handy when calling there sometimes.
The next segment is even more fun since it involves what you can and can not do while using the service – that is: playing online. Basically it says that you can’t harass anyone online – and my question is: has anyone who wrote this text actually played online? Sure for most parts my online experience has been nothing but good – but that doesn’t mean that there has been harassment and inappropriate language. It happens every time I go online. Most of the time I have also been playing a game which clearly states that you need to be 18 years of age to play – and what do I hear on the other end of my headset? Correct – I hear a swearing, for most part, annoying 7-12 year old that tries to prove something with his gaming by telling everyone how good he is and that the rest of us are idiots. Basically everyone in that particular room should have been banned.
Now to the next community – problem is that its rules have already been discussed in a similar post. Which is really not a problem, but it feels like it would be unnecessary to discuss something that someone else already has written. I am talking about Myspace. Now you can find its rules here. What I found most interesting about Myspace is not the rules itself – but the fact that people do there best to brake them. As I said earlier in this post there are a lot of old and fake profiles, the later controlled with bots. This brings me to a crucial opinion: people are ready brake the rules in order to get seen on a platform that is overfilled with spam and the owners do not do much about it. I think this is sad since Myspace has the potential to grow as a community.
So these are my view on communitys. I will most likely come back to more discussions on Myspace in later posts.
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