My Second Twebinar

My Second Twebinar

Today was my second Twebinar day. The Twebinar is a Web-based social media seminar conducted via online video session and Twitter live stream. It was organized by Radian6 and hosted by Chris Brogan.

The Twebinar's theme was: "Who really owns your brand?" It was announced as "a roundhouse discussion on all that's brand in the Web2.0 world."

Some of the questions of today's Twebinar were: "Where are all of the conversations? Does it matter whether it's begun by an influencer? What can you do now that you can't control every aspect of a brand? Who, if anyone, owns 'your' brand?"

Compared to the first Twebinar, I was glad to notice the improvements. Almost all of the points I made here were addressed in the right manner:

• Twebinar #2 was more interactive because Chris discussed with his guests in real time and addressed some of the questions being raised via Twitter.
  

• This time, Twebinar was more structured, focused on one topic--the destiny of brands in the social media world.

• Twebinar #2 was a live-stream session, featuring "live" speakers, and sparkling conversations (much more social than the first one).

• The Twitter conversation was centralized through one Twitter stream.
  

• Richard Binhammer (Dell) was a good choice--spontaneous, insightful and down to earth.
  

However, the Twebinar was not as exciting as expected.

It seems that our social media leaders got a little tired and lost their "evangelistic" attributes. Or is it just the fact that we need to find some new perspectives in our social media discussions? Should we let some fresh air in our social causerie?

What do you think?

Social Media News Release

Social Media News Release


American University's Center for Social Media recently announced the release of a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. This document, created by a team of scholars, lawyers, and new media enthusiast from leading universities, is "a clear statement about what constitutes fair use in online video." Before the code's release, there were no adequate documents on this issue.

I'm currently developing a social media news release (SMNR) that will spread the word on the code of best practices. The traditional, mainstream press release for the code can be found here. My first draft of the SMNR for the Center for Social Media, which is a "work in progress" (it will have sidebars, not so many pages) looks like this:

And here is a simple flaw chart:
SMNR is a new revamped version of the traditional news release. It serves the same purpose as the traditional one--to spread the news about any relevant event, product, etc .

After more than 100 years of being used in the same, standard format, in 2006/2008 (thanks to Todd Defren from the SHIFT communications who offered the first and second SMNR template and Tom Foremski and his famous blog post "Die! Press Release! Die!") traditional press release evolved and started to assimilate some social media components. It became less narrative, more visual, and easier to share among the online communities. The new release is comprised of short bulleted facts, multimedia (images, video, audio), links, quotes, and tags. With the 2008 version, SMNR became even more interactive, with embedded links for comments.

I'm still looking for the best template/software for my SMNR so if you have any suggestions and experience in developing SMNR do let me know!

Social Media and Postmodern Poetics

Social Media and Postmodern Poetics

Widely used social media terms such as remixing and remixability are just well coined “tags” for the phenomenon established a long ago in the postmodern poetics. However we name them, there are certain distinctive features embodied in all artistic creations developed within the postmodern frame. The same applies to the postmodern communication theory:

"Working through such modes as appropriation, synthesis, recombination, mutation and generation, postmodern poetics expresses a commitment to the dialogical, social world."
(Conte, Joseph M. Unending Design: the Form of Postmodern Poetry)

In the postmodern poetics, as well as in our social media world, the phenomenon of the author and the institution of authorship have been deconstructed.

Similarly, in the Web-based communications, everyone is a potential author, contributor, and message creator . The concept of a traditional author (or a message creator) is deconstructed and replaced by a collective authorship. The individual as well as an organization cedes control over the communicative process.

User-generated content has become a distinctive feature of new interactive media. As a consequence, the content is not only created by a “collective intelligence,” it is also formed through the network of other contents.

Every digital text refers to many other documents by using a number of links embedded in the text. This hypertextuality (or we can call it "remixability" if you want) results in a fragmented digital text whose meaning co-exists simultaneously within an interconnected system of other texts. The final product is like a palimpsest; it assimilates all other texts that refer to or from it, but still keeps their integrity alive.

Furthermore, message recipients are no longer passive consumers but active participants in content creation. As a consequence, the traditional concept of a reader has been deconstructed as well, since the recipient has become a producer and an active contributor in communication process.

Social media also signifies a transformation of the old two-way communication model and the creation of a new all-way dispersive communication model. This model has been also developed from the poetics of postmodernism. New communication practice incorporates an “all-together” mentality which is why social media means primarily the democratization of communication. Participation, sharing, collaboration, and interactivity are the crucial terms in explaining the nature of new media and its impact on communication.

This postmodern change has only culminated in our times because of the production of the new Web 2.0 tools and applications that have enabled practicing new modes of connections and communications. This is inherent in the two-way communication model and it was advocated long before social media, but social media has made it even more essential.