So far, over at Vimeo.com, where we’ll be hosting Pinprick’s endeavors, we’ve got some comments encouraging us to stick with ‘Hump City’.  However, this bad boy doesn’t debut until May 19th, (in 2010, for those time travelers out there).  So, we still have SIX, count ‘em, SIX (6) (!) whole days to lock down a title.

We believe in the power and potential of social media.  We also believe that the general narratological ambiguity of this teaser (watch below) will invite some crazy ideas from the hoi polloi.  Why?  Because we want this show to be as much about the fans as it is about the content contained therein.  What better way to do this then to ask the Internets™ to take some unofficial co-ownership of this our humble foray in to Web television by coming up with the moniker.

So, will you, dear friend of watching hipsters make total fools of themselves, propose a name for this sucker?  You can do so in the comments below, or, if you have a Vimeo account, you can do it there, too.  THANK YOU.  LIKE, TIMES ELEVENTY.

Upcoming Pinprick Films Web Comedy Project from Pinprick Films on Vimeo.

What would you call this show? Give us your idea below!

This post is REALLY long. I’ve included headings that might help you navigate the boring bits, but skip to the bottom because it has the best parts.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I have a lot of Facebook friends.  As of May 2010, I am clocking in somewhere near 1000 connections, though I’m sure that kind of number is far from unheard of on the Interwebs.  Still, I’d say it’s significant.  I believe I saw a statistic somewhere that mentioned that the average Facebook user has upwards of 400 Facebook friends, although some sociologists get all whiney about the Dunbar number and say you can only ever really have 150 stable social connections and yadda yadda yadda.  Listen, we all know there is a big difference between an on-line friend and a IRL friend, though often a personal connection can represent both.  In other words, I think the sociologists should find other silly facts to get all uppity about and let us have our social networking fun.

Being a man who works in social media, I find it important to have many Facebook friends for several reasons.  For starters, it expands my potential reach and overall presence on the Web (or, if you’re in marketing, it’s the more eyeballs the better).  When I produce a new video, write a new blog entry, find something remarkable in connection to a professional venture, or otherwise publish worthwhile personal- or business-related material, my 1000 connections get to see that.  And because I’m such an egotist, 1000 just isn’t enough – I ‘Add as a Friend’ just about anyone that I meet (this also helps me remember who they are as well as get to know a little bit about them based on their ‘Info’).

It’s all about reach…

Now, before you accuse me of thinking that my friends are just numbers to me, let me illustrate what I’m really talking about here in terms of online reach: a couple of months ago I had the privilege of producing a video of an awareness event for the Greater Northwest Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.  Volunteering in this capacity, I found out through the Chapter that the video was to air as part of a special program regarding MS on a local university’s TV channel.  Through my on-line social connections I was able to inform a social networking specialist at the local NBC TV affiliate, who in turn relayed word about the event to their thousands of Twitter followers, so those followers in turn could be aware and come out for the event that day.  None of this would have been possible if it wasn’t for my drive to ‘Add’ everyone I meet, including this TV station’s social media person.  Although the our social network indicates we’re Friends, in reality we hardly know one another.  But, by knowing her something great happened; it’s got nothing to do with merely numbers – every number is a real person, and good things happen when you’re dealing with real people!

…which brings me to my topic – the silent unfriend, or rather, the sad fact that the silent unfriend even happens.

Putting the ‘Myspace’ in Facebook

Now, this is purely conjecture, but it appears that for many people, Facebook is as much about connecting and sharing with friends and loved ones as it is about narrowcasting to the world, at least to some circle of connections, what you’re all about. danah boyd could probably speak better to this, at least when it comes to Myspace, that digital badlands of youth self-identification, but overall I’d say plenty of self-identifying similarly takes place in the way Facebook profiles are populated and maintained by individual users.  This would certainly apply to who we’re Friends with, because even that list of Facebook friends can say a lot about who a person is – or, at least, who they want the world to think they are.

“I unfriend, therefore I am“

With that ‘self-identification via one’s Friends list’ in mind, there appear to be countless submissions across the Web on the topic of unfriending.  Yes, Oxford’s 2009 Word of the Year, “unfriend“, the act of removing a connection from an on-line social network, has become common parlance.  Lovers unfriending exes over their broken relationships, children unfriending nosy parents, employees unfriending overly-informed bosses, etc, etc.  Generally, there always seems to be some legitimate, viable cause for the unfriend – and it always seems to receive plenty of attention amongst those affected.  It says a lot to proclaim to the world that you’ve unfriended someone.

Silently unfriending

But, then there is the silent, seemingly baseless unfriend.  The one you don’t notice until one day, as you’re looking up some certain somebody to share a link with or ask a question of or otherwise reconnect, you realize that you and that person are no longer listed as friends.  They’ve silently, quietly, casually unfriended you.  And this happens in silence because Facebook, for matters of obvious privacy, does nothing to inform you that you’ve been unfriended.

Reasons for a silent unfriend: 1) Digital Housecleaning

In trying to think of reasons why a connection might silently unfriend a person, several ideas come to mind.  The first I would link to simple housecleaning, although this digital housecleaning is not without certain meanings.  Perhaps you’ve been silently unfriended because the person thinks they were never really friends with you to begin with, or they haven’t heard very much from you apart from occasional postings in their News Feed, or they previously meant to unfriend you for otherwise legitimate reasons like those seen above, but just never got around to it.

2) Image

Then, what next comes to mind is more in the self-identification realm.  Perhaps they’ve unfriended you because they don’t want others to know or think that you’re friends – that that connection might say something to the world about their identity which they feel they don’t have the social capital to pay for.

3) Annoying applications, annoying people

Third, I think about simple “nuisance factors”, although I think this says more about the unfriending party’s ability to employ Facebook’s robust filtering and application-blocking options than it does about the annoying unfriended party.  Sometimes one-too-many Farmville invitations are enough to warrant a silent unfriend.  Or constantly updating one’s status with the contents of one’s day in such a way that virtually begs for an unfriend (warning: link not safe for the easily offended).

4) “Omg U R so creapy (sic)”

Fourth, but sometimes most frighteningly obvious, is that a Facebook user is fearful of an old connection having access to too much of their personal data.  Is that creepy ex-boyfriend stalking you?  How can you really know?  Is he STANDING OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW RIGHT NOW WATCHING YOU READ THIS? and so forth.

But, as pertinent or innocuous as any of these above-mentioned reasonings may be, the sad reality is that so much is not achieved by way of the silent unfriend.  If Facebook’s constantly eroding privacy policies have anything to say about it, the termination of a friend connection by someone who just doesn’t want to deal with the unfriended person any more, despite whatever previous association they might have mutually experienced, doesn’t really do much anything to block them from a great deal of publicly available data.  Granted, fear of being stalked or engaging in unwanted exchanges completely warrants an unfriend – but it might not do anything to stop the unwelcome behavior in real life.

The truth

All of these things aside, ultimately, I’m going to go with a fifth and final reason for why most unfriends take place – they just don’t like you any more.  Or maybe they never did to begin with and they were just being nice when they accepted your initial friend request (although it’s more obvious their feelings have turned if they were the one’s to originally request you).  I often come across old friends that I have noticed have given me the silent unfriend and think to myself: “I’ve done nothing I know of to offend this person. I haven’t even spoken or interfaced with them in ages.  What gives?”  In this new dawn of Likes and Unlikes, could it be they’ve just decided to Unlike me?

I’m a firm believer that people rarely act under coercion or by sheer random chance – they only do what they want to do.  If a person silently unfriends me, it’s because they don’t want to carry some supposed extra social weight, the “responsibility” of being a Facebook friend.

The non-responsibility of being an on-line friend

But, seriously, let’s face it, is there really much responsibility associated with being a digital friend?  Most people just leave their connections on the Friends list, and in doing so, in doing nothing, they’ve already met their social obligation to them.  It’s nothing like in real life, where actual conversation or genuine interaction might be called for.  While I believe that social media is the perfect analogue for real-life social interactions, sans restrictions of geography or time, I don’t presuppose that that comes with some mystical, additional social responsibility.  There is nothing uncomfortable about the online Social, when compared with real life’s social quandaries.  Turn off the computer, pretend you lost your Wi-Fi connection, or just click ‘Ignore’ to begin with.  Not adding a friend is so much more ambiguous in meaning than what actually adding them inherently implies.  The fact that you’re not even in the same room really saves a lot of personal anxiety!

A word of warning against the silent unfriend

In conclusion, before you silently unfriend that old connection, think about the true meaning of digital friendship.  It really has no meaning, so there’s not much to lose in maintaining it, but there might be much to gain by keeping it up.  The next time that random someone posts they’ve just completed research on your favorite medical topic, or that they’ve struck it rich and they’re buying everyone lunch, or that they’ve found the location of Amelia Earhart’s plane which they discovered on their expedition to the south Pacific, or, (and I so wish this would happen to me) their best friend Shaquille O’Neal is having a house party and his friends are welcome to bring guests, you won’t be missing out because your ego is too big for a few extra numbers on your computer screen.  As you can tell, the ‘silent unfriend’ only creates silence in an age where “knowing is half the battle”.  Let this be a warning to you.

You don’t need to have anything to do with me, I understand that.  You don’t even need to be my friend, I also understand that.  I screwed up and handled the break-up and/or how I treated you when we dated incredibly poorly, I definitely understand that.  I am really crazy, like probably chemically crazy, we can probably both agree on that, too.  And, of course, people often just don’t want to associate with exes (or crazy people), I understand and respect that clearly as well.

Nevertheless, I happen to still think you’re pretty cool, so…

What I also understand is that there is often an unhealthy, if minor and mildly annoying, tension – an almost NEED that we artificially create in our minds to protect ourselves – a subconscious (or very concious) game of thinking about how to avoid a person that we previously had some kind of fallout with whenever they happen upon us.  At least, that’s what happens on my end.  Of course, I know I am not the most popular guy in the world, so your side and your thoughts when seeing me in a room could be quite different, but generally, I think that’s what happens.  Negative energy ensues.

But, I also think we all have kind of a common bond, and that’s our mutual associations, friends, and, potentially, future social exchanges of some kind, all of which remains worthwhile.  As for the latter, I’m talking “exchanges” of information, business, or maybe even service, in the least.  I think we just can’t close the “mutually beneficial” doors that life may present to us from time to time.  I know that in my chosen industry, a networker’s paradise, we pretty much never ignore a soul because someday we might be working for them, and vice versa.  Even if not financially.  You might show up for that community volunteer gig and find out the guy you loath is the one with the clipboard!

Anyway, despite all of that, there is a wall that we’ve propped up by our pasts.  It’s this imaginary blockade that requires people to have to circumnavigate it when sailing the social seas.  But, it’s a wall that just doesn’t need to be there, and I personally think it will relieve everyone involved if we just let it go.  Letting it go doesn’t mean becoming insta-friends, or hugs or high-fives, or even smiles; it’s just a shattering of notions, a dismissal of the preconceived (without forgetting the past – which past prevents those hugs and high-fives and maybe even smiles from reoccurring to begin with – trust me, I know how bad I can be).  It’s just an armistice and a decompression, that’s all anybody needs, and all that I seek, so that when encountering a room full of mutual connections one is not thinking about who they hope is not there and so that one is instead simply looking at a room of people and friends, known or not known, and not thinking about anything – there are no mental chess games taking place.  If we manage that, then there are no fake smiles or awkward passings-by, … just, instead, you see that old “once was” (you know, me) and you say “Hey, what’s up?”, or maybe I say it first, and you actually stop to listen, even if just for long enough to indicate your disinterest.  I don’t think it’s a major thing to ask of a person… in fact, I think it’s the price we all pay for simply knowing who a person is.  And you don’t get to un-know.  Knowledge is permanent.

Or, to put this all in more nerdy terms:  I know people are not computers and that life is not a network, but to me, seeing a person that I can’t say hello to and know a little bit more about and associate with when warranted (certainly never forced) is like finding a server that I can’t ping, that’s gone down.  I hate seeing a node down when I scan a list of servers.  I even don’t like knowing that there are nodes physically present that I otherwise can’t see because they’ve been unplugged or something.  To me, they are hiding in plain sight!  I want to bring them all back on-line so that the data of social existence can continue to flow without any workarounds.  Nothing is re-routed, no matter how automagic and indistinguishable the maneuver may be.

So, what I’m getting at is… honestly, I hate routing around you, and I’m tired of it.  Sure, I think you might hate that I exist, but if you look at me from the same perspective that I look at you, heck, in my mind we are all important, and even the least appropriate server to route your connection to has real substance for the overall integrity of the network.  It all fits together.

So, I propose that we reset the connection just so we don’t have to feel like we’re hiding in plain sight anymore.  You know, even if it’s just a case of “friends close, enemies closer”… all that good stuff.  Why?  Because, like I said, I still think you’re cool even if you can’t stand what I’m all about, and you still matter to me and the integrity of the networks we otherwise share, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

Now, as some of you, especially ping.fm users, are reading this, you might ask yourselves, “why doesn’t he just use one service to populate everything?” Well, the answer is simple: each service has different needs.  They all have different audiences, and they (typically) each separately require unique approaches and handling.

Those few personal brands who work in the social space who have large, entrenched followings can afford to “broadcast” to otherwise “narrowcast”outlets (by that I mean they can send one identical content item/link/status to many different services, allowing their following to engage with what’s shared in the space of their choosing).  But I think this is a less effective approach, and can be overly redundant.  On the other hand, it does reach users in their preferred realm(s).

Well, I’m no Pirillo or Scoble as yet… but, as I said, while I’m trying to present a uniform message, or personal brand, I realize that each venue, each niche, needs to be handled in its own unique way – personalizing the personal brand, if you will.  A web juggernaut like Pirillo might not need to do that, but as I am building my brand (something I can do for any brand, hint hint), I know I need that more niche-tailored approach.

So, here’s how it goes for me..

Facebook – My Facebook status is updated by my Twitter feed whenever I tweet anything.  This allows me to communicate to the public as well as to my friends at the same time.  When I only want to share what I’m up to with my friends, I just update my Facebook status instead of sending a tweet.  This helps me safely mix business and pleasure.  I still share certain content items and links on Facebook with specific friends and/or just on my wall, but that’s mostly for fun.  Plus, these kinds of items might not be things I want the greater public to see because they’re irrelevant to my business or maybe just sensitive in nature.  However, I’ll pretty much add anyone who requests me as a friend on Facebook, regardless of how well I know them, using the multitude of specific privacy settings available to filter what I share as needed.  Why add strangers? Not only does it extend my reach on-line, but because I allow users to decide which services they wish to engage me in – if they only use Facebook, then that’s their decision, and I’m not going to alienate.

…beyond that, Facebook aggregates almost everything I do on the Web.  In addition to my Twitter status updates, I pipe my Flickr, YouTube, Digg, del.icio.us, Foursquare, and blog posts to my profile.

MySpace – Yes, I still use MySpace.  If you think that’s a wash, you need to study the writings of danah boyd.  Again, not only do I want to give potential associates choice, as I do with adding anyone who wants to add me on Facebook, but MySpace is still a massive marketplace and a major influencer of music and cultural trends.  However, I don’t log in very often, and I now update my MySpace status with Tweetdeck (in other words, Twitter).  Nevertheless, based on who is engaging me, I will as indicated in my opening paragraphs, customize the way I interface with MySpace friends.  However, for simplicities sake, I will just allow my Twitter feed to update my MySpace status the same way I handle Facebook (assuming I’m updating from Tweetdeck).

YouTube - YouTube is a social video sharing network, but I primarily use it as a content hosting service.  I upload my Web video creations to YouTube, add channels that I like as friends (and subscribe to them, of course), but then otherwise share my content items in other services – mainly my blog, Facebook, and Twitter.  Why?  Because that maximizes my audience.  I automatically pipe activity to Facebook, but I manually share on Twitter, because I do not upload to YouTube on a daily basis.

Flickr – I’m not much of a photographer, but I prefer the simple design and popularity of this photo sharing service.  My uploads pipe automatically to Facebook, but I share manually on Twitter – mainly because I think my friends will be more forgiving than the public! haha

My blog (nerdacumen.com) – I use WordPress as my blogging software, self-hosted with my own domain.  My blog is a great place to aggregate almost everything I do on the Web, much in the same way I use Facebook.  The sidebar has RSS feeds from my Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us, and YouTube accounts.  Whenever Foursquare adds RSS, I’ll include it, too.  I also include my Facebook Links, a little gateway in to my personal life and a slice of Facebook I’m not as protective of as the rest of it.

Foursquare – I’m new to the location-based social sharing service, but I allow it to update my Twitter status as well as post my “check-ins” as content items on Facebook.

Digg – Anything I “digg” on the this link-sharing and aggregating service updates my Twitter feed and shows up on my Facebook wall as a content item.  This way, I can share with my friends and the public items that I appreciate that are gaining popularity as well as items that might be more relevant to my work.

del.icio.us – The social bookmarking service, I share whatever I bookmark by having it automatically update my Twitter feed. del.icio.us also automatically adds my bookmarks as content items on Facebook.

Fark - Fark is a news aggregator with a comical slant – you find an item, then “rewrite” the headline as a means of commenting on the item from, perhaps, a more frank, critical, topical, cynical, ironic, or comical perspective.  It’s more something you just have to see to understand.  A Fark account is only really used for commenting in forum threads for news items on the site, so the only way to share content you might like or that might be relevant to your work is with the social sharing buttons provided on the site.  Perhaps in the future the site will create more robust means of engaging Facebook and Twitter.

LinkedIn - A jobseekers and employment social network that allows you to have your Twitter feed update your LinkedIn status, as I often tweet non-work related items, I actually haven’t implemented the automatic updating function.  I can use Tweetdeck to update my LinkedIn status when it’s needful.

Twitter – I saved Twitter for last here because of its central role in affecting the flow of information across several of my social media accounts.  I already mentioned that my Twitter feed is updated by my activity on Digg, my check-ins on Foursquare, and what I bookmark on del.icio.us.  As I already mentioned, I haven’t implemented any service that will have my Facebook status show up in my Twitter feed – I keep that one way for privacy reasons – whereas I allow the other services (Digg, Foursquare, del.icio.us) because they are inherently public in nature.  As twitter is the micro-blog of choice around the Web, it just seems most sensible to have these services pipe to my Twitter.  Plus, I can still use Twitter for business and personal -related tweets.

The nice thing about having Twitter catch my Digg, del.icio.us, and Foursquare activity, is that, as you already guessed, all of my Twitter posts update my Facebook status.  Yes, that creates redundancies with the way Digg, del.icio.us. and Foursquare integrate with my Facebook wall, but I think this is ok, as my 140 character status updates are not the same as the richer content items posted to Facebook by those services.

So, that’s how I Internet.  Almost anything I want to share online finds it way to my blog and my Facebook profile, while I can still engage all the separate services in their own special ways.  And, of course, this doesn’t even go for what I post or publish to particular forums or other kinds of websites.  However, the neat thing about going out in to the Web as a singular personal brand is that, in traversing those other random forums and other spaces/blogs/etc., I can use Gravatar, which helps me utilize the same identity across many different sites.  This, in turn, helps drive people to my blog or website, and then out to my other accounts across the social sphere.  It’s all circular in execution.

So, I guess my overall message is that you can use umpteen services to propagate your content while still treating them uniquely, allowing you to engage all users from the perspective that best suits them instead of you.  Many large corporations still don’t understand this basic of social media rules, choosing just one or two venues or redundantly abusing all of them with identical content.

When I began my studies as a graduate student in the Master of Communication in Digital Media program at the University of Washington, in my very first course, awkwardly named something like “Research Methodologies for Digital Media” – I cannot remember exactly what it was called, but some students cleverly nicknamed it “Research 2.0″ (get it? like Web 2.o, only smarter), the very first book we were asked to look at was Shirky’s “Everybody”.  Since what you are reading here is my very last book review in the program – expounding now upon the item for Kathy Gill’s Net Economics course a little over a year later – as the opportunity presented itself, I felt I ought to revisit “Everybody”.  I’m doing so not only to see how my understanding of the book might have changed after continued in-depth education on all things digital media here at the MCDM, but perhaps also to see if the very things Shirky writes about – sharing, collaborating, and taking collective action in the digital world – have become realities for me during the course of my education.  And the answer is ‘yes’, they have, in the most beautiful way possible.

When I began the MCDM program, I knew, at least, that I was a storyteller, and I knew, at least, that I was working on telling stories in the digital space, meaning with the Web.  Since earning my Bachelor’s from USC in 2004, I had annually produced short videos and authored DVD versions to give to friends and the people I made them with.  When I discovered YouTube, things radically changed for me because now I had a venue in which to share my little creations.  When I joined Myspace and Yahoo! Groups I suddenly had an on-line collaboration platform – a social network – where I could find other filmmakers, performers, and storytellers to collaborate with on new video projects.  And, although I didn’t know it at the time, I was one of perhaps millions of people who, without any real hierarchical governing body or officially certified and organized industrial sanction, was actively taking part in a global collective action that was completely changing the face of the media content production world.  And why were we all doing this?  Simply because we could.  Nevertheless, it was totally unbeknownst to me the scale or importance of what it was I was involved in.  It had no label, at the time, for me.

Reading from Shirky’s “Everybody” finally helped me understand what it was that I was collectively participating in and finally gave me a label for it, or, really, a modus operandi for myself.  “Everybody”, along, of course, with the overall educational experience of coming in to the MCDM program, has everlastingly provided me with an explanation for and a means of identifying what it was I was up to in this post-undergraduate on-line world.  Prior to Shirky, the closest I had come to some loose cognition of what all of this playing around in the digital sandbox was was in the work of Henry Jenkins at MIT, who, as a self-described “Aca-Fan” (meaning, academic researcher and pop-culture enthusiast), had been working to define the process by which fans of any particular pop-culture phenomenon (say, Star Wars) were co-opting and commodifying anew (say Star Wars fan videos) their beloved prior texts, creating a new “participatory culture” (see Jenkins, 2006).  I knew that I was taking part in some element of that (especially because I didn’t know anything about the concept of “copyright infringement” – and now, sadly, I know too much!) but I didn’t really think about the how of it all.  What Jenkins did for me is help me to define myself as a “New Media Producer” – I was producing videos with a heavily memetic co-option of all that Web and pop culture I was familiar and enamored with (I made movies with titles like “Revenge of the Jocks” and “Epic Wingman“), and I was uploading them to a new medium.  But, here’s where “Everybody” comes in.  Thankfully, It defined the how of it all for me, and the how was social media.  Understanding the how has helped me to define myself as a New Media Producer working in social media, a personal brand and a unique voice in the digital space ready to tell stories with purpose in my post-graduate world.

So, this is why I love Shirky – his writing defines what I am.  His book, at least how I interpret it, really sets in place the three pillars of social media:

• Sharing
• Collaborating
• Taking collective action

Whether its thousands of eggheads passionately crafting Wikipedia entries on everything from Lingual frenulum to World War II, or just a few dozen people helping to recover a woman’s lost cell phone, social media has exhibited a power and a promise never before seen in the mass communications era (and let’s go ahead and date that back to, say, the invention of the telegraph).  By eliminating barriers of time and geographic distance with increasingly more evolved technological determinism, social media services and applications empower Jill and Joe Everbody to accomplish more efficiently the work of what otherwise would have been the old entrenched forces of a rigid industrial economy.  As Shirky points out, social production flattens and dismantles the old hierarchies of business (Shirky, 2008).  The Web, with it’s Facebooks and Twitters and Wikis, creates a network for making things happen (in my case, content creation – e.g., storytelling) without a need for top-down structures.  Naturally, this scares the ever-living crap out of the old guard, the Microsofts and New York Times and Republican Parties of the world.  But, I guess I really get a kick out of being a part of that!

Shirky writes with real insight and respect for the power of social media in “Here Comes Everybody”.  He considers the pros and the cons but astutely inclines the reader towards understanding the positive effect.  Not everything is perfect in, or perfectly accomplished through, social media, and Shirky discusses that, undoubtedly.  But, one really gets the feeling that Shirky is on social media’s side.  I’ve joined that side, too, and I recommend not only his “love letter” to social media, but also taking part in it, to anyone.  That’s my love letter in return.

References

Jenkins, H. (2006). About me. In Confessions of an Aca-fan: The official weblog of Henry Jenkins. Retrieved 7 December 2009, from http://henryjenkins.org/aboutme.html.

Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.

Self-contained narratives are iterations of a larger type, what we have classically referred to as “movies” or “films”.  Movies can be anything from that 15 second clip of a dog on a skateboard to a two-hour long Netflix stream of Spider-Man 3.  To a degree such videos can serve a functional external purpose – for example, the skateboard video could be co-opted by a skateboarding website to help generate pageviews, and we certainly understand a large Hollywood movie like Spider-Man 3 is going to have all kinds of licensed merchandise tie-ins – but invariably, “movies” are, in the old media sense, individual SKUs meant to be consumed on a per-performance basis.  By individual SKU, I mean that we think of these movies as products, something we would have traditionally exhibited on the aforementioned per-performance basis; we’d sell tickets or rent the DVD or otherwise distribute, or commoditize, these self-contained narratives for no other reason than to create a viewing experience, or an individual performance of a narrative which, hopefully, would be paid for individually.  Moreover, the experience can end when the curtains close and the lights come up.

Now, the fortunate thing about the Web is that anyone, anywhere, even collaboratively over great distances, can produce movies, the 15-second or 2-hour variety, completely unrestricted, and post them almost anywhere on-line.  From there, movies can take on new life in the social media space, too, in that they can spread an idea, help build a filmmaker’s portfolio and reputation, foster a meme, and perhaps lead to further work for the filmmakers.  Also, movies can become an active part of participatory culture.

The unfortunate thing is that, as digital commodities with a reproduction price of zero, movies on-line are painfully difficult to sell as self-contained narratives.  Almost all must (or inevitably will via infringement) be shared for free.

Which brings me to our second variety of Web video, material that serves a functional external purpose… As explained above in our skateboarding dog or Spider-Man examples, Web videos with functional external purposes can also be self-contained narratives – most, in fact, are.  However, web video that serves a functional external purpose does not rely on itself as a monetizable commodity.  As indicated, in today’s information economy, ones-and-zeroes are tough to sell on a per-unit basis.  The only goods that can still command a reasonable price are tangible ones.  Thus, wise digital storytellers will realize that their Web videos will go further and produce a higher return on investment if they serve a functional external purpose.  Viral videos that directly or indirectly share information about certain products or services which must be obtained elsewhere easily and immediately fit in to this category.  However, don’t conclude from this that Web video should only exist as a marketing or advertising strategy.  There are many examples of how Web video can serve a multitude of external purposes, purposes which exist outside of the narrative of your video.

Web videos that serve a functional external purpose exist to inform viewers about cultural artifacts, social conditions, or related material assets.  They explicitly or implicitly offer viewers a choice about an outside agent(s).  That external subject matter may or may not be featured in the video, but somehow the video will direct viewers towards such agents, inviting them to do something tangible.  A TV station’s news clip can inform the public about a dangerous situation, such as a police stand-off in a particular neighborhood – the viewer is implicitly invited to make a choice – go or do not go to that neighborhood.  A documentary about small business owners facing up against large chain stores can indirectly invite viewers to take political action in their home town.  A short video about the ills of alcoholism can explicitly invite viewers to donate time or money to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  A promotional piece for the latest James Bond film can encourage the audience to purchase tickets at a local cinemaplex or to buy James Bond DVDs.  A comedy clip on Funny Or Die can help create a fanbase surrounding a particular actor or actress, indirectly inviting the viewer to consume that performers craft in other forms, such as watching the star in his or her latest TV series.  An entire Arrowsmith music video anthology could be posted to a music service for free, inviting users to remix and mashup the videos, creating additional cultural artifacts while simultaneously promoting Arrowsmith concert tickets and merchandise.  All of these examples represent ways in which Web video can serve a functional external purpose.

I believe the days in which we pay for movies in the traditional sense are swiftly coming to a close.  My proposal for a solution to the net neutrality debate represents one way in which traditional movie content can be monetized (it behaving as a selling point for distribution services, but that particular solution is more pipe-dream than anything).  No, instead I think the best way to monetize Web video, even old-fashioned “movies”, is to use them as a platform to communicate messages about functional external purposes – or, if not that, such as in our TV newsstation example, to at least inform the public of societal circumstances (in which case you make your money through your reputation as a reliable news source, selling what advertising space you can).  Fostering a free information commons and encouraging participatory culture only helps to spread the messages you share through video.  If you try to control your content and expect people to pay for it as a standalone product, you will fail because you are working against the tide – you fail to understand that by digitizing your content you are changing the way it is used and consumed.  Forward-thinking institutions and businesses recognize this and are wise to marry their content to functional external purposes.

My hope, as a New Media Producer, is to help organizations create video that serves a functional external purpose and promote that video within the social media landscape.

Moreover, a closer examination will reveal that The Wealth of Networks has a vengeful deity, too, one akin to the god found in the first thousand-odd pages of that most famous of Books.  Benkler’s jealous Being is seen in the fundamental message of, at least as I read it, Benkler’s text – that the social production of an information commons and the existence of an alternative to the industrial models of the twentieth century, a networked information economy, does not always have to be about the bottom line.  That, it would appear, is a scary message for some, indeed.  But for those small few of us who have joined with the covenant people and followed Benkler as our Moses in to the World Wide Wilderness of Sinai, there’s a message of freedom and a better world to be had in networks, the kind of wealth in networks that I feel inspires the greatest economic motivation: sharing knowledge, and lifting others thereby.

As Benkler defines it, the networked information economy is an economy that does not have a central hub; it uses inter-networked systems to decentralize production and dissemination.  Now, let’s back up a little.  Upon reflection, the juvenile rendition, or at least the foundation, of Benkler’s networked information economy really grew up in parallel to modern economic systems: those born of the industrial revolution.  An historical overview would show that the original networked information economy was perhaps really born to coincide with the industrial boom of the Western World in the late nineteenth century, not simply after it.  Mass media, as it would come to be known, would utilize the effects of the widespread adoption of communications technologies and services, the newspapers and radios and TVs sold and endlessly fed from their disseminating central origins, to sway society from within.  Benkler discusses the power of this centralization, that the powers that be have controlled information and have given it away only for a price.  But, I think one could pin the seed, or the beginnings of the networked information economy on the birth of the telegraph, insomuch as it represents a potential echo chamber for information otherwise coming from other one-way mediums – although it appears the telegraph’s uses were primarily contained by the mass media and the military.  Despite that, I think the networked information economy’s gestation (and its promise) began with such two-way mediums.  The restraints of time and geography began their erosion whilst modern industry churned out other mass produced one-way information commodities to assist in that erosion.  Yet, information is not a scarce resource in Benkler’s networked information economy, and, it can be controlled from the outside, not centrally.  Its reproduction would not forever need to happen on Henry Ford’s assembly line.  Many decades later the Internet would herald a new age of communicating that the innovators who laid a foundation for it, albeit in other forms (telegraphs and telephones), could not have conceived of, though through their invention made inevitable.

This lack of vision is mirrored in the modern hopeless expressions we see on the faces of those who have reaped major profits and gained greater power from centralized communications in the past.  Incumbents feel the stultifying effects of this wrathful god that is the networked information economy, “weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth“, to employ our scriptural allegory once more, as they slowly lose control to the networked public sphere and its liberal commons.  The elite clamor for answers as the disruptive social production of information resources bypasses incumbent services entirely, and the new democratizing effects of the Web crash the old dogs’ party (see the election of our first digital President, for starters).  Benkler shoots down many critiques against the democratic effects of the ‘Net, for instance, that the Internet will just take on the same form as it mass media forefathers as incumbents pour more and more money in to it. Central forces, be they governments, mass media entities, or even educational institutions can try, but as long as there are disruptive players with alternative motivations, seeking social capital or otherwise, their efforts are totally m00t (to reference TIME’s 2009 Most Influential Person in the World, 21-year old Christopher Poole, aka 4chan.org founder “moot”).

I recommend “The Wealth of Networks” for anybody who has already converted to the newer social media gospels espoused by the Shirky’s, Li’s, and Anderson’s of the world.  These adherents will better understand the messages of such latter-day texts.  However, I don’t recommend Benkler to anyone who is looking for ways to reproduce the industrial economic model in the new age of communications.  If one does that, expect to be smited by the Old Testament-like wrath that is social production power.  Find ways to become an agent in the chaos, not a ruler, and join the tribe.

Reference

Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press.

This is a video presentation I put together for my Net Economics course, as well as to inspire my co-workers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and everyone else for that matter, to “get in there and play” when it comes to building the information commons through social media.

With the tools we now possess to get vast quantities of data from user interactions on-line, to monitor chatter on blogs and in social networks like Myspace, and to trackdown to the very minute just what people are tweeting about, should government and law enforcement agencies attempt to do more to monitor the web for death threats and talk of plots to carry out murderous rampages?  And then, to what extent can they respond within the law?  Sure, I’m a staunch proponent of free speech of all kinds, and the thought of the NSA warrantlessly wiretapping my telephone makes me cringe, but the questions people will be asking in the coming days deserve some serious consideration.  It’s not just what could have been done to prevent this needless violence, or even what is being done now by various agencies, it’s SHOULD we monitor and then HOW do you deal with obvious threats?  We have the tools to find out, right now, what people are saying about Coke or Pepsi, so why not track chatter on shooting threats and the like?  Nobody wants to be policed on-line, but if you have the tools and wherewithal, why not?

Note:

Special thanks to Mashable’s post about the Sodini blog, which helped spur this entry.

More examples of the discussion and killers’ posting to the web before they carry out their deadly attacks:

Finland Shooting 2007

Threats against San Francisco area BART cop

Tea Party Death Threats on Twitter