WordPress seems to have run into some problems with closing comments. Should be (temporarily?) resolved. Too much php and MySQL knowledge required for comfort. In the meantime, keep reading my special “Orchestras and New Media” series. If you have any suggestions or feedback, leave a comment. If that doesn’t work, e-mail me at dutchperspective (at) mcmvanbree.com More on the series soon. If you have a thirst for more reading, right now, then I would suggest We Are Media or some other suggestions from my updated del.icio.us account (great add-on for Firefox 3 available here)
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Tagging is the core social element of many Web 2.0 services. The buzzword for this phenomenon is “folksonomy,” which translates to “user generated classification.” Participation is very easy and tagging data is used in new ways to find information. Organizations can create special tags to keep track of conversations and give an opportunity to content creators to effectively pull the organization’s sleeve and bring attention to their content. Some previously mentioned services that use tagging are Technorati, where you can search blog posts or even entire blogs carrying specific tags, and Last.fm, where you can tag artists, albums and...
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Second Life is the best known and largest of the Internet-based virtual worlds. Users, or Residents as they are called, download software, which allows them to interact with each other through avatars, virtual representations of themselves. Residents can explore the world, through walking and flying, chat and meet with other Residents, participate in activities and create and trade items and services for an in-world currency. In short, a complete virtual reality world. Real-world companies and organizations have set up offices in Second Life. Residents can drive around in a Nissan on the company’s own island; or they can buy...
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Like other Internet services, music Web sites have moved toward Web 2.0 and social media. Customization, sharing and social networking are at the heart of online music services such as Last.fm, Pandora and iLike. Pandora and Last.fm let users create a profile, similar to the social networks at Myspace and Facebook, and enable users to find friends and join groups of people that share their musical taste. Users create custom radio stations and playlists that play their preferences, which are indicated by rating, disapproving or approving songs and artists. The service recommends other songs and artists based on their...
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Wikis, Web sites that allow users to contribute to or edit its content, are fully embracing the Web 2.0 approach, operating on the philosophy that the more users participate, the better the content. The collective intelligence empowers the community. The best known wiki is Wikipedia, which takes the number seven spot in traffic ranking on both the global as well as the United States list at Alexa. Although wiki pages can make no guarantee of validity due to its open process (and vandalism frequently occurs), a large community polices, edits and cleans the pages at a remarkable rate. Employees...
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Social network services are the embodiment of Web 2.0; more than any other service they encourage participation, openness, conversation, community, and connectedness on the Internet. Just as telephone, fax and e-mail changed the way we communicate; social networking has revolutionized our conversations and social interactions. The services, including MySpace and Facebook, let users build a profile with photos and personal data such as education, employment and favorite movies, music and books. This profile serves as a base from which the users build a network of friends and contacts. In an April 22, 2008 key note address to the Chicago...
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Last post, we looked at the key elements for blogging and how organizations can connect with blogs and their authors. In this post, we look at how organizations can blog and why, or if, they should. The first question you have to ask yourself is “why should our organization have a blog?” Keeping up with the Joneses is not the right answer; there should be a strategic objective for starting a blog. If you’re not sure why and you can’t figure out a purpose or objective, perhaps you shouldn’t be starting a blog. A Northeastern University and Backbone Media...
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A blog, short for weblog, is a Web site with regular entries on any topic imaginable, an online journal. But who needs any explanation anymore these days? The more important questions for organizations are “how does our organization connect with bloggers?” and “why should our organization blog?” But first, Cameron Marlow at the MIT Media Laboratory explains “what distinguishes weblogging from previous web media is the extent to which it is social, and one can say that the medium came into existence when the set of web journal writers recognized themselves as a community.” He lists several features of...
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Public relations has traditionally held the reputation of being difficult to measure in terms of results. Measuring results, however, especially RoI (Return on Investment), is important for any business or organization. Just like in public relations, measuring results of social media strategies can be difficult; there are no standardized metrics yet. What to measure? A popular phrase among social media specialists is “return on influence,” a different take on “return on investment” found in regular business. The social media equivalent is a “broader, more long-term, long-lasting return,” according to a Dow Jones white paper titled “Tracking the Influence of...
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A good start in sizing up an organization’s situation and crafting a strategy is the so-called SWOT analysis, which appraises a company’s resource strengths and weaknesses and its external opportunities and threats. Orchestras share many strengths and opportunities, but also weaknesses and threats. Below, you will find a SWOT analysis focusing on general features. Many of these concepts are liberally taken from “Strategy: Core Concepts, Analytical Tools, Readings” by Thompson, Gamble and Strickland. Strengths Resources that enhances an organization’s competitiveness Materials and media Vast amount of interesting (archival) content to share with its constituents; many materials are easily accessible...
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The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Kansas City Star, Miami Herald, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and nearly the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. What do these newspapers have in common? Over the past years, full-time classical music critic positions at these organizations have been eliminated. In 2004, the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University published “Reporting the Arts II.” This expansive work takes a critical look at news coverage of arts and culture in the United States, comparing data with the identical earlier study in 1999. Although Chicago comes out relatively strong in the study, compared to other cities nationwide—the Chicago Tribune...
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