New Media changes our lifestyle

Have you ever noticed that for the last 10-15 years, the number of the electronic devises in our life increased  significantly? Laptops became lighter, cell phones more powerful and functional, eReaders entered the digital market and so on. And even more, it doesn’t just exist in our life,  it’s completely changing it! Especially with the introduction of iPad and other digital tablets, it became even more interesting. Now we can truly say that we are living in the 21^st century.

Can anybody in 1990’s imagine that ordinary phone could deal with such complicated functions as  creating and editing documents, sending emails, formatting videos and photos, etc. as normal computer or laptop?  Of course this type of phone today is called  a smartphone, but still its main function is the ability to call other people. And all other functions are nice bonus, which we receive by buying it.

Our society is dictating us this need. The influence of the Internet and Media sources tells that we should follow it everywhere and every time.  That’s why the number of consumers who is looking for ordinal cell phone just for making calls is decreasing. 

Thus we don’t use gadgets just for their basic functions. Today we are demanding for much more! We want to be a part of global Media system. Let’s have a look on total numbers of users of different social media platforms.

Isn’t it impressing? So many people, so many users, and all this became possible just with the technological progress, developing of  the Internet and the growing desire of people to be part of this community.

Everyday we follow news via Facebook, Twitter and Google. Even more, today it is possible not to have a phone number of the person, just be friends on Facebook, and still be in touch with this person 24 hours 7 days per week. Looking back at the history, we may remember the importance of ordinary post letters, which were delivered for a weeks or months. If we want to know something new, or just quickly fresh up any fact or information, then we just open Wikipedia. How many of you still looking for information in the encyclopedias? I wonder that the last time you opened it were few years ago. Also all this Media platforms give us possibility to have our own input in the complicated system of New Media. Now any person can share thoughts on any valuable topic, create a video or even movie and spread it all over the world. New Media gave us a huge field for human creativity. There are almost no borders for it. People are sharing, criticizing, arguing and therefore developing brand new concepts using collective intelligence.   

How about changes in kid’s preferences under New Media changes? For children it became even more important to have very technological device.

"According to the new data from The Nielsen Company, the iPad is the most desired electronic gadget this season. 44% of the children surveyed are interested in buying (read: receiving as a gift) an iPad in the next six months, 30% want an iPod touch and 27% want an iPhone. Those figures are on a par with last year’s numbers. In 2010 31% of kids aged 6-12 wanted an iPad, 29% wanted a computer, 29% wanted an iPod touch and 25% wanted a Nintendo DS/DSi/DS Lite. The story changes a bit for kids over 13, but the iPad still sits at the top of gadget wish lists. 24% of teenagers older than 13 are interested in buying an iPad during the next 6 months, 18% want to buy a computer and 18% want to buy an eReader. Nielsen’s survey was conducted during October 2011 and involved 3,000 participants." 

The most valued part of this movement is that iPad can be used not just for playing games, as it was before with computers. Now there are dozens of special developing applications, different drawing and learning programs build exactly for kids. And some scientific studies do show that if the use of iPad or similar gadget wouldn’t be over limit it will improve and help in children’s development. Maybe in near future we will face the fact that schools will be provided with the iPad instead of computers.

So, there are a lot of visible changes in our lifestyle because of New Media development. Someone may argue that is just good ones, someone may think otherwise. But we all agree on the fact that it do change our world. But there are few things that can’t be replaced by new technology, for example this one. 

Daria Levchenko

Burberry is one of the first luxury traders to massively implement CRM systems

Recently, this British traditional luxury goods maker went completely online using the digital platform of the company called Salesforce.com. This company provides its solutions based on a cloud system for some time already but Burberry is the very first of the conservative, luxury goods producers who decided to implement the CRM (customer relationship management) platform. It seems to be another logical step in a trendy way of the CEM (customer experience management).

Companies all around the world solve the same problem – the traditional marketing has its limits and we are no longer able to recognize what decision processes drive our customers. They realized it is all a lot emotional and one cannot be really persuading his customer through a single TV spot. A perfect, unified experience is now considered as the best marketing tool so if you go to Cartier for example, you can make a complaint if they do not offer you a glass of champagne. Chains all around the world use the very same perfume, furniture or fresh flowers in every local store. The burst of the new digital media gave this trend another tool to use – digital platforms which are able to unify all your company systems, databases etc. and help you with managing the relationship with your customers.

Back to Burberry. The company’s CEO Angela Ahrendts decided to create a social enterprise which goes digital from one end to another. They tried to take all the elements which make the feeling of Burberry and pack them into the one, complex digital code. They literally moved the world of Burberry to the digital environment to make it accessible from anywhere. The goal is to allow a total access from any medium possible, the only condition is the internet connection. In the terms of CEM the intention is clear – to create an environment which gives the very same feeling of the brand to anybody who tries to touch it.

What I personally find good about it is the fact that they can use the range of all possible digital media and provide their company’s elements – fashin shows, online stores, acess to all possible products, history footage, have any kind of up-to-date information just one click away. On the other hand, it sets an industry standard which might not be so enjoyable at all. Burberry opens its gates to anyone in terms of getting information, people suspiciously consume it on the field of social media and one can lose its distant, luxury status of something unreachable. Another thing you might lose on the way creating the social enterprise is the local esprit. Not everyone desire for the unified experience. From time to time we want to feel the local sense – shopping in the Burberry store on Savile Row should be different from the Burberry Dubai let’s say. But it’s slowly happening that it’s not.

One might say that shift goes in a wrong direction but on the other hand, tablets and smart phones are just yet another medium. A new medium which slowly replaces store or a fashion show – the old medium. An interesting thing is to see such an quick digital media implementation by a company which was, several years earlier, completely negative about even an online store. In the past, these luxury makers were boldly declaring that they would never going to lower their standards in such a manor. Yet, here we are and they are investing some big amounts of money to build a social enterprise which goes totally online, accessible from anywhere in the world.

Angela Ahrendts about Burberry's cooperation with salesforce.com

New media : replacing the dog's function being your best friend

The human population has to face a new fact. New media has changed the society’s ranking values.

Have you ever thought who is the human’s best friend of 21 of century? 100 years ago this position belonged to a dog. Nowadays the situation has changed. People have started to replace their pets. A pet should have four legs (some exceptions two),it can move without any help, it should have own brain and it usually makes some sound. The pets of 21 century also have own brain and made some sound, but there are naturally made by humans and they consisted of human devices.

According to one study, computer has overtaken the role of dog in the family. If you can notice people take their computers and all the other kinds of new media everywhere with them. If they feel lonely they can do one easy step, log to the social network and the problem is solved. They are very sensitive and squeamish about their computers. They always have to have a special place in the house, in the school, in the car, in their personal bag. Some people can’t survive one day without their loving pet called Computer.

,, According to an online poll of British adults conducted by Computeractive magazine and animal charity RSPCA,  Researchers found that just 6 per cent of us believe that 'most people rely more on their dog than they do on their PC', while 67 per cent think the opposite to be true. Even 38 per cent of dog owners confessed to relying more on their PC than on their dog, although 36 per cent disagreed.“ And 71 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old dog owners said they relied more on their computer.

People, even the ones who owns dog spent more of their time on the computer than with their dog.

Thinking about society right now, this is not that shocking outcome of the research. So what is so special about the PC than our loving best friend doesn’t have?If they don’t see their dog, they miss him but when they don’t have any access to their computer they feel detached from the entire world.

People are getting addictive to the internet. They do everything through the internet.  They find their friends, their husbands and wifes and they prefer to spend their free time surfing on the net than going out with their friends. Instead of writing personal diary people are getting use to write whatever they want into their blogs. Doesn’t matter if the information which they share is valueable or not, they just want to show off in front of their new computer’s friends, which they haven’t even seen live.

Computers have too big influences of our life, nobody can argue with that.

Which function from the dog has computer overtaken?  Their is a statement about computers which says : ,,Without computer you can never get bored.“ Is it really so?

But we should think about one important thing. When our computer stop working and it is dead we can just easily replace it. But when our dog dies we can’t replace him so easily.

Can you think how long have you survived without using your computer or any other kind of new media? Have you been thinking about it a lot or was it easy for you?

LENKA LIPTÁKOVÁ

Bradbury’s "Fahrenheit 451", a visionary insight of new media evolution

For a minute, let’s imagine you’re back in the 1950s in America, in the early days of mass culture, when new, modern consumer goods were made available for more and more people:  after the success of radio, television's popularity increased rapidly, to such an extent that at the end of the decade, 77% of American households owned a TV set. Media advertising contributed to forge - and sell- the American way of life, and conformity, entertainment, and happiness became key words of the post-war consumer society. 

Inspired (or more precisely, frightened) by these new social trends and technologic developments, science fiction writer Ray Bradbury published a dystopia entitled Fahrenheit 451, in which he delivered a pessimistic vision of where new media could lead society to. In Bradbury’s world, a deluge of trivial information and immediate entertainment has replaced culture, which has disappeared, burnt down by pyromaniac firemen (whose job is no longer to put fires out, but to burn books, which are considered dangerous for society). The main character, Montag, is one of these firemen, who becomes gradually aware of this generalized alienation and starts questioning the system: by preserving books from destruction, hiding them and memorizing their contents to give culture a new life, he engages on the path of transgression and rebellion and becomes an enemy to be chased. Look at this if you want to watch some extracts of François Truffaut's 1966 adaptation of the book ! 
                              

Even though Fahrenheit 451 was published 60 years ago (in 1953, to be precise), this vision of a not so distant future society, where mass media have taken the upper hand over knowledge and thinking, proves to have threateningly relevant aspects in today’s world of proliferate digital media. Regarding television and its evolution, Bradbury’s prediction is still striking us by its technological and psychological accuracy: while the book was written in the era of TV box sets making their first entrance into people’s daily life and providing black and white programs, Fahrenheit 451 depicts a society driven by television-addiction and self-reclusiveness. 

   

TV screens are now entire walls covering and constituting the very rooms which they are put in, creating a new, full digital experience: as epitomized by the character of Montag’s wife, who wants her husband to work more in order to afford the fourth screen-wall which is still missing in their living room, people measure their happiness by the intensity of digital reality they have access to. Difficult not to think of today’s TV screens becoming larger and larger and designed at making digital experience as vivid as possible (look at the advances in 3D technology)… In Fahrenheit 451, communication is no longer unilateral and undifferentiated (two aspects defined by media analyst Marshall McLuhan as main characteristics of mass media), and the viewer can participate directly into the TV program, contributing to create the message:

“What's on this afternoon?" he asked, tiredly.
She didn't look up from the script again. "Well, this is a play comes on the wall-to-wall circuit in ten minutes. They mailed me my part this morning. I sent in some boxtops. They write the script with one part missing. It's a new idea. The homemaker, that's me, is the missing part. When it comes time for the missing lines, they all look at me out of the three walls and I say the lines. Here, for instance, the man says, 'What do you think of this whole idea, Helen?' And he looks at me sitting here center stage, see? And I say, I say--" She paused and ran her finger under a line in the script. "'I think that's fine!' And then they go on with the play until he says, 'Do you agree to that, Helen?' And I say, 'I sure do!' Isn't that fun, Guy?"

Each viewer takes personally part in the show and so it is not difficult to understand that, as a result, this interactivity has completely blurred the frontier between reality and digital world. Social relations have been transformed to such a point that for Montag’s wife, the numerical projections on the screen, which she talks to and lives along with, have become her true family… conversely, she only has a superficial, dull relationship with her husband. If media were invented to connect people, here we can see a total subversion of this original goal ; here we can see the triumph of perpetual entertainment, alienating people’s minds from reality and caging them into an artificial happiness, as Montag tries to explain it to his wife:   

“Let you alone! That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real ?”

In the end, this vision of new media developed in the 1950s certainly continues to give us food for thought, at a time when the threat of such a dystopia coming true does not seem as improbable as it used to. Even if books are not yet in such jeopardy as in Fahrenheit 451, the multiplication of numerical books and kindle editions (more convenient to carry etc.) is not without raising questions about the future of printed books and the possible transformation of culture. Just consider all these online digests, often made for students, shortening hundred-page long books into basic summaries, and exempting you to read the whole book to have an idea about it… Ironically enough, while Bradbury has always distrusted dematerialized books and considered they would pave the way for the death of books, Fahrenheit 451 was finally released as an e-book in November, 2011 (with the author's consent) and it is now on sale from all major e-book retailers. The unstoppable march of digital media?

#Loewe's viral experience

March, 14th

“Do u wanna laugh for a while and/or feel embarrassed? Watch the new advertisement of #Loewe” by @pathernando.

“The documentary about special education of #Loewe is great” by @cot_julia.

“All of you hate #Loewe’s new advertisement, but, all of you talk about it. Do you know what viral marketing means?” by @October_Lee.

What does viral marketing mean?

Viral marketing means advertising, it means money, interactivity, and above all it means social networks as means.

Just imagine a virus. A simple flu will serve. Yesterday you went to a hospital and you, unknowingly caught the virus. Later, you went out with your fiends whom you, unintentionally, transmitted the virus. They came back home and transmitted it to their families. Parents went to work and brothers and sisters went to school. We already have an epidemic. All infected.

Now, replace the flu with an advertising message and the hospital with Youtube. The key: to transmit = to share. Like.

This is viral marketing, an advertising strategy that seeks the rapid spread of a message to potential consumers of the advertised product.

Viral marketing is no new. Do you remember mouth-to-ear (word-to-mouth)? These are the roots. Nowadays, mouth have been replaced with “Notification on your wall” and ear with “Share on a friend’s timeline” or #let’screateaWorldwidetrend. Today, the Internet and social networks are the mean and the propagation is quicker and more effective.

A company hides an advertisement within a provocative idea in video format that make viewer’s opinion came up et violá!, for the modest price of a video uploaded to Youtube for free, it got to manage to thousands of people. And everything without paying for spots on TV or radio. Economic ¿right? Yes it is, and much more when traditional media publish pieces of news about the success of the viral campaign. Total media convergence. Just one text, many media.

This is precisely what Loewe, the Spanish firm of luxury goods, has achieved. Let solve the unknown factor. A company: Loewe. A message: gold collection 2012. A provocative idea: try to represent the Spanish youth with a sample of "supercool” young people."The results: #Loewe, Spain trend in Twitter, 730,000 views on YouTube, hundreds of posts on blogs, articles in national newspapers, parodies on YouTube... and most important, thousands of young Spanish people speaking about Loewe, even if it’s only to criticize and satirize. But... how true the idiom 'let them talk, well or bad, but talk' is?

Kony 2012 - Political Activism in New Media

Have you ever heard of Joseph Kony?

Kony is 49 years old, lives in Uganda and is the leader of the so called Lords Resistance Army (LRA). The aim of this army is to have a theocratic governmental system based on the bible and the Ten Commandments. The pneuma itself gave Kony the order to found this army and conduct this war. His modus operandi is suspect, because the LRA is today known for its brutal abductions of approximately 66.000 children. They became the involuntary soldiers of Kony's army. He is accused to be responsible for the brutal despoilment of entire villages and for the command of murders, rapes and mutilations. All in all he terrorizes the civil population of Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and of South Sudan for more than two decades now.

A week ago the American aid group "Invisible Children" (IC) published the "Kony 2012-Campaign" on the internet. It is a 30 minutes film, made by two American filmmakers, who founded the organization IC. Within 48 hours the video had more than seven million views on the platform Vimeo, more than five million views on Youtube and more than one million "likes" on the social network facebook. Even now this campaign is one of the most impressive examples for the change of political activism through social media. The film is viral and very well produced and it has a gripping effect on the viewers. But in the same time the video aroused worldwide criticism. Can a facebook "like" save the world?

In the film you can see the little son of one of the founders of the organization and he learns in front of the camera, what his daddy does and who the bad people are. Furthermore they show an interview with one of the victims, where he describes the atrocious death of his brother. Most of the scenes are supposed to arouse compassion in the viewers and the techniques they used seem to work on the people. But it's not only the self-dramatization which provides critics with a target. In the film they call people up to buy a "Kony-Action Kit", which contains posters, a T-Shirt, Buttons, an Action Guide, Stickers and Kony-Bracelets. To buy this Action-Kit, people have to donate money to the organization on the long term. But it has been proven, that most of the money is used for running costs, promotion and the production of films. Only one third of it is used for development assistance. Further on it is said, that the research behind the film is rather poor. Some of the scenes are more than ten years old and the situation in Uganda has not only changed, it is much more complex than it is described in the campaign. So that academics doubt, that the problem would be solved with the arrest of Joseph Kony.

The Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni already made a statement, which says, that Uganda is not in danger anymore. The people actually live in peace there nowadays and Kony doesn't stay on Ugandan territory any more. He even invited the two founders of Invisible Children to come to his country and see themselves that the situation has settled down. But about this, people should also keep in mind, that Uganda is afraid now, that the tourists are put off, after they saw this movie. After all tourism plays a role in the countries economy and if the people stay off from the country, it harms them. Museveni emphasizes this in the end of his statement, when he refers to Uganda as one of the top must-see travel destinations named by the Lonely Planet this year.

However the aim of the campaign is to make Kony famous and arrest him before the deadline of the 31.12.2012.
Last october the U.S. sent 100 soldiers to Uganda, to help in advisory function on the spot. The film says that without public pressure those troops would be removed by the American government.
However, there are no indications for the withdrawal. So the motivation of the film is also questionable.

Despite all the criticism and the suspect effect on the happenings in Uganda, the film was successful in a way, that it raised worldwide awareness of a problem which shouldn't go down in the massive flow of nowadays media. That reality can't be depicted in a 30 minutes film should be clear in everyone's mind. But to write this campaign off easily and call it emotional blackmailing is not right. Because in the end this movement shows that social media is something which people can use in a much more efficient and intelligent way than creating virtual personalities or following the details of Kim Kardashian's sex life.