New Media

I wish you could have been here to experience the energy and interesting conversation that took place during this presentation. Kirsten is an amazingly energetic person and presenter. I learned some really interesting information about networking and socialization on the Internet. It was educational and interesting. Thanks Kirsten!

Dr. Kirsten Sandford; Davis, CA; kirstensanford.com and twis.org (This Week in Science) a podcast broadcast by UC Davis and www.thisweekinscience.com

"Old media" — TV, radio, telephone, etc.

"New media" — Web 2.0 is the version that came along when people could get on the web and change things and communicate and get together.

Web 3.0 is being talked about, but we're not there yet, we're still building the technology we'll need to get there.

Blogging was the starting point for Web 2.0. It began as a way for people to keep a journal or diary online. many people use it to make money, and media are using blogging more than ever. In blogging it is up to the reader to determine whether the source is trustworthy.

Podcasting: cast comes from broadcasting; pod comes from iPod. They are similar to blogging, just an audio version. Blogging and podcasting are "pull" media as opposed to old media that pushed information to users. People pull that information into their computers.

Production values are going up as professionals get involved and people are looking for stuff that's better produced.

Now we're at social communities, the step of evolution of Web 2.0 beyond blogging and podcasting. Now we can do what comes naturally, which is communicate with each other and find people with common interests.

Technology is advancing to the point that so many of these things are now being done in the pams of their hands because of advancing cell phone technology. Americans are still behind the times with this though; Japanese and Europeans are earlier adopters of this kind of technology.

Attendees engaged in a discussion about the pros and cons of the use of this new technology. Some points were brought up about the isolation that can happen, while others pointed out many of the benefits of the new technology.

There are so many dimensions of the social web, and a graphic (the Conversation Prism by Brian Solis on flickr.com) that identified 22 dimensions.

Kirsten's podcaset started as a radio show at UC Davis, then they started a Web site, then iTunes came along that allowed people to subscribe easier and provided a place for podcasts to sotr of gather centrally, now Kirsten has a personal blog, and the next step seems to be video podcasting. Kirsten accepts advertising, gets donations from listeners, sells memorabilia, etc. to make money. The show is an hour long. It's science news, interviews, other items and broadcast once a week.

She's also done Food Science and Rad Science, video productions that were created as original content for the Web. Rad Science was made for PopSiren and Food Science was made for ONnetworks.com.

Making it Social:
Back to the Conversation Prism. LinkedIn, facebook, MySpace are all networks Kirsten is on. She also uses many of the other platforms, including ning.com; a free site for building sites, podcasts, etc.; seesmic.com, that provides for a video conversation; jaigu.com; utterz.com, you can call from your cell phone and record an audio file;tubemogul.com, which allows Kirsten to upload her video to that one site and it will send that video out to multiple other sites; skype.com; talkshoe.com, allows conversations of up to 300 people for audio conferencing; ustream.com is a video version of talkshoe.

Connect with Kirsten at: kirsten@thisweekinscience.com; Dr. Kiki on Twitter; Kirsten Sanford on facebook