I did quite a useful interview with Murray Newlands, the social media consultant, for his blog the other month - now available here. We cover my long history with blogging - that's micro-, macro- and meso-blogging - and how that fits with my general analysis of culture, economy and technology as expressed in the Play Ethic book. An exchange:
Where do you see growth in the blogging field?
Again, I think micro-blogging (a la Facebook and Twitter), particularly conducted through rich portable media devices like the iPhone, has taken some of the burden off traditional web-based blogs to be these instantaneous places of self-expression. For me, blogs are now an opportunity for you to step back a little from the cybernetic loop we can so easily get caught up in with mobile, locational and real-time media. However I think that micro-blogging can itself develop a little more, up and away from the “140″ character limitation. My presentation at the Media140 conference in London suggested that a ‘meso-blogging’ might be possible. (Which allows for my kinda blogging to be ‘macro-blogging’, I suppose). If we’re not just reading newspapers on street corners, but now producing news on street corners, are the devices, networks and platforms were using really up to the task yet? I’m using and trying out everything in this field (AudioBoo my favourite), but I still think there are slightly richer on-the-move blogging experiences to be had than the ones afforded by a telecom engineer’s casual addition to the design of his device…
What new ideas are advertisers coming up with to take advantage of new trends?
As Clay Shirky says, we’re in the space between the death of the bad old things and the birth of the good new things - meaning that online advertising is not yet an complete replacement for the kinds of ads that a collapsing old media used to serve up. And perhaps they never will be. I wonder whether the whole relationship between someone who makes a product or service that they think might have users or consumers, and the deeply demanding conversations and transparencies that characterise online behaviour, means that advertising will have to completely rethink its function - and by association, the manufacturers and service providers themselves. Add to that recession and eco-crisis, and it may be that online advertising and its clients will have to become part of the toolbox of living sustainably. lightly and well - clearly seen to be adding to the solution, not wasting and problematising our precious time.
Social Media and Informationalism blogger and author of The Play Ethic, Pat Kane an Interview
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