a lil trawlin'

Being a digital native, my first instinct before doing anything is to google up the query instead of thinking it through myself#. so here I am, having decided the structure of the white paper that is to be written and poised to write the entry in this blog that should elucidate the start of the discussion, but instead am writing an entry thats a chronicle of my trek through numerous blogs and other interesting outposts on web related to digital native discussion. lest you think that this post would hence be any less valuable, think again, there are some interesting links that I came across during my scavenging. not everything is directly related to the query at hand, but as is the non-linear nature of surfing (funny, I am presenting this post in text - a linear logic, to advocate digital nativity, whose hallmark feature is being non linear. well until we have a better alternative, lets stick to text for now.) I would share some other interesting stuff as well, in no particular order.

a. friendfeed.
this is one of the hottest new service on the web. It generated a lot of discussion in many of the silicon valley blogs. the guys who started it are ex-google employees who have steered such google projects as google maps, adsense, and google group.
I started it using it yesterday. It essentially aims to be a one stop shop of all social networking tasks. it creates a news feed incorporating all the social networking websites. so u can have twitter, gchat status, blogs, youtube videos etc., all at one place. Now that the social media is getting crowded, it was about time for such a service to emerge. Its interesting and simple.
though i wonder how would these guys make money out of it.
2. speaking of monetizing, the debate about facebook's over valuation just refuses to ebb. facebook had to face much criticism with its beacon service. aswell, their revenues, don't justify the valuation...by far. its mostly speculation. lets not get into details here, but speaking of social network websites and their revenues...
3. google still hasnt figured how best to squeeze the max out of the social networking website for ad revenue. its myspace deal again, in the vain of earlier point, seems highly ambitious with $900 mill guaranteed doll out to myspace. speaking of ads in social networks..
4. Alexander van Elsa runs a good blog, and has a recent entry about ads in social networks here.
5. oh btw, just so u know, last year global ad spending on social network websites shot up 155%, to $1.2 billion, says researcher eMarketer. This year, eMarketer expects it to jump 75%, to $2.1 billion. u can find my reference here.
6. time for some interesting device usage info...
mobile videos has found surprisingly slow adoption. People mostly view mobile videos on PCs or laptops. :P
Also, thought of as the best bet a year ago in 3g ready markets, people find lil' relevance of video call, owing to visual privacy concerns. lessons for 3g roll out in India in the offing.... :P u don't want to repeat UK's dizzying valuation for 3g licences, now do u?
7. US adults who download podcasts now outnumber those who publish blogs.
I am trying to find relevant Indian nos. but my hunch says, that podcasts still haven't caught up with the popular imagination of the digitalarati in India. Though many of the digital natives I know, use i pods, laptops and are aware of podcasts, they themselves don't use it much.

_____
#. we had to write an essay 'has internet made us dumber or smarter' as a part of entertainment media coursework. (well, ma'am threw this assignment as a challenge after being subjected to a presentation containing a lot of predictable, googled up, argument. hence it wasn't as much of a media sociology assignment, but a demand of a confessional.) I chose to advocate that we are dumber being slave to digital wonts. not as much because i really believe in that argument, but to make a sarcastic statement. I started the essay with an admission that, to write this assignment, my first instinct was to google it up, if at all I can find anything related. I could have argued that its smarter to stand atop the 'collective wisdom' garnered after being subjected to many different point of views through website. however, who would take that extra step ahead and above that heap? having achieved the purpose, most of us won't bother to try and think by themselves. I argued that the technology is impeding our quest and preventing us from original thinking by allowing us to build rational excuses through the use of technology. It advocates, by being, incremental improvements in thought process, and not necessarily original thought germination. (well, an argument is the process born of selective rationalization. hence i am leaving out the possibility of social interaction over internet that is a fecund ground for brainstorming and new idea generation. ;) )

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