Even Steven.. Or no?

The power of giving a gift always makes one feel good, the fact of receiving one is appreciated as well. In this article Seth Godin goes on to explain that when someone sells you something, you are exchanging gifts. The customer gets the product and the seller gets money. Even trade, right? However, when someone gives you a gift of far greater importance or value, how is the trade fair? Godin also says that giving gifts gives you a power that some did not know they had and how giving can sometimes be just as good as receiving. Artists give to us all of the time. Whether they hang up a painting in a museum or we hear a song on the radio we are receiving their gift without giving them anything in return. However, this article says that we can be givers if we pass on what we saw or heard to another person, making that artists’ work even more popular.

The advertising world has done a great job of training us to believing only what we hear by word of mouth. If we hear that a song is bad or a movie that just came out was terrible, chances are, we won’t go see that movie or buy that person’s CD, despite all of the advertising that company may have done to promote that movie or CD to make it seem better than any other one out at that time. Everyone likes receiving gifts so when we hear about someone offering them we tend to like their work more than someone else’s and we might even re-visit this so called artists’ work again sometime in the future.

Online music comes to mind when thinking about something like this. A lot of people in this day in age download music off the internet for free. This is, in a way, the process of giving and receiving because when someone downloads a certain artist off Lime Wire or a music site like that, that person may or may not become more introduced in that artist’s music, therefore resulting in them purchasing their full CD or what have you. Then in that case, everyone gets something.

Seth later says, “When done properly, gifts work like nothing else. A gift gladly accepted changes everything. The imbalance creates motion, motion that pushes us to a new equilibrium, motion that creates connection.” Gifts are a great thing, but like Seth said, when they are done properly and correctly. The internet provides people with gifts everyday, whether it’s free information, free music, free movies etc., but what do the people receiving these gifts give back to the internet? It’s something to ponder I suppose…

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Celebrity Doppelganger Week Takes Over Facebook:

And we thought Facebook couldn’t get any better? Celebrity Doppelganger Week was the hit of Facebook for the week of February 1, 2010. Everyone is on Facebook, let’s face it. But I would have to say that I was a bit confused when I logged on last week and saw Megan Fox, Tom Cruise, and Carmen Electra writing on my wall. Come to find out, it was still the same friends that I see everyday, not the celebrities. What a let down. For those of you living under a rock let me clear up what Doppelganger is. It is when Facebook users put up a picture of a celebrity that they seem to believe resembles them, or who other people tell them they resemble. When uploading a picture of yourself there is facial recognition technology that will match it with a celebrity. There is even a Facebook group that as of today has about 7,319 fans in just about a week. Critics are relating this to “David after Dentist” and the New Orleans “Who Dat” movement.

Bob Patel, creator of CDW, said that this all started at his work when some of his co-workers would tease him by calling him Tom Selleck. That is where he got the idea to begin this fad that soon took over Facebook. Myheritage.com says that they created a celebrity look-a-like finder way before Celebrity Doppelganger Week even started (Boo Hoo). I decided to try it out, you know, to “fit in.” My match was completely wrong and looked nothing like me, so I am not quite sure where they came up with my match. When I posted the picture of my celeb look-a-like only a few people had asked me what I was doing and why I had a picture of a celebrity in my profile picture. Everyone else knew what was happening when everyone had a bunch of celebrities in their pictures, which just goes to show that the internet has a major effect on the way that people live their day to day lives.

People are starting to use Facebook more than their cell phones or face to face communication. Social networking is taking over and Doppelganger is proof. There is over 350 million users registered for Doppelganger, because you MUST register to take part in this. However, you better have a lot of time on your hands because with the amount of people participating, the site gets very backed up.

Problems…? There are many copyright issues with Doppelganger because according to Horizons blog, “Celebrity photos posted to the web are most often owned by the media outlet that paid to send a photographer to take them – reposting on your profile could be considered intellectually property theft.” People don’t think about issues like this when participating in the latest trends online and that is where a lot of trouble comes from. Everyone thinks that information on the internet is fair game and there is no need for copyright or citations. So again, internet plays a major role in the 2010 day to day lives of innocent people just trying to make themselves feel good by putting up celebrity photos and hoping someone will give them a comment that says, “Oh yeah, you look just like them!”

Even Facebook’s Terms of Service made it very clear that certain content is allowed to be posted while other content is not. Their Terms of Service says this, “You will not post or take any action on Facebook that infringes or violates someone else’s rights or otherwise violates the law.” Facebook had a very strong and logical comeback… Let’s see if you agree. http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/0202/Facebook-Celebrity-Doppelganger-Week-What-you-need-to-know

The Long Tail

After reading the Long Tail Blog it gave me a better understanding of how many different opinions there are out there in the world and how many of them blog about them. I was never into blogging before and never really understood why some people took part in it. However, now I know that they are used for people to express their opinions about certain issues or topics and have other people comment on them and put their two senses as well. The article in generally was very interesting. At some points I found myself glued to the screen because it was so interesting and at other times I found myself just wanting to skip to the next paragraph because of the dryness. There was a lot said in this blog and I wouldn’t say that I agreed with one hundred percent of it but I definitely agreed with the overall message.
I think that this theory of the Long Tail will affect Advertising for the Internet because now that some people have read this a lot of people will have a different outlook on how they are spending their money and how far their money actually goes. If they know they don’t have to pay 99 cents for a song on iTunes then they probably aren’t going to anymore which will decrease the sales in general. Towards the beginning where the blog went on to say that the twentieth century was all about hits and the twenty-first century will be all about misses, I think was a little far fetched. I don’t think there is really any way that people can predict that or not. A lot of it is based on chance. A movie is only shown in theaters if it gets 1,500 viewers in two weeks. They take a lot of chances with that and risk involving a lot of money on the chance that they actually will get 1,500 people.
A little later in the blog it goes on to say that there are 6,000 movies that are submitted to the Sundance Film Festival and only two hundred and fifty five were accepted. Of those two hundred and fifty five movies, only twelve were picked for distribution. I liked the argument on that study where the Long Tail says why not just pick all two hundred and fifty five of those movies, put them on DVD and discount them. There is a lot of time and money being wasted on evaluating these movies rather than actually releasing them. I think the blog brought up a very good point. Why go through that whole process when the blog even stated that most of the time, hits make money, but so do misses. Not everyone is going to like the same twelve movies that are picked to be released and they won’t know the money they are missing out on if they keep the other two hundred and forty three movies not available to the public.
Another interesting point that the blog brought up was the fact that stores only sell what we want. Or what we think we want. Certain stores make us believe that if they don’t carry it or we’ve never been introduced to it, then we don’t need it. If we wanted items, they would definitely be sold at all the stores. I think this is very true because if someone goes into Wal-Mart or Stop and Shop or wherever, if the brand that isn’t there that we prefer we are forced to settle for a different brand and we realize that okay this store doesn’t carry it so I don’t need it anymore. Certain things don’t get as much recognition as they deserve. Just because the overall population dislikes something, doesn’t mean the rest of us won’t like it either. The Long Tail discusses how if there is enough “non-hits” on the “tail” then the market will be bigger than the hits. I couldn’t have said that better myself. Everyone just goes along with the flow and with what is popular and “in” at that particular time. Everyone is so afraid to branch out and go against the “popular” things in life. If everyone realized this, the “non-hits” would be more popular than the actual popular hits.
“The biggest money is in the smallest sales.” I find this quote to be very true. Just like The Long Tail says, if things cost less people will buy more. So why do we overprice things that could be at a lower price? I think a lot of people have just stopped arguing with that fact and accepted it. No one is actually challenging it and The Long Tail was the first thing I ever heard about that is in fact challenging it. I think the blog brought up a lot of good points. A little dry and boring at some parts but the overall message was very interesting and fun to read about.