Ryan MacMillan

Its that time of year once again folks, where we -the R*M collective- gaze in to our crystal balls and predict what the future of digital (and social) media holds in 2009. I’ll be analyzing last years predictions and giving a full roundup later in the week but while the new year is still fresh i’ve decided to take the initiative and get people a-prognosticatin’. As such i’d take it as a kindness if all and sundry would give their predictions for the coming year in the comments below.

Oh, and anyone caught using the words/phrases ‘downturn’, ‘current economic climate’, ‘credit crunch’, ‘recession’ or ‘web 3.0′ will suffer death by stoning. You have been warned…

Kate and I recently had a discussion about the nature of writing blog posts and writing articles (for websites) which offer a comment box at the bottom (much as a bona fide blog would). Now, we wondered, should these articles be considered as an extension of blogging or something ‘other’.

If you’re confused as to what I mean by online articles with comment boxes then visit any number of broadsheet newspaper websites where articles written for print are posted online and readers, at the end of the article, are invited to comment (afterall, comment -so they tell me-, is free) to get a sense of what I mean.

Now, on the one hand, these articles invite reponse with the deployment of a comment box and often have RSS feeds. So, its understandable to think of them as blogs right?

Well… On the otherhand they very rarely have hotlinks (being as they are, often rehashed print articles) and read very much as an article, not a blog (one might even accuse them of being ‘Blessays‘). Moreover one cannot easily get a ranking for these articles using (amongst others) Technorati (which, granted is more a personal iritation than damning evidence).

In the end Kate and  decided that such articles should NOT be considered blog posts-proper and instead should be considered as something ‘other’. I feel its time to consult the Dept. of Neologisms and see if we can’t adequately name and categorise these pseudo-blogs; these articles in blog’s clothing…

A quick note from all at Ryan*MacMillan wishing you, the assembled internetz, blogosphere and digerati, a Merry Christmas!

This is my third and final post on the growing phenomenon of online gaming, and whether it should be considered a form of social media. My first post began by exploring why playing games online is a debatable social medium, whilst my second post questioned whether it should be considered a form of media in the traditional sense. This final post will attempt to understand what we mean when saying our online activities, especially gaming, are ’social’ activities.

Last time I looked at Bryan Eisenberg’s definition of social media as “platforms for interaction and relationships”; which is a great way of understanding the differences social media presents us with when compared to traditional media. If we also consider The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of ’social’ as “capable of being associated or united to others”, we can further appreciate how interacting and building relationships is almost certainly a social activity.

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This morning I’ve been doing some research in to Barack Obama’s use of social media both in the primaries and the election-proper and was about to Twitter my iritation that every single blogger ever (and this is in no way an exaggeration) has blogged on Obama’s use of social media. I decided not to rant at the Twitter-verse, however, and instead decided to carry myself with a little more decorum.

Decorum, however, was thrown out of the windown when, to my surprise, I googled ‘Obama social media’ and saw this:

…yep, thats right; if you google ‘Obama social media’ through all of the noise, all of the manifold articles that have been blogged about Obama, Dan’s post ranks at number 5 on Google. Hurrah (…for Dan).

I suppose then its a good job that R*M will be presenting some of its thoughts on Obama’s success at Digital Lounge’s ‘Obama 2.0: Lessons in Social Media from the Obama Presidential campaign’ in the new year.