andy grayson

Explaining social media

Best thing I've come across yet to explain why all things social media, bad or good, have seen such success.

From rd

"The media thinker, Clay Shirkey, says in Cognitive Surplus:

'creating something personal, even of moderate quality, has a different kind of appeal than consuming something made by others, even of high quality'

This is deeply profound and true, though slightly dull when read out. It's the single best explanation for the triumph of all sorts of social media things from MySpace to Twitter. It's why social media works. It's about the writer and the act of writing, as much as it is about the reader. "

http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2011/09/what-i-meant-to-say-the-internet-with-things.html

bet you didn't know # 29...the living camera

This was a post on Jenna's blog. It was so cool, I'm stealing it to share here with anyone who hasn't seen it because 1) you just should, and 2) I'm too busy to post anything worthwhile today. Thanks, Jenna. Sorry people.

tags

Dalynn pointed me to chowhound.com and besides it being an interesting take on finding restaurants, etc (basically a flickr meets citysearch meets a public blog) its tag board caught my eye. Apparently everyone would rather be eating in Boston, LA, SF, NY, or some good old Home Cooking.

I know that this is not really what it means, but it got me thinking. Is the whole community web 2.0 thing herding us towards large poles? I mean, did those tags rise to the top because more people in those cities are on the internet? Or are more foodies located in those cities? Because of the web's ability to aggregate community behavior, am I missing something more appropriate and perhaps much more interesting to me? I'd like to see what would happen if some days all of the web's poles were reversed.  Would I be pointed in the direction of some New Zealand beer? Perhaps to my delight some new spirits from Portugal.