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The honchos at Twitter have made good on a promise to let users tap into their tweets from long ago. Twitter explained that users who go to the “settings” tab will find instructions on how to download their archive. So, what does it mean to unlock babble from long ago? For now, the Twitter archive is a way to indulge in personal nostalgia much like Facebook’s Timeline. But in the long term, these archives will come to be indispensable tools for scholars, statisticians and cultural historians — consider how Twitter feeds have already become analogous to newspapers and diaries.
Twitter Officially Opens Your Archive
Amid the virtual gallons of digital ink that have been spilled about Instagram’s changes to its terms of service, there seem to be two dominant strains of thought: one is that the photo-sharing service has been infected by the same nefarious privacy virus that Facebook is notorious for, and only eternal vigilance will stop it from doing something horrible with our photos. The second is that this kind of evil behavior is a natural outcome of an ad-supported user-generated-content model, and therefore this model is broken and/or bad. But is it really that simple? Not even close.
In case you missed the brouhaha, my colleague Eliza Kern has covered the details of the original changes — which many bloggers and Instagram users took to mean that the service was planning to sell their photos without their permission — as well as the company’s follow-up blog post, in which it apologized for the misunderstanding and rolled back some of the wording in its TOS. Despite the apology or clarification, however, it seems that some users have no intention of trusting Instagram again, and have deleted their accounts and exported all of their photos. As it does in almost every case like this — and there have been many over the past few years, involving everyone from Facebook and Google to Dropbox and Twitpic — the phrase “if you don’t pay for it, then you are the product” often gets used, in a finger-wagging sort of way that implies you should have seen this coming. And there’s some truth to that: after all, how did you think Instagram was going to pay for the server space and bandwidth to host all of your precious photos? And how did you think Facebook was going to justify paying almost $1 billion for the company?
Who’s to Blame for the Instagram Debacle? Take a Look in the Mirror
Following reports that radio stations had pulled Ke$ha's hit single "Die Young" from rotation in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, the singer has responded with not just an apology, but the admission that she never wanted to record the song in the first place.
Ke$ha Apologizes For 'Die Young' After Newtown Shooting, Claims She Was Forced To Sing It
In light of the Dec. 14 school shooting in Newtown (CT), Foster The People's 2011 summer hit, "Pumped Up Kicks," has been pulled from some radio stations. TMZ reports that L.A. radio station KIIS-FM has taken the song out of rotation entirely. "Pumped Up Kicks," as poppy and upbeat as it is, chronicles the tale of a school shooter. The lyrics of the song read: "Yeah! He found a six-shooter gun / in his dad's closet, with the box of fun things. I don't even know what, but he's coming for you. Yeah, He's coming for you!" The song quickly turns into the dark chorus of, "All the other kids with the pumped up kicks / You better run, better run, outrun my gun. All the other kids with the pumped up kicks / You better run, better run, faster than my bullet."
'Pumped Up Kicks' & Newtown: Foster The People's Song Pulled From Radio After School Shooting Vevo (see the video)
Nielsen’s $1.26 billion deal to acquire Arbitron would make the world’s largest supplier of media and marketing research even bigger, giving it not just greater dominance over another medium, but yet another one of Madison Avenue’s so-called market “currencies,” and constricting the supply chain of media ratings that advertisers and agencies use as the basis of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of media buys.
The timing of the deal is ironic, coming nearly two decades after Dec. 31, 1993, when Arbitron officially shut down its television ratings business -- making Nielsen the de facto monopoly supplier of television ratings, and putting it in a position to dominate the rest of the advertising food chain for decades to come. The deal also comes as Nielsen executives claim to have reached the “tipping point” for becoming the ad industry’s trading currency for another key medium -- online -- following an especially rapid and aggressive push to make its Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings service Madison Avenue’s standard for Internet advertising, including essentially giving the service away for free to some of its biggest customers until it achieves a critical mass of penetration among big online advertisers. In other words, if regulators approve Nielsen’s acquisition of Arbitron, the consolidated company will not simply be a supplier of media audience estimates and consumer marketing insights, but will be the sole supplier of advertising trading currency for three major media: TV, online and radio. "It makes Nielsen the currency for $85 billion in advertising -- $68 billion for TV and $17 billion for radio,” Brad Adgate, senior vice president-director of research at Horizon Media, estimates of just the TV and radio portion of Nielsen’s market position.
Nielsen/Arbitron Deal Sparks Concerns Over Competition, Supply Of Ad Market 'Currencies'
[Commentary] Nielsen is buying Arbitron -- this industry nightmare must be thoroughly appraised.
Before evaluating this proposed acquisition, the U.S. regulators should open the evidence of the erinMedia vs. Nielsen antitrust suit. Anyone understanding the merits of that case would surely surmise that it would probably stop this take-over cold! ErinMedia settled out of court in their $1.5 billion (triple damages) antitrust suit (2005) against Nielsen in April 2008 before the full trial, reportedly due to Frank Maggio’s major investments in the Florida real estate market, which was starting to slide at the time. That's despite the strength of erinMedia’s case, reflected in the judge’s generally “favorable” comments and almost derision of Nielsen’s case for dismissal, following discovery as well as the damages being tripled (from $500 million) as a result of Nielsen’s directly related competitive business actions during the proceedings. Unfortunately for the industry, the evidence was sealed as a result of the settlement.
[Tony Jarvis is Research Architect at Olympic Media Consultancy]
The Night(mare) Before Xmas!
[Commentary] We have a problem. More accurately, we have several problems that are the sum of a number of factors. Even the will to engage with these problems is suppressed by fear, denial, vested interest and more. As a society, we have become like a functioning addict who lives on a potent cocktail of social, behavioral, political and commercial factors that diminish us more each day.
We live in denial of the reality they collectively represent. To change our attitudes so we change our behaviors is a significant challenge. There will be conflict between those advocating change, those fearful of it, and those who profit from the status quo. And yet the status quo cannot be allowed to stand if we are to consider ourselves a civilized society. So what are the factors that underlie the attitudes and behaviors would need to be addressed? I would suggest the following:
- We live in a “violence culture”
- We live in a “sound-bite culture”
- We live in a “quick-fix culture”
- We live in a “them and us culture”
- We live in a “money culture”
- We live in a “no-blame culture”
[Bloxham is executive director, marketing for the Media Behavior Institute, the home of USA TouchPoints]
Beyond Newtown - Our Greatest Challenges
Several studies have pointed to the potential benefits of telework, such as increased work-life balance, the ability to maintain continuity of operations in the face of a natural disaster or other emergency situation, improved employee productivity and reduced vehicle carbon emissions on the environment. But a new study by the University of Texas suggests some potential downsides for teleworking, particularly when it comes to blurring that work-life balance line.
University of Texas researchers found that most employees who work remotely are working more hours than their in-office counterparts. For example, most of the 30 percent of respondents who said they work from home add five to seven hours to their workweek compared with those who work exclusively at the office. Teleworkers also were less likely to work a standard 40-hour workweek and more likely to work overtime. Many of those who telework also said most of their teleworking hours came after they had already put in 40 hours of work at the office.
Is Telework Too Much Work?
“Oh, I don’t watch television.” Remember when your pretentious friends used to say that? You don’t hear it so much these days. That’s partially due to the accessibility of TV content on different platforms--you don’t literally have to watch TV now to watch a whole lot of TV. But, more to the point, anyone who would make such a proclamation now would sound like a fool because TV has become the seat of entertainment excellence. In fact, we’ve lived through a renaissance that saw the most groundbreaking dramas in the history of television rolling out one after another in the last 15 years or so. TV critic Alan Sepinwall tells the story of how a dozen of these shows--we’re talking everything from Oz to The Wire to 24 to Breaking Bad--came to be in his new self-published book The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever.
How Television Got to be so Damn Good
Slowly but surely, iPads are changing the face of medicine. Surgeons, physicians, nurses, and residents regularly use the ubiquitous tablets to check electronic health records (EHRs), patient notes, journal articles, procedure notes, or just to access patient imaging. iPad use isn't limited to offices and hallways either: Sterilized iPads are frequently found in the operating room as well.
One recent academic study in Medical Reference Services Quarterly found widespread iPad use among clinicians at one sample hospital, Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital is similar to most other hospitals nationwide in terms of iPad adaption. For medical professionals, iPads--and pocket-sized iPad Minis--are optimal tools for quick image reference while hustling from room to room. There are critics, however, of the increasing use of iPads in medical settings. Rush University Medical Center's Tanu S. Pandey wrote in the Society of General Internal Medicine Forum that iPads can distract residents from talking to patients. “There are several observations that I have made during my day-to-day work that I would like to share. Residents seem to spend less time with patients and more time in front of their electronic devices. They often place orders based on the documentation from other provider’s notes before completing their history and examination. This can compromise medical care,” Pandey wrote.
Is Your Doctor's iPad Good For Your Health?