Logically with the expansion of the internet, businesses went online to reach a greater audience. Since then with the introduction of sites such as Amazon, Ebay, and Etsy, a giant online outlet mall has opened up to us from the comfort of our couches. But what does it mean when media is now dictating the market? When what users put online, and "like" online becomes the big ideas that enterprises capitalize on? It means that we are in a democratic, global economy.
YouTube is one of the most visited sites in the history of the internet. At it's start, YouTube was the trifecta for spreadable media. You could post, watch, share within clicks of each other. YouTube videos have reached ever crevice of the internet with ease. YouTube as a company has a large audience that they now support through advertisements. They've tapped into the idea of spreadable media by creating their own culture with a hierarchy of stars in their own right. Stars such as Daily Grace, Jenna Marbles, and Tyler Oakley have made a living off of creating media for YouTube. How do you think they got that role? Spreadable media. Their media spread. Not by them, but by us. We spread their media. Got it?
Since the end of the SXSW conference these YouTubers have exploded in their appearances. Above, Tyler Oakley talks about his coverage for Taco Bell during their Passion Pit Concert series, his work with Virgin Mobile at their expo. Jenna Marbles recently returned from a sponsored trip to Ireland to speak to Irish universities about internet lifestyles. Daily Grace was just invited to make a documentary for G4 on the explosion of The Walking Dead phenomena. Is it just me or are you sensing a trend? We trust these people, or at least enjoy what they have to say, and are the sole reason for their success. So much so, Daily Grace has landed a role in the new Lowe's commercials because even though she lives in a tiny apartment with no room for "home improvement", we will take her opinion on the new MyLowe's program more seriously than some random actor.
The fact is that sense the internet is negotiable, these YouTube stars will adjust to our standards of what we want them to do, or we'll watch other videos and create new personalities. In the same sense, what we are buying online is negotiable as well. iTunes allows for the option to buy one song on an album instead of the whole album giving the user to choice to not go without. Along those lines is the music website NoiseTrade.
Brian Wahl, an independent worship leader, is a huge advocate for NoiseTrade and even wrote a "How To" blog for other musicians to get them on the site and use it effectively. NoiseTrade allows musicians to post or preview their music and make it downloadable for fans for free with an optional donation. This site puts the power in the fans' hands. We can dictate the quality of the product by how much of a donation we give, a comment, a download, and then by word of mouth. The site even has an option to share your download preferences with your friends via Facebook and Twitter. Again, the idea of divi-gratis is exercised: we "give" (download or share), and a career is propelled.
Thanks for your interest in the book, Claire. One of the things we wanted to focus on in Chapter 1 of Spreadable Media is how the business models of these sharing technologies were created and the potential tensions within/behind those models, as we often see them play out. On the one hand, these technologies enable the sorts of behaviors that create Spreadable Media. But the way they do so of course have to conform to the business models of the platforms in ways that sometimes cause tension for content creators, in others for audiences, or sometimes both. These are the sorts of questions, I think, that will help shape how we think about participation in the 21st Century. How does "participatory culture" get translated into the spaces that mediate them?
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