Social Blogging

Actors Jessica Biel and Emile Hirsch attend the William Rast Fall 2009 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in the Tent at Bryant Park on February 16, 2009 in New York City.

NBC retreated on Sunday from its controversial bid to shake up prime time US television, saying it was “going back to basics” with traditional dramas and comedies to try to rebuild audiences and its reputation.

Time thieves, all of them. Or at least that’s how they’ve sometimes been portrayed in news media and even the occasional scholarly study.

Thousands of female users - and some male ones seem to think the bra or boxer colours help raise awareness for breast cancer as they began updating their Facebook statuses with “beige”, “hot pink”, “crimson red”, “sexy black and gold” or even “nothing”. As online confusion raged and dozens of bloggers speculated about its meaning, it was disclosed …

In this weekly Media Literacy Digest, open education and connectivism advocate George Siemens, takes you to news and stories about his new media technologies discoveries and their possible impact on how we work, learn and communicate together.

Photo credit: Andrea Danti

Inside this Media Literacy Digest:

• How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think? - Every year, the Edge asks a few hundred people a provocative question. This year, the question is: How is the internet changing the way you think? (if you are interested in topics from previous years, they are available here).
• Data Is All - The explicification (it is not a real word, but it should be) of our activities is a somewhat recent development. A few decades ago, I could go to the library, buy my sandwich with cash, have a conversation with a colleague… and I would not leave an explicit data trail that could be analyzed and dissected.
• Nexus One - Google, in its humble goal of organizing the people information of the world, has released Nexus One. Reviews are generally positive and the Nexus vs. iPhone comparisons are already beginning (in the technology field, you are cool based on how quickly you can declare something that is currently popular “obsolete” and list a new tool / software that will “kill product X“).
• That Old College Lie - For the average student, college is not nearly as good a deal as colleges would have us believe… Colleges are often lumped in with other non-profit entities like charities and hospitals in the public mind. But they actually most resemble the institution from which many of the oldest and most renowned colleges sprang: organized religion.
• The Year Ahead In Higher Education IT - Not too many universities and colleges have an optimistic view of 2010. It is shaping up to be a year (and more) of budget cuts and frugality. Unlike businesses - which are immediately impacted by financial downturns - governments feel financial pain when tax revenue drops (usually six+ months after downturns).
• How I Spend My Time As An Analyst and Researcher and How That Has Changed In Four Years - Work is changing in most fields… and Janet Clarey addresses how technology and information influence how she spends her time as an analyst and researcher and how that is changed in four years

A 29-year-old Green Bay man accused of raping a woman he met on the social networking Web site MySpace pleaded not guilty today to two counts of sexual assault.

Facebook is quite the colorful place today. An odd meme - bra color status updates - has made its way around the network, but no one really knows how or why the what-color-is-your-bra meme took off.

A TEENAGER who left another man brain damaged after hitting him over the head with a metal bar taunted his victim on Facebook while on bail, a court has heard.

If you are interested in finding out what I think 2010 and beyond have in store for you, when it comes to new media, communication, marketing, learning, collaboration and new technologies, you have landed in the right place. This is Part 2 of MasterNewMedia yearly report on new media trends and anticipations for the new year.

Photo credit: Robin Good

In this second part I am covering:

1. Curation
2. Online collaboration and web conferencing
3. Events
4. Learning and education
5. P2P
6. Visual communication
7. Mobile
8. Video publishing
9. SEO search
10. Usability Testing
11. Online Music

Here is Part 2 (here Part 1):

The Ford MyTouch Microsoft Sync services page is displayed on a mock interior at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

These fans would truly be lost without their favorite TV show - and they’re taking their case to the top.Fans of the ABC series about marooned plane crash survivors fear President Barack Obama will give his State of the Union address Feb.

Republican state Senate candidate Mike Parry is apologizing for comments he posted on Twitter.

The man charged with killing a Utah sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop was captured while sleeping in a shed Wednesday, three days after saying in a MySpace posting that he was feeling “crazy” and “ready for whatever is next.” Roberto Miramontes Roman, 37, was captured around 8 a.m. at a trailer park near Beaver, about 200 miles south of Salt …

Kodak has announced the ‘Slice’ touchscreen camera built around a 3.5″ LCD. It features a 14MP sensor, 5x optically stabilized zoom lens and will be available in black, nickel and ‘radish’ colors for US $349.95 from April 2010.

Every end of the year I stop to write down my thoughts about what’s coming up next, when it comes to communication, collaboration, learning, marketing, media and technology, as this is the busy and fast-changing crossroad where I hang out most frequently. This time it has taken me a little more but here it is finally: what a professional new media publisher needs to know about what is coming what’s coming up next, in 2010 and beyond.

Photo credit: Robin Good

As a matter of fact, I have now realized that I am not attempting to “predict” the future or to speculate specific industry announcements during the upcoming 12 months. What I am trying to do here is to stop and highlight the key trends and transformations happening around my above-listed focus areas (communication, marketing, media, learning and technology).

This end of the year writing celebration is for me just an opportunity to step down from my daily running train of technology-media-communication thinking and to look with a bit more perspective at the journey I am making spiced up by the curiosity of the passenger who wants to find out early what are the upcoming stops and “vista points“.

In fact, if you want to look to the more speculative type of 2010 predictions and technology anticipations I think you would be better served by the likes of Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and the many others out there who do a fantastic job of bringing you back the best and latest on new media technology breakthroughs. For this purpose I have also just published a two-part roundup of what I think are some of the most interesting 2010 anticipations that have surfaced from the web recently. Give it a look:
Top Internet Trends 2010: A Guide To The Best Predictions From The Web - Part 1 and Part 2

My look at future trends on these fronts is a personal one. I don’t like to be called an “expert” in these fields, but rather an “explorer“, a business researcher as I enjoy much experimenting and testing out new solutions until I find out which are the ones that really suck, and which are the ones that, at least in my case, do work.

Before you dive yourself into experimenting and investing more time in your next web design, content production, online class or upcoming social media marketing strategy, stop for a while and reset yourself around these key, revolutionary trends.

If you don’t, someone else will before you.

Here the new media areas I am looking at, in this two-part 2010 trends and predictions report.

Part 1, the one you are reading now, is devoted to:

1. General Trends
2. Innovation
3. Online advertising
4. Social media
5. Community building
6. Social analytics
7. Online business models
8. Personal branding
9. Blogging - Web publishing
10. Communication formats

Part 2 will cover:

1. Curation
2. Online collaboration and web conferencing
3. Events
4. Learning and education
5. P2P
6. Visual communication
7. Mobile
8. Video publishing
9. SEO search
10. Usability and more

So, without further introductions, here are my “2010 and beyond” new media trends and predictions (see my 2009 predictions Part 1 and Part 2):