Friend Blaster!

Anyone in a band who is struggling to build a fan base needs to start using Friend Blaster, a stellar program created specifically for myspace. Before I explain the function of this program, it is important to understand the power of myspace to effectively build a following.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

In 2003 when myspace was first launched, many bands saw the potential to spread their music by reaching out to the growing number of online users. Lily Allen, singer songwriter from the UK, did this better than anyone, becoming one of the first musicians to gain unprecedented fame through myspace. By posting demos of her songs on myspace, and responding to the comments of fans on her page, in no time she gained hundreds of thousands of friends on her site.

Today record labels continue to look at the amount of interaction bands have with their fans as well as the number of friends on their profiles as a means of judging if a band is worth their investment. That's where Friend blaster comes in. This brand new program gathers the profiles of up to five hundred friends a day, and allows you to send, along with a personal message of your choice, friend requests to each profile. Before this program was created bands were forced to go through time consuming process of friending each profile one at a time. With Friend Blaster, those days are history!

Another great feature of friend blaster is that it allows you to target the group of profiles you send friend requests to. Pop rock bands trying to build a fan base in the D.C. area, for example, would use friend blaster to gather the profiles of friends of popular pop rock bands in the D.C. area. My band, Trustfall, has used Friend Blaster to gather profiles of fans of local, popular rock band Hotspur. Since using Friend blaster, the hits on our page have trippled, along with the number of comments we recieve!

Finally, though Friend blaster gets the job done when it comes to friending potential fans, that's only half the battle. In order to make believers out of your new friends, you must let them know that you care about them and appreciate their support. Responding to the comments of your new friends on myspace demonstrates that you want to get to know them on a personal level, and aren't only concerned with selling them your merchandice.

The comfort of online graveyards

In class we tackled the question, Do we seek digital immortality? Whether it be through our blogs, facebook accounts, or sites we have created, many are driven to create these sites with “digital immortality” as a major incentive. However, recently people have used sites like facebook and myspace to preserve the memory of not only themselves but of loved ones that have passed on.

One way sites like myspace and facebook have been used to immortalize the deceased can be seen in the continual posting of comments on the profiles of those who have died. A few years back a friend of mine, Jamie Kellerman, who also happened to be an avid myspace user, was killed in a car crash. On her myspace page, friends posted thousands of comments addressed directly to her, as if she would continue to check her page. Though over the years many of her friends have stopped writing on her page, occasionally a family member or close friend will write to Jamie, reminding her how much she is missed. One person who never ceased to write on jamie’s page was her mother, posting once a month since her death . Some criticize this, believing that profile pages prohibit loved ones from ever moving on, creating the illusion that the dead live on throught their profile pages. I disagree. As we all know losing a loved one is tough, and no one can tell you the correct way to deal with loss. Thefefore, if one finds comfort posting comments on the profile page of a loved one who has died, so be it!

It's strange how sites take on unprecedented roles. The creators of myspace and facebook had no idea that their sites would create a unique, widely accepted way of coping with death. While nothing stopped people in the past from writing letters directly to the deceased, profile pages have caused a dramatic increase in this practice for many reasons. For one, many decided against writing to loved one’s simply because they had nowhere to send these letter to. Today, profile pages provide an outlet for writing to loved ones.

There’s no doubt that sites like facebook and myspace are powerful new means of coping with death. One of the greatest comforts one can have when dealing with the death of a loved one is knowing that the deceased was loved and cared for by many during their life. It’s no wonder why Jamie’s mother continues to post on her daughter’s profile, struggling to let go of the same profile flooded by thousands of heartwarming comments expressing love for her daughter after her death.

Why Twitter is the Cat's Pajamas

Image via CrunchBase

When I first heard about twitter, and the rapid growth of its users, I failed to see what the hype was all about. The fact that twitter limited its users' posts to under one hundred forty characters seemed to contradict the very purpose of the digital world. Why put a limit on the amount of words one could post? Hadn't the purpose of transforming words on a page to bits been to allow users to write as much as they wanted, no longer constricted by the limitations of the physical world? Struggling to understand why twitter had become so enormously popular in recent months, I pooled my knowledge together to come up with the reason why twitter is loved by so many.

In my New Media Frontiers Class, my classmates and I have discussed how the digital age has transformed the current generation’s desires, thoughts, and overall perspective on life. Because new technologies have made all sorts of knowledge and activities available on the web with unprecedented speed, most people have developed a short attention span. Like kids at a candy store, users on the internet are attracted to everything. Rather than spending time on one particular topic, users are restless, constantly looking for something new and exciting that requires little time.

Twitter, with it's short updates, caters to the new generation of users who want a quick fix. As the Internet has made all knowledge more accessible and faster to obtain, our desire to know what everyone is up to in the shortest amount of time possible has increased dramatically. As a result a short recap of one’s thoughts in fewer than one hundred and forty characters is just what the new generation of users desires.

The exponential growth of twitter over the last few months can be attributed to what the digital age has been accomplishing ever since its birth decades ago. As new technologies continue to make knowledge more accessible, our attention spans will grow smaller, thus making sites like twitter more attractive, forcing it's users to provide simple, quick updates. One might ask whether our growing desire for a "quick fix," with sites like twitter, will prevent us from appreciating what takes time?

Taking Control of our Privacy

When most people think of technology and how it's developed in recent years, they think of the incredible benifits it has brought to society. However, I believe it is just as important for people to understand the downsides that many of these technologies have created, specifically the invasion of privacy. Robert O Harrow, author of "No Place to Hide" and prominant writer for the Washington Post, Skyped my class a few days ago. Having spent the last twenty years researching how new technologies have destroyed our sense of privacy that existed before the technological boom, he strongly encouraged us to be aware of the ways new technology formats have allowed for our invasion of privacy on a whole new level.

The fact that many of us are not aware of the ways companies, the government and other agendas use new technologies as a ways of gathering information about our lives that intrudes our privacy makes is disturbing. Though I don't see a problem when one willingly chooses to express private issues on sites like facebook, I am deeply concerned when ones privacy is intruded upon without any warning.

A perfect example of this is can be seen through the use of an EZ pass. Millions of Americans have bought an EZ pass in order to cruise by others through toll stations on highways. What they don't know is that everytime the light flashes green and allows them to pass, a record is kept of the exact date and time they went through that toll, creating a digital record of where they have travaelled. Finally, this driving record can be retrieved and used in court! Though in some cases this record can be benificial, I'm willing to bet that most EZpass users would be shocked to learn of this, and many would reconsider their decision to use the pass altogether.

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

Critics argue the reason why people are unaware of this "invasion of privacy" is because of ignorance. I argue that this is precisely why companies should not be allowed to exploit inexperienced users of new technology. Ignorance of the consumer does not in any way justify the exploitation of ones privacy; therefore, companies must be required to clearly lay out what data is being kept and whom it is being shared with until people become more accustomed to how technologies effect ones privacy. However, because it is highly unlikely for companies to inform the public of its questionable practices, especially with no laws in place regulating them, I suggest that those who are aware of the way technologies invade our pricacy make it a priority to inform friends and family of this as well. With the "benifit" of the ever growing web of communication facilitated by the Internet, informing others of this shouldn't be that difficult.

At the Apple Store Size DOES Matter

When the new ipod shuffle hit stores, though I was intrigued by the new "talk feature" of the ipod, what I found most interesting was apple's approach to advertising its new product. On the front page of apple.com an advertisement entitled, "small talk," boasts that the "iPod shuffle is jaw-droppingly small... half the size of the previous generation." When clicking on the tutorial video, a young woman goes on an on about the new shuffle being "the world’s smallest music player…even smaller than a double a battery" before finally going on to the new functions of the ipod.

When I clicked off the ad, I had a good laugh, pondering what it was about smaller physical mediums for technology that are so appealing to the consumer? Though I was genuinely impressed by the sheer feat of cramming 4GB of memory into such an incredibly small object, I couldn’t see much practical use to having that small of a machine. For one, I can't imagine trying to relocate the new shuffle if, God forbid, I misplaced the object not much larger than a paper clip. Also, an ipod that small would certainly be much more breakable than ipods in the past. As I thought about all of the disadvantages of the new ipod, I was beginning to feel like an elerly person complaining about the impracticality of new technology, everything about it being too small, whether that be the buttons, screen, etc.

Finally, I asked myself the question that often comes up when considering new technology. At what point are the creators of the product going to stop? Will apple continue to make ipods until they are no longer visible to the naked eye? At this rate, I don't see why not.