From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V14 #172 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Friday, June 26 2009 Volume 14 : Number 172 To unsubscribe: e-mail ecto-digest-request@smoe.org and put the word unsubscribe in the message body. Today's Subjects: ----------------- Twittering fans [Adam Kimmel ] Re: Twittering fans [Gregory Bossert ] bat for lashes on TV [JoAnn Whetsell ] Twittering fans [Steve VanDevender ] Re: Twittering fans [Sander ] Re: Twittering fans [Greg Dunn ] I Kissed A Girl [Michael Pearce ] Re: I Kissed A Girl [morayati@email.unc.edu] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:15:46 -0800 From: Adam Kimmel Subject: Twittering fans I don't want to come across as the grumpy old fart, here, but I think I've already expressed my bafflement at the whole Twitter thing (and, to my shame, did not follow up on the info given me), so I'd be right miffed if any of my favourite artists decided to take this course and this course alone to broadcast news to the faithful, as this would exclude me. I just don't WANT to Twitter. What happened to freedom of choice? I try to keep up with various mailing lists, but I still seem to hear more news about gigs and releases from Mike Gray (and a big shout out to Mike, there) than the people themselves, and my frustration with Carina Round's people continues, as a case in point. It's bad enough feeling that I HAVE to check each artist's web page or MySpace page on a regular basis or get left behind, but to know that I'm being excluded from news or events strictly on the basis of my technical preference makes it worse. It was bad enough when Radiohead expressed their contempt for music listeners by releasing their recent album, initially, for download only: I wanted the hard copy, it's a matter of choice. Or not, 'cos if you wanted the hard copy you had to wait until the very last day of the year, a date that appears to be have been chosen to get a message across and the message appeared to be: TAKE THAT, GRANDDAD!!! IN YOUR WRINKLED AND GREYING FACE!!! It reminds me of the Not the Nine O'Clock News "Gramophone" sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSINO6MKtco Thanks to Birdie for posting the Thea Gilmore link -- I was aware of this, but hadn't seen her myspace blog on this and it was interesting to see the responses to the idea, as well as her responses to their responses. Adam K ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:21:19 -0700 From: Gregory Bossert Subject: Re: Twittering fans On Jun 25, 2009, at 3:15 AM, Adam Kimmel wrote: > I don't want to come across as the grumpy old fart, here, but I > think I've already expressed my bafflement at the whole Twitter > thing (and, to my shame, did not follow up on the info given me), so > I'd be right miffed if any of my favourite artists decided to take > this course and this course alone to broadcast news to the faithful, > as this would exclude me. I just don't WANT to Twitter. What > happened to freedom of choice? i'm always happy to be a grumpy old fart. i don't like twitter for the same reason i don't like any of the big social networking trends of the last decade: it's all about subscriptions to information coming from individuals: me me me me. unlike USENET and mailing lists, which are subscribed, yeah, but the production of content is shared by all the subscribers. or the web, where the idea was: everyone publishes, everyone shares. them again, the nature of celebrity is, of course, "me me me me", so what's new? i can't say that i am baffled by twitter's success. cyberspace, if you will excuse the term, has become a very real, powerful element in peoples lives, and is by its nature anonymous. the psychology and sociology of people wanting to create social groups, and demonstrate their own position, boundaries, and control over this new world is pretty straightforward. twitter will fade and mutate. just as the social networking sites are slowly merging back into the general morass of the web, so will twitter blend back in with RSS and SMS and MMS and good old email and netnews: you've got messages, and they can be pushed out or pooled together, broadcast, subscribed, or targeted directly, and everything else is just marketing. so fear not. news will out, and information wants to be free. if someone announces something on twitter that's worth knowing about, the word will get around. for example, right here on ecto, where people are always happy to share: there's your freedom of choice. 'tah - -g ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:16:38 -0400 From: JoAnn Whetsell Subject: bat for lashes on TV http://tinyurl.com/lem3dtDaniel from Jimmy Kimmel's show Also, she'll be on Carson Daly tonight (or rather very early tomorrow morning) 1:35 EST/12:35 C JoAnn _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC thats right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:31:01 -0700 From: Steve VanDevender Subject: Twittering fans Adam Kimmel writes: > I don't want to come across as the grumpy old fart, here, but I think > I've already expressed my bafflement at the whole Twitter thing (and, > to my shame, did not follow up on the info given me), so I'd be right > miffed if any of my favourite artists decided to take this course and > this course alone to broadcast news to the faithful, as this would > exclude me. I just don't WANT to Twitter. What happened to freedom > of choice? Well, you can keep choosing not to use Twitter if you really don't want to. I don't feel any desire to sign up for my own Twitter account ("I. Do. Not. TWEET!"), but I'm not unwilling to occasionally look at something on Twitter. At least compared to a lot of other web things it encourages a minimalist approach and remains usable from text browsers. There are a few amusing things in Twitter like Graham Romieu's twitter.com/hellobigfoot. By coincidence I happened to run across these parodies of World War II propaganda posters a moment ago: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctabu/sets/72157620497679512/ For example, "Loose Tweets Sink Fleets". ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:41:31 +0200 From: Sander Subject: Re: Twittering fans Gregory Bossert wrote: > i'm always happy to be a grumpy old fart. i don't like twitter for > the same reason i don't like any of the big social networking trends > of the last decade: it's all about subscriptions to information coming > from individuals: me me me me. Although there's certainly people on twitter who use it only to broadcast information, _the_ strength of twitter and the reason so many people are so very enamored with it is that it's all about conversation; a global conversation where anyone can look in (asynchronously but very easily in near-realtime due to the shortness of individual tweets) and participation is as easy as addressing the people in that conversation. (If they don't reply _back_, that's _their_ fault (choice), not that of the tool.) Although twitter certainly has aspects of being a social network, including the negativity which comes from people "collecting" connections purely for the number, it has a really big leg up by being completely open (for reading) and transparent (those few individuals who choose to "protect" their tweets to "followers"-only notwithstanding). You _don't _need to sign up to twitter to get value from it. You can follow the stream of messages from people you're interested in just by visiting the page for that individual, same as with any regular website (for artists, just think of it as the news page on their website, but published somewhere else due to it not belonging on the official site because of its inaneness), or put the feed into your feedreader, same as with any blog. If you want to take the pulse about what "the world" is thinking about any current event, just put some searchterm in search.twitter.com - by the virtue of millions of individual pebbles of "me me me", you'll get a great overview. It won't be well thought out or in depth (though there's certainly individuals who can express deep and well thought out ideas in < 140 characters), but it'll be relevant and immediate, and more than any form of traditional media can give you. (For example, when that plane landed in the Hudson back in January, the news hit twitter near instantaneously. Three minutes later a first photo was published. (See the screenshot in a weblog post I wrote about it here: http://weblog.juima.org/showpost.asp?postid=4243 ) > or the web, where the idea was: everyone publishes, everyone shares. Twitter (even more than hosted blogs) makes publishing content _really_ low barrier for people who would otherwise never be publishing anything, of where there's _a lot_. Twitter _is_ on the web - and it brings publishing to cell phones, too, which allows even more people to share even more frequently. Now this is not to say that everything is perfect with twitter; for one, it's a completely centralized (thus single point of failure) service, which really sucks. And there's many, many people for whom it's not the right medium (myself included). But if you're going to lambast it, do so for the right reasons, and give it credit for getting a lot of things right, too. Cheers, Sander ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:04:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Greg Dunn Subject: Re: Twittering fans It does have a few nice uses. My daughter's pro sports team plays occasional away games and since it's not high profile enough to generate live radio coverage, one of the girls generally hooks up with wi-fi and tweets the running score to her account where the fans can follow. Theoretically you could check in from your mobile phone and get running updates (never tried it), making a play-by-play accessible to most of their fan base. Much more efficient than blogging it. - -----Original Message----- >From: Steve VanDevender >Sent: Jun 25, 2009 1:31 PM >To: ecto@smoe.org >Subject: Twittering fans > >I don't feel any desire to sign up for my own Twitter account >("I. Do. Not. TWEET!"), but I'm not unwilling to occasionally look at >something on Twitter. At least compared to a lot of other web things it >encourages a minimalist approach and remains usable from text browsers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:00:16 -0700 From: Michael Pearce Subject: I Kissed A Girl > Jill Sobule is the biggest indie success story at the moment I would love it if Katy Perry would insert Jill's original version into one of her concerts some time. It took quite a while before I heard Katy's and realized it wasn't just a cover. I wonder why she released a song with the same title and subject. Jill should get some royalties, but I think her version sold better than Katy's. Michael ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:17:04 -0400 From: morayati@email.unc.edu Subject: Re: I Kissed A Girl Is it really that surprising? Jordin Sparks has a song all about how love is a battlefield. It isn't a cover. Quoting Michael Pearce : >> Jill Sobule is the biggest indie success story at the moment > > I would love it if Katy Perry would insert Jill's original version > into one of her concerts some time. It took quite a while before I > heard Katy's and realized it wasn't just a cover. I wonder why she > released a song with the same title and subject. > > Jill should get some royalties, but I think her version sold better > than Katy's. > > Michael ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V14 #172 ***************************