Twitter

Twitter: chosen as the word of 2009 because it has become a big hype these days, but is Twitter as good as everyone says and does it really add value to our information society?

Well, let me start by saying that we cannot yet tell if Twitter is of a great value to us and always will be, it is still too early to conclude that. We can however, give our opinion on the usefulness of Twitter. In some ways Twitter can be very useful, for example if you are a big artist and you want people to see that your new album comes out soon, you can just leave a message at Twitter and everyone that follows you can see the news. For normal people however Twitter is not that useful in my opinion. I don’t want to check on a friend what he is doing every 5 minutes. Messages like I’m waiting for the bus or I’m watching TV now are completely useless.

Twitter can also be dangerous, because everyone knows where you are and what you are doing. When you give away so much information stalkers or other criminals can just follow your every move. If you say on your Twitter that you are not at home, burglars can see that and they can just go to your home and steal your stuff.
Another problem with Twitter is that you get to much information. If you have 100 people to follow, you can’t read everything everyone has to say, so you get an information overload.

My conlusion is: Twitter is a handy tool for if you want to do promotional things, but not everyone should have Twitter because that would be too much information.

Myspace

Myspace has been founded in 2005 and has become one of the biggest websites in the World. In 2006 it became one of the most famous social networking sites in the U.S. Mypace is one of the leading examples of web 2.0, because there is so much you can do to design your own webpage.

Millions of users have already found the benefits of Myspace, with Myspace you can make a personal profile which tells something about yourself. You can also upload videos and music to make your profile even more personal. Other things you can do are writing blogs and articles to give your opinion on a situation or event.

Myspace is also great for music, a lot of starting artists have became famous in the last few years thanks to Myspace. If you are a starting band you can upload a demo on your Myspace site (there are different accounts for bands) and you can tell your status, if you are looking for a gig for example. A local band from my hometown even arranged a European tour thanks to Myspace. As a band you can also ask if there are other bands that would like to play in your pre show, because you could not find a local band that wants to play there.

To conclude I would like to say that Myspace is a great site if you want to stay in contact with friends or spread music so I hope to see you there!

Youtube and Music

It might be one of the most biggest multimedia websites of the world. There are a huge amount of videos on there and you can even upload your own Videos. We are talking about Youtube.

Youtube is a website based on uploading, sharing and watching videos, it has been founded in 2005. Since then millions of people have used this great website. Youtube is great for new artists to get famous: for example the British band Arctic Monkeys have became famous partially thanks to Youtube. They used to spread their demos for free and fans liked it, so they would put the songs from Arctic Monkeys on Youtube. Thanks to this and some other media Arctic Monkeys first album became an immediate success, the best selling debut album ever in the U.K.
I also like to use Youtube to upload video’s from my band: Jazzy en de Pattynama’s. We have our own channel on the site and if we have a gig that we recorded, we put a video on the channel. We have also recorded a demo and uploaded it on Youtube. Thanks to youtube millions of people can watch your shows and hear you music without having to make lots of records or having big campaigns. If your music is good enough, Youtube will make sure everyone can hear it and like it.

ICM Webskills Photostory: ‘El Butcho is back’

For our ICM course: Webskills we had to make a photostory in Flash, here is the result. It is called: El Butcho is back.
I made it together with Theresa.