The Social Network

"On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history... but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications."

Key issues raised:
Copyrights to the idea and company of Facebook (IP- Intellectual Property)
Privacy (Photo's of girls and friends in Harvard, put on the web)
Advertising (Investments from companies eager to promote the site)

Chris Anderson's Long Tail Theory 2006

The Long Tail, in a nutshell

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

Chris Anderson's most significant examples were iTunes, YouTube and social networking sites and his theory was spread quickly through the use of viral marketing (word of mouth). A lot of writing about the changing nature of media has included Anderson's theory since it was first published in 2006.

He states that in the pre-broadband era, companies and distributors were interested in blockbuster hits and best selling products however now there is a realisation that adding up all of the niche consumption might amount to as much revenue as the units sold of the peak material.

The music industry is affected massively by the online age and large multinational companies such as HMV, Amazon and Play stock thousands of titles in their "Virtual Warehouse" on the internet however only big selling chart CD's are available in the high street shops. As well as this, every song imaginable is available for download on music databases such as iTunes, whereas if there was an iTunes shop on the high street it would be likely to only sell the most popular tunes at the present time in order to maximise revenue.

An example of a huge chart topping CD available in all high street shops is "Tinie Tempah- Discovery", the singles released so far have had a combined 70 million views on YouTube and have been in the Download chart repeatedly as being the most downloaded on iTunes. Shops such as HMV will stock up to 75 copies of the album on the shelves in the shops and in the "virtual warehouse" an endless amount of copies are available.

Useful Links

http://mediaandtheonlineage.blogspot.com/ - Class Blog with exam information

https://hsfc.blackboard.com/ - College VLE Blackboard

feed://feeds.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/media/rss - Media Guardian RSS Feed