user Gen - eb 2.0 - crowds, lists etc Annotated
Yet there is a limit to how splintered a culture can become, one that’s as much psychological as aesthetic. Humans like to congregate and join a crowd, at least up to a point. One thing the Internet does superbly is to tabulate, and it’s no accident that sites featuring user-generated content prominently display their own most-viewed and most-played lists. Even if they take pride in ignoring the mass-market Top 10, users still want a little company, and perhaps they hope that the collective choices add up to some guidance.
Humans also like to share what they enjoy; hence all the user-generated playlists at sites like Amazon or eMusic, the inevitable lists of favorite bands and films on social networking sites and the proliferation of music blogs, like fluxblog.org or obscuresound.com, that gather hard-to-find songs for listeners to download directly. The songs on music blogs are chosen not by companies desperate for profit, but by individuals with time to spare, and if the choices often seem a little, well, geeky — indie rock, with a side of underground hip-hop, seems to be the overwhelming choice of music bloggers — who but a geek would be spending all that time at a computer?
Those geeks make life easier for the media moguls who bought into user-generated content this year. Selection, a time-consuming job, has been outsourced. What’s growing is the plentitude not just of user-generated content, but also of user-filtered content. (There are even sites like elbo.ws that tabulate songs found on music blogs, finding yet another Top 10.)
The open question is whether those new, quirky, homemade filters will find better art than the old, crassly commercial ones. The most-played songs from unsigned bands on MySpace — some played two million or three million times — tend to be as sappy as anything on the radio; the most-viewed videos on YouTube are novelty bits, and proudly dorky. Mouse-clicking individuals can be as tasteless, in the aggregate, as entertainment professionals.
Unlike the old media roadblocks, however, their filtering can easily be ignored. The promise of all the self-expression online is that genius will reach the public with fewer obstacles, bypassing the entrenched media. The reality is that genius has a bigger junk pile to climb out of than ever, one that requires just as much hustle and ingenuity as the old distribution system.
V.C.s Have a Crush on IceBreaker - Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds -- DealBook - New York Times Annotated
.C.’s Have a Crush on IceBreaker
June 6, 2007, 7:23 am
- Topics
- Industries
IceBreaker has landed $7.2 million in new financing, money that the Bellevue, Wash. startup will use to continue marketing its mobile dating service, Crush or Flush. It also plans to use funds to bolster a research and development center in Beijing, where the company employs more than 20 people and is looking to add more.
Unveiled in mid-January, the Crush or Flush service allows singles to find potential matches by browsing picture profiles of other members on mobile phones.
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