WhOoosh! You have just taken an extremely high-speed voyage through the channels of the world wide web and have smoothly arrived at "Nodes II Infinity"; a blog created by a 'human node' by the name of Alicia Shum.
Social media is a great medium for executing viral marketing. The latest viral campaign is a YouTube clip titled “NSFW. A Hunter Shoots a Bear”.
The video was created for Tipp-ex; a brand of ink-correction fluid and is one of the most clever and most entertaining YouTube clips I have ever seen. The scene takes place with a guy encountering a bear at his campsite while brushing his teeth. He picks up his gun and aims it at the bear, but two interactive buttons appear on the page where the viewer can either “Shoot the bear” or “Don’t shoot the bear”. These buttons actually link the viewers to another page where the guy uses a Tipp-ex to erase the work “shoots” and allows the viewer to enter their own action to play another video that corresponds to the action entered.
This clever YouTube video was created by an agency called Buzzman and is the most engaging and fun viral campaign ever. It creates an interactive “choose-your-own-adventure’ experience. I believe this is an example of immediacy and hypermediacy because it urges the viewers to engage and take part in the act of mediation. It allows individuals to determine the outcome of the story and give them a sense of ownership by allowing them to redefine the way the story ends.
A Stanford University survey confirmed that iPhones have become an indispensible part of lifestyles. Nearly one-quarter of those surveyed in the study said their iPhones felt like an extension of their brain or body (1). The results were interesting and they were as follow:
85% of iPhone owners used their phones as a watch
89% used it as their alarm clock
75% admitted they fell asleep with the iPhone in bed
69% said they were more likely to forget their wallet than their iPhone when leaving in the morning (1).
Most of the students that participated in this survey acknowledged their reliance on their iPhones. When they were asked to rank their dependence on their iPhones on a scale of one to five (five being addicted and one being not at all addicted) they responded accordingly:
10% acknowledged full iPhone addiction
34% ranked their dependence on their iPhones at four on the scale
6% were not addicted at all
32% admitted that they were concerned that they would become addicted in the future
41% also confessed that losing their iPhone would be ‘a tragedy’ (1)
Sherry Turkle is a faculty member of MIT who states that computer culture has grown familiar with the experiences of passion, dependency, and profound connections with artifacts. Although designers have focused on how computational devices will help people better manage their complex lives, users are beginning to see these devices as ‘extension of self’ and often a ‘second self’ (2).
Today, mobile phones and smartphones are not just for voice calls, text messaging, capturing photos and listening to music; individuals are constantly exploring the mobile internet to email and engage with social networking sites to keep in touch with their community. For most, it has become an inevitable part of our everyday lives to the extent that the boundaries between the offline and online worlds are vanishing. Due to the new generation of mobile internet services that leverage the social web, individuals are progressively living their lives on their mobile phones and they feel an increasingly emotional attachment with it.
The new generation of mobile internet is commonly referred to as Mobile 2.0. Many assume that Mobile 2.0 simply means bringing Web 2.0 to mobile devices, but it is much more that. Mobile 2.0 is where the social web meets mobility, it is the extensive use of user-generated content, it is about leveraging services on the web through mash-ups and delivering rich mobile user experience, but most of all it is about personalization (3). Internet access has expanded beyond the personal computer and individuals now have the option to mix and match networks, devices and content that bring a richer and more personalized experience, and for that reason we feel we need to have our mobile phones with us at all times. Our reliance on mobile devices has become prominent as we rely on it for our personal and business needs. It is hard to believe that someone in this day and age can live without a mobile phone.
1. Dan Hope (2010), ‘iPhones can be addicting, says new survey’, viewed 17 October 2010
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35768107/
2. Sherry Turkle, 2004, ‘Wither psychoanalysis in computer culture’, Readings in the philosophy of technology, pp. 415-429
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
3. John Strickland, ‘How Web 3.0 Will Work’, viewed 10 October 2010,
According to Netcraft (www.netcraft.com) the World Wide Web currently comprises of more than one hundred million websites (1). As the proliferation of website continues to expand, the amount of information also continues to increase but unfortunately the management of information has not advanced. At this point in time web search engines are unable to understand a search; it only has the ability to list webpages that contain keywords entered in search terms. Current search engines like www.google.com are incapable of identifying whether a webpage is in fact relevant to the user’s search. For example: if a user searched “Apple” it may return a search result that lists information about the fruit “Apple” and the computer manufacturer “Apple”. It is simple for an individual to visit a webpage and comprehend the information but computers do not have the capacity to understand how keywords are used in the context of the webpage (2).
Tim Berners Lee envisions the future web to be a Semantic Web. His theory of the semantic web relates to the way computer will be able to scan and interpret information in webpages through software agents; which are programs that crawl through the web and search for relevant information. It will have a collection of information known as “ontologies”; files that define the relationship among a group of terms. Tim Berners Lee’s explains that the Semantic Web is about “giving information a well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in a cooperation” (1).
Some Internet experts predict that instead of multiple searches, users will be able to enter complex sentences into a Web 3.0 browser and the rest will be done for them. For example: if an individual enters “I want to shop for expensive designer clothes and have lunch with the girls at a well-known café. What are my options?” the web browser would analyse the user’s response, search the World Wide Web for all possible answers and then organize the results.
In the article How Web 3.0 Will Work John Strickland states: “Many of these experts believe that the Web 3.0 browser will act like a personal assistant. As you search the Web, the browser learns what you are interested in.” (1)
Therefore, Internet experts also predict that the browser will learn each individual’s interests, create a unique profile for each user and tailor their browsing experience accordingly. The individual may ultimately type in “Where should I go shopping?” and the browser can then refer to the records in their profile and filter the their likes and dislikes, obtain their current location and then suggest a list of stores/shopping centers the individual would be interested in. Further more, if two individuals each performed a search with the same keywords using the same search engine, they would subsequently received a list of different results established according by their individual profiles.
Many believe Web 3.0 will be a giant database that will use the Internet to make connections with information as opposed to Web 2.0 making connections between people. It will provide users with richer and more relevant experiences.
Here is a great YouTube clip that provides a great introduction to “Semantic Web”
1. Alexander Mikroyanndis (2007), ‘Toward a Social Semantic Web’, pp.113-115 University of Leeds.
2. John Strickland, ‘How Web 3.0 Will Work’, viewed 10 October 2010,
