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Medialoper Bebop Episode 2: Buried in a Sea of Coverage

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Michael ScottWelcome, once again, to the Medialoper Bebop podcast. This, right here, is Episode 2: Buried in a Sea of Coverage.

As always, your hosts are Jim Connelly, Tim Gaskill & Kirk Biglione, holding forth on a wide variety of topics.

There are 8 million podcasts on the naked internet, and we can guarantee you that no other podcast this week will focus on both Osama Bin Laden and Coco Crisp. Which is weird, because when we originally conceived the podcast over the weekend, we weren’t going to focus on either one.

But then, head-related things happened to each man, and we were compelled to discuss them.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:46 — 28.3MB)

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For those of you keeping score at home, here is today’s starting lineup:

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Five Awesome Things – August 2, 2010

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OK, gonna try something here: a quick weekly list of five awesome things going on in the media, technology, pop culture, politics, sports, whatever happens to strike my fancy.

No real rules on this, except that whatever I put here has to be current, and it has to be something that I’m really liking right this second.

FIVE AWESOME THINGS – AUGUST 2, 2010

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Facebook and the Semi-Public Tragedy

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By now, I’m sure that you’re aware of the concept of the “Facebook-only” friend. For most people, it could probably be defined as someone who would probably drive you crazy if they were currently in your life (and vice versa), but whom you’re still curious about.

They’re often people you used to hang around with 10, 20, 30 years ago, but of whom you’ve lost track over the years, only to be reunited virtually, with occasional vague promises to “have a beer together” some time.

Either that, or they are people with whom you’ve had discussions with in other online places, and you’ve somehow also ended up as Facebook friends.

The upshot is that — if you use Facebook a lot — your circle of Facebook-only Friends probably dwarfs your circle of Real Life Friends. And because your only glimpse into these people’s lives on a day-to-day basis is via their status updates, it has given rise to a phenomenon that I call “The Semi-Public Tragedy.”

The Semi-Public Tragedy is when you can tell from somebody’s status updates that something awful has recently happened in their lives, but because you’re not that close to them in Real Life, you don’t know exactly what the hell it was. So the tragedy is out there, but it’s not like you’re seeing it on the news.

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Tweets in Space!

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Because you are absolutely nobody or nothing if you don’t have a presence on Twitter right now, NASA has gotten into the game. This week, they announced that one of their astronauts — Mike Massimino — is going to be using the Twitter from the Space Shuttle.

Top that, Oprah and Ashton!

In any event, Massimino — tweeting under the admittedly awesome nom de twit of “Astro_Mike” — is a relative newbie to the Twitter, so you can only imagine what he will be tweeting.

Well, luckily, you don’t have to. As it turns out, Medialoper is currently beta testing super secret software that allows us to go and retrieve tweets from the not-too-distant future, and I’ve compiled a list of some of the things that Astro_Mike will be sharing with a waiting world.

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How to Fix the New Facebook Home Page

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Once upon a time — February, 2009 — Facebook was the single most powerful community-building tool I’d ever seen. Over the course of 2008, I watched it reconnect a group of friends — day by day, person by person — that had last been fully connected two decades ago. It culminated in an amazing post-Christmas reunion party organized entirely via Facebook.

Now, with the new Home Page, Facebook has broken its own back. It currently lays on the ground like a wounded bird, reduced to retardedly chirping over and over again: “What’s on your mind? What’s on your mind? What’s on your mind? What’s on your mind?”

But it can be fixed. Easily. And I know how.

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Hey MySpace, Stop Spamming My Friend Updates!

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It’s right there in my “Friend Updates:” Apparently, my friend Tom — you know, the MySpace founder guy who is everybody’s default Friend — has added a new song from some singer-songwriter or other to his profile.

However there’s one small problem with this. Tom’s not my Friend.

When I first signed up for MySpace over a year ago (yup, I was late), I thought that it was a stupid idea to have Tom as one of my Friends, so I de-Friended him almost instantly.

So, if Tom’s not my Friend, why am I being told about the music he’s adding to his profile?

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Will SXSW 2008 Be the Death of Twitter?

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Twitter is down As digital media professionals from across the country and around the globe pack their bags for the annual trek to Austin, one question is emerging that will likely dominate the conversation at this year’s SXSW festival — can Twitter survive it’s own success?

Last year Twitter emerged as the runaway hit at an annual event that’s been described as spring break for geeks. At the time I speculated that something better would almost certainly come along within the next year. Surprisingly, a year later Twitter is still going strong. I say surprising, because Twitter is such a simple concept that it should have been easily usurped by something better.

In the past year Twitter has successfully resisted insurgencies from rival applications, including Jaiku, and to a lesser degree Pownce (which still lacks basic SMS support). That Twitter has succeeded where its competitors have failed is all the more amazing considering the downtime and performance issues the application has suffered.

Twitter’s performance problems have been blamed all manner of causes, including the service’s hosting environment, phenomenal user growth, the Rails platform, and the underlying application architecture. Regardless of the cause, the Twitter faithful continue to use the application, although they grumble mightily when the service fails.

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Why quarterlife was Such a Bomb

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quarterlife, the much-hyped new series from the creators of such shows as thirtysomething, Once and Again and the eternal My So-Called Life, debuted a couple of nights ago to what some are calling “the worst ratings in 20 years.”

I don’t think that this was what NBC had in mind when they announced that they had picked it up from, er, MySpace amidst a busload of hype. Given the fact that it had a pretty high profile and was debuted during a time where there is very little serious drama being broadcast, their expectations must have been that it would at least hold its own.

And yet it failed, miserably. Why? The flip answer is that it sucked, but that’s only part of it. The full answer is a bit more complicated.

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The Kucinich Campaign Stumbles Into Second Life

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Kucinich HQ in Second Life It’s hard to say anything bad about Dennis Kucinich. It has been scientifically proven that he’s the one presidential candidate that Americans agree with on nearly every major issue.

And then there’s his wife, Elizabeth. If Kucinich is good enough for her, then he’s good enough for America. Still, I have my doubts about where the Kucinich campaign is heading with its recent move into Second Life.

Kucinich is the second presidential candidate to officially authorize a campaign presence in the virtual world (behind Mike Gravel, who has been here for almost six months). Somehow the title “Second Presidential Candidate in Second Life” doesn’t have much of a ring to it. When you’re running well behind the rest of the pack in real life, second place in the Metaverse doesn’t count for much.

I probably wouldn’t be so harsh on the Kucinich campaign if it appeared that there was a method to their madness. Unfortunately, after several visits to their new Second Life location, I’m almost sure there is no plan.

While I’ve said that second and third-tier presidential candidates need to be more aggressive in their use of new media, I’m starting to think that Second Life may be the exception to this rule.

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The Gingrich Who Stole Second Life

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The Virtual Newt Gingrich When Newt Gingrich strolled up to the podium on the steps of the virtual Capitol Hill last week, it was almost like any other Washington press event. The differences were subtle but noticeable to the trained eye: Gingrich looked 30 pounds lighter, protesters were levitating fifty feet above the ground, and the audience was just a tad bit furrier than the typical beltway insider.

Such is the nature of politics in Second Life.

Political activists here have had difficulty bringing real-world politicians into the virtual world. Only Mike Gravel has authorized a campaign headquarters here of the current crop of presidential candidates. The other candidates have focused almost exclusively on more traditional social networks.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media has begun to pull back on its Second Life hype. Recently, glowing accounts of virtual real estate millionaires have been replaced by sensational stories of illicit gambling, deviant sex, and, worst of all, a questionable virtual economy.

If Second Life has any hope of becoming a legitimate platform for real-world politics, it’s up to the true believers to take action and make something happen.

As luck would have it, Newt Gingrich is a true believer.

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