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New Media News Every Morning

Death of the Paparazzi

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According to a top paparazzo, amateur camera-phone photographers are putting the squeeze on celebrity photographers.

German Hans Paul, who says he once earned $120,000 for a picture of a then-pregnant Julia Roberts, said fees for paparazzi had been driven to new lows as even fans and autograph hunters now know how to market their pictures.

The advancements in camera-phone technology have made camera-phones cheap enough and the quality of the photographs good enough to be used widely and be useful at the same time. Furthermore, online outlets have made it incredibly easy for ordinary people to be linked with newspapers and other media to sell pictures to them directly. We covered one such outlet last December.

Mr Paul highlighted the example of the pictures of the execution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as evidence of how images captured on a mobile phone can create news in any media. He said: “There is no doubt that we paparazzi are suffering from this. There is hardly any money to be made in the everyday business.”

The Guardian has more. (Subscription required, required information is available here)

Originally posted on February 28, 2007 @ 11:05 pm

34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog

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Darren Rowse has revealed 34 reasons why his readers unsubscribe from blogs. He asked his readers why, and there were total of 109 comments from which he has categorized the results. While I agree with most of the reasons, some of them were truly asinine. Here are the 10 reasons that topped the list.

  • Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming) – 37
  • Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead) – 29
  • Partial Excerpts Feeds – 25
  • Blog Changes Focus (too much off topic posting) – 23
  • Too many posts that I see elsewhere (Redundant, Repeated or Recycled News) – 19
  • Uninteresting Content – 16
  • Irrelevant Content – 13
  • The Blogger’s Ego – Too much self promotion – 11
  • Low Quality Content – 11
  • Too many posts that are too long – 10

Visit Mr. Rowse here.

Originally posted on February 28, 2007 @ 11:33 pm

Are New Media Workers Multi-Taskers?

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When was the last time you were doing multiple things at the same time? A Washington Post article talks about how teens multitask with homework, video, phone calls, and Internet chatting. But I quickly realized that I pretty much to do it every day. It’s a necessity for working in New Media. You’re browsing in one window, with a blog editor in a split pane, and running 1-4, maybe more, chat windows with different collaborators or clients. You might even be talking with someone via Skype or SightSpeed.

This sort of multi-tasking activity becomes second nature for new media workers, and if you have a large enough screen, you can actually do it productively. Teens who multi-task their homework and interact online say they feel more productive. But experts are not so sure that this is a good thing for younger people:

There is special concern for teenagers because parts of their brain are still developing, said Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Despite that, young students feel better because they can get the answer to a homework problem by firing up a chat session and asking a friend, or a friend of a friend. Since this sort of multitasking seems to be widespread, if there are any problems it’s not known how detrimental it’ll be. But if proves not to be a problem, I think we’ll have a generation of youth fully ready to handle the role of professional bloggers.

Originally posted on February 28, 2007 @ 4:21 pm

Gizmodo’s Anti-RIAA Manifesto

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Gizmodo has declared March to be their Boycott the RIAA Month. They have finally gotten sick of the despicable tactics that the RIAA has been employing for so long, and have decided that it is time to do something about it. To make more clear what they fight is about, who it is against and why, and why the fight is so important, they are kicking the month off with a manifesto.

The manifesto covers the following:

Who We’re Up Against

Piracy Lawsuits: Extortion and Privacy Invasion Under the Guise of Copyright Enforcement

DRM: Pay More, Get Less

Rescuing Artists From Those Claiming to Support Them

Out With the Old, In With the New

Head over to the commendable team at Gizmodo to learn more about this manifesto and what you can do to help.

Originally posted on February 28, 2007 @ 3:41 am

Ning: The ‘ing’ in Social Networking

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Ning has come out of its beta and delivered on its promise to allow anyone and everyone to create their own social networking site. Since the relaunch, Ning requires zero programming experience, and the new streamlined social application building process allows you to have your own social network up and running within minutes. I just tried making a social network and the whole process took me less than 5 minutes from signing up on the site to having the url live.

The first step after naming and describing the new application is drag and drop desired modules- such as text boxes, RSS feeds photos, forums, blogs and videos – into the application in the area you want them. Adding the “members” module, for example, shows a list of the networks most popular members within that module.

Even though you don’t need to have any programming experience, those of you that do, can further customize the site to suit your needs. Furthermore, while the site is completely free for basic use, there are upgrades available for a cost.

According to CEO Gina Bianchini, growth for the site has been both steady and strong.

Nearly 30,000 applications have been created to date, up from less than 5,000 a year ago. Page views have been spiking, reaching 20 million per month, 20x traffic a year ago. Unique visitors have reached nearly 5 million per month as well, 10x a year ago.

Team Arrington has a much more in-depth look at Ning.

Originally posted on February 27, 2007 @ 12:29 pm