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Javier E

While We Weren't Looking, Snapchat Revolutionized Social Networks - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...utionized-social-networks.html

social network social media culture

shared by Javier E on 01 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Snap’s business model, which depends on TV-style advertising that (so far) offers marketers fewer of the data-targeted options pioneered by web giants like Google, feels refreshingly novel. And perhaps most important, its model for entertainment and journalism values human editing and curation over stories selected by personalization algorithms — and thus represents a departure from the filtered, viral feeds that dominate much of the rest of the online news environment.
  • Before Snapchat, the industry took for granted that everything users posted to the internet should remain there by default. Saving people’s data — and then constantly re-examining it to create new products and advertising — is the engine that supports behemoths like Google and Facebook.
  • Snapchat’s “ephemeral” internet — which has since been imitated by lots of other companies, including, most recently, Instagram — did not just usher in a new idea for online privacy. It also altered what had once been considered a sacred law of online interaction: virality.
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  • There is, instead, a practiced authenticity. The biggest stars — even Kylie Jenner — get ahead by giving you deep access to their real lives. As a result, much of what you see on Snapchat feels less like a performance than on other networks. People aren’t fishing for likes and follows and reshares. For better or worse, they’re trying to be real.
  • The diminution of personalization algorithms and virality also plays into how Snapchat treats news. Snapchat’s primary format is called a Story, a slide show of a user’s video clips that are played in chronological order. This, too, is an innovation; before Snapchat, much online content, from blogs to tweets, was consumed in reverse chronological order, from the most recent to the oldest. Snapchat’s Stories, which have since been widely copied, ushered in a more natural order — start at the beginning and go from there.
  • insiders at Snapchat noticed that Stories were an ideal vehicle for relaying news. They could be crowdsourced: If a lot of people were at a concert or sporting event or somewhere that breaking news was occurring, a lot of them were likely to be snapping what was happening. If Snapchat offered them a way to submit their clips, it could spot the best ones and add them to a narrative compilation of the event.
  • Snapchat began hiring producers and reporters to assemble clips into in-depth pieces.
  • Every day, Snapchat offers one or several stories about big and small events happening in the world, including football games, awards shows and serious news.
  • Snapchat has said that it thinks of itself as a camera company rather than a social network. This sounds like marketing puffery (after all, it only just started making its first actual camera, Spectacles), but I think its determination to set itself apart from the rest of the tech industry is important to note. Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Javier E

I visit the world's wonders with my young son. All is ephemeral. Even Notre Dame. - The... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...9-9ff2-abc984dc9eec_story.html

ephemera travel gratitude contribution history culture

shared by Javier E on 21 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • whenever I can, I take the boy along with me. He is excellent company and possesses the key virtue of any co-traveler — the ability to roll with the punches.
  • I’ve taken him to Central America and the Middle East and Africa and Europe, and everywhere it is the same, an inspection of ephemerality. “Look at that bird,” I say, pointing to a white cotinga in Costa Rica. “Look before it goes.”
  • It is a fleet thing coursing through the mangrove forest, soaring over the black branches, out of view. I hold back a word. I do not say, “Look before it goes extinct.” But that is what I mean.
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  • “The coral! The coral!” I mouth underwater, snorkeling at a reef, splashing my gestures. I do not say: “Look carefully. Look. Remember it. It will soon be only in your memory.”
  • We live in an age of ephemerality, and the devastation of a building that had survived the Middle Ages, the French Revolution and the Second World War comes barely as a surprise. We expect such events now. Our children expect them.
  • Once-stable institutions, impregnable towers, burn and topple everywhere.
  • The art we cherish is the art of addictive consumability rather than a celebration of the eternal.
  • And our time will leave no Notre Dame as a memento for the future. The present’s contribution to posterity will be the 620,000 square miles of disposable floating plastic trapped in the North Pacific Gyre, with a half-life of between 450 and 800 years
  • In such conditions, the desire to see the world can only ever be the desire to see the world falling apart.
zoegainer

The Smithsonian Is Collecting Objects From the Capitol Siege - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hsonian-capitol-artifacts.html

smithsonian capitol collecting US history

shared by zoegainer on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A sign that reads, “Off with their heads — stop the steal” and a small handwritten poster with the words “Trump won, swamp stole” are among dozens of objects and ephemera from pro-Trump rallies and the Capitol takeover Wednesday that are heading to the National Museum of American History, collected by curators from the division of political and military history.
  • it has begun archiving protest signs, posters and banners from protests on the National Mall and from the violent mob that stormed through the Capitol on Wednesday.
  • “As an institution, we are committed to understanding how Americans make change,” the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, said in a statement, explaining that “this election season has offered remarkable instances of the pain and possibility involved in that process of reckoning with the past and shaping the future.”
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  • Efforts to acquire materials from the unrest are restricted to the National Mall, while authorities in the Capitol Building are leading their own cleanup efforts and aiding a federal investigation into the violence that took place. However, curators expect that in the near future they will be able to work with government agencies, congressional offices and the curator for the Architect of the Capitol to make acquisitions from inside the building.
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