Yahoo! Local... Not Quite the Most Interesting Site on the Web

Yahoo! Local allows its users to do a few things, though nothing too exciting. There are four main tabs to drive participation on the site:

1. City Guide
Users can write their own reviews of their favorite, or not so favorite businesses. These reviews will be tracked under the My Local tab so that you can keep track of the businesses you have rated (1-5 star rating system and comment), and quickly view the thread to see what other people are saying... if anyone else is saying anything. *There tends to be 1-3 reviews for most featured businesses from my town = sad.

The City Guide tab is organized well with a list of business categories as well as featured Popular Music, Arts, Sports, Events, Maps (?), and a buzz list containing the most searched words of the week. I find it humorous that these are the three most searched words for my town, and am now extremely interested in White Lake's Yahoo! Local demographics :



2. My Local
My Local is supposed to be the hub for all of your Yahoo! Local activities. Under this tab you can see recent searches, your reviews, your collections (there is no description for what a collection is, but I believe you can title a collection for example, places to go on a Tuesday; places to go on a Friday; places to take the kids this summer... and add businesses to those collections). Seems like a lot of work to me, but for those looking to live active economy-driving lifestyles it could come in handy.



3. Directory
Because I have been using Google for so long, coming to Yahoo! Local to find a business seems very unnecessary. Sorry Yahoo!(!)



4. White Lake Neighbors
This may be the most interesting thing on Yahoo! Local. Get this, you can post a discussion topic, e.g. "I'm looking at buying a home that uses heating oil," “Are You Tired of Your Money Blowing in Wind? FREE CLEANING if you call within 5 days!,"“Where is the best trail in the area for bike riding?" “Does anyone know of any charities that could use beanie babies,” "Let's get schoolkids involved in politics!"



... and people can reply to the topics. The problem is that not many people reply to these topics, and many of the topics have something to do with cleaning, handyman services, or are complete wild-card questions for specific towns that aren't too local enough for me to know such specific information on-- The more you "zoom" out the radius of the search for discussion topics, the more discussions that come up.



OVERALL REVIEW
Could be better for people living in bigger cities... where more reviews might get written... but I think that is what Yelp is for.

Yahoo! Local (NOT a dating site like it sounds)

First Impression
I think I have heard about Yahoo! Local sometime in the past few years, but it wasn't until this week that I took a look at the site. While I am a big fan of Yelp, this site seems to have potential for customer reviews, and even neighbor-neighbor interaction.

Customer-Based Reviews
I know Yahoo! has a space for expert reviews, but I don't think that Yahoo! Local includes any. Currently I am signed into my old Yahoo! account so it automatically made my hometown the "local" city to feature. Right after landing on the site I noticed the White Lake Neighbors tab. It sort of reminds me of a less-spam version of Facebook's Marketplace. While it is underdeveloped, and not too many listings (discussion topics) have had replies, I definitely see some potential for this section of Yahoo! Local due to the neighborly voices of the few people who have responded to questions (and who've written the reviews under the City Guide tab).



Credibility
No matter which review site, whether it be Ratemyprofessor, or Yelp (the two review sites I use most often), when it comes to credibility, I am always a little weary.

One of the first businesses I clicked on had these two reviews:

My first instinct was that because the top review said awful food and gave the business one star, and the second review said great food and gave five stars... I don't trust the second review. Jennifer H could easily be someone from the business. Then I noticed the dates were two years apart, the bad review was more recent.

As I continue to read through more reviews ratings become more consistent per business and I notice that the reviews are fairly detailed. The more details I see, the more legitimate the review sounds. I have come to react to reviews much more negatively when they sound anything close to gimmicky or whiney. Gimmicky when an overachiever, under-experienced marketer tries to do damage control or reputation building; whiney when it's a no marketing experience business owner being defensive online (telling the customer he/she is wrong... as if it is okay because they are not face-to-face.)



With the rise of social media use for business purposes, marketers are told to avoid commenting on blogs to promote their sites, make Facebook pages that simply announce sales; anything that is not true human-human interaction is looked down upon and has a really low success rate.

Another thing that stuck out to me on this site, that I have noticed on the other review sites... which is sad, is that if I see a well written review (good sentence construction, flawless spelling, etc.), I tend to think it is a company trying to save their reputation. For example:



Final Thoughts/Review
I don't usually trust any reviews unless there are 4+ majority "vote" for one side or the other, and with the vote, there needs to be consistent positive or negative details within those reviews. Until Yahoo! Local gets more users participating on this site from my town, I don't think I will check back to often; maybe annually just to see what crazy posts get placed under the White Lake Neighbors tab.

SNS Bebo Part 2

In part 2 of my Bebo review, I would like to break down the aspects of the site that are the most important to me.

Home Page
When I get to the homepage I am surprisingly disappointed. Nothing fancy, nothing fancy at all. It is recommended to me that I view Lady Gaga's Poker Face video, as well as (buy?) the HSM3 DVD... did they not realize I said I was born in 1985? Do they really think I would be interested in High School Musical? Maybe they are trying to make me cooler than my ancient age of 25.



Like most SNS's I have used, I am able to easily add video, photos, and applications to my profile. It looks like many users use the Timeline space to rant and rave about the things they love most in life...



Layout
The design aspects of the layout is the bland To Do and Lifestream sections. There is an option to customize your profile background and sadly people have taken advantage of this... and their profiles look overwhelmingly cluttered. There doesn't seem to be a great sense of calm across the profile base on this SNS... and there is a huge overuse of the smiley face. EEK!



Oh here we go, I'm also allowed to "Tell my friends what I'm up to! How about now?," and "Go to my stuff." I'm about to go on a hunt to see what their target audience is for the site... no luck.

Culture
After finding their Testimonials page, it looks like they have a group of Bebo addicts to advocate for them. Some people make the comment that Facebook is too slow in their country, or they have never tried Myspace. I cannot imagine having never tried either before coming across, and becoming addicted to Bebo. Going off of the pictures I see on this page, I think they have a younger, high school, aged audience that spans several other countries. I also have made this assumption because some of the most popular bands (noted on my Bebo Profile) are Fall Out Boy, Miley Cyrus, and Rihanna.



Looking through various user profiles... it seems like another random group of people that want to be heard by whoever will listen.


That are okay with "flirting" with people or are scared of cyber stalking/bullying so they have set their profiles as private.


Overall Thought: Not impressed. It is a bad version of what Myspace used to be before the spammers took over back in 2007.

Postive Note: They seem to have a loyal following that embrace the chaos and make this and this happen.

SNS Bebo Part 1

First Impression
My first impression when clicking around Bebo a few days ago was that it is a less organized version of Myspace.

The Bebo Mission
The mission of the site is to "help you discover what's going on with YOUR world, and help the world discover what is going on with you. This language is very informal. Are the creators trying to be cool? Trying to be the site that knows what its audience can relate to and stoops to their level. I find this to be very, what is the word, forced. A forced fun, laid back, friendly relationship between the site's creators and their users.

About
On the about page it is explained that their latest features are a Social Inbox (Organize all email accounts into one inbox? Not really clear how this works.),a Lifestream Platform (Lifestream... as in Facebook's Live Feed but connecting all of your social media accounts?), and a Timeline (your personal newsfeed... you do something on Bebo, your actions are added to this feed). They (the Bebo team) also includes an address for Bebo so that users can send their ideas or "talk to one of our amazing team members." Oh come on, seriously? I realize this is the right thing to do, you know the start of a good B2C experience, but it is cheesy and annoying. I'm not actually sure I am over how awful the name Bebo sounds, so that may be creating a bias and overall negative tone for this review.

Getting Started
So I made an alias so that I can explore this site a little further. Hello Myra Jackson. One of the first screens I was sent to is my Edit Profile Screen. Apparently Facebook does everything right because the information page is a gray version of what I have used to seeing since a few Facebook updates ago... only with a gray color palette.

Custom Background Image Makes the Blog.

I chose my current PB template, "Ethereal," because it had a simple format that looked organized for the things I needed to include on the blog: About widget, Follow widget, regular blog posts with defined titles, dates, a text header, Blog Archive, and a Links widget.

I was also interested in having a colorful background, but did not want it to be too busy, so the salmon colored gradient worked out great.



Alternate Theme 1: Travel

This theme has an obvious charm to it with the armchair, and quaint picture frames in the background. The problem I see with this frame is that there is no need for that specific picture. The great thing I just discovered is that you can change the image! This just turned into a great theme. If you can create a nice background image for it, this would be the best theme to go with in my opinion. There is a shaded spot so that your blog posts will show up, there are several layout options, and you can edit the CSS! You could pretty much customize this site to be whatever you would like.

The problem I see with this blog is getting the background image good enough so that you can easily read your posts. The shading will obviously help a little, but depending on how big a screen people are reading your blog from, your background may not work as well as you think it will.



Alternate Theme 2:

While this theme has a lively background image to start (which some people may find tacky, others artistic) the theme also has the option to upload your own image. I think this theme would be a nice fashion student blog as it is colorful and may inspire some kind of artistic thought, but I don't think if you want to become a big fashion blogger that this is custom enough to do so. Also, I noticed that on one of the layouts, the right column's widgets separate into two columns. This looks cluttered and does not follow suit with the typical fashion blogs.



When it comes to templates, especially when working on my website, I find that the ones that do not allow a lot of widget integration, or allow CSS editing give you the greatest troubles. As I am not too good writing my own HTML or designing CSS templates myself, I have spend a lot of time trying to find a template that works best for my website needs. The problem is that a few little things are off that make the templates nightmare-esque. For example the image below shows a huge feature box that I wish was smaller because it takes up a good portion of the homepage (why the designers made this so large, I have no idea... otherwise I really like the template).

5 Tips From Shelby Jacobs About Blogging.

Here are my five blogging tips:

(1) If you are writing for your friends, write for your friends; write as you would normally talk to your friends.

+ If you are writing a blog for your family, make it family appropriate; add images they can share with other family members (you will inc. your loyal followers)

+ If you are writing a blog about your experiences with the stock market, write for people interested in finance (pick an age group… you might want to write for potential future employers, or you might want to write for your finance class buddies (but make it so only they can read your thoughts, not the public).

(2) Post regularly.

+ I have trouble doing this, I’m not going to lie. I know I will write each week, that is not really the problem. The problem is writing every M,W,F at 3 PM… a schedule my NIF audience could easily get used to due to he general high school/college class schedules.


*Image from the Art of the Business

(3) If you don’t have images, and can’t draw, and don’t want to borrow someone else’s images, borrow them anyway and learn to use the Microsoft word draw tool.

+ I was taught in a 7th grade desktop publishing class how to use MSW draw tools to create a pepsi can, house plans, and a thanksgiving dinner. You can do anything with these tools if you have a little time to get to learn the program. If you have no imagination of how things can go together, find a picture online and use the objects in the picture as something to trace (I don’t know about you, but I usually trace and then end up making something that looks completely different once more creative ideas start coming to mind.)



(4) If you are going to do a video blog…

+ Make sure it is worth sitting 2 minutes to watch… and make sure the image that is displayed before you press play is somewhat interesting (I never click any pictures that don’t look interesting unless I already know what I’m about to watch).

(5) Try out tumblr, wordpress, and blogger. They all have interesting themes and structures that vary in different ways. I have started blogs since high school and have used the three for various reasons.

Tumblr- currently using it to co-blog with my best friend whiel she is gone for the summer. We use it to share everything and anything; stories, website links, videos, pictures, whatever. Tumblr is cool because you simply click Text, Video, Link, etc. buttons and add a new post really quickly.



Blogger- in the past, I have used Blogger to keep a more personal journal for family and friend to read because it is not as easy to upload pictures as the other sites.



Wordpress- I currently use wordpress to host my website, NextInFashion.com. The templates offer a wide range of website building options, and can make a blog look more like a professionally done website, and less like your typical blog.

FSO: Fashion Students Online.com Design Review

I will evaluate this site based off of the elements listed in this article because I feel very biased about reviewing the site as it is quite similar to what I am doing with my own website.

Is the layout confusing?
The layout is a pretty standard three column design. The menu is easy to figure out and organized well with how many options are available. The home page seems to have a blog layout, though there is a menu navigation that you can click to "view as blog." I guess that is kind of confusing. Unless you haven't visited many websites, you should be familiar with how to easily get around this site.

Do you glide around the page naturally? Is the page balanced?
The page does seem to be fairly balanced, though it is very text heavy. The only images are in the header and in the right column; they are very unattractive, scam-like looking advertisements.

Does the color theme add to the site design?
The color theme of green, purple, and orange is not attractive to me at all. There is also some red text in the right column further throwing off the design appeal. In addition, the fashion students online logo (which I assume is the logo because it is in the header), is very plain (Microsoft Word font?) and colorless.

Are there any small details that add to the overall design?
There are not any details that add to the design. There aren't any custom looking elements, not even an attractive twitter button. Just this ugly little thing:


Are important elements, such as post headlines, clearly emphasized?
The post headings are clearly emphasized by an orange font. This looks a little ugly as it is placed on a website with purple as a main color. Hello Halloween?

Does the design make give the site a unique edge?
No, the site does not look very unique at all. There is a page that mentions that they are working on rebuilding the site. I feel like if they brought in a graphic designer to make a few custom images that match the look of the header, they would be well on their way to unifying and streamlining the look of the site. For example, look at these header and sidebar linked images from What I Wore:



Does the site allow commenting?
Yes, the site allows commenting, but it looks like there are only a few posts with 1-2 comments. Otherwise, it looks like it's normal for articles to have 0 comments.

Evaluation
I am as excited to see their site rebuild as I am to rebuild my own site with a layout that I am happy with. I think their site is nicely organized but could definitely use an upgrade on the custom design elements of the site; take it from a year 2000 site to 2010 site.

FSO: Fashion Students Online.com

My worst nightmare occurred when I came across this website one or two months ago. It has articles written from the point of view of fashion students as well as professionals, and everyone is encouraged to contribute. In addition, the site is set up so that the audience can become a part of a community and login to comment and earn points.

It seems that the content on FSO is targeted more at college students and people beyond college looking to figure out the best courses to take, or what technical aspects of design they should be familiar with if they have an interest in the fashion industry (though there is an extensive list of schools offering fashion programs; sans descriptions, only links are offered).

The way in which it differs from my website, is that it does not have many student interviews, and the interviews available were only conducted with fashion professionals. Another thing is that FSO attempts to focus on design, textiles, illustration and patternmaking, while my site is trying to create a bigger picture of all the jobs that make up the fashion industry as a whole (it's a work in progress).


The articles written by the student contributors focus on specific topics; e.g. Intro to Fashion Journalism (course focus), Fashion Forecasting: Colour Forecasting and Trend Time-lines (how-to), Designing for Different Body Shapes and Sizes (how-to), The Dior New Look (history lesson). So far it looks like there are 24 total articles written by the student contributors. Similar to my site, there is also a review section. On FSO, there are 5 review articles covering websites they support, recommend tools for designers (singer sewing machine), and a suggestion to attend a gallery.

One of the problems I see with this site, is that while there are some authors that add images, there are several authors that do not... so their posts end up looking like this.

I can related to this as sometimes it is difficult to find an image that supports the message of a blog post. I don't want to start taking google images and need to cite everyone else's work all over my own blog full of original content unless I am writing about something specific that I do not have access to. Fortunately, while looking at these posts several ideas have come to me about images I can use that aren't necessarily my own creation, but they will be original; e.g. screen caps of the websites I am suggesting, scanned in images of project I have worked on that relate to my articles, Microsoft Word drawn cartoons, or color swatches with words that highlight the keywords of the article.

The Good: Detailed articles with vivid examples of what these fashion students have experienced.
The Bad: Could use more images, site is well organized, but is not visually appealing.

Review: CollegeFashion.net- Design

The site is a little awkward because it is a blog that looks more like a website.

There is a menu with 8 options atop a features horizontal scroll plugin (is that what that is called?), and then finally the blog posts.


The blog gets a little lost because the posts are so long. I would think they would shorten them and have a "read the rest of this post" link to the full article on a different page. This way, CF visitors would be able to scan more conveniently down the page to see what the recent posts are.

What I do like about this page are the custom widgets on the right sidebar. I will have to do these for my own NextInFashion site ASAP. A simple version of a custom "widget" is to use Adobe Photoshop to create these images and link them to the things you want linked.




I like how the site has three main colors, pink, light blue, and white. I also like the offwhite background color as it is easier to read on this color as opposed to a bright white.

Review: CollegeFashion.net- Content

COLLEGE FASHION.net


CollegeFashion.net is a great resource if you are a college student looking for the latest style advice or how-to create a look for college-specific occasions. It has a broader focus than I Am A Fashion Student, and in my opinion covers everything the average college student would be interested in. They have covered sections that hint at professional development, and I think they could have an entire section dedicated to this topic to really offer the advice college students need.

Audience
The CF target audience is college students with an interest in fashion; females, ages 18-22. There are around 15 comments per post.

Message
“College Fashion is a blog for stylish college girls, featuring fashion tips for students, the latest fashion trends, beauty tips, online sale updates, ruminations on college life, and style advice for 20 somethings.”-CF

Organization
+ There are 8 Menu Navigations: Blog, About, Archives, Popular, Contact, Shopping, Advertise, Subscribe

The site is well organized and has a few widgets in the right column that can help you get back on track if you get distracted.

Style
The style of the blog is relatable to college students. Each post seems to have the voice of a friend you may have in one of your classes.

Content:
Beauty & Hair
College Life
Coupons & Sales
Dorm Room
Fashion News
Fashion Tips
Free Stuff
Hot Websites
Inspiration
Looks on Campus
Miscellaneous
Shopping
Trends
Would You Wear?

Sharing, Oh Sharing.

From the first play-date we encounter at age 1 (or whenever it was that your parents decided to find you friends other than your stuffed animals), we are taught to share. The reasons to encourage this action? To keep you from hitting your new friend in an effort to get your toy back. To teach you to be a giver. To help you practice your patience. To teach you a skill that you will need to utilize over the Internet one day?!

I never really thought about it this way until now, but without sharing, the way in which we all compile our own unique storage "box" of information from our interactions with a different people, lessons, etc., we would probably never have as diverse of a collection of knowledge. If it weren't for these situations of sharing everything and anything we can... we would have to rely on our brains to pick up and seek out new experiences to learn first hand on our own... and no one has time for that.

One of the videos said something like, "Sharing, learn from it. Be inspired by it." I think once you have been exposed to something, there is no way that you can come up with another thing that is entirely new. You have been influenced and while people exposed to your product encouraged by the inspiration may not know of its roots, it still is based off of a work that already existed... so do we need to cite our inspiration too?

Should I cite this?

In my own life, especially when it comes to my blog and serving as a mentor for Columbia's marketing association, I often find myself relaying information I have gathered from my own mentors. When I share tips that I feel are very unique, I can't help but explain who I got the tip from. Sometimes I wonder if this is necessary; did these people really come up with these tips on their own? Except for the examples they use that prove their advice works, the tips are the kind of phrases that put seemingly common sense principles into a relevant perspective. So who is to say if there is a need to cite these people online or offline.

On the topic of sharing, I have also noticed that many of the e-books published on social media marketing how-to offer the same information said in a different way. This material is copyrighted and can make the "authors" a lot of money, but the concepts and strategies are not really anything new. How are they able to site the tips as theirs when it seems like the same information is spilled out in blogs and across other mediums? I understand that these people have tested out some of these methods and there results are what is copy written ... but what happens if someone else has experienced the situation and writes about it? Who owns that experience?

As you can see in my personal blog post from this week, a big part of my life has been crafting. One of my favorite things to do is create collages from magazine tare-sheets. Magazines offer the opportunity to "remix" their words, artwork, background colors; every piece of the magazine can really be repurposed. As an overall collage may present a visual summary of the magazine due to color schemes and voice of the magazine, I often consider the collages to be my own design and have even thought about selling them. The problem is that I do not think you can repurpose any images for resale from the magazines.

More thoughts on the remix rev. [read part 1 below first?]

Another thought, and it's just a thought, just throwing this whole lot out there, trying to think in a different way from the way I think on other occasions-- who can truly say that anyone who says something is their idea is really the first to express the idea and is then entitled to complete ownership over that idea? How many times have you seen a new product and thought, "I totally thought of that a few years ago, I just didn't know how to make it happen! Damnit, I could have been a millionaire!" I mean, I love getting credit for thinking of something and collecting the praise for things I work hard to produce and develop but really who am I to say one day I won't find it fully executed with fancy packaging promoted on the Internet by someone in Russia? For example, how many of you at some point in your life have said there was a need for something that matched the design of the Snuggie?

So, yeah this is what gets spit out: The remix revolution. People that have easy to use tools to create mixtures of things that others are already interested in. A revolution filled with people that aren't looking for the gratification that they could get from creating something brand new, but a gratification they can get when x certain amount of people respond to anything they have been able to "create," because it has become easy to target the people that will respond.

It sucks, but I don't see the masses coming together to sit and really think enough to figure out something completely new to the entire world... or figure out a system to make certain, absolutely certain, that it is the first time that idea was muttered. If there is no way to fully signify a unique and new idea, a true, true, copyright, (not just a blog with a little c-in-circle sign, why would everyone try and be the first to come up with something?

I apologize if that whole rant may have seemed fairly imbecile. Oh & I'm not going to lie, I'm most certainly a remixer.


Like I said, it was just a rant of topcoat thoughts.

What happened to wondering?

"Gibson's culture of the ubiquitous remix is not only destroying the sanctity of authorship but also undermining our traditional safeguards of individual creativity. - interesting. where is creativity?"

The remix generation was bound to take over and mess things up sooner or later. What did everyone expect to come out of a vehicle [the Internet] that offers extremely easy to find & quickly accessible anything, while training the future adults of the world to become technologically savvy at the same time; e.g. HD flip cameras, kid-friendly lap tops, and smart phones to elementary school kids?! I mean seriously, are people really shocked!

Did everyone really think that kids would even consider that it was easier to come up with ideas on their own when they are encouraged to find seemingly more amazing things already executed for them with a simple search button? No way!

It is doubtful that parents are praising their kid more for a fifteen minute rant about their ideas over their kid's youtube compilation with music, cool color effects, and fast moving images the tot put together; parents gasp, "That's amazing Jackson, wow you are learning so many cool things in school that I never got to learn. You will have to show me how to do that." Hey Jackson's mom, why don't you sit and have a good brainstorm sesh with your son tomorrow to talk about that fifteen minute idea... oh you don't have time? Oh.

... Oh right. Stop your bitching.

Maybe I am not giving anyone enough credit... but do kids [middle school level] even say, "I wonder if," anymore?

The media is saying our generations are getting lazier and more careless about things like grammar and arithmetic. But you know what? The man isn't stopping us from using grammar check, spell check, google spell check, or the texas instruments' amazing programs in all-you-could-ever-want calculators. In fact, they encourage it. They encourage the fast and easy route to things, and continuously pump out new products to ensure an easy lifestyle. They cater to the "lazy."

Hi & Goodbye to the iPad

I have a brother that is dead set on getting an iPad. It looks like a pretty piece of technology, but when there are already computers, ipods, and iphones in our house, an iPad seems superfluous. For a few weeks I thought I might be interested in getting the iPad for the e-reader and wifi components, but when I went into the Apple store, I immediately rejected the possibility of reading off of that screen.

It hit me that I am a staunch supporter of print publications. Since summer break began, I have had the chance to sit down with a few books and magazines that had been piling up on my desk all semester. I've heard people talk about why they love reading actual books versus reading off a computer, "I love the feel of the pages, and holding the book in my face, and storing them on a bookshelf until I can pass one off to a friend."

While I completely agree with the reasoning in last sentence, I feel it is even more than that. There is something relaxing about underlining sentences and making notes on the side of the page when I read an outstanding line, or tossing a book in my purse on my way to the doctors office, or stopping on a Border's bookstore after work and checking out new titles and flipping through a selection of pages to get a glimpse of someone's story.

I also noticed I have built up a get-through-this feature kind of anxiety when reading things off of my computer. I want to get through the section so that I can get to the next find online. When I sit down with a book or magazine, I can simply focus on the material. If I had an iPad, I think the same anxiety would arise. My email and a plethora of other applications would be too convenient that I would probably spend my reading time flipping in and out of the book to get other things done at the same time (kind of reminds me of how I watch TV with a laptop in front of me). It's multi-tasking with no true focus.

Has anyone made the switch to e-reader? Do you miss the paperback?

Day One: Frustration

I am a victim of link temptation. I do not remember the last time I finished reading an entire online article and fully soaked in the information that I had read. This is due to my nearly incessant need to see where links lead. It is not that I am nonstop clicking links that are advertisements, but more so that I always seem to find myself more interested in the other titles promoted on the side bar, or in a keyword or in a different blog on the website that really resonates with me.

The consequences are proving to be quite adverse. I find that instead of gaining a deeper understanding of various topics, I have become more knowledgeable on how to find the information on those topics. Wow, that last sentence sounds slightly pathetic; but I believe it is the truth.

Before SEO became a common necessity for all significant websites on the Internet, and before there were millions of sharing capabilities, I was an avid offline reader. I would spend long hours (straight), reading magazines, newspapers, novels (both fiction and nonfiction), and I would retain a lot of information on what I had read. When I did need to go on the Internet, it was for activities like instant messaging, playing Pacman, or researching topics for grade school papers. At that time, I would get on a website read and see if the article was something along the lines of what I needed, print it out, and read as if it were a xerox copy from an encyclopedia.

To compare the two periods of my life in less-rambling sentences...

Then: I remembered the information first and foremost, and would occasionally remember where I found the information. I would tell friends and family, "I read somewhere that..."

Now: I remember immediately where or how I found the information, and less of what the actual content was explaining. Now I might tell friends and family, "If you google something like, "Peaceful Chicago 20 Places," you might find the best places to go on walks in the city.

What the hell?

Like I noted earlier in this piece, I'm frustrated.

I have realized that the way I go about collecting information has evolved so drastically over the last 12 or so years of my life (I'm only 20) due to the excitement over using the Internet to find information fast. The problem I see is that during my child development years, no one encouraged my peers and I to preserve the old ways of focusing in on the information one thing at a time as was the norm in the pre-web days.

Maybe it's "a personal problem" as my stepdad would say, but maybe some of you out there are on the same page too? Maybe?

Introduction.

I'm Shelby.

I am a marketing communication student that highly recommends this book to everyone.

This blog was created for the New Media Summer Course at Columbia College Chicago.