Video Pollution on the Web

In the previous post I was writing about the long tail and the rise of niche culture. The democratization of production and distribution tools and integration of supply with demand led to the huge diversity of choice. Without filters, e.g. search engines, recommendations, blogs and user ratings, users can lost themselves in a multitude of products, because the long tail has a dynamic and wide range of quality.

Beside all the positive facts that new technologies brought, the impact of pollution on the web is becoming evident to society. In the last issue of First Monday, I found an interesting article called Video Pollution on the Web. Authors say that videos have become a predominant part of users' daily lives on the Web, especially with the emergence of video sharing services, such as YouTube. Part of the huge success of multimedia content in the Web is due to the change on the user perspective from content consumer to content creator. By allowing users to publicize their independently generated content, the long tail of videos is becoming longer but video sharing networks become susceptible to different types of pollution. As example, users can pollute the system spreading video messages containing undesirable content. Users can also associate metadata with videos in attempt to fool video search engines (i.e., popular tags, but unrelated to the content). Moreover, users can upload identical videos, generating duplicates of the same content on the system.

Authors identified following types of pollution:

• Redundant information (near-duplicates); since users can freely upload content in VSS systems, it is natural to expect that part of these videos is identical or very similar, this type pollute search results.
• Incorrect, noisy, imprecise, or manipulated meta–information (metadata pollution); one of the new trends of the Web 2.0 is to allow users to freely create and associate metadata to the content. The main problem caused by this type of pollution is related with content retrieval, as most information retrieval mechanisms rely mostly on metadata. If a video content is not well described by its meta–information, it can not be found in search results or appear in lists of related videos.
  
• Undesired or unsolicited information (video spam); in video sharing systems, videos can be used as objects of interactions between users. Similarly to e–mail spam, link spam, and spam in blogs and forums, conversations established in video social networks may contain video spam. Video messages can be considered spam if the video communication is unsolicited or is completely unrelated to the subject of the conversation or discussion.

Pollution can cause negative impacts on system aspects such as content distribution networks, and video search engines. The impact on the user caused by this type of content may include:

• loss of interest in using the system, as some of the retrieved information is mostly redundant or does not match well to an expressed information need or interest;
• distrust in the system, as some of the retrieved information is clearly not related to the current interest or navigation pattern, being perhaps offensive or being included only to take advantage of the user;
  
• impatience, as some resources are very difficult to find or due to the low performance of the system, among many others (Benevenuto et al. 2010).

Authors have also suggested pollution control strategies, which may be applied to all of the three types of video pollution, video duplicates, metadata pollution and video spam.

1. Automatic approach is widely used to control several types of pollution in Web environments and relies on machine learning algorithms (e.g., supervised classification). Basically, special purpose algorithms are developed to automatically detect and fight polluters and polluted contents.
   
2. Another filter or control strategy is feedback from users. By allowing users to flag a video when they encounter pollution, the system is able to remove some sort of undesired video objects.
   
3. The third is collaborative approach. Current popular video systems such as YouTube organize videos around online communities structured as personal (or “egocentric”) networks, with the individual at the center of their own community. One interesting approach to tackle pollution consists of empowering members of online communities with mechanisms to clean or report members that do not contribute positively to the community. This approach builds on the idea that each user should take care of the system and the content that other users upload, editing the content and associated metadata of every video uploaded to the system, like users do to articles in Wikipedia.
   
4. The fourth approach is “make life harder for polluters” by increasing the cost of sending spam or creating pollution (Benevenuto et al. 2010).

Beside all the positive examples that new technologies have brought for individual there are also issues that can deteriorate our experience with them. All the filters that authors are listing, are really important because a dynamic and wide range of quality of products and services in long tail of video sharing networks.

Resource:
Benevenuto, Fabricio, Tiago Rodrigues, Virgilio Almeida, Jussara Almeida, Marcos Goncalves, and Keith Ross. 2010. Video pollution on the Web. First Monday, vol.15, issue 4. Available at http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/current.

The Long Tail - How new technologies are changing consumerism?

Today, enterprises are often in dilemma, where to find more and more whimsical consumers. Few years ago, when mass culture dominated, this was not a difficult issue. Fewer things competed for our attention, and hits managed to attract a mass audience. But this is no longer the case. “The age of one-size products for all ends, and there comes something new, niche market,” says Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail, where he is reconstituting a map for 21.century economy.

The development of technologies for high-speed Internet, mobile phones, MP3 players, online shopping and digitization of all types of content, opens the door into a new era, where instead of “hits” culture, “niche” culture is dominant. Networks enable access to culture and content of all kinds, from mainstream to the most marginal. This trend challenges the economic power of hits. The market is broken into countless niches and consumers are becoming more and more diffuse.

The essence of the long tail theory is in the removal of physical restrictions of the shelves and others bottlenecks of distribution, which ensures that goods intended for a small target audience are the same economically attractive than those for the masses. New technologies incredibly quickly reduce the costs of achieving niches, and although the sale of products in each niche is relatively small, due to their abundance, these products make up a market that can compete with the hits. The long tail is therefore a culture that was not refined by economics of scarcity.

Although we are all trained to look at the world through the hits, new diversity and new environments thoroughly change our view on the world. More than we get away from mainstream, more we realize that our taste does not fall so much in the mainstream, as advertisers, culture, or simply a lack of choice were able to convince us. The diverse interests of consumers are working their way into the spotlight. Although niches always have been here, their economy is changing because of digitization and networked consumer. Market that was invisible until now rises to the surface. Price of saving bits is negligible, so everybody can find their audience.

Anderson noticed that the fastest growing part of the online business of content providers such as Netflix, Amazon and Rhapsody is coming from the sale of products, which are in traditional physical stores not even available. This was made possible because of trends of democratization of production tools, which enabled volunteering and amateur work (Wikipedia, blogs), declining prices due to the democratization of distribution and the increasing integration of supply with demand. Integration is crucial, because consumers would be otherwise difficult to tackle with the expansion of the diversity of choice. With filters we can discover items that are more attractive than items with the lowest common denominator, occupying the narrow channels of traditional mass-market distribution. Without filters, there is a risk, that in the long tail there would not be anything else than noise, because it has a dynamic and wide range of quality. If you want something that is appealing to all, you have to make some compromises, that is why niche products are attractive only to a narrow range of tastes. Without search engines, recommendations, blogs and user ratings, users can lost themselves in a multitude of products.

Anderson also talks about fundamental changes that transform relations in advertising industry. The fact is, that advertising is loosing power, and there is increasing trust in individuals. Communication is now controlled by a society, as a top-down communication is becoming less popular, while bottom-up rumors are increasingly influential.

This new economic policy is not only subject in the media and entertainment industry. Anderson also shows principle of a long tail in others industries, e.g. in the sale of used items (eBay), kitchen mixers (KitchenAid) and many others. All industries slowly recognize that hits were wonderful, but next big market will be composed of niches. Of course, the hits will not go away, and the same applies to the stores with a limited space. They will retain on the surface, because of the convenience of instant gratification and other tangible benefits that are important when we are buying something in a traditional stores.

The long tail book is an interesting reading for anyone interested in future business and society in general. Understanding of upcoming consumer behavior on the markets with an unrestricted choice is crucial, and sales challenges are growing because of era where buyers have more and more power. Excellent added value of this book are picturesque interpretations of the cases from the real business world and this book is an excellent opportunity for both merchants and consumers to learn how to exploit numerous advantages of the digital age.

Document Freedom Day, March 31st 2010

Document Freedom Day (DFD official site) is a global day for document liberation. Its main purpose is to raise awareness about document freedom and spreading the word about the importance of open documents and the workable open standards that ensure access to your documents now and in the future.

The digital environment is increasingly showing the need to develop and apply technologies and standards that enable smooth exchange and use of content, as well as the freedom of information and expression. When we save a document we need to be sure that the information in it will be accessible in the future. How and where we choose to access our documents shouldn’t make a difference. The only guarantee of long-term access to data is independence of formats and application which are used.

Open Standards are essential for interoperability and freedom of choice based on the merits of different software application. They enable choice of any operating system or application and still be able to read and edit all your old document and collaboration with others regardless of which software they are using. They also lead to more competition in software, resulting in better pricing and service, increased competition in hardware and this means more flexible, innovative and cost-effective solution. Moreover free software can be developed without thinking about commercial pressure that often degrades the quality of the software.

Open Source is also important for education. Software produced and marketed with restrictions on its use, is never really owned by the organizations that use it. For example, schools cannot give their students software they use at school, and students cannot copy proprietary software to share with friends. Why should be use of proprietary software taught in schools when students have to purchase for home use? Free software has become the foundation for society where we want to share our knowledge.

Document liberation is really an important issue for our future and we can join efforts of many teams around the world with support, spreading the word about it and also with participation. In Slovenia there will be numerous events occurred on this topic. Here is list of some events.

Why I like Prezi …

Prezi is zooming presentation tool and it is much more interesting and funny then all other presentation tools I know. I got tired of creating boring slideshows and Prezi helps me to express my ideas in a different way; that is why it has convinced me to use it. Prezi is beyond slides; it helps audience to understand and remember much better. Prezi is just one big canvas where you place your text in allowing clear presentations where you can provide great overview of ideas and you can focus on details and particular topics or show the relations between objects.

Prezi is easy to use; on their official web site there are many short tutorials. I learned its basics and most important functions in only ten minutes.

Prezi is not open access tool but you can get a free public license, which has 100MB storage space or free student/teacher license but these licenses does not include options for making content private and does not include use of Prezi Desktop, which enables offline work with Prezi. Great option is Portable Prezi, which is exported version of Prezi presentation and works without internet access. So it is easy to download presentation on your computer or share it online.

Here is my short Prezi presentation about Prezi.

Prezi is really worth to check it out!(:

Is the Age of Privacy really over?

These days there are many debates about social networks and their effects on our lives, friendships and also business issues. Many students enrolled in New Media & Society seminar already wrote about this theme on their blogs, so I decided to focus on dilemma about privacy policy of social networks. 350 million people signed up for Facebook under the belief their information could be shared just between friends they confirmed. But is this true?

The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people”, he said. “It is important for companies to reflect the changing social norms in order to remain relevant and competitive.” "This statement may not be a surprise because it helps to justify the company’s recent and highly controversial decision to change the privacy settings of its 350 million users and it also represents a remarkable shift from where Facebook originally started out, as an exclusive network that allowed people to communicate privately within small groups of friends."

Many people disagree with Zuckerberg justification and one of them is also Marshall Kirkpatric. He says that Zuckerberg’s statements are “not a believable explanation”. Kirkpatrick points that Facebook is making a big mistake by moving away from its origins based on privacy because society is not in fact changing the way that Zuckerberg claims it is. Kirkpatrick presents three main arguments. “Evolving preferences do not justify elimination of choices”, although people are becoming more comfortable sharing private information that doesn’t mean that it is ok to take away peoples choices and force them to make public some of their information all the time. "It is hard to believe that the hundreds of millions of Facebok users want to throw their privacy out the window." Secondly, “privacy doesn’t just mean secrecy”, accurate and contemporary understanding of privacy is based more on the integrity of context. When personal information and conversation become public, Facebook is eliminating any integrity of context that these conversations would naturally have. Third argument, “many people need control over personal information”, point out that people need to keep access to some of their personal information online limited just to trusted friends. Removing user control over what's public removes the ability for millions of people to safely participate on Facebook.

“While we are sharing more, we are gaining more too” said Zoe Margoils in her article “Is loss of privacy a price worth paying". Her idea is that just because one medium attract more headlines about its supposed effect on privacy, it does not mean that other areas in life are less responsible for any loss of privacy we might experience today. She stress that while there are serious moral and ethical issues concerning the loss of online privacy, maybe this is a fair price to be paid by the dramatic improvements in communication, connectivity and socializing.

I agree with Margoils statement that we have gained much from advances in technology, both, personally and society as a whole. But although I am a user of social networks, there are definitely things that I still want private. There are some options to select levels of privacy on Facebook, but they are buried under public default options and also much of a user’s activity is not subject of that kind of options. In my opinion best solution is that what we want to stay private we do not share over social networks. I disagree with Zuckerbergs argument that Facebook is only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing, Facebook itself is a major agent of social changes. I think it is all about having a choice and education about privacy is definitely the key. Unlike the current, we need understandable options that are transparent and still we must be careful what personal information we post in public places online and take in consideration that they are there forever.

Howard Rheingold on collaboration

While surfing on Web I encountered interesting video (you can find it here), where Rheingold talks about new technologies and collaboration that they enable. He is presenting some interesting ideas and it is really worth to see it.

Rheingold starts his talk with announcement that we can already see the beginnings of new story, story where cooperation and collective action will play a more important role in society. Through examples he is presenting his ideas about evolution of new media that create new forms of collective action and new forms of wealth.

Today, of course, the enabling technologies are based on the Internet and in the many-to-many era, every desktop is now a printing press, a broadcasting station, a community or a marketplace. He stresses that new forms of communication and new media in the past have helped to create new economic forms and with examples of open source business he is pointing to a new form of production: peer-to-peer production. He suspects that if new forms of cooperation enabled by new technologies create new forms of wealth, we may be moving into yet another economy form that is significantly different from previous ones; it is based on collaboration. Businesses that are open-sourcing their software and services are not doing this out of altruism, but because they are learning that a certain kind of sharing is in their self-interest (Amazon, EBay, Wikipedia). Instead of “neither of us can trust each other so we have to make suboptimal moves”, it is, “you prove to me that you are trustworthy, and I will cooperate”. For example, BitTorrent turns every downloader into an uploader, making the system more efficient the more it is used. Rheingold says that we don’t know enough, not even about basic principles and he makes an appeal to start to think about them.

Rheingold made an interesting speech, but because of its complexity, I only summarized his main ideas about communication technologies. Although he present new way to think about new technologies, in my opinion his expectations are not completely realistic. I think that cooperation-based economy, although has its own advantages, is not going to be realized so soon. There are many power relations and structures that wouldn’t agree.

About my blog ...
New Media & Society seminar represented many new possibilities for academic work that includes online environments. One of them is also to write a blog. Although I never thought to have one, it is good opportunity to explore new venues of using new technologies in academic environment. This blog is one of assignments for New Media & Society seminar and is intended for presenting and exchanging ideas and reflections regarding this seminar.

... and something about me.
I am postgraduate student in Media and communication studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. My diploma thesis was about new media hypertextual potentials and I found that these potentials are poorly used; only few web sites provided open links to other online sources that are important for users. I am very interested in new media and I also planned to write my master thesis about homogeneity and commercial exploitation of media web sites. During this seminar I want to upgrade my knowledge, theoretical background and get better insight into the field of online communication, its opportunities and constraints, better understanding of this would help me more precisely define my master thesis.

Let it be enough for the first time ... Thanks for attention :)