Life in the Network

I was so scared to edit Wikipedia! I never knew you could do that and I am certainly not an expert in anything! However, I was an elite gymnast for 9 years so my mom said it would be okay for me to make an entry about gymnastics. I edited the section on floor exercise and described how hard it is for a gymnast to choreograph her music to fit her personality and her style, while at the same time, make acrobatic moves in sync with the music. You can view my changes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_exercise.
I have not noticed any changes to what I posted, but I don’t think people visit this page very often. I will keep checking back for another week. I kept my post neutral because I am not trying to market anything, but rather make it a point that gymnasts face this challenge when choosing their floor music. I definitely noticed links to the USGA which could be construed as marketing. I also noticed that famous gymnasts and Romanians had links in the entry. I am not sure if this means they made it a point to have that appear in Wikipedia but it wouldn’t surprise me. The Romanians want to conquer the world of gymnastics!
I don’t think there should be a line between documenting something like the Subservient Chicken and other marketing tactics. What works, works. I say the more creative companies can get with their marketing, the better. Successful companies always find a new way to market to their customers, even if the customer is not aware of it. Obviously, when the customers don’t even know its marketing, then that is GREAT! I think that consumers of Wikipedia need to be more informed about what content they are actually reading and be more aware of what exactly is going on. But, this is tricky since most consumers really have little to no idea.
As to how this all relates to the readings. I would like to make some comments on some passages from the readings. “. . . the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force� (Lanier). It scares me that anyone can edit what I am reading and believe to be true. But, at the same time it is another way I think the United States can become more global and communicate better. I am on board with anything that gets people talking and forming opinions. To me, this is the only way I know that things actually change.
Secondly, “Participatory journalism presents a major change in the media ecology because it uniquely addresses an historic “knowledge gap� – the general lack of content sources for the period between when the news is published and the history books are written� (Lih 5). Lih presents some very insightful points in his paper that I had never considered at all. But, wikipedia is a good example of the knowledge gap I think. Before we can right history and set in stone what happened, people are starting to form opinions on what happened. At times I think this could be dangerous because the events might get lost in translation and what REALLY happened may be lost. People can construe things to such a great extent and that is scary.
Brier’s paper was very informative and iterative to me. My occupation is a marketing analyst (I look at how campaigns perform for a company called Thomson West) and we very often discuss viral marketing. “By concentrating on the long-term goal of virality, marketers often lose sight of the narrower objectives and strategies specifically attached to online viral advertising. The strategy of a successful online viral marketing element concentrates not on incubating a message, but rather on spreading it. In other words, the viral message has to be contagious� (Brier 1). To me, it is obvious that you want your message to stick in consumer’s mind and your brand to be ever-present in their purchasing behavior, but saying this and actually finding creative, effective ways to do this is very very difficult!