I Sold Some Plasma to Get More Books

I placed a nice, fat book order with the folks at Amazon today. I should receive the following four New Media books by this time next week (2/19/10): Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing WIthout Organizations - Clay Shirky; The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom - Yochai Benkler; YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture - Jean Burgess; and finally Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (Digital Formations) - Axel Bruns.

At the beginning of the semester, the class received a large selection of books to choose from. I chose the above titles over the rest because of personal-interests, one book's lack of availability, and a perceived redundancy between the YouTube titles. I hope to be able to split up the next purchase with a fellow student (hint, hint.)

I would like to put a wrap on this auspicious and seminal post with a big fat bow tied with candy canes, laurel, and a video. The clip below is taken from an interview with the two authors of “YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture.” (Here is a book review.)

Relax, enjoy a sip of coffee or drink of choice, and watch how the authors explain their spiffy approach to surveying content posted on YouTube. One twist that they brought up really has me chomping to get my copy of said book -- YouTube as a true social network. Might seem obvious to some or most, but up until now, I had thought of the Tube as merely a storage site for music videos, television clips, piano playing kitties, pratfalls, and crotch dings; and judged most of its commenters as a pack of insulated jerks with a vexing attraction to over CAPITALIZATION and runaway ......ellipses..... . But Jean and Joshua say au contrare.

They claim that it is its own cultural space formed by a unique community of content (both user created and traditional) providers and responders. For the cursory user (me), it may seem like a video clip dump site, but not so for its devoted social community. YouTube can be viewed more like a gathering of video-bloggers and not solely as a convenient way to catch clips of last night’s “American Idol.”

But enough of my yakking, welcome aboard.