Web 3.0 & the Semantic Web

A2 – Media in the Online Age

We’ve spent some time discussing the development of the web, from the days of Tim Berners-Lee to the present day and beyond. We’ve outlined what Gauntlet wrote about Web 2.0 and interactivity but we haven’t looked at the differences 2.0 has with Web 3.0. This should help clarify that.

Following from:  https://lifeboat.com/ex/web.3.0:

Web 1.0. Web 1.0 was the first generation of the Web. During this phase the focus was primarily on building the Web, making it accessible, and commercializing it for the first time. Key areas of interest centered on protocols such as HTTP, open standard markup languages such as HTML and XML, Internet access through ISPs, the first Web browsers, Web development platforms and tools, Web-centric software languages such as Java and Javascript, the creation of Web sites, the commercialization of the Web and Web business models, and the growth of key portals on the Web.

Web 2.0. According to the Wikipedia, “Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services — such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies — that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.”

I would also add to this definition another trend that has been a major factor in Web 2.0 — the emergence of the mobile Internet and mobile devices (including camera phones) as a major new platform driving the adoption and growth of the Web, particularly outside of the United States.

Web 3.0. Using the same pattern as the above Wikipedia definition, Web 3.0 could be defined as: “Web 3.0, a phrase coined by John Markoff of the New York Times in 2006, refers to a supposed third generation of Internet-based services that collectively comprise what might be called ‘the intelligent Web’ — such as those using semantic web, microformats, natural language search, data-mining, machine learning, recommendation agents, and artificial intelligence technologies — which emphasize machine-facilitated understanding of information in order to provide a more productive and intuitive user experience.”

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The Semantic Web

Web 3.0 is connected to the idea of the ‘Semantic Web’. This term was coined by Tim Berners-Lee to represent:

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A “Semantic Web”, which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The “intelligent agents” people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

“Semantic Web” is sometimes used as a synonym for “Web 3.0”, though the definition of each term varies.

So, maybe the web is more than just cat gifs. Maybe. Maybe not.

 

 

Global Music Report 2016

AS Media – Institutions & Audiences – The Music Industry

Click below for the 2016 Global Music Report. You will find relevant information regarding the global music scene which you can then compare and contrast with the UK. Remember, look for trends which show the industry changing.

Click here: gmr2016

Chris Anderson – The Long Tail

The Long Tail is a key theory in our understanding of both Institutions & Audiences but also Media in the Online Age.

The original article

This video will help explain it by using YouTube as the example. You can easily apply this theory to companies like Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Netflix…

The Long Tail, in a nutshell

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

One example of this is the theory’s prediction that demand for products notavailable in traditional bricks and mortar stores is potentially as big as for those that are. But the same is true for video not available on broadcast TV on any given day, and songs not played on radio. In other words, the potential aggregate size of the many small markets in goods that don’t individually sell well enough for traditional retail and broadcast distribution may someday rival that of the existing large market in goods that do cross that economic bar.

The term refers specifically to the orange part of the sales chart above, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to hard goods. The vertical axis is sales; the horizontal is products. The red part of the curve is the hits, which have dominated our markets and culture for most of the last century. The orange part is the non-hits, or niches, which is where the new growth is coming from now and in the future.

Traditional retail economics dictate that stores only stock the likely hits, because shelf space is expensive. But online retailers (from Amazon to iTunes) can stock virtually everything, and the number of available niche products outnumber the hits by several orders of magnitude. Those millions of niches are the Long Tail, which had been largely neglected until recently in favor of the Short Head of hits.

When consumers are offered infinite choice, the true shape of demand is revealed. And it turns out to be less hit-centric than we thought. People gravitate towards niches because they satisfy narrow interests better, and in one aspect of our life or another we all have some narrow interest (whether we think of it that way or not).

Our research project has attempted to quantify the Long Tail in three ways, comparing data from online and offline retailers in music, movies, and books.

1) What’s the size of the Long Tail (defined as inventory typically not available offline)?
2) How does the availability of so many niche products change the shape of demand? Does it shift it away from hits?
3) What tools and techniques drive that shift, and which are most effective?

The Long Tail book is about the big-picture consequence of this: how our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to million of niches. It chronicles  the effect of the technologies that have made it easier for consumers to find and buy niche products, thanks to the “infinite shelf-space effect”–the new distribution mechanisms, from digital downloading to peer-to-peer markets, that break through the bottlenecks of broadcast and traditional bricks and mortar retail.

The Wikipedia entry on the Long Tail does an excellent job of expanding on this.

The shift from hits to niches is a rich seam, manifest in all sorts of surprising places. This blog is where I’m going to collect everything I can about it.

BPI OFFICIAL UK RECORDED MUSIC MARKET REPORT FOR 2016

AS Media – Institutions & Audiences – Music Industry

The British Phonographic Industry have published their data for UK recorded music for 2016. This information is vital for our study of this unit. Click here to read the full report and ensure you make relevant notes based on your case study but also the core areas of study for this uni.

Introducing Section B: Institutions and Audiences

Today we are starting Section B: Institutions and Audiences. This will be a Case Study based unit we will be working on until the exam in May.

Here is some info from the specification:

Students should be prepared to understand and discuss the processes of production,

distribution, marketing and exchange as they relate to contemporary media institutions, as well as the nature of audience consumption and the relationships between audiences and institutions. In addition, candidates should be familiar with:

• the issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice;
• the importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing;
• the technologies that have been introduced in recent years at the levels of production, distribution, marketing and exchange;
• the significance of proliferation in hardware and content for institutions and audiences;
• the importance of technological convergence for institutions and audiences;
• the issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences (specifically, British) by international or global institutions;
• the ways in which the students’ own experiences of media consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour

This unit will be approached through contemporary examples in the form of case studies based upon the following media area:

Music

A study of a particular record label within the contemporary music industry that targets a British audience, including its patterns of production, distribution, marketing and consumption by audiences. This should be accompanied by study of the strategies used by record labels to counter the practice of file sharing and their impact on music production, marketing and consumption.

 

Introducing: Media in the Online Age

Don’t forget Year 13 students that after the Feb Half Term we will be starting the final section of the course, Section B: Contemporary Media Issues – Media in the Online Age.

If you’d like to make a start then take a look at this fascinating article published by the Motherboard column on Vice about how ‘big data’ is changing the political landscape and how our use of social media and is saying more about ourselves than we might think.

From the OCR Media Specification:

Media in the Online Age

• How have online media developed?
• What has been the impact of the internet on media production?
• How is consumer behaviour and audience response transformed by online media.
• To what extent has convergence transformed the media?

Candidates might explore combinations of any two media, considering how each (or the two in converged forms) can be analysed from the above prompts. Examples might be music downloading and distribution, the film industry and the internet, online television, online gaming and virtual worlds, online news provision, various forms of online media production by the public or a range of other online / social media forms.