For the third year in a row, good citizens of the web, we ask that you take a few minutes to tell us about your professional skills, educational background, career prospects, job benefits, and more.

The State of the Internet Memescape: 2008–10

Whether it's Weezer's "Pork and Beans" or LOLCat ubiquity, the internet memescape is getting enormously bigger and badder. This talk will assess current trends in internet culture and discuss how changes in the software and hardware environment will alter the construction, spread and evolution of online memes into the future.

• Tim Hwang, ROFLCon

Going to talk about the
* Past year
* Hardware/software that powers the “memescape”
* The future

Founder of ROFLcon: Web celebrity, Web fame, Web culture.

(Interesting map of Iranian blogosphere. Data map by subject/political affiliation.)

A lot of things we’ve seen before (funny vidoes, catchphrases).
But also new things: Emergence of web culture into mainstream culture. Emergence of books/realworld meetups.

Benkler’s Layers of Communication:
Content
Code
Physical

Connection between memes over time and memes happening at the same time.
Not random (dinosaur in a birthday hat)

Pattern underlying memescape.

Underlying patterns for content in 2008:
* The daily meme: Shorter memes. Numa numa was "funny" for like a year. Now shorter attention span. A lot of the shorter ones seem to emerge via Twitter.
* Real world emergence: Rick rolling. Gary from Numa numa always stayed online. Rick Astley "rick rolled" the Macy's Day parade. Forchan (anonymous image board): Anonymous protests against Scientology. Stuff white people like: from blog to actual book. On NYT bestseller. Twitter and Shorty Awards.
* Genres: Own self-referential world of … Hamster dance. Big meme in late 90s. Flash-forward to LOLcats. Former one-time thing, share link and that’s it. Latter has a community and develops memes within memes. Translating the entire Bible into LOLCat pidgeon. LOLCode. Hamster dance never spilled out. Lolbama.com

Underlying patterns for
* The daily meme: The function of the persistence of the internet. Now with the internet 24-hours day instead of less in the past. Mobile devices and laptops are much more diffuse than in the past. Everyone is on Twitter all the time.
* Real world emergence: Social networks are more popular than ever. And not just young people. The largest growth in Facebook people aged 25-54. Now there’s a market to connect with and sell to.
* Genres: Communities built around memes and the tools to build memes. I can has cheezburger. Shared knowledge about meme as you build new meme. And tools that make it easy to generate content.

Problem with Benkler’s layer of communication: missing people.

Stock market has lost a lot value and most of the world is in recession. This could be a boom for internet culture.

Supply

Lots of people sitting in front of the computer all day with nothing to do. And even when looking for jobs, good idea to publish something viral, but it’s easier to get hired.

Demand

Hire good looking people from the internet. Cost-effective choice in tough times.

People

If you’re an unemployed person looking for entertainment, what do you do? Can’t afford and piracy might not be appealing, so internet culture.

Proof: Correlation between decrease in value of Dow Jones and increase in Etsy and Vimeo pageviews. (see about getting graphs)

Question?

Once we understand it, can we hack internet culture.

Realboy: believable twitter bots. Bot identifies two independent groups talking about the same thing, but then redirects tweets from one group to the other to connect them. Bots with 25/50% follow-back

Hacker war between Fat and NYCR

Social Net Neutrality

Statements: arbitrary followbacks are damaging to the ecosystem.
Issue bug reports for various social networks.

Memes that have always been around. archive.org roflcon
Before the LOL: Cat photos with funny captions in the 80s

Bruce Sterling was a little bitter yesterday (wish I would have caught it!). Notes from Bruce Sterling's talk

With more people on the internet, is internet culture diverging or converging? Not just kids, but a lot of retired people on the internet now.

Anyone interested with working with Tim Hwang on a video documentary of Goatsy?

Q: What software do you use to track the memes you study?
A: Have to develop tools yrself.
Berkman center: media cloud. Eats RSS feeds. Generates associations between certain terms in the news.
Content analysis and mass RSS scraping.

Q: Are memes spreading internationally? And if so, what form do they take?
A: Nigeria and the 419 scam. Tim would like to start investigating international memes. But doesn't currently know a lot about it. Not just internet culture via nationalism, but also Internet culture across gender and class.

How Social Networks Are Killing the Revolution

Social networking sites today do as much for real world action as paint on the walls does for the structural integrity of your home. Come discuss how we are creating a false majority-view mentality and how to overcome this to achieve large scale change in the world.

• Steve Swedler, Chief Prod Guy, Gangplank
• Jeremy Tanner, @Penguin
• Todd Huffman, Nucleator, BIL Conference
• Shannon Paul, New Media, Detroit Red Wings

What is the "revolution"?

Any type of change you want to see happen in the real world.

What is "friendship" online?

Three types of online friends:

• Familiar: People you already know.
• Validating: Seek out people on internet who validate your opinion.
• False: Spammers.

Validating can be the most dangerous, because it can lead to complacency. So much noise in validating network, may believe something is actually happening.

Why doesn’t it translate?

* False-majority view (sampling bias)
* Bigger silos (validating groups)
* Noise != action (anonymous)

Anecdote about Anonymous and the Scientology action. None of the Scientologists even knew about Anonymous.

What about Change.org? Smaller, specialized networks. Highly specialized, intentional networks. Attract people who are already committed to action.

Can we do better?

* Feedback
* Redefine social network retro
* Mobile
* Making the message actionable

Tools can be used, but David Armano example. Had the social capital. Made it personal. Rare event—doesn't ask for help often.

How to move people from discussion to action, in response to greeblemonkey.

Download and checkout the Obama iPhone app. Even though the election is over, it is amazing.

Creating feedback loop. This is a place where social networks can play a role in feedback and transparency.

The mobile Web has connected more of the world than the traditional Web.

In terms of redefine social network retro, use the phone, what about meetup.com? Seems like a useful tool for facilitating real world action.
(Someone asked it. Panel feels tools are a bit clumsy.)

The more human we can get online, the better our ability to effect change. Smaller, more applicable and relatable.

Questioner works for PETA and uses the power of their social networks to get people to stop selling fur.

It's a conversation, not direct mail. Don't just send them stuff.

Hmm… ultimate analysis: Only panel I wouldn't recommend. Posting because I was there, but not sure it's worth listening to the audio or reading the notes. I don't feel like I learned anything actionable; I mean, I guess the only thing I really learned was the obvious fact that if you think you're going to change the world via a Facebook group, it hain't going to happen.

Just before Inauguration Day, Change.org will host an event in Washington, DC and hand-deliver the top 10 rated ideas to a representative of the Obama Administration. They'll then mobilize the collective energy of the millions of people on Change.org, MySpace and partner organizations to ensure that each winning idea gets the full consideration of the administration and the 111th Congress.

OneWebDay, the Earth Day of the internet, has submitted a proposal to make OneWebDay a national day. Please review their full proposal below, and, if you support it, vote for it at Change.org.

The idea behind OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key Internet value (universal access and digital literacy in 2009), focus attention on local Internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills) and create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the Internet. OneWebDay is like an Earth Day for the Internet, celebrated every September 22 since 2006! We are building an organization that works like the Web: an open platform that supports collaboration on annual projects that educate and activate a broad range of communities about issues that are important for the Internet's future.

In recognition of President-elect Obama's deep understanding of the power of the Internet and his stated pledge to bring "true broadband to every community in America," we hope that the new Administration will recognize OneWebDay and partner with us in 2009 to organize a week of national (and global) service to bring more access and skills to communities that are still left behind in the new digital world.

Tomorrow is the deadline! Please take action and vote at Change.org now!

In the first one, Al Gore states, forget about "gee-whiz stuff," "Web 2.0 has to have a purpose."

"The purpose, I would urge all of you—as many of you as are willing to take it up—is to bring about a higher level of consciousness about our planet and the imminent danger and opportunity we face because of the radical transformation in the relationship between human beings and the Earth," Mr. Gore said Friday evening at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

While I have no desire to discuss a "higher level of consciousness about our planet," I do find it interesting that Al Gore wants to circumscribe the "purpose" of "Web 2.0" and that he dismisses so much of what actually accomplishes. This sentiment really hit me when I read the NYT article on how Obama "wondered if social networking, with its tremendous communication capabilities and aggressive database development, might help him beat the overwhelming odds facing him."

Like a lot of Web innovators, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new. Instead, by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans.

Web 2.0 clearly has a purpose—communication. The question is not what the purpose is, but how to effectively use it. Something that Barack Obama clearly seems to grasp, but Al Gore?

Look at their websites (Barack Obama, Al Gore) and check out their Twitter accounts (Barack Obama, Al Gore). Who really gets the purpose of Web 2.0?

• OpenNIC Project—an alternate Network Information Center/Alternative DNS root to the legacy ICANN.
• Open Root Server Confederation (ORSC)—publishes an alternative to the US government DNS root zone.

Source: http://www.rocketboom.com/rb_08_oct_01/

Something new is happening in the Silicon Alley night. A decade ago, a typical party for New York techies would be held at a glitzy club to celebrate the start of a Web site. There might be minor celebrities, go-go dancers, an open bar and pricey giveaways all to build brand-awareness, which, it was believed, would somehow, someday, lead to profitability.

But when the Internet bubble collapsed, so did the Silicon Alley 1.0 party scene. What remained was more buttoned-down and sedate. Cybersuds, a low-key monthly networking party, started in 1994 at a TriBeCa bar, evolved into a formal technology conference and then around 2003 disappeared.

Now, young Internet entrepreneurs, some holdouts from the old days and a few members of the city's creative class (and underclass) are engaged in a new type of party, which mashes together Silicon Alley 1.0's camaraderie and optimism, meetup.com’s spontaneity and informality, Burning Man’s home-brewed creativity, and a technology conference’s devotion to unveiling ideas. These days many of the ideas are about producing and delivering video content.

Via NYC Resistor