Inquirer: Philadelphia's fine arts and social media

social-networking

I was interested to cover the convergence of social networks and fine arts institutions in a story running in today’s Inquirer. While it focuses on Philadelphia examples, there are broader implications, I think.

On Valentine’s Day, Pennsylvania Ballet staff members stood in the Merriam Theater’s lobby handing out coasters that bore what might have seemed a strange suggestion coming from an arts organization: Go to our YouTube channel.

What the mostly graying matinee audience made of the invitation to an online video-sharing site is unclear. What is clear is that the Pennsylvania Ballet is not alone in lusting after online social-network users.

The Kimmel Center has a Flickr photostream. The Curtis Institute of Music is on LinkedIn. The Arden Theatre and the Franklin Institute use Twitter. The Philadelphia Orchestra has a MySpace page. Read the rest here.

Go read the story and comment, Digg it here, and then come back and see the extras that didn’t make it into print.

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Don't do it for free, freelancers

Photo by Alex Irwin. See more at AlexIrwin.wordpress.com
Pike Place Market in Seattle.Photo by Alex Irwin. See more at AlexIrwin.wordpress.com

Last month, Alex Irwin, a good friend and a very hip arts blogger and Philadelphia music writer, posted that he gave over publishing rights of two of his photos to an online travel guide for Seattle, where he was visiting his girlfriend when snapped the pictures.

Wrong move, I say. Let me tell you why.

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Why MySpace sucks, is lame: its shortcomings and possibilities

I got a comment from “Mike” on a post early last month.

Interesting post. Curious on why you say “MySpace is lame.” I read recently that MySpace is among the most-visited Web sites with over 1b visits per month…

Of course he is right. MySpace remains one of the most popular Web sites in the world. I have a MySpace profile page, too. So why do  I still contend it’s one of the lamest sites on the Internet?

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Your digital legacy: we know your wild past won't forget, but who doesn't?

Image by Steve Carroll

We already got the message. Twenty-somethings of today, I suspect, are already careful about their presences online. We were coming to professional age when we were first joining social networks.

But the conversations seems to be ongoing.

The Economist magazine has released its annual forecast for the coming year, and, among their predictions, the U.K. politics magazine says 2009 may be a year in which the social networking phenomenon will reach critical mass: hurting security, employability and socializing.

Hear their audio and my thoughts below.

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How developed is your contact list: freelance journalists better become collectors

How many e-mail addresses do you have in your address book?

Sources have been important to journalists of all shape and caliber for the profession’s entire history, perhaps even more so for freelancers, who are guiding a ship and finding their story pitches on their own. But in an age of social networks and e-mail clients, it’s important to reevaluate how you’re collecting, retaining and organizing your sources.

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Marketing yourself online: your byline is your brand

Last week I announced my intentions to give one of the hardest professional roads a try. I’m trying to be a freelance journalist – in Philadelphia, a city in a persistent media hiring freeze.

So if it’s always important to brand yourself, now is a particularly important juncture for this underemployed writer. For more than a year now though, leading up to and continuing beyond my college graduation, I have employed and developed a growing online community of methods to take control over my Web presence.

I am obsessively trying to find ways to market myself online like more and more multimedia journalists of all ages and experiences. So, what are you doing to promote your name?

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Web presences, social networking that can be put on hold

google-reader

Google Reader I am back.

Last month I returned from five weeks backpacking Europe and moved into a new home in Frankford, a neighborhood in lower Northeast Philadelphia.

Somehow, even though I was travel blogging and video podcasting at WeDontSpeaktheLanguage.com, my month-plus European tour was an Internet vacation (IV) for me.

It was a chance to look at what social networking devices are easiest to put on hold.

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Youtube: my one-year anniversary emits thoughts as a device

christopher-wink-youtube

I was fairly late in joining Youtube – one year ago today, the day after I launched this Web site.

My roommate first told me about the video sharing and hosting site in November 2005, a year after it launched and a year before Google purchased it. However, I didn’t even think to join it until last December, when I put this site up and realized it was decidedly 1999-like without any multimedia.

Video was a first go. One year later, I have some thoughts on Youtube’s use as a social networking tool, how it moves forward and what it will mean in the future.

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