Dr. Media

How Different Cultures Shape the Brain - Sharon Begley - Newsweek.com

2010-03-11T23:10:00.000-08:00

Drmedia says,

This is a very interesting article. It's premise, how the Brain is shaped by culture, sidesteps smartly, the more central question of how personality is shaped by culture and how culture is created by thought. The effort to reduce our complex world to neuroscientific models is not new, and can be interesting, however the attempt to reduce the complexities of culture and mind to neurology is an age old effort to avoid the complexities of understanding human understanding and instead look at neurology. Afterall neurology can't tell you to shut up .

Another thing, how about how the culture of the internet shapes the brain, mind, personality, sense of self, etc.

How Different Cultures Shape the Brain - Sharon Begley - Newsweek.com: "Cultural neuroscience"

Sharon Begley

West Brain, East Brain,what a difference culture makes.

By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the sensory information we absorb to the movements we make, our lives leave footprints on the bumps and fissures of our cortex, so much so that experiences can alter "hard-wired" brain structures. Through rehab, stroke patients can coax a region of the motor cortex on the opposite side of the damaged region to pinch-hit, restoring lost mobility; volunteers who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.

Still, scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when we ("we" being the Americans in the study) think of our own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me" circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom. Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self as autonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes on quite different functions.

GALLERY

A Day in the Life

A Marine severely wounded in Iraq, and his family, fight for his recovery

"Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Some of the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, buttress longstanding notions of cultural differences. For instance, it is a cultural cliché that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians pay attention to context and background (another manifestation of the individualism-collectivism split). Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes, Asian-Americans and non-Asian--Americans recruited different brain regions. The Asians showed more activity in areas that process figure-ground relations—holistic context—while the Americans showed more activity in regions that recognize objects.

Psychologist Nalini Ambady of Tufts found something similar when she and colleagues showed drawings of people in a submissive pose (head down, shoulders hunched) or a dominant one (arms crossed, face forward) to Japanese and Americans. The brain's dopamine-fueled reward circuit became most active at the sight of the stance—dominant for Americans, submissive for Japanese—that each volunteer's culture most values, they reported in 2009. This raises an obvious chicken-and-egg question, but the smart money is on culture shaping the brain, not vice versa.

Cultural neuroscience wouldn't be making waves if it found neurobiological bases only for well-known cultural differences. It is also uncovering the unexpected. For instance, a 2006 study found that native Chinese speakers use a different region of the brain to do simple arithmetic (3 + 4) or decide which number is larger than native English speakers do, even though both use Arabic numerals. The Chinese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements (the latter may be related to the use of the abacus). But English speakers use language circuits. It is as if the West conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight. (Insert cliché about Asian math geniuses.) "One would think that neural processes involving basic mathematical computations are universal," says Ambady, but they "seem to be culture-specific."

Not to be the skunk at this party, but I think it's important to ask whether neuroscience reveals anything more than we already know from, say, anthropology. For instance, it's well known that East Asian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and that Americans do the opposite. Does identifying brain correlates of those values offer any extra insight? After all, it's not as if anyone thought those values are the result of something in the liver.

Ambady thinks cultural neuro-science does advance understanding. Take the me/mom finding, which, she argues, "attests to the strength of the overlap between self and [people close to you] in collectivistic cultures and the separation in individualistic cultures. It is important to push the analysis to the level of the brain." Especially when it shows how fundamental cultural differences are—so fundamental, perhaps, that "universal" notions such as human rights, democracy, and the like may be no such thing.

Facebook Zero: To Get More of Your Data Dollars, Social Networking Takes a Cue From Crack Dealers | Technomix | Fast Company

2010-02-17T16:00:00.000-08:00

Hi Kids, check this out, so you can get a faster facebook which gets you to facebook, where you can be spammed.

Gee , guess they need to make money, huh?You will be seeing movie trailers and games in no time.

Dr. Media

Facebook Zero: To Get More of Your Data Dollars, Social Networking Takes a Cue From Crack Dealers | Technomix | Fast Company

Word's just leaked, before a formal announcement, of a new super-light, text-only version of Facebook designed for simple cell phone interactions. It looks like it's designed to further [1] Facebook's penetration [2] into daily life. And it might be free. But only for a little taste.

The system is called Facebook Zero, and it was almost accidentally revealed earlier Tuesday during a 20-minute keynote address by Facebook's Chamath Palihapitiya at the Mobile World Congress event. The obsessives at TechCrunch noticed that Facebook's not revealed the system yet.

The idea is that Facebook's drummed up some pretty neat deals with a large number of cell phone providers across the globe and has written some code that presents a user's Facebook news stream as a text-only entity that can be accessed via a phone's browser at zero.facebook.com [3]. The trick is that it's free of charge. And that will be an extremely interesting idea to many millions of Facebook addicts who've yet to make the leap to full-on smartphone tech, or who have limited data packages as part of their mobile broadband contract with their cell phone network. (Get ready for that, America, it's coming.)

Sounds fabulous, doesn't it? But there's actually some subtle marketing going on here. Died-in-the wool Facebook addicts may be tempted to switch to a different carrier that offers Facebook Zero if their current one doesn't--which is good and bad for the cell phone carriers in question. And once a user clicks on a Facebook Zero item to see more, perhaps to view a friend's photo, for example, then they'll be whisked to the full Facebook site, their carrier will levy a small data-access charge, and thus will earn some more revenue (the crack dealer model for mobile data consumption, perhaps). As far as Facebook itself is concerned, of course, the benefit is that even more people will interact with its services and for more time--enabling greater ad placement sales. Facebook may even be hoping that by encouraging free access via cell phone that people will do more of the real-time status updating that it's really hoping to sell to search engines and news aggregators like Google.

New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

2010-02-05T15:43:00.000-08:00

Hi Gang this is a little dated, but quite interesting. because for one reason it comes from an objective source and not from Twitter, if you are going to use socmedia for marketing, better pay attention. Especially if you hope to market a movie or other media project. Dr Media likes real data, lets see more!

New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets

2:15 PM Monday June 1, 2009
by Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski | Comments (134)

Twitter has attracted tremendous attention from the media and celebrities, but there is much uncertainty about Twitter's purpose. Is Twitter a communications service for friends and groups, a means of expressing yourself freely, or simply a marketing tool?

We examined the activity of a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 to find out how people are using the service. We then compared our findings to activity on other social networks and online content production venues. Our findings are very surprising.

Of our sample (300,542 users, collected in May 2009), 80% are followed by or follow at least one user. By comparison, only 60 to 65% of other online social networks' members had at least one friend (when these networks were at a similar level of development). This suggests that actual users (as opposed to the media at large) understand how Twitter works.

Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women. Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This "follower split" suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships. This is intriguing, especially given that females hold a slight majority on Twitter: we found that men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. To get this figure, we cross-referenced users' "real names" against a database of 40,000 strongly gendered names.

Even more interesting is who follows whom. We found that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman. These results cannot be explained by different tweeting activity - both men and women tweet at the same rate.

Scott Brown on How Movies Activate Your Neural G-Spot

2010-02-04T11:18:00.001-08:00

Scott Brown on How Movies Activate Your Neural G-Spot

Posted using ShareThis

Basics - Abstract Thoughts Prompt Literal Physical Responses - NYTimes.com

2010-02-02T18:50:00.000-08:00

Good Article. Of course Gene Gendlin at the U of Chicago, showed this relationship 30 years ago in his development of experiential psychotherapy and eventually Focusing. Nice to see his insights confirmed by cognitive sciences. Of course, I Dr Media apply this principle to working movies and any media. This is the way you make the link between personal mythology, and media images, does it move you, does it touch you, emotional literacy is what its about if you want to know what works.Bodythinking, emotional analytics, embodied cognition, psycho-semantics, all ways to understand what the artist knows intuitively, what makes it hold together and the audience get it, and this can be qualitatively evaluated. The dream, the movie, the game, the web, all operate on the same principles.

Basics - Abstract Thoughts Prompt Literal Physical Responses - NYTimes.com

Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally

By NATALIE ANGIER

The theory of relativity showed us that time and space are intertwined. To which our smarty-pants body might well reply: Tell me something I didn’t already know, Einstein.

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that when people were asked to engage in a bit of mental time travel, and to recall past events or imagine future ones, participants’ bodies subliminally acted out the metaphors embedded in how we commonly conceptualized the flow of time.

As they thought about years gone by, participants leaned slightly backward, while in fantasizing about the future, they listed to the fore. The deviations were not exactly Tower of Pisa leanings, amounting to some two or three millimeters’ shift one way or the other. Nevertheless, the directionality was clear and consistent.

“When we talk about time, we often use spatial metaphors like ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you’ or ‘I’m reflecting back on the past,’ ” said Lynden K. Miles, who conducted the study with his colleagues Louise K. Nind and C. Neil Macrae. “It was pleasing to us that we could take an abstract concept such as time and show that it was manifested in body movements.”

The new study, published in January in the journal Psychological Science, is part of the immensely popular field called embodied cognition, the idea that the brain is not the only part of us with a mind of its own.

“How we process information is related not just to our brains but to our entire body,” said Nils B. Jostmann of the University of Amsterdam. “We use every system available to us to come to a conclusion and make sense of what’s going on.”

Research in embodied cognition has revealed that the body takes language to heart and can be awfully literal-minded.

You say you’re looking forward to the future? Here, Ma, watch me pitch forward!

You say a person is warm and likable, as opposed to cold and standoffish? In one recent study at Yale, researchers divided 41 college students into two groups and casually asked the members of Group A to hold a cup of hot coffee, those in Group B to hold iced coffee. The students were then ushered into a testing room and asked to evaluate the personality of an imaginary individual based on a packet of information.

Students who had recently been cradling the warm beverage were far likelier to judge the fictitious character as warm and friendly than were those who had held the iced coffee.

Or maybe you are feeling the chill wind of social opprobrium. When researchers at the University of Toronto instructed a group of 65 students to remember a time when they had felt either socially accepted or socially snubbed, those who conjured up memories of a rejection judged the temperature of the room to be an average of five degrees colder than those who had been wrapped in warm and fuzzy thoughts of peer approval.

The body embodies abstractions the best way it knows how: physically. What is moral turpitude, an ethical lapse, but a soiling of one’s character? Time for the Lady Macbeth Handi Wipes. One study showed that participants who were asked to dwell on a personal moral transgression like adultery or cheating on a test were more likely to request an antiseptic cloth afterward than were those who had been instructed to recall a good deed they had done.

When confronted with a double entendre, a verbal fork in the road, the body heeds Yogi Berra’s advice, and takes it. In a report published last August in Psychological Science, Dr. Jostmann and his colleagues Daniel Lakens and Thomas W. Schubert explored the degree to which the body conflates weight and importance. They learned, for example, that when students were told that a particular book was vital to the curriculum, they judged the book to be physically heavier than those told the book was ancillary to their studies.

The researchers wanted to know whether the sensation of weightiness might influence people’s judgments more broadly.

In a series of experiments, study participants were asked to answer questionnaires that were attached to a metal clipboard with a compartment on the back capable of holding papers. In some cases the compartments were left empty, and so the clipboard weighed only 1.45 pounds. In other cases the compartments were filled, for a total clipboard package of 2.29 pounds.

Participants stood with either a light or heavy clipboard cradled in their arm, filling out surveys. In one, they were asked to estimate the value of six unfamiliar foreign currencies. In another, students indicated how important they thought it was that a university committee take their opinions into account when deciding on the size of foreign study grants. For a third experiment, participants were asked how satisfied they were with (a) the city of Amsterdam and (b) the mayor of Amsterdam.

In every study, the results suggested, the clipboard weight had its roundabout say. Students holding the heavier clipboard judged the currencies to be more valuable than did those with the lightweight boards. Participants with weightier clipboards insisted that students be allowed to weigh in on the university’s financial affairs. Those holding the more formidable board even adopted a more rigorous mind-set, and proved more likely to consider the connection between the livability of Amsterdam and the effectiveness of its leader.

As Dr. Jostmann sees it, the readiness of the body to factor physical cues into its deliberations over seemingly unrelated and highly abstract concerns often makes sense. Our specific clipboard savvy notwithstanding, “the issue of how humans view gravity is evolutionarily useful,” he said.

“Something heavy is something you should take care of,” he continued. “Heavy things are not easily pushed around, but they can easily push us around.” They are weighty affairs in every tine of the word.

The cogitating body prefers a hands-on approach, and gesturing has been shown to help children master math.

Among students who have difficulty with equations like 4 + 5 + 3 = __ + 3, for example, performance improves markedly if they are taught the right gestures: grouping together the unique left-side numbers with a two-fingered V, and then pointing the index finger at the blank space on the right.

To learn how to rotate an object mentally, first try a pantomime. “If you encourage kids to do the rotation movement with their hands, that helps them subsequently do it in their heads,” said Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, “whereas watching others do it isn’t enough.”

Yesterday is regrettable, tomorrow still hypothetical. But you can always listen to your body, and seize today with both hands.

Writers Groups Oppose Google Settlement

2010-01-09T01:27:00.001-08:00

Writers Groups Oppose Google Settlement - Media Decoder Blog - NYTimes.com

Writers Groups Oppose Google Settlement
By MOTOKO RICH
Hi Kids, Dr Media has been on hiatus for a while, but this was to good to pass up. For all you content providers out there especially authors who write to make a living,, 'googlr wqants to provide you with a chance to be a starving artist, cool do no evil, information wants to be free, except if its your mealticket but don't worry google will make sure you are discovered and get a great deal, RIGHT!

A trio of writers groups has sent an open letter to members of Congress who are also authors, objecting to the Google book settlement that seeks to create a vast digital library of mostly out-of-print books.

The National Writers Union, the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America wrote a letter objecting to the amended version of the settlement that Google and its partners, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, submitted to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in November.

The original settlement of a 2005 lawsuit over Google’s ambitious plan to scan and digitize books from major American libraries was reached in October 2008. But over the last year as Google and its partners moved toward court approval, many groups, as well as the Department of Justice, criticized the agreement.

In response to the criticisms, Google and its partners agreed to hammer out an amended settlement. The revisions submitted in November included a provision for the appointment of an independent fiduciary, or trustee, who would be solely responsible for decisions regarding so-called orphan works, the millions of books whose rights holders are unknown or cannot be found.

The revised settlement also gave the trustee the power, with Congressional approval, to grant licenses to other companies who also want to sell these orphan books.

In its letter, the three writers groups noted that many writers who could be affected by the settlement were “hugely confused” by the agreement. “It isn’t fair,” the groups’ leaders wrote. “There are millions of book authors in this country who could be locked into an agreement they don’t understand and didn’t ask for.”

They called for Congressional authors to contact officials in the Department of Justice and “implore them to continue their close scrutiny of this settlement.” A court fairness hearing is scheduled for Feb. 18.

Americans' information consumption soars

2009-12-10T06:31:00.001-08:00

Hi gang, now here we have some interesting info. What does it mean that the amount of information inundating those of us who live in the 1st world has increased 75% since 1960. Well lets look at some of the things which have occured during this period, electing the 1st Catholic, getting him killed, and his bother and MLK, landed on the moon, had riots in the streets to end a war, elected the 1st black president, liberated women and got the 1st female speaker of the house,created civil rights,just to name a few hmmm, did this increase in avialable info have anything to do with these phenomena?
Dr. Media says, how could it not? The fact of this information Tsunami, rolling continuously over the psyches of millions of of people could make some chages in their worldviews,The clash of cultures creates new mythologies that embody new ideas,like freedom of thought and expression, and technology allows for the spread of this meme.This becomes internalized and is fought against by those who don't like the consequences,like the breakdown of religions parochial hold on peoples ways of thinking."How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they have seen Paree", as the song says.

Americans' information consumption soars

Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, December 9, 200

If you've felt bombarded by information in this era of Internet communications, hundreds of TV channels and video games, it's not your imagination.

A new study released Wednesday says households in the United States consumed a mind-boggling total of 3.6 zettabytes of information and 10,845 trillion words in 2008.

That's a daily average of 33.8 gigabytes of information and 100,564 words per person.

Put another way, it's the equivalent of covering the continental United States and Alaska in a 7-foot-high stack of Dan Brown novels.

"We're all on information overload for good reason," said Roger Bohn, the study's lead author and a professor of management at UC San Diego.

"The amount we can assimilate is only a little bit more than what our ancestors could assimilate, but the amount that's available to us now is many orders of magnitude more," said Bohn, director of the school's Global Information Industry Center.

The researchers sought to create a census of how much data and information flows to consumers from all sources - the Internet, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, mobile phones, video games, DVD players, music files and more.

The study accounts for everything from individual bytes of words to the gigabytes of information in a video. But the report doesn't cover data Americans get at work. That will be left for a future study.

One zettabyte is equal to 1 billion terabytes, or 1 million million gigabytes. The 3.6 zettabytes consumed is about 20 times more data than all the existing computer hard drives in the world can store.

Using 20 different sources of data - such as Nielsen television ratings and U.S. census data - the researchers created mathematical formulas to compute how information was consumed in words, bytes and time spent.

The report built upon previous research at UC Berkeley and by International Data Corp. Previous projections found the world would not reach one zettabyte of data consumption until 2010, but Bohn said they didn't fully account for television and video games use.

The UC San Diego researchers said the bulk of the bytes consumed came from three sources - nearly 54.6 percent from computer games, 34.7 percent through television and 9.8 percent from movies.

The average American receives information 11.8 hours of each day, or about 75 percent of the average time a person is awake, the report said. That compares to an average 4.3 hours per day based on a 1960 study.

The researchers were surprised by the relatively slow 5.4 percent annual growth rate of bytes consumed since 1980, when personal computers began to spread to homes. At that point, Americans were consuming about 9.8 gigabytes of information daily.

More than 75 percent of average household information time is still spent with non-computer sources like radio and television, even though younger audiences gravitated to computers.

The researchers were also surprised to find that contrary to prevailing wisdom, people are reading more than 20 years ago and that computers have reversed a TV-caused decline in overall words read before 1980.

Overall, reading from all sources, including television, has tripled since 1980, the study said.

While the share of printed words read declined from 25 percent in 1960 to 9 percent in 2008, the share of words read from the Internet and computer programs is now about 27 percent, or 27,122 words.

E-mail, texting and "a lot of Web browsing is still in the form of reading," Bohn said.

In the future, the spread of high-definition TV will be one reason the amount of data consumed will rise, although probably at a slow rate, he said.

But that could still be affected by shifting consumer trends, with the Internet becoming increasingly video-driven and mobile phones gearing more toward text via messaging and Web browsing.

"We're in the middle of a lot of different kinds of evolution in terms of how people are getting information," he said.

The New Facebook News Feed and What It Means - NYTimes.com

2009-10-24T02:11:00.001-07:00

Hi Gang now here we have something that is correctly seen as an important shift in how people relate to one another on the web. What's the most interesting is thing here is that Facebook is deciding to change how people relate to their information for them, rather than letting them decide how to organize it for themselves. In other words they are going to edit your data for you based on their algorithms interpretation of what you see as important. Now if you were able to tell this virtual assistant what you wanted it to do , that would be interesting, but they assumme that you are to lazy of dumb to do it for yourself, sooo. I will bet a lot of research went into this decision, Right!
Dr. Media

The New Facebook News Feed and What It Means - NYTimes.com

The New

October 23, 2009
The New Facebook News Feed and What It Means
By MARSHALL KIRKPATRICK of ReadWriteWeb

Facebook just made one of the biggest changes to the site's user experience since the introduction of the News Feed three years ago. News Feed was the place in the very center of the site where all the activities of a user's friends were displayed in reverse chronological order. That feature is now called the Live Feed and the News Feed has become a filtered display of activity highlights instead.

In September 2006 the News Feed was a radical idea; thousands of Facebook users revolted against the idea that all their friends would be shown every photo they uploaded, when their relationship status changed and other information as soon as it was available. Today we live in a different world. Almost everything is social and the new challenge is tackling information overload. That's what Facebook just did today and it's going to be very important for the future.

The real-time flow of social activity data is very exciting, but many people have cautioned that it will be a net-negative for users' experience of the web as we're flooded with an overwhelming quantity of low-quality information. Confronting this issue is an obvious next step for social software.

Everyone's trying to solve this problem. There are inbox filtering services like ReMail, Threadsy and the experimental new Mozilla Raindrop. There are column filters in stream readers like Tweetdeck and Seesmic. Google Reader yesterday introduced a "magic" filter view for the most popular items across the whole network. FriendFeed, a small but innovative social aggregator started by one of the creators of GMail and acquired by Facebook for $50 million this summer, offers a "best of day" view of any stream of updates you're looking at.

That FriendFeed view is the closest thing to the new Facebook News Feed, but a Facebook spokesperson told us that the two products are unrelated.

Everyone's trying to tackle information overload. Step one, get more people sharing information. Step two, figure out how to create a personalized, high-value view of all that information by surfacing the most important updates for each user. Step three, profit!

How It Works

The new News Feed view is based on an algorithm that scores every update coming in through what's now called the Live Feed. That scoring is based on the number of "likes" and comments an item has received and how much you personally have interacted with the update's author in the past.

A related algorithm was used in the past to create the "highlights" section on the right-hand side of the Facebook home page. That section was getting too little interaction and didn't include things like important status updates, the company says. If your sister posted a status update saying that she's pregnant, a Facebook spokesperson told us today, that wouldn't show up in the old highlights view. It should show up in your News Feed now.

So three big changes: 1. The new Live Feed is linked-to at the top of the page and shows a number of new items since your last visit. 2. Highlights plus hot status updates are now the default, the new News Feed. 3. Birthdays and other important events have taken the place of the old Highlights section; they are of particular interest to users and will now be easier to see.

What It Means

Facebook says that after viewing your new News Feed, you can go check out the raw Live Stream of all the most recent updates from your contacts. That's the opposite of the way FriendFeed did it and neither strategy should be taken for granted. Decisions like this impact a major method of communication for hundreds of millions of people around the world.

By showing the News Feed highlights as the default view, Facebook will probably encourage users to pay more attention to, interact with more and grow closer to the people they already have a history of interacting with and the events that are already popular. Weak social connections and your personal long-tail of content are less prioritized in this view.

The inclusion of a user's past behavior as a criteria for hotness is key, though. It's not just a popularity contest. Your News Feed is your little universe and popularity is defined in relative terms.

What It Could Mean In the Future

Someday social networking is going to be like the telephone. Today you can't send messages from Facebook to people on MySpace or LinkedIn but that isn't going to last forever. Just as you can call someone who uses T-Mobile from your Sprint phone, someday sharing and messaging between online social networks will be a given.

How will social networks retain users then? Why stick with Facebook when some smaller service offers a decentralized social networking service outside of Facebook's control but still tied into your friends on Facebook and elsewhere?

These services will someday have to compete on user experience, when they no longer have your social connections locked-in. The service that does the best job filtering up the most important information you have coming your way will likely be the service you stick with. That's going to be a key area of competition between social networks.

How well will Facebook do at filtering the Live Stream of content? We're about to find out and it's going to make a big difference in how we experience the web. That will only be more true and more and more people begin publishing content.

Copyright 2009 ReadWriteWeb. All Rights Reserved.

Declaration of Independence: The Ten Principles of Hybrid Distribution

2009-10-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks,
I wanted to bring your attention to Peter's excellent analysis. What is most important here is that you need to KNOW where your audience may be, WHO they are, and HOW to reach them.
In order to do these things you need to have a business strategy, and a story to tell them. The interesting thing, especially for media makers, is to tell your story, you need to tell your story on the web. The meta story, the story of you, the project, why you made it, how you made it, who wants to see it, why, etc.
Who better to do this than filmmakers.
Dr. Media says stick to your vision and learn the new media methods, musicians did, now its your turn.

Declaration of Independence: The Ten Principles of Hybrid Distribution - indieWIRE

Declaration of Independence: The Ten Principles of Hybrid Distribution
iw by Peter Broderick (September 21, 2009)
Declaration of Independence: The Ten Principles of Hybrid Distribution
Peter Broderick, this morning in Manhattan. Photo by indieWIRE

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That whenever any form of distribution becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new distribution most likely to effect their livelihood and happiness.

When a long train of abuses and usurpations reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such distribution.

- Thomas Jefferson (liberties taken by Peter Broderick)

Hybrid distribution is the state-of-the-art model more and more filmmakers are using to succeed. It enables them to have unprecedented access to audiences, to maintain overall control of their distribution, and to receive a significantly larger share of revenues.

This article is a sequel to my report, “Welcome to the New World of Distribution,” which was published exactly a year ago in indieWIRE. Since the report appeared, the Old World of Distribution has continued to decline. The vast majority of filmmakers making Old World deals (in which they give all of their distribution rights to one company for up to 25 years) are ending up dissatisfied, including producers and directors who had previously succeeded in the Old World. Many of them have told me that the traditional distribution system is broken and that they are determined to find a new approach.

Meanwhile it has been a banner year in the New World. Hybrid distribution has come into its own with such successes as “Valentino: The Last Emperor” and “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” both of which hired service deal companies to handle their theatrical distribution. Working with Abramorama, ANVIL has grossed over $675,000 in U.S. theaters. Through Truly Indie and Vitagraph Films, “Valentino” grossed more than $1,755,000 theatrically. In addition to consulting on “Valentino,” I also consulted on a number of other films that successfully combined theatrical service deals and semi-theatrical runs, including “The Singing Revolution” (Abramorama), “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” (theatrical: Balcony Releasing; semi-theatrical: Film Sprout), “Note by Note” (Argot Pictures) and “Throw Down Your Heart” (Argot Pictures).

I coined the term “hybrid distribution” in 2005 to describe the innovative model I had been developing for several years alongside a handful of pioneering independents. Inspired by the example of “Reversal” (which Jimi Petulla sold so lucratively from his website), I helped design the strategy for one of the first hybrid breakthroughs—Mark Neale’s documentary “Faster.” Since then I’ve worked with hundreds of filmmakers to develop and implement hybrid strategies. Each film I’ve consulted on—from features such as “Ballast” and “Good Dick” to documentaries like “King Corn” and “The Future of Food”—has helped me refine the hybrid distribution model.

As this model has been used more widely, the meaning of the term “hybrid distribution” has become less precise. When Thom Powers asked me to give a presentation at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival, I took the opportunity to define the core principles of hybrid distribution. My goal was to break the concept into essential components that filmmakers can use to create customized distribution strategies. This article expands on my Toronto presentation.

Let’s start with a definition. Hybrid distribution combines direct sales by filmmakers with distribution by third parties (e.g. DVD distributors, TV channels, VOD companies, educational distributors). In the Old World of Distribution, Plan A was to give all your distribution rights to one company and Plan B was self-distribution. In the New World, Plan A is doing your own direct sales while splitting up the other rights; Plan B is making an all-rights deal with one company.

Today many filmmakers are as determined to retain “distribution control” as they are to maintain “creative control.” Distribution control is the power to determine the overall structure and sequence of distribution, select distribution partners, and divide up distribution rights. While single source production financing usually means the loss of some measure of creative control, single source distribution through an all-rights deal always means the loss of distribution control.

A hybrid approach enables filmmakers to choose partners with the resources and expertise to maximize distribution in different channels while allowing filmmakers themselves to do what they do best—reach core audiences directly.

The following ten principles are distilled from the experience of filmmakers I have worked with across the country and overseas. As their distribution strategist, I have been by their side as they have explored the New World of Distribution.

1. Design a customized distribution strategy.

Every film needs a customized distribution strategy. Ideally this strategy should be designed before the film is made, increasing the chances of securing financing. To create a strategy, filmmakers must clearly define their goals and priorities, identify the film’s initial core audiences, plan different versions of the film (e.g. theatrical, television, DVD, foreign, educational), determine distribution avenues and a release sequence, identify potential partners, and decide how to initially position the film both online and off. The strategy should be flexible, implemented one stage at a time, and regularly assessed and refined.

2. Split distribution rights.

While in the Old World of Distribution all domestic rights were usually given to one company, hybrid distribution enables rights to be split more finely and effectively. Filmmakers retain direct sales rights, including the right to sell DVDs from their websites and at screenings, and the right to sell downloads and rentals from their sites. Most often filmmakers also retain theatrical and semi-theatrical. VOD, television, and retail DVD deals are usually made with separate distribution partners. Deals are often made with educational partners but some filmmakers are retaining these rights. Digital rights for avenues like iTunes are more complicated—they are sometimes given to the retail DVD distributor or the VOD distributor and sometimes licensed separately.

Rights can be usefully divided into eight domestic and two international categories:

DOMESTIC
Theatrical
Semi-Theatrical & Non-theatrical
VOD
Television
Retail DVD
Direct DVD
Educational
Digital Rental & Download

INTERNATIONAL
Television
Other (Theatrical, DVD & Digital)

While splitting up rights is complicated and time consuming, it allows each right to be exploited well, avoids cross-collateralization (where expenses from one area of distribution eat away at revenues from others), and allows a filmmaker to retain overall distribution control.

3. Choose effective distribution partners.

In the Old World where all domestic distribution rights were usually lumped together, certain rights were often poorly utilized or completely overlooked. In the New World, it is important to determine how best to exploit every right without neglecting any of them. Filmmakers can handle some rights most successfully on their own. In other areas, the goal is to find the distribution partner with the skills and experience to be most effective. Ideally this partner has an impressive track record with similar films or particular niche audiences. Before signing any deal with a distribution partner, it is essential to speak with other filmmakers currently or recently in business with the company.

4. Circumscribe rights.

Grant each distribution partner only the specific rights they can handle well. For example, if a company is strong in retail DVD and digital, give them these rights, but do not also give them VOD if they have no experience with VOD.

Carefully limit the rights (scope, term, exclusivity) granted to each partner. Make sure the rights given to different distributors complement each other without conflicting. Make as many deals as possible at the same time so the rights given in one area do not subsequently prevent you from making deals in other areas.

5. Craft win-win deals.

Design deals that will work well for both your distribution partner and you. Divide revenues fairly and define responsibilities clearly. Build in guarantees (e.g. minimum number of cities and marketing spend, performance guarantee), approvals (e.g. deals, marketing, editing), and safeguards (e.g. escape clauses, expense cap, bankruptcy protection, limits on assignment, dispute resolution).

6. Retain direct sales rights.

Retain the domestic and international rights to sell DVDs (from your
website and at screenings) and downloads and streams (from your
website). Also retain the rights to screen the film theatrically and
semi-theatrically.

Direct sales are the lynchpin of a hybrid distribution strategy. They have four significant advantages over third-party sales:

• Higher profit margins – A DVD sold directly from a filmmaker’s website can easily yield profit margins 7-8 times as high as DVDs sold in retail.

• Faster payment – Filmmakers usually receive payments faster from PayPal or a fulfillment company than they would from a distributor.

• Revenues aren’t split with middlemen – Filmmakers receive all of the revenues, after manufacturing and fulfillment costs.

• Customer information – Filmmakers receive data on all
customers who make purchases from their websites, but do not get any
information on consumers who buy through third-party retailers. This
data enables filmmakers to stay in touch with purchasers and offer them
other products.

7. Assemble a distribution team.

It is as important to have a distribution team, as it is to have a
production team. This team includes some or all of the following:
strategist, producer’s rep, foreign sales agent, webmaster, outreach
coordinator, theatrical and semi-theatrical bookers, print and online
publicists, and fulfillment company.

8. Partner with nonprofits and online communities.

Nonprofits can be indispensable distribution partners. They can
build awareness among key core audiences by hosting screenings at
national conventions and local chapters, by co-sponsoring house
parties, and by promoting films through their publications and
websites. Online communities can also increase buzz, audience, and
sales (through affiliate marketing), potentially helping your film go
viral.

9. Maximize direct revenues.

In addition to selling DVDs directly from their websites, filmmakers
can also sell other products they produce (e.g. soundtrack albums,
companion books, posters, hats, and t-shirts). Filmmakers can also
purchase related products from third parties (e.g. books, DVDs, CDs)
that will be of particular interest to their audiences. As online
retailers, they can buy these products at wholesale and resell them
from their sites at retail.

10. Grow and nurture audiences.

Independents can expand their films’ audiences by building mailing
lists, communicating effectively and developing ongoing relationships
with subscribers. They should provide them with valuable and engaging
content, while keeping sales pitches to a minimum. They should also
create a content-rich, dynamic, and interactive website that encourages
participation. Their ultimate goal is to develop a core personal
audience that can support future projects through contributions and
purchases.

While hybrid distribution is the state-of-the-art model for the New
World, it is not the best approach for all independent films. Some
movies are better served by an Old World all-rights deal with an
experienced distributor. The best distributors have resources,
relationships, and expertise, which can be essential to a wide
theatrical release. They may also have advantageous deals in place for
VOD, DVD, and digital rights. If filmmakers do due diligence (by
speaking with other filmmakers involved with the distributor they are
considering) and are able to negotiate a fair deal, their best choice
may be an all-rights deal. Higher budget, more mainstream features are
better suited for an Old World approach.

Hybrid strategies are ideal for most documentaries. Lower budget,
more distinctive features, like “Good Dick,” may also be better off
splitting up their rights in the New World. Features with strong core
audiences can also do well implementing a hybrid model. “My Big Fat
Greek Wedding” used a theatrical service deal to gross over $241
million domestically.

Just as the development of digital filmmaking tools in the ‘90s
meant that no one could stop determined independents from making
movies, the evolution of hybrid distribution in this decade means that
no one can stop tenacious filmmakers from bringing their films into the
world.

As the New World of Distribution continues to expand, hybrid
distribution will become the optimal model for a wider array of films.
It offers three major advantages over an all-rights deal. By enabling
filmmakers to retain “distribution control,” it allows them to use
strategies that are much more customized and better targeted. Hybrid
distribution gives filmmakers a significantly larger share of revenues
through direct sales and fairer terms in third-party deals. By
providing filmmakers direct access to viewers, it also lets
independents develop a supportive audience around films and to build a
personal fan base that can help sustain them over time. Hybrid
distribution can make the difference between being a dependent
filmmaker in the Old World or an independent filmmaker in the New World.

FEEDBACK WELCOME: These principles of hybrid distribution emerged
from the experiences of hundreds of filmmakers. They will continue to
evolve as more and more independents use these strategies. I’d welcome
any thoughts, techniques, or case studies you want to send my way
(peter@peterbroderick.com). My goal is to create a living document that
evolves with the latest hybrid experiences and empowers filmmakers to
realize their full potential. Visit www.peterbroderick.com to sign up for the “Distribution Bulletin,” featuring the latest in independent film distribution and marketing.

(c) 2009 Peter Broderick

Google's YouTube Finds Money In Analytics

2009-10-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks, so now we have a claim that content id technology will allow media owners to track their content and this is being turned into money .Really? I for one would like to see the real data which supports that claim, and I would bet the advertisers would as well. The skinny I got from the techies that work for some of these companies is that the metrics are dicey at best.
Is interesting to note that Sony tracked down the use of a tune in a wedding video, now THAT could get real interesting.
Dr. Media

MediaPost Publications Google's YouTube Finds Money In Analytics 09/29/2009

First Google found a way to generate revenue from YouTube video through Content ID. Now the Mountain View, Calif. company gives copyright holders a tool to track viewer sentiment to determine the best distribution and marketing strategy for music, video and other content clips that are generated and uploaded by the community.

Think Google Analytics for YouTube. The content management feature integrates Content ID, which allows copyright holders to find and monetize content uploaded across the YouTube network with YouTube Insights, a free analytics tool that lets media companies mine information. The combined tool could help copyright owners generate revenue from the data, which in theory should boost profits for YouTube.

ComScore released August 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service Monday. The data shows that 161 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month. Online video reached another all-time high in August with more than 25 billion videos viewed during the month, with Google Sites accounting for more than 10 billion.

Google sites continue to rank No. 1 in the U.S., surpassing 10 billion videos viewed in August, which represents 40% of all videos viewed online. YouTube.com accounted for 99% of all videos viewed on Google properties. Microsoft sites ranked No. 2 with 547 million, or 2.2%, followed by Viacom Digital with 539 million videos viewed, 2.1%, and Hulu with 488 million, or 1.9%, according to comScore.

Combining Content ID with YouTube Insights gives media companies data on view count, geographic region, most-viewed part of the video, and audience demographics. It allows content owners -- such as music labels, movie studios and advertisers -- to compare audience demographics between "claimed videos" and "official versions." It also provides data and insight into Web sites or search terms that drive the most traffic to versions of the content uploaded by YouTube members.

Now, all the statistics and the data from YouTube Insights is also available to Content ID partners -- making the content management tools more useful, especially for media companies claiming and complaining that videos uploaded by YouTube members generate lots of views.

"Some partners have millions of claims in the system," says David King, product manager of Content ID at Google. "From a marketing and business intelligence perspective, we needed to find a better way for them to understand their audience."

Aside from tracking the blogs where the videos appear, media companies now know the keyword terms that people search on to find the videos, and the sites that link back to videos that YouTube members upload. This allows media companies to understand their audience -- people who become passionate about a subject and take time to upload and distribute a video.

And this also provides fodder to design new distribution strategies after realizing that people uploading the videos have different ideas on distributing content than executives at major music labels, broadcasters and movie studio had thought.

A feature called Hot Spots identifies the hottest parts people rewind to within a video. It also gives media companies the exact location when viewers close the clip and lose interest. The feature enables copyright owners to understand why YouTube members edited, mashed-up and uploaded the videos in the way they did.

Sony Music used Content ID to claim a user-generated wedding video featuring a Chris Brown song. "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" became the music label's eighth-most-popular video on YouTube. While Sony learned about the demographics from their own upload, it also analyzed the wedding video to determine whether the demographics differed and sparked new ideas for distribution, sales and marketing that were not previously considered.

All major labels, broadcasters and studios in the United States rely on Content ID to protect copyrighted content. In fact, more than 1,000 companies worldwide tap into the technology. Rather than copyright holders turning their back on fans, media companies have begun to make money on consumers who take time to share their passions.

Filmmakers Are Finding a Tougher Market at Toronto Festival - NYTimes.com

2009-09-15T11:28:00.001-07:00

Hi Gang, well here we are once again, with reports from the trenches in Toronto this time, telling us not only how tough it is getting films made but once made distributed . Is this news ? Not to indie film makers. who will keep making their films and trying to get them shown.Stubborn bunch aren't they?
Of course most will not give up their day jobs.
Dr.Media

Filmmakers Are Finding a Tougher Market at Toronto Festival - NYTimes.com

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Twitter Effect's Power Overstated when it Comes to Making and Breaking Movies

2009-09-05T12:38:00.001-07:00

Dr. Medai say:

Hi folks so below we have numbers confirming what everyone knows. WOM sells movies, and now it sells everything else as well. The web is just another place to talk, Can you trash a good movie on Twitter, sure, but if its really a winner,the film will survive. This has always been true. BUT will the distributors and theater owners let a film find its audience, no longer than they have in the past, which is, for most films one long weekend, maybe two. ads for entertainement choices in all media is nothing new, What is new is how quickly people can ruin the reputation of a project or make it.
Dr Media says back in the old days when I did focus groups for films we worried about bad WOM from screenings, now the bad WOM is micro broadcast by hundreds.
Of course you can also get good buzz, but could that be the studio ghost twitters, naw they wouldn't do that .RIGHT!
I mean everyone tells the truth on line don't they?

Twitter Effect's Power Overstated when it Comes to Making and Breaking Moviies

Twitter Effect's Power Overstated when it Comes to Making and Breaking Movies

Written by Sarah Perez / August 28, 2009 7:49 AM

/ 14 Comments

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When summer movies like Sacha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" and "Funny People,"
the latest from comedic hit-maker Judd Apatow, tanked, for once people
weren't blaming the quality of the films themselves. They were blaming Twitter.
According to multiple reports, it was the early buzz on Twitter - much
of it negative - that caused these movies to crash and burn. Similarly,
when movies do well, as is the case now with the sci-fi thriller "District 9" and Brad Pitt's action-filled "Inglorious Basterds," credit is given
to the powerful "Twitter effect" and its ability to make or break a
movie. But is Twitter really having this big an impact on the movie
industry?

Twitter Effect in Action?

Recent news from crimson hexagon,
makers of an online conversation-monitoring platform called VoxTrot,
reveals that the word of mouth circulating on Twitter over the weekend
about "Inglorious Basterds" was largely positive. In fact, only 8% of
the 4500 sampled tweets had anything negative to say about the movie.
Not surprisingly, the movie ended up doing extremely well at the box
office, pulling in $37.6 million in the U.S., with an additional $27.1
million overseas, during its opening weekend.

But was Twitter really the impetus behind the movie's success?
According to Matt Atchity, editor in chief of News Corp.-owned review
site Rotten Tomatoes, the answer is "no." He thinks Twitter's influence is overhyped and overrated. In a recent Forbes interview, Atchity is quoted as saying:

"It's an interesting word of mouth, but I think only for a
certain part of the audience. For the younger, more connected audience
that may be true but for older audiences, I don't know...Do I think
Twitter is affecting my cousins in Kansas City and what they see? If
it's a big enough movie, they are going to see it."

Tweets Don't Equal Ticket Sales

He may have a point. Despite the reports and charts
attempting to prove the "Twitter Effect," what's being said on Twitter
may not have as big an impact on real-world actions as is being implied
by these numbers. For one thing, we know that the demographics on
Twitter aren't representative of the demographics of the movie-goers. (Teens don't tweet, remember?) Plus, correlating the volume of tweets about a movie, as research service Trendrr recently did,
only proves people are talking, not what they're saying nor whether
their anticipatory tweets will lead to actual ticket sales. Besides,
don't we all know by now that correlation is not the same as causation?

Online Buzz Doesn't Always Deliver

Finally, online chatter, even when positive, can't save a movie (or a TV show for that matter, as "Firefly" fans will be sure to remind you.) Case in point: 2006's "Snakes on a Plane."
In what was one of the first cases of crowdsourcing movie production to
fans, the filmmakers eventually reshot parts of the movie to meet fan
expectations. They added in more snakes, more gore, and more death
scenes, thus bumping the rating of the movie from PG-13 to R. And, of
course, they added in the now-famous line "I want these mother####ing snakes off the mother####ing plane!"

Based on the online chatter and excitement surrounding the film,
everyone was sure it would be a success. Interest in the film went
viral, with fan-made trailers and scripts, lit-up message boards, and
general frenzy. What happened at the box office? Did "Snakes" become a
smashing success? No, quite the opposite. The movie managed to rake in
only $15 million on its opening weekend and, in the end, grossed $34 million domestically - only $1 million more than the production budget alone. In other words, it bombed.

What this means for Twitter is that the online chatter taking place
on the popular microblogging site, while still an important vector for
studying sentiment, is not powerful enough on its own to truly impact
the overall success or failure of a movie. As of now, only the
movie-going audience can do that. And guess what? They're not all on Twitter... well, at least not yet.

Sites Specific: Can Streaming Save Indie Film? - Features - News - IFC.com

2009-09-05T12:32:00.001-07:00

DR. Media says if this is the answer indie films will go away. Why? Because it costs money to make movies even not so good movies, even extremely low budget movies, even less than 50k movies, and you know why, because, surprise , surprise, writers, directors, actors, producers, camera people, etc., like to eat, and investors, like to make money, unless its a donation of course.I do NOT think Indies wil go away, because there are alwaystalented people with good ideas who are willingto take the risk to tell their story, just the means o distribution has changed and the economics is going thruogh a shift, like everything else, BUT the 24/7 media world needs talent and content, and not just any content, as the article states, content that finds an audience.
The thing not stated here is the how of finding that audience, or the audience finding you. The means of production asre cheaper, distribution via the net easier, getting found harder, thats the key.
This model says we will take the films you make and we will market them for you sort of and if you make any money we will collect it and you will get paid. This model does not say we will invest in your movie, we will help you get funded, we will create funding for you so you can pay your crew, distribute your movie, advertise, it, etc. This is the vanity publishing business, and there will always be people who want to make movies or be published and some may have a good idea, well executed, in a timely fashion which gets to Sundance and gets seen and bought and released, want to take a guess at how many films that is, less than 5%.
The rest, and there will be many, will get to go online and HOPE they get discovered. Ask yourself, are these deep pocketed companies going to pay for acquisitions? Will they be at Sundance bidding against the Weinsteins or Sony Classics. If not there will be a lot of projects they can snag, a good name.
Good luck Indie makers, if you are going to rely on this,make sure you pay the rent.
Dr. Media

Sites Specific: Can Streaming Save Indie Film? - Features - News - IFC.com