Archive for February, 2009
Mutiny
February 27th, 2009
Clearly the reported mutiny of Bangladeshi border guards is not really something to laugh about but the story seems to include some humourous points.
The Guardian reports how the insurrection occurred :-
“The rebels wore red bandanas and sprayed bullets into the unit’s officer corps at an annual “durbar”, a meeting where the rank and file can bring their grievances to the officer corps.”
It would seem this model of allowing heavily armed people to air their grievances has a rather big flaw.
It apparently occurred because border guards are annoyed that they don’t get to go on peacekeeping operations for the UN. I would think that if you’re trying to make a case for being allowed to maintain peace agreements then you first need to demonstrate that you won’t execute your commanding officers.
A very strange story.
Posted in Media | Comments (0)
Does the world need another post about
Twitter? Of course it doesn’t.
Is that a good enough reason to not write one? Well it probably is but I’ll do it anyway.
The whole world appears to have become obsessed with a medium of communication restricting every contribution to 140 characters just because
Philip Schofield thinks it’s a good thing. That’s just weird. There is no other field of human endeavour where people would sit up and listen to Philip Schofield. If he suggested the Sudanese Government were perpetrating genocide in Darfur most right thinking people would seek a second opinion.
I imagine that when
Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Even Williams first began to consider how to propel Twitter from the niche to the mainstream then Philip Schofield wasn’t at the top of their list. I doubt they had him anywhere on the list. I doubt they have a bloody clue who he is.
Twitter executive: “Who can we get to demonstrate that Twitter is an exciting and vibrant platform for engaging with celebrities?”
Twitter employee: ”Philip Schofield?”
Twitter executive:”Who?”
Twitter employee: “He used to be a continuity announcer on Children’s TV in the 80′s and was friends with a gopher”
Twitter executive: “Please leave.”
The strange thing about it is that it’s actually worked. Through his admission on This Morning he goes on Twitter and…… talks about things, he’s triggered something in the minds of other celebrities. Looking at
Schofield’s profile you are suddenly struck by one glaring fact. Over 50,000 other people give a toss about what he’s got to say. That’s slightly incredible.
Now I’m no celebrity but I’m sure if I were it would raise a question in my mind. If that many people care about Schofield then how many would I get? This seems to have prompted an unseemly surge of celebrities gasping to tell us what they’ve had for tea.
With a little bit of delving you can put a figure on how good a celebrity is.
Brent Spinner (
Data from Star Trek) has 17,312 followers. When you make a comparison with
MC Hammer, who has 45,140 followers, it is immediately obvious that MC Hammer is 160% better. If you think about it, we all sort of knew that, but it’s nice to put a figure on it.
Twitter has become the currency of celebrity. It is only a matter of time before we someone from Eastenders top themselves because the public have rejected them through Twitter. I think that can only be a good thing.
It has also provided an insight into celebrity lifestyles. The immediate benefit of Twitter is that someone has the opportunity to communicate with hundreds/thousands of their “fans” without the barriers of PR or media censorship. The immediate problem with Twitter is, what if you’re boring? A rather bad example of this is
Dave Gorman, when he’s on the telly, is a very funny man. On Twitter he comes across as a very very serious man. Now that’s not a bad thing, if you’re funny for a living then having to perform like a seal is probably grating to say the least.
Whereas
Richard Bacon who is largely famous for
Konnie Huq and
cocaine (though probably not at the same time), has turned out to be very funny. I’m a little worried that he has removed freewill from his life and replaced it with Twitter but that is his choice. Worryingly Richard only has 11,547 followers. This makes him statistically more rubbish than Brent Spiner, my theory could be a bit flawed.
The most interesting thing about celebrity usage of Twitter is their inverse relationship with it. Most people sign up, search out some friends and then wait for someone to notice them. The inverse perspective is to sign up and then get bombarded by requests for information from people you’ve never met before. This makes the point that when we get the likes of Philip Schofield telling us how great Twitter is, they’re really telling us about something that will bear little or no resemblance to our experience. When it becomes represented in the mainstream as a celebrity stalking tool it loses some of its function and worth.
Tags: Celebrity, Twitter
Posted in Media, Misc | Comments (2)
Play Away
February 7th, 2009
I’ve been bothered by the recent decision by the Competition Commission to stop the so called Project Kangaroo. My irritation with the decision is odd as I don’t generally use the existing video on demand services provided by BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Though I do like marsupial based technological developments.
BBC iPlayer seems to work fine and Channel 4 OD requires too much software running in the background. I spend a fair mount of my time trying to avoid ITV so the prospect of watching it on the Internet fills me with a bit of dread.
I think the thing that has annoyed me about the decision is the element of condescension within it. They believe the public (us) will benefit from having to visit three different sites to watch UK TV. The market will, apparently, provide us with a better service through making the whole process more difficult.
An analogy would be to say that manufacturers are restricting competition through allowing us to watch more than one channel on our TVs. The decision appears to fly in the face of all moves towards convergence.
I think there is an interesting parallel with the decision to restrict the BBC from developing local news services. The decision was apparently taken in order to prevent local news providers being subject to unfair competition from a state funded organisation. This ignores the fact that the majority of local news providers are a little bit crap. Maybe the injection of competition would force them to raise their game.
We frequently forget that the BBC is ours. We pay for it. We should use it to provide services that improve the quality of our lives. It should not be considered a publicly funded private organisation. We can use it to make developments that raise the bar for other organisations.
The iPlayer itself has set a standard that other organisations are trying to meet. This standard has been set both nationally and internationally and I think we should be proud of that.
In the judgement the Competition Commission seem to have ignored one vital factor to the video on demand market (well they did in the press release, I didn’t read the whole report). The current market is made up of more than the established media providers. Both Sky and Virgin prompted this investigation and to be honest you’d expect them to moan about it.
The competition for providing media services is really coming from the likes of Bittorrent. It is a simple process to find TV you’ve missed for free and download it. Usually with the adverts removed.
It is this problem that mainstream media providers need to address rather than their own protectionism. Kangaroo would have provided a platform with a revenue stream whilst giving us something that we want.
It’s a short sighted decision and one I’m convinced will be overturned.
Posted in Media, Politics | Comments (0)