OBSERVE: 4/2/18

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For this week’s observe I was inspired by our discussion in class about analyzing followers on social media. I decided to analyze my own followers on instagram for one main reason: I made an instagram account back when the application didnt have many users, before any celebrities really used it (their usage made the application pretty popular at the middle/end of 2011), and though most people think this fact is stupid and also a lie, it has affected my social media following on instagram. Instagram was launched in October 2010, and I made my account back in March 2011. At the time I was in eighth grade, had gotten my first iphone, (early, i know), and was just discovering my love for photography. I didn’t know much about it but I was intrigued by filters and I decided to download a bunch of filter apps and see which ones I liked. I made an instagram account and didn’t think much of it. On instagram, to save an edited photo to your camera roll, you have to post it to your account. So, I took random photos and edited them and posted them so i could have them on my phone. I didn’t pay attention to my profile for months because I was only uploading to save the photos to my phone, it never once occurred to me that other people might find and look at them (keep in mind, i think it’s safe to say social media was much less prominent in 2011, back before iPhones took over blackberry and many other cultural references I could name). A couple months go by, I’ve posted about 20 photos, (all since deleted because they are ugly and the photos from the mid of an eighth grader), and I have a few hundred followers. Random people, and I had no idea what followers were. A couple more months go by and I have almost 2000 followers.
When I say this to most people they think I sound like an idiot, like some girl who wants to make some statement by saying she caught onto a fad before it was cool. However, I only say this because in the last year I have had many people ask me why I have double the amount of followers vs. people I am following, yet compared to others I “don’t nearly get as many likes”. I’ve thought about it too, and so I went back and looked at my followers. From the pictures I provided, you can see that multiple accounts of these random people that followed me years ago, when instagram was just starting up, are either inactive, fake accounts, fan accounts for celebrities, people who follow just to get follow backs, accounts who give “shout outs”, and accounts of brands/bands. Theres around 500 of those followers(give or take), and around 200 people who followed me between 2011-2013 that are random and I’ve never met or interacted with, but continue to follow me. It just goes to show that many accounts are fake, or bots, or unused, but it will still look like more people care about your personal life than they actually do.

OBSERVE: 3/12/18

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For my observe I wanted to analyze hulu’s welcome page. I chose this to analyze, firstly because I have noticed that my hulu usage has increased dramatically in the last 6 months. Last year at this time, I hardly used hulu at all. I believe my usage has increased for 2 reasons; firstly, because in the last year, netflix has increased the amount of shows that are being take down, which was not as common for tv shows last year as it was for netflix’s extensive list of movies. Secondly, aside from hulu having access to many of the shows that netflix took down (i.e family guy, american dad, bob’s burgers, etc) hulu has added many shows that air on live tv to their lineup, available right after the show airs. This year, they released a partnership with spotify, which also probably helped their revenue and contributed to the increase in tv show options.
All these things considered, when you go to hulu’s homepage on a computer or smartphone, it gives you many options on how to sign up or obtain an account with hulu; the top of the main page has two areas that allow you to access a free trial, and when scrolling down, it shows you payment plan options, and ultimately ends with another designated area for which users can start their free trial (I wonder what they want me to take away from their homepage..maybe that there is a… free trial option?) (just kidding, that was sarcasm).
They are definitely playing to a certain audience here, but what’s interesting to me is that you actually have to search for where to log in. There is a menu-looking button in the top right corner that some people would interpret as a menu, but others may just think it is a design choice. You must click it, and when the menu drops down, there are two options: log in, and, say it with me now, start your free trial! I found this interesting because clearly it is doing many things to try to persuade people into signing up for hulu, but it doesn’t do much to encourage existing users to keep coming back, at least on the main/home page. Of course companies want to advertise to potential new customers, but maybe they should play to the likes of existing users too, ya know?

Project 0 Week 9

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http://knight-0f-rhyme.tumblr.com/post/172472429892/tumblcoin-introducing-tumblcoin-tumblr-is

I forgot it was April Fools today, and most websites I use interact with their audience by creating a new feature for the day as their prank. Since it’s currently 1 in the morning, I was surprised to find that tumblr already added their prank. This year they introduced “tumblcoin,” which is a bitcoin that you get for interacting with and making posts.

The user can look at the tumblcoin they have earned by clicking an image placed to the right of their dashboard. In this menu, the user can also buy items with their tumblcoin. I always think the april fools pranks on websites are really fun so I’ve already been messing with this and i bought myself a pet horse (bottom left) which was from a different year for april fools. This also could be a way to get people to post more or reblog more if they really want to see what everything does, and just for fun I want to try and “buy” everything in this menu.

Observation 4/2

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Occasionally when I’m reading an article through the Facebook app, a spam popup appears and locks up the screen unless I hit “OK”. The only way to get rid of it is to close out and restart the app entirely because some instinct inside me just knows that clicking OK would invite disaster into my phone. I got one this past week and started wondering, “Where do these popups come from? Doesn’t Apple have super-tight security against malware and spam?” So I started doing some research.

“What enables these ad redirects to haunt virtually any browser or app at any time, rather than just the sketchy backwaters in which they used to roam? Third-party ad servers that either don’t vet ad submissions properly for the JavaScript components that could cause redirects, or get duped by innocent-looking ads that hide their sketchy code…Publishers are particularly vulnerable, because they often rely on third-party ad networks for revenue. As a result, they can find themselves at the mercy of whatever a given ad network doles out. Even if publishers use only reputable services, those ad networks can themselves get duped.”

The biggest mistake people make with technology is assuming that it works the way that you think it does. For example, publishers assuming that third party publishers have properly vetted their content or the ad networks assuming their JS code doesn’t have a secondary, malicious purpose. There’s a lot of potential for these spam popups to cause real damage to mobile devices that likely don’t have any anti-malware programs installed. If companies don’t start regulating the content they provide on their platform then this poses a huge potential security risk to users.

In summary:

  • No surprise: they’re pretty bad. The notifications are all either marketing tricks or outright scams, and you may be giving the scammers access to your Facebook page. Redirecting ads can do different types of things—some of them are just a nuisance, but redirecting ads can also drop malware on people’s machines.
  • Ways to fix it: Ad purchasers are not well-vetted enough and are given too much leeway with regards to JavaScript code execution. Ad exchanges should crack down on this type of aggressive code with a better screening process.
  • An ad hijacking your browser like that isn’t technically a hack, in the sense that it doesn’t exploit a software vulnerability. Instead, it relies on the attacker’s ability to submit and run ads that contain redirecting JavaScript. But though they aren’t a critical threat to web users yet, redirecting mobile ads could create a jumping off point for attackers.

An informative article from Wired in January 2018 (quoted above): link  

Observe 8 In Ya Face

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For my observe this is an explanation for something I’ve seen over the course of months concerning facebook and the presentation of memes. I had to do this one right after I found out about it because without it, meme culture on facebook seemed to be having these weird features about them and says a lot about what Facebook is turning into. With the growing amount of memes on facebook, they actually attempted to fight against the amount by changing their post algorithm to favor posted videos instead of picture. Before knowing this I would click on a meme in what would appear to be in image format just to realize it was a video going for several seconds and I thought it was stupid. I would wonder why people just made me look at a video of a still image but come to find out they just want their meme to be seen and passed around more easily. In response facebook makes still image videos go under the category of spam and are blocked. Still before seeing this post I would see similarly still images of a meme in video format but with faint triangular shapes floating around the screen overlaying the video and again wondered its purpose but here it is. This is showing how software shapes the user, or in a sense how user shapes the software. The user’s of facebook desperately want to turn facebook into memebook so they are doing what they can do find the loopholes in facebooks algorithms to get the posts they want to put up to be able to stay up and circulate. This also shows how facebook would actually filter out some people’s posts just because they want their site to have a certain kind of material. This is seriously the battle of the ages and I’m wondering what other implications will facebook come up with to decrease the number of memes and how the community will try to work around it.

Observe 8-option 1

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I almost never use twitter. And apparently twitter has noticed this, because this morning I received this message in an email:

This is confusing for many reasons.

  1. Since when is Twitter’s theme color orange?
  2. I made a twitter account under the username @TheGreaterBelow?
  3. Apparently, all I used the account for was to retweet subpar memes and stuff about Nine Inch Nails?
  4. Also, it looks like–for some reason–I used my real name? What??
  5. If I can barely even remember making this account, it has to be at least kind of old, so why am I only getting an email about it now?
  6. I understand the social media strategy of luring in users by proclaiming that they have “notifications” (the true meaning of which is a topic for another time). If I looked at my tumblr account and it said “Look! You have 20 notifications!”, that would be one thing. But to send me an email just to tell me I have one notification? As well as calling it the one notification–as if to make absolutely sure that I know there’s only one. That’s just bad marketing; no one wants to use an app that goes out of its way to tell you you’re not very popular.

So why did twitter do this?

My only guess is that the email was sent to all users who had been inactive for a certain amount of time, its creators making the assumption that, since the users been inactive, they’d probably have lots of notifications to look through. If that’s the case, I think that in most instances, the email was probably successful; it would read to users as “look at all the cool stuff you missed! Come check it out!” However, when I received this email someone who generally Does Not Use Twitter, it was saying something more along the lines of “literally one thing happened while you were gone. That’s it.”

If my theory is correct, all I can think to take away from this is that apparently my lack of online social connection is beyond the comprehension of both man and machine. Sorry?

Mashups

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http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/5ab94f21a1e49-donald-trump-is-a-circus-clown.php

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/5ab94e89cfd51-ricky-rolled-mashupppppppppppppppppp.php

Observe #8

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For my observe this week, I wanted to show how theSkimm draws the readers attention through an email news website. They usually make the Topic of the message short and catchy and do the same with the layout of subject material in the email. They use informal language to draw readers in and only talk about the bare minimum while still providing the necesary details. For someone like me, I think this is great because it saves me time from going to a formal news website such as FOX, CNN, of NYTimes and covers just enough so I can get the gist of whats going on. They also provide hyperlinks so you can refer to a subject of interest more in depth. I think theSkimm is a great way for a busy college student to make time for news.

MASH

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MASH 1

MASH 2

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/5ab93ba10c486-s-t-u-n-g-b-y-a-b-u-g.php

MASH 3

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/5ab93ce0055ed-s-e-i-n-f-e-l-d-p-o-p-c-o-r-n.php

Project 6 – Mashup

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https://mitchelloliver.com/mashup1

https://mitchelloliver.com/mashup2

https://mitchelloliver.com/mashup3

https://mitchelloliver.com/mashup4

I had some inherent difficulty trying to get a full video-based webpage translated into an instagram post, and I think that’s why I got very little social media engagement. I imagine it could have worked better on Facebook (especially if not the mobile version), but I’m off the FB these days.

A lot of websites blocked the iframe so I had to choose some less-good alternatives (went from the Whitney Museum // Trump to Crystal Bridges // Walmart).

6: mashed

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I had a lot of fun with these mashups, and you can see mine below!

My very useful mashup is this Weather Page I created. This lays out the current weather from my two most visited weather forecast websites. Now I don’t need to check them both individually, and I can compare the information between the two sites with a quick glance. As a bonus, this mashup is located on a personal page, which I frequently use.

Another fun project  is my backgroundNoise website. This is a personal mashup for fun and in remembrance of times past. These video mashups actually started on the multiplier (it’s the last one on my list below). I liked the results so much that I figured out how to make it work on a personal website. The trickiest part was getting the middle video to be muted while the other two played.

 

I think I had way too much fun mashing videos together. I created 4 so far, with varying reasons behind each. Here are my mashups that are on the multiplier:

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/5aaea5b62723b-mybrother-mysister-mylove.php
This Olympic brother-sister duo caught my attention this year, while the Rage video is something that I’ve seen before and lingers in my mind. For fun, I mashed these two together because they are both videos about family, but one shows familial love, while the other shows quite the opposite. I wanted to see what would happen. What I found most interesting was how the two videos were in sync. This led to some rather disturbing and intriguing overlaps with the video and sound. I think this is attributed to the formatting nature of the two videos — one is a newscast, which are undoubtedly formatted to the minute; the other is a documentary of sorts, which most likely also follows a format. The formatting doesn’t surprise me, but how close they both are to each other was a surprise.

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/5aaeaa5e929db-trippinwiththeturpins.php
I read about this family in some smut magazine recently. While snooping around online, I found some videos of the children, and a news interview about them. This mashup is simply to bring more attention to the issue.

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/5aaeb4aa4eb19-justwatchitalreadyok.php
I stumbled upon the first video of the children and thought it could use a little background music. A quick search later, and I found the gem on the right. I think they play well together, and music adds a little more drama to the interview of the children.

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/5aaeb36cc7b61-outoutoutoutoutoutoutout.php
This is the same thing as the backgroundNoise website, but it’s on the multiplier. I started on the multiplier, liked the results, and then figured out how to make it work on a personal website.

Project 6: M*A*S*H

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Video Mash Up 1: Today’s Country Music

Video Mash Up 2: Climate Change is a Hoax

Article Mash Up: 

  
<style type="text/css">
      .site {<br />
        float:left;<br />
      }</p>
<p>      iframe {<br />
        float:left;<br />
        margin-bottom:30px;<br />
        height:800px;<br />
        width:750px;<br />
      }<br />
    </style>
<%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%></pre>
<div class="site">
      <!--<iframe src="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/march-for-our-lives-huge-crowds-gather-for-rally-against-gun-violence-in-nations-capital/2018/03/24/4121b100-2f7d-11e8-b0b0-f706877db618_story.html?utm_term=.de7fa8736026"></iframe></div>
-->
<div class="site">
      <!--<iframe src="http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/03/25/march-our-lives-dc-crowd-smaller-organizers-estimates-imaging-company-says"></iframe>--></div>
<%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%></div>
<pre>


Website Mash Up: 


  
<style type="text/css">
      .site {<br />
        float:left;<br />
      }</p>
<p>      iframe {<br />
        float:left;<br />
        margin-bottom:30px;<br />
        height:800px;<br />
        width:750px;<br />
      }<br />
    </style>
<%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%></pre>
<div class="site"><iframe src="http://www.espn.com/" width="300" height="150"></iframe></div>
<pre>
-</pre>
<div class="site"><iframe src="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/" width="300" height="150"></iframe></div>
<pre>