I apologize in advance if this blog isn't as well thought out as it could be. I just spent an hour and a half writing it, and it got deleted. So, on the verge of tears, I will attempt this again...
Theme #4: The trend in each emerging medium from utopian ideals to the focus on monetizing.
Article: "How Tweet It Is"
The opening statements of this article are, "Sure, the Twitter guys still have no idea how to make money off their fabulous invention. But for now they are living in a dreamworld of infinite possibilities, maybe the last one on Earth." This is immediately indicative of the world we live in. The article, though talking about the merits of Twitter, seems to focus on how exactly the service will make money. There are a full four paragraphs speculating about how the monetizing will take place. From "brand verification" to the possibility of charging users a subscription fee, making money is on the way. However, the creators of Twitter don't seem as concerned as most other people do.
"When you ask Williams and Stone about revenue, they’ll—reflexively, defensively—remind you how young the company is, then they’ll point out that they have to worry about first making sure their product is flawless, then they’ll note that no one asked Google in 1998 how it was going to make money, then they’ll gripe that just because everyone else on the planet is terrified about money right now doesn’t mean they have to be."
It seems like they're only trying to make money off of the service because that's what everyone expects them to do. We live in a capitalist society that focuses only on making money. However, that usually turns something "pure" into an advertisement-laden annoyance. In fact, later in the article, the author talks about how, because of Twitter, pictures and posts about the Hudson River plane crash were up before any newspapers could cover it.
"Krums’s first instinct was to take a picture and load it to the web. There was nothing capitalistic or altruistic about it. Something amazing happened, and without thinking, he sent it out to the world. And let’s say he hadn’t. Let’s say he took this incredible photo [...] and decided to sell it, said he was hanging onto it for the highest bidder. He would have been vilified by bloggers and Twitterers alike. His is a culture of sharing information. This is the culture Twitter is counting on. Whatever your thoughts on its ability to exist outside the collapsing economy or its inability (so far) to put a price tag on its services, that’s a real thing."
This is the utopia that Twitter is now. There was no focus on money, just information sharing. However, the use of the phrase "so far" puts, again, an emphasis on monetizing. This obsession with monetizing Twitter has even made it's way into sarcastic cartoons, like this one I found online:
Old Media: Radio
FM radio began as a utopian ideal, just as Twitter is today. It had the freedom to play whatever it wanted, and DJs only played advertisements for products they supported. The focus was less on money and more on having a good time listening to music and creating a community. Now, FM radio as we know it, has no freedom and is all about monetization. Old FM radio gained success, and corporations immediately saw a way to make money. They squeezed the life and essence out of old FM radio and changed it into a robotic advertisement, with ten of the same songs played in between. Old FM radio seems to be comparable to Twitter now, and if the focus on monetizing Twitter continues, it could fall in line with FM radio as we know it now - a bland, lifeless medium only focused on making money, taking all the purity from what it used to be.
Theory: Capitalist Ideology
America is a capitalist society. Every form of media there is focuses on making money. If it does not make money, it's purpose has not been served. However, not every medium starts out that way. As I said before, FM radio started as a form of enjoyment, and now I can't turn on the radio without hearing DJs scream and rave about different products they swear by. The same could be predicted to happen with Twitter. Advertising is everywhere; we can never escape it because we are constantly being sold a lifestyle that is based on consuming. Because there is such a focus on this capitalist lifestyle, Twitter is likely to fall in line, even though it is now more on the utopian side of different media. Sometimes, the pure form of something should remain just that - pure. Trying to make money, though important, seems to drain the life out of things we enjoy, and this idea definitely applies to Twitter.
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