I admit I didn’t really get myspace. I mean, sure, social networking. Friends linking to each other. So what? The only thing myspace would appear to be good for is spotting douches, for which it is fertile ground.
But now that I see Justin Beach’s CBC Love myspace site, I’m starting to get it. As he explained to me, in a few short weeks, he has 1026 “friends” in his network, and growing. To these people sends bulletins of CBC schedules, local events, specials, whatever. This isn’t spam – these people want this info, and this is how they prefer to get it.
And you might say: “1026 people. So what?” But it’s called buzz and high-priced consultants will explain it like this:
Cost to the CBC is nothing.
Also interesting to me is that there are a number of CBC myspacers out there, like George, and David Suzuki, and Gill Deacon, flogging their shows and themselves and connecting directly to their audience. They get it, even if I don’t, and even if the CBC doesn’t.
And although she has nothing to do with the CBC, I would be remiss if I mentioned myspace and didn’t mention Lady Sovereign, if only to hear her cover of the Pistols’ Pretty Vacant, which she doesn’t really need to cover but does anyways.
And if you can take another recommendation, our friend Tessa Sproule has a new blog about her lockout baby. So cute!
And one more. Joe Mahoney with a purely Mohoneyesque post on radio, copyright, Aesop, unions, and Key Lime pie.
All right then, one last recommendation, although it seems kind of silly to recommend the New York Times. But this is free access week and there is some great stuff in there that you usually have to pay for, including Douglas Coupland’s blog.
Just like his books, his blog goes from maddeningly crappy and wonderfully brilliant. I mean, the guy masticated his novels into pulp, a week a book, and made wasp nests out of them as a statement on the sanctity of books, and a different kind of buzz.
4 Comments
I hope and pray that you don’t work for any area of CBC that deals with the public Bill – because, unless my calculator is wrong you’re saying those numbers ONLY expand to about 125,000 households…for free…have you seen the ratings numbers lately?
but the Small World thesis is really about closed societies, rather than the theoretical everybody-on-the-planet.
Those 1026 only expand to 5×10^3
So it isn’t a mass group yet. See the Statcan or CRTC numbers on net access; always on; broadband connections ; wanting the net; time to read the net; etc.; etc.;
I think that “1026 people, so what”
might be part of the problem, no you can’t bend and customize the CBC for each individual but each individual should be taken very seriously. Never mind Buzz, the term 6 degrees of seperation when you add up all the people those 1026 people know, and all the people their friends know etc., 1026 people should be taken very seriously.
Apart from the Borat movie, the most buzz came from Bees On A Plane
Already an old joke.
Apparently, we may indeed all become composites of computer modules in the decades ahead, according to the brilliant Ray Kurzweil, who gives an extensive interview on C-SPAN