Jess's Insights
[SUMMARY—MediaSnackers youth liaison officer shares some insights.]
(WORLD) This week, I've been excited by quite a few things (it sounds a bit sad on reflection but I've spent the best part of a month studying for exams!). Firstly, it's surprising how many people go to the library to study for exams (I haven't been to the library in a long time). It's also surprising how many people end up chatting to their friends for hours on end, instead of doing work. (Today, I sat opposite a girl who came in with a sandwich and a cake, took out her Chemistry textbooks and talked for two hours to her friend and only managed to write a title). I'm also surprised by the girl:boy ratio that go to the library—there are quite clearly a lot more girls that study there. It's been quite an eye-opener and it made me think about how girls are constantly performing better than boys…
Secondly, an American girl is staying in our house this week (a distant relative), and after numerous conversations with her, I found out that, "hardly anyone in the States uses MySpace anymore, it's all Facebook nowadays!" and also there is a huge craze over there called 'Digital Scrapbooking—basically like the traditional scrapbook, but you have your own mini-printer to print your photographs and memories and they all have 'scrapovers' (as opposed to sleepovers) and exchange photos, etc., and apparently it gets, "very intense"—thought it sounded very cool.
Thirdly, YouTube has been, for the last week, my distraction from studying. Looking at bands covering bands, young peoples attempts at imitating a drum part in various songs, interviews with people from the television program 'House', and many other things. And today I noticed how YouTube's changed slightly (and I found another revelation, but more about that later!). There's, like, a little slide feature at the bottom of embedded videos now, showing eight related videos to the one that you're currently viewing, all with the ratings. And a small menu part, where you can instantly embed or find the URL. Earlier this week, I also found out that on some videos there is an 'Active Sharing' section, where you can see other users who are watching the same video as you AND you can see other videos they've watched in the past half hour. This feature will certainly open up a whole load of other videos that I'll be interested in, which will undoubtedly distract me for even longer…
Also, after a few hours of not going on MySpace, (Addicted? Me? Never…!) there were (and I shall count them) 5 bulletins stating that a new comment function was added (options to comment back, send message, block user and delete comments). And I quote, "I too like this whole MySpace update business", "WOAH at the fact MySpace is well different now", "MySpace has changed a bit. I like change", "Feeling excited due to the change in comments. Yes I'm gay, but it's cool", and "Aren't the updates to comments like the coolest things in history?"
And I must add my two cents here that I was very excited to see them appear.
I just think that it's really great that young people can get really hyped up about new features on websites. It's like they are so consumed by them that they have to log every new feature that is added, and this is brilliant. This is MediaSnacking. :) (But I was quite disappointed how no-one mentioned that the bulletin lists are longer…!)
Filed by DK on June 7 2007
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