Glossary of Popular New Media Formats

It should be no surprise that formats for the dissemination of new media content and experiences change rapidly. Perpetually fighting for relevance in the day-to-day digital life of the populace, these formats are constantly evolving, as new ideas emerge and claim a seat at the table.

Smart Phone Apps
Companies like Nokia, RIM and Apple have developed marketplaces for the sale and exchange of applications designed to run on “smart phones” like the Blackberry and iPhone. These apps can be anything that takes advantage of phone’s built in features — the touch screen, the web connection, the gyroscope, the geotracking, the music, the video, etc. From games, to comics, to rudimentary social networking, and complex proprietary applications.

Twitter
Twitter is a free “micro-blogging” service that enables its users to send and read each others’ short updates, known as “tweets”. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to other users — known as followers — who have subscribed to them.

An example of a Twitter campaign:
In April of 2009, actor Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to a “Twitter race” to a million followers. CNN accepted the challenge (via Larry King on YouTube) and both parties set out to claim the largest following possible.

What is interesting about this unexpected use of Twitter was the publicity it garnered for both parties — at the time, no user had a million followers on Twitter and this competition resulted in a tremendous boost in popularity for Ashton and CNN — for free.

Rather than simply “tweeting” to fans and waiting for word of mouth to raise their fan numbers, this modest competition (publicized through free channels online like Youtube and Facebook) did what thousands of advertising dollars would be hard-pressed to accomplish and in just a few short weeks.

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