Monday 24 November 2014

The Murdoch paywall

The Murdoch paywall

1) Do you agree with James Murdoch that the BBC should not be allowed to provide free news online?

I strongly disagree with James Murdoch because the BBC are a public broadcasting service and they are already earning a revue from households which have a TV. This means that they have no need to charge extra, for online news as their main aim is to inform, entertain and educate. Profit and money shouldn’t come into it as they are a different companies with different goals.

2) Was Rupert Murdoch right to put his news content (The Times, The Sun) behind a paywall?

As a business mogul Rupert Murdoch was right to put a paywall up, as his primary goal is to have a profitable business. Although since they have put up the paywall, they have been able to gain approximately 140,000 subscribers and made profits of £361 million. In Rupert Murdoch’s opinion he would say that the paywall is successful strategic method for him to gain my money from viewers and subscribers as they are receiving quality news. Rupert Murdoch putting up a paywall has benefited his business, as they can reduce their losses.

Audi R8 Scam

No, you can't get free Audi R8 cars on Facebook – it's a scam


This article is about how people are being scammed of their personal details in return for a “Free Audi R8”. You can’t get a free Audi R8 car by liking a Facebook post. Which sounds like an obvious statement, but according to security firm Bitdefender, more than 200,000 users of the social network have fallen for it.

Entrants were asked to like the page and share its post on their own timelines, while saying what colour car they’d like if they won. Bitdefender claims that the page has attracted nearly 180,000 likes and more than 210,000 shares so far. Some of its posts include links to videos, which is where the scam gets worrying: Bitdefender says that some of the sites hosting those videos are also running the JS:Trojan.JS.Likejack.A code that can be used for “clickjacking on hidden commercials”.

My opinion about this is that it seems straightforward and people shouldn’t be failing to see that is very unlikely that you would just be giving a “Free Audi R8”.

How to use social media to get a job

How to use social media to get a job 



This article is about how Charlie Loyd, a satellite image enthusiast, perfected a new way to make maps with cloudless imagery and tweeted his work to five mapping companies. Within minutes he had a reply tweet, followed by an interview and eventually a job offer.

Key points:

·         45% of employers now use social media to screen job candidates. Likewise, jobseekers are increasingly using online profiles to find jobs, with 34% using Twitter to make first contact with employers.


From this article it is clear to see that the developments from the digital age has allowed easy access and easier ways to try and apply for a job. This may have increased the amount to communication there is from employers to applicants.

Minecraft YouTube videos

Minecraft YouTube videos have been watched 47bn times


This story is about how Children and adults alike aren’t just playing Minecraft in millions: they’re watching YouTube videos made using Minecraft – and those videos are racking up billions of views.

Key points:
·         By June 2014, Minecraft videos had been watched 30.8 billion times, with only 183 million of those views coming from the channel of Mojang, the game’s publisher.
·         That’s nearly three times the total views for videos about Grand Theft Auto, which Octoly estimated was the second most popular gaming brand on YouTubewith nearly 12 billion views, ahead of Call of Duty (10.2 billion), Angry Birds (six billion) and Halo (4.8 billion).

      My opinion is that Minecraft is doing something right as a brand as they are gaining popularity from YouTube viewers who enjoy the game which is played by million but watched in billions. This game has made some YouTubers successful as people enjoy their content. Viewers may not see the obvious as this is an evolution of YouTube over the last couple of years. YouTube is a big part of the reason why Minecraft is such a strong, well-loved gaming brand in 2014 – and it’s also a notable factor in Microsoft’s decision to buy Mojang for $2.5bn this summer. Microsoft isn’t just buying a popular game that’s sold more than 54m copies across computer, console and mobile: it’s buying one of the world’s biggest television brands. Despite the fact that its huge popularity is online, rather than on traditional television.

'Build The Wall analysis'

'Build The Wall analysis'

To all of the bystanders reading this the true audience for this essay narrows necessarily to a pair of notables who have it in their power to save high-end journalism—two newspaper executives who can rescue an imploding industry and thereby achieve an essential civic good for the nation.

Truth is, a halting movement toward the creation of an online subscription model already exists will it work? Is there enough demand for old-line, high-end journalism in the age of new media? Will readers pay for what they have already accepted as free? There is no going backward, they will declare, affronted by the idea that a victory already claimed can even be questioned. The newspaper is all but dead. Long live the citizen journalist.

The third point was about the newspaper industry not spotting the early developments of new and digital media which has made them lag behind and not able to do much about this development. In the beginning the newspaper industry didn’t take the changes seriously so the rapid expansion happened like a disease

The fourth paragraph is about 3 scenarios of a pay wall. The first scenario is about how the audience would be willing to pay if there was a pay wall as the news would be high quality. The second point was about newspapers become local to their regions and online pay walls go up. The final scenario states that all small newspapers are eviscerated and only unique and essential newspapers have survived.

Summary
This article is his personal view about the struggle of the news industry. The article starts off with the explanation of newspapers having high quality professional journalism, that is paid for, rather than citizen journalism that is unprofessional and if the audience is not willing to pay for their news they shouldn’t receive it at all. He talks about the pros and cons of the big institutions and where they went wrong with not seeing the developments early. The end of the article talks about the three scenarios.

My opinion
My opinion is that newspapers were the original sources of news on all platforms as news was first written and sent out through them. That has changed as there is a development of new and digital media which has allowed consumers to access news in different ways. These developments have allowed faster ways to access news.


I think that if a pay wall should go up it will drive away the little audience it has, this is because the audience have other sources plus they already have been getting it for free.