BigCo Isn’t broadcasting the preserve of commercial media organisations because it requires specialist equipment and expertise? Not anymore, thanks to social media. Now, equipment to capture high quality media is widely available and simple to use. Put that together with web services like YouTube, Flickr and blogs and you have a simple way to broadcast yourself to the world. This means that everyone can participate in the creation and sharing of rich media including audio, video, photos.

So how do I get started? Well, first you’ll need to create some media, but that’s pretty easy in a digital age, where even a mobile phone will capture (digital) media of respectable quality. But if you want better quality, you might need to spend a little more, but digital cameras, camcorders and microphones are increasingly affordable. So now I’ve got some media, what do I do with it? Distribution is simply a case of uploading your media. Let’s take a video as an example. You upload this to a video sharing service such as YouTube or Blip.TV, using a simple, intuitive web form. Your video is then optimised for web delivery and made instantly available to anyone in the world through the web. But what if I don’t want everyone to see it? Well, most services will allow you to control who is allowed to see your media. [family, friends, specific people…? Drop a couple of people icons from slide]

? So with all these people creating media on whatever they’re interested in, doesn’t it make it more difficult for me to find what I actually need? It is possible feel swamped by so much choice a greater range of topics, including niche topics that would never have been viable for the traditional media. But there are tools built into these services that can help. I want to know what my colleagues & peers are looking at and if they think it’s any good. Well, that’s where some of the social aspects of social media can help – such as ratings, comments and recommendations. Could change arrows for symbols/icons representing niche topics/diversity?

Most Popular Most Viewed By tag Web2.0 video 100,000 views technology HowTo twitter Social media sites present user-generated content by ‘what’s recent’, ‘what’s popular/most viewed’ and by ‘tag’. So how does that help me? Well, let’s start with tagging…

Web2.0 Web2.0 video technology All media tagged: Web2.0 twitter HowTo video | twitter Photos | flickr When you upload your media, as well as providing a title and description, you can also use ‘tags’ to categorise it using the keywords that they think best describe their content. So, in our example, lets say our video was about Twitter. We might add several tags to categorise it. The video sharing service will then compile a list of all media added under the same tag, which is presented to users when they click that tag. This provides a more flexible way of describing content and a better way to find relevant content.

Where are the references? A excellent lecture! Great resource. So, once I’ve found something, how do I know if it’s any good? A key feature of social media is the conversation going on around it. Instead of simply consuming content, users can now interact with authors by commenting and rating.

SHARE Popular media tagged: Web2.0 100 comments 50 comments These can act as social recommendations, meaning that the media that is most viewed, highest rated and most commented on tend to rise to the surface and gain more prominence. What I’d really like to do is display this on my own page on the university website, but I don’t know how to write a webpage – can I do that? Social media sites make this simple through embedding.

BLOG WEBSITE <embed> </embed> SHARE This provides ready made code that you can simply cut & pasted onto other sites. Why would they let me do that (if I don’t own the content)? The original author has put their media in the public space and this offers the opportunity for their work to be seen by a different and wider audience, who can also share it with other people.