With cameras in phones, cheap video cameras, blogs, and anything else you can record your life with, we’re documenting our lives like no society ever has. Our days can be reported on, taped, podcasted, blogged, video blogged, micro blogged, photographed, commented on… all supposedly allowing us to live forever in the vast nexus of digital storage. (Though I hear Livejournal deletes your blog after a year of not logging in – so they can clear space for the living.)

But are we somehow taking away the specialness of life with all of this documentation? Does it cheapen our experiences to be able to dial up the video of them at a whim, relying on the value of our own memories?

Or

Do you think this is preferable, since you always have some touchstone to events that happened in your life? Rather than you mother’s scrapbook, full of photos taken on “special occasions,” do you like being able to call up a thought on a day you blogged back in 2003?

Well, I am not a blogger and nor do I wish to be, but it does seem that people are documenting their lives constantly, and I am okay with that, because I don’t have to read it if I don’t want to. If I ever did blog I would probably do it for myself as opposed to doing it so people will read it, more of a diary type thing, but as I said I don’t ever plan on doing that.

However, with two children I do photograph and video more than I would have ever thought possible thanks to my cell phone camera, my digital camera and my Flip. My mother used to drive me nuts by always wanting to take pictures when I was growing, and now I have turned into that person, but I have the advantage of being able to see those pictures or videos instantly to know if I want to keep or delete and I can send almost instantly to anyone I want. My mother may have developed those pictures once a year. I can have those pictures printed (virtually) and sent off in seconds.

People used to fear big brother was watching. Forget big brother, our entire society is eagerly waiting to capture any moment at the drop of a hat. And for some reason I am okay with that. One day we will be looking at this generation in great detail thanks to all of the blogs, images and video at our disposal and we will most likely say “What the hell were we thinking”

Brian Alig

People generally post on the Internet only what they are willing to share with the public. It is also quite common for people to filter their words and thoughts so only the most interesting and favorable information gets out. One way to think about it is that social media content producers are writing their autobiographies on the fly.

With people who become famous or renowned in their industry, a digital paper trail will serve as an excellent look into the lives of those individuals. For people who are not so lucky, the data will fade into obscurity along with the digital lives of billions of other average people.

As for affecting the specialness of life, I think having the ability to share a video of an event — or even an immediate recollection after an event — is favorable to relying on one’s memory and one’s ability to communicate to another person something that happened years ago. If anything, this will give people a better understanding and greater appreciation of what you had gone through.

Brian Shaler

It’s better by a long shot, but - like everything - it has its caveats. (You knew that was coming, right?)

Special moments are special regardless of whether or not they’re captured on film of any kind, and being so captured does not make them less so. The only “harm” inflicted by recording these moments is on our ability to get away with embellishing them the way feeble human memories typically do.

The memory of a child’s first steps is in no way less “special” because it was captured on film. Michael Phelps becoming the winning-est Olympian of all time is in no way lessened by the fact that it was captured by dozens of cameras in high definition, viewed by millions of people worldwide in real time, and viewable any time thereafter. The “vast nexus of digital storage” makes it possible to preserve these moments in a way that makes them less susceptible to being lost, and their being digital means it is far, far easier to preserve them exactly as they were recorded.

Some people have a love affair with printed paper, photographs, and other tactile means for recording human activity and/or production. I don’t buy that kind of sentimentality. The printed word’s value has nothing to do with it being “printed” - its value is intrinsic. A photograph lost in a fire has no value relative to a high quality scan of it stored in the cloud, where it can be recalled on demand; where companies far better at the task see to it that it is always there, ready.

I mentioned caveats, and in my opinion the problem with the ubiquity of recording devices is that they get us far too comfortable with exposing our private lives. The average person has no idea they’re caught on camera dozens - sometimes hundreds - of times a day. We’ve regressed into a society where privacy is no longer a right, but a privilege, and where precious few understand how to properly respond to any question that begins with, “If you’ve got nothing to hide…”

Joseph Jaramillo

The idea of capturing the moments of your life is and will always be special. But as a society I believe we are going a little overboard with allowing other people to access those moments. Any sense of privacy is being lost and sadly I don’t see that diminishing anytime soon.

Roger Hurni

That’s a good question you raise.

I had a little talk about something similar a couple days ago where it was asked if access to all this information makes us less intelligent? Basically meaning that instead of learning anything you can look it up on Google. While I understand the point I don’t believe so, in ways. Take for instance if you lose your phone. How many phone numbers of friends/family are you going to remember? Probably none as you’ve never really seen them before. But when I was a kid, I knew every friends numbers in my head because I didn’t have a cell phone to save them in.

At the same time I believe it intelligent to be able to know how/where to find anything when needed. That helps me learn.

As for the archiving of your life.
I see the specialness of life in the ability to index all that information and advance our quality of life. People have been indexing information with hieroglyphs and stories and pictures (yearbooks) ever since they could and all this digital media is just the next step in all that. … and yet we still have our memories :)

Technology helps us to live longer, cure diseases, and learn more about anything (not counting budgets or politics).

Chuck Reynolds

I do believe that ages ago people may have recorded their thoughts through diaries and journals more than people do today. They had less technological distractions, and more time to reflect on life. Fast forward to today, technology is making it easy and fun to record and share our lives with multimedia.

I don’t feel that ease of creation and sharing cheapens our imagination or the experiences recorded. I look at photos from my childhood and it helps me remember other things about a particular vacation which was NOT recorded on film, yet having a photo jars my memory about that era and helps “prove” to my brain that I was there and did that thing. Other memories follow. When we go through photos with our children they start talking about other things from the photos.

A problem with extreme documentation of our lives is we may miss out on life right now, while trying to create the “now” memories. Spending 12 hours glued to ustream.tv watching a someone life stream their (also) normal life while ignoring your own friends and family means that you are missing out on your own life. If something that great happens in a life feed, believe me, you can always see the Flickr photos, blog posts or tweets about it the next day.

As a photographer I’ve been guilty of dragging my pro gear to the park to photograph my kids playing. A ten minute lighting setup and a few thousand dollars of photo gear sitting on the ground is not very conducive to me playing with my kids and being a dad. A while back I found a website called, “UnPhotographable” by photographer Michael David Murphy. He describes events which he missed with his camera or which he chose to not photograph while truly appreciating the moment. I was never much into poetry, yet as a photographer I understand capturing a split second in time which tells a powerful story.

Since finding Michael’s blog, I’ve made a conscious efforts to take in some moments and cherish them in my mind. A cell phone photo (or just a memory) of my happy kids will will always trump a very well lit photo of a 5 year old wishing his dad would chase him around the park.

Adam Nollmeyer
Phoenix Photographer

I must say, the main reason I chose this topic for the question this week is that I just sold my Flip Video camera. It was neat for a while, but I realized as I was strolling through Jerome with my girlfriend that I wasn’t really being in the moment - I was sacrificing that moment so that I could point and click. What’s more, looking at the videos the next day, just as Adam described the YouTube example, the videos weren’t worth missing the moment of really “being there.”

How much more of our lives are lost like that? Frankly, I don’t mind killing time that way: I’m waiting for the movie to start, so I fire off a quick text to Brightkite and I’m on with my life.

For things I actually want to remember, though, I find all this documentation replaces my chance at a memory with a digital scrapbook. And that scrapbook is a pale imitation of having lived a life. The more we do this, the more I fear we won’t even care. We’ll be a population of documentarians with nothing worthy of documenting.

Eric Reid

I would answer “No” and “Yes”.

No – For those entering the fray of social media, blogs, etc. Too much is really not enough. You have to find out what types of content is truly sticky.

Yes – After you have been at it for a while, a good blogger/poster/tweeter understands the types of content which her audience really respond too. In other words, they develop a good gauge for what is interesting, compelling and provocative and subsequently a great content filter. Hint: If it doesn’t elicit further conversation, comments, replies or the occasional “thanks for your post”, then try a different approach. Unfortunately, some sources of social media content just tend to continually create the same kinds of content over and over and expect different results. I think there may be a term that defines that kind of behavior…

Chris Sietsema

AdAge recently criticized Microsoft for a not-so-clever ad campaign meant to help boost the tarnished reputation of their Vista program.

The online campaign features a “Punk’d”-style commercial where unsuspecting average Joe’s who refuse to try Vista because of what other users have said try a new program called “Mojave” that they rave about, only to find out that it’s really Vista. And no, Ashton Kutcher unfortunately does not make a cameo. Darn.

Not-so-hot marketing aside, is it true - is Vista not really as bad as people say? What has your experience been with Vista and would you recommend it to a friend? Essentially - would you be punk’d if you were the star of this campaign?

At home, we recently needed a laptop and one major factor in our buying decision was the ability to downgrade to XP from Vista. We were amazed at the numerous options but it came with a price tag. In the end, the best deal included Vista, which we decided to try for giggles. For the non-technical consumer, Vista has too many unnecessary nag screens to change and turn off. For everyone, Vista is slooooooooooooooooooooooow to start up. There are many more reasons we don’t like Vista. In short, Vista reinforced our decision to switch to Mac. We still have the Vista-infested laptop but our main computer is now an Apple.

Judi Merrick

Vista is not as bad as people have said, but the point is that it is not so much better than Windows XP that it warrants an upgrade. The unfortunate thing here is that Microsoft is essentially saying people are too stupid and/or ignorant to realize what they’re missing.

The fact is the jump from Windows 98 to Windows XP was a no-brainer. Vista is prettier and ostensibly more secure, but having had nearly seven years to perfect it, Windows XP is generally considered good enough for most people.

That’s one reason Apple is doing so well these days. Mac OS X is an upgrade from any version of Windows.

Joseph Jaramillo

I have not used Vista much to say “yay” or “nay” but I do know my fiancee who is getting me a lap top for school is working really hard to find one that doesn’t have Vista on it, and he hasn’t used Vista much either. So, either way, they really do need a better product, marketing campaign or both.

Michelle Talsma

I think it’s telling that there were so few responses to this question, only because so few people have bothered to buy a computer with Vista on it. I bought my computer when Vista came out, specifically so I could find the best, last available XP machine. (I wouldn’t have bothered, of course, if I had known the consumer computer industry would rebel the way it did.)

Microsoft, essentially, does what no other company in the world would be able to get away with: Release something they knew didn’t work properly, telling consumers, “we’ll get around to fixing that.” If General Motors started releasing cars that didn’t work properly because they were rushing them out the door, but promised to send mechanics to everyone’s house in the middle of the night over the next four years to put in the missing parts, I’m not sure their lawyers would ever physically leave federal court.

Then again, General Motors doesn’t build one of only two available models of car. Windows is simply lucky that Macs are so much more expensive, and that you can essentially build a PC out of bailing wire, duct tape and a dream.

Eric Reid

Verizon has come under fire with complaints by animal right activists in respond to a 30-second commercial for the LG Dare cell phone. However, Verizon is taking a stand against the controversy and plans to continue airing it. Take a look for yourself.

Why it Works:
From a mere marketing perspective, I think the spot is effective because it conveys the product’s unique selling proposition: the phone is for daring and bold audiences. The copy reads, “Dare you to touch one.” It sparks your attention because it gets your adrenaline going even if just for a second. Audiences are hard to entertain in today’s fast-paced media environment, so this commercial attempts to keep your attention through action and excitement.
Resistance:
Many animal right activists are claiming that the Pit Bulls were portrayed as malignant, but I think it’s all relative to public opinion. There is obviously a lot of negative press about this particular breed, yet the commercial didn’t maliciously capitalize on these characteristics the way they could. That is, the aggression presented was mild enough to establish the setting: the dogs appear for about 10 seconds.
• The dogs never hurt the young man.
• The dogs are never hurt, either.
As far as it being a breed issue with them being singled out, I’d say it’s not the first time Pit Bulls, Doberman Pinschers, or other stereotypical “scary” dogs have appeared on films and TV. And what constitutes a “scary dog”? Well, their apparent features such as large muscular build that when paired with lack of socialization and training, can lead to aggression and violence. The truth is that a general public view of a junkyard dog as a threat exists in our society, and the commercial used it to convey a message about a phone for courageous risk-takers. It’s simply a person coming face to face with a frightening dog, which is something we can all relate to.

Professional social networking site LinkedIn has friends in high places, specifically The New York Times. In a recent story, AdAge reported that, beginning this week, when users of LinkedIn read specific sections of the newspaper they will see articles selected for them based on their LinkedIn profile.

It’s 1-on-1 professional marketing at its best. Both the newspaper and LinkedIn say they will protect the privacy of their consumers and no word yet on how much this new relationship will monetarily benefit both parties.

Another interesting point is that they are trying this new advertising approach slowly – by only targeting only the newspaper’s business and technology’s sections. Although I find this relationship nothing extremely new in the realm of online advertising, it is just another showcase of online advertising’s ability to take big corporations and make them personalize ads for an individual user.

Kind of surreal if you ask me.

Is there anything more bedeviling in the digital marketing sphere than online media planning? You have hundreds of thousands of Web sites that accept advertising, most of which could conceivably deliver your target audience to some degree. Where do you even start?

Fortunately, we have a stable (actually more a collection of cubicles) of big-time online media buyers that do nothing but figure this out every day for clients. They know what sites are legit, and which are struggling just to get to sketchy. Plus, we have our own ad server for testing and real-time tracking and so forth.

But for most people (clients and agencies alike), putting together a credible online media buy too often results in the purchase of only “default” sites like the local newspaper, local TV station etc., which often creates a scenario where you’re overpaying for mediocre results.

The good news is that finding a group of sites that goes beyond the default is easier (and cheaper) than ever, due to the recent release of Quantcast Media Planner. Quantcast combines panel data with actual data (via javascript) to provide audience size and demographic information. Their new Media Planner interface enables you to search for sites that have a high concentration of (for example) women, 25-44, HHI of $60k+, children in household, who also visit ebay.com. Pretty powerful!

As you get into smaller sites, the data gets pretty suspect, however, so be sure to take Quantcast a bit less than 100% literally. But for an initial search to see what’s out there, it’s a great tool with a perfect price point. Only major feature it seems to be missing currently is the ability to segment audience by geography. Hopefully, that’s in the works.