Blurring the lines between traditional and new media

Check out my ZooLoo blog post, "Blurring the lines between traditional and new media." Be sure to comment and tag your tweets with #ZooLoo to let me know what you think!

I found this comic when I was writing the blog... It wasn't completely relevant, but I still liked it!

My new Twitter-based obsession: Twistori

I've fallen in love with a new Twitter application, Twistori. It will appeal to avid readers of Postsecret and FMyLife.com, but every user's experience is different, and you have the option to control which type of statement you see. Twistori is a collection of Twitter updates with key words in them: I love, I hate, I think, I believe, I feel, or I wish. The user visits the site, clicks on whichever key words they want to read about, and Twitter updates begin to scroll across the screen.

Perhaps you're in a bad mood and you want to see what people hate. If you click on "I hate," you could see anything from, "I hate when sleep doesn't fix everything." to "Completely digging the Lolla lineup, but... oh how I hate huge crowds of drunk assholes. At least I only live 2 blocks from the 'venue.'" Or if you've just fallen in love and you want to see what others love, you could read "Watching Tom and Jerry. I love. that. cartoon." or something deeper, "I love learning shit in class. FACT: US citizens have NO constitutional right to privacy...news to me!"

The Twistori website is well-done, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing. I could definitely spend a large segment of my time reading through these groupings of updates. The only problem is that if I want to know more about a person... there is no option to direct me to his or her Twitter page. Theoretically I could remember the phrase and go type it into Twitter search, but that defeats the purpose of anonymity which made such sites (Postsecret, FMyLife, Twistori) successful. We all want to relate to someone, but if we know too much, statements are no longer generic and the connection is gone.

Spread the word!

My ZooLoo Logo
Originally uploaded by sarahmaloy

Are you ready to ZooLoo? Take my ZooLoo logo and post it wherever you network-- Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. Let me know how you're spreading the ZooLoo word. Anything you post will help me, so let's show everyone at ZooLoo the kind of buzz that Sarah Maloy can create online! Also be sure to join the Facebook group.

I can't fall asleep... So of course I wrote a blog about "Fight Club" and Fall Out Boy.

I know it's completely cliche to be obsessed with Fight Club, but every night as I'm drifting off to sleep, I find myself staring at the Fight Club poster mounted beside my bed, and I begin to analyze its every detail. This is highly escalated on nights such as tonight, when I find myself unable to fall asleep. And of course, tonight of all nights, I was looking at my Fight Club poster when Fall Out Boy's "20 Dollar Nose Bleed" began to play and I was graced with the sounds of Patrick Stump asking, "Where will I be when I wake up next to a stranger on a passenger plane? Permanent jet lag, please take me back, please take me back, please take me back."


I really have little purpose for this blog, and I might make it private in the morning, but I just had to write this to get it out of my head. I could probably be happy spending the rest of my life listening to Fall Out Boy and watching Fight Club. There are an infinite number of things to analyze, discuss, expand upon, etc. in those songs and that movie. In fact, I think that one night when I'm not five and a half hours from morning, I'm going to write an entire entry about Fight Club. I'll include my thoughts, my ideas, my analyzations, and my questions about the movie, and hopefully we can all discuss it in the comments.

Oprah = Fail Whale?

The Twitterverse is chirping lately with talk about Oprah and the number (estimates range from 300,000 to 1.5 million) of users she brought onto Twitter when she signed up for the service and publicized it on live television. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said that by later this week he will have the exact number of users who signed up thanks to Oprah, but it is abundantly clear that she made an impact. Not only is Twitter once again constantly over capacity and full of fail whales, but Oprah, #Oprah, and #herebeforeoprah have all been trending topics lately.

Oprah Winfrey (@oprah) had more than 35,000 followers before she even sent her first tweet. By the end of day one, she had gained more than 300,000 additional followers. She also inspired the creation of HereBeforeOprah.com, a site which allows users to enter a screenname and see if said user was on Twitter before Oprah. I'm not entirely sure why this is neccessary... I guess it just instills a bit of notoriety and allows the "original users" (similar to original gangsters) to feel good about themselves. I won't deny that I felt a bit impressive when I searched my name and saw the result-- "@smaloy was here before @oprah."

Twitter is at that awkward social media stage between niche and mass popularity when new users are flooding the system and original users are getting irritated with the popularity and changes (including rumblings of advertisements) that are happening to the system. While Oprah may have sped up the process, I'm certain that Twitter would have breached the gap into universal popularity in the near future, regardless. Twitter is one of my personal favorite websites, but like Xanga, Myspace, and Facebook before it, it is just another social media site that begins with niche popularity, becomes the next big trend, and eventually goes back to intermittent use when something new comes along.

Check out a screenshot of @Oprah's recent tweets:


Photo of Oprah learning Twitter via www.nytimes.com.
Screenshot of Oprah's tweets via twitter.com/oprah.

Update: Apparently Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, read my blog. That or this tweet is a coincidence... Yeah, it's probably the latter.

Seven Pounds

Seven Pounds was technically one of the most depressing movies I've seen in a while... but I didn't see it as depressing. I saw it as brilliant, intricate, beautiful, and, in a strange way, uplifting. I'm not going to spoil the movie to anyone who hasn't seen it, but I recommend that everyone go see it. When it ended tonight, the theatre full of college students was silent, and there was hardly a dry eye in the house. It's an amazing movie and everyone should have a reason to cry from time to time.

Flickr... I took the plunge.

So I finally got a Flickr account! I don't anyone who has one, so if you do... become one of my contacts! I'm always the first person I know who gets any social media account, so I'm sure I will be able to soon bring friends to the Flickrverse. I love being the first of my friends to dive into a social media site, as I did with Xanga, Myspace, Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, etc. It makes me feel cool to be fully versed in something while others are struggling to understand. Plus I love teaching people new things on the web! =]

You can check out my Flickr at www.Flickr.com/people/SarahMaloy. Right now it's just a few obnoxious Photobooth pictures of myself, but I plan on soon uploading all of my concert and politics pictures, my ZooLoo "buzz" pictures, and whatever else I find in my computer archives!

Have you missed me? I've been getting ready to ZooLoo! And I'm ready. Are you?

Although this blog is definitely not a "This is my life. Aren't you so interested?" sort of blog, I decided to post something letting everyone know what I've been up to lately... because it's exciting!

I'm a Twitter frequenter. It's a bit of an obsession... but everyone already knows that. I've recently started following the #printern hashtag, and I saw a post for an internship in Scottsdale, AZ with a soon-to-be-launched website: ZooLoo.

I looked into the job and it basically looked amazing. The application was unique, but in my world, fairly typical. I had to submit a resume... and an application video. Just like I did for Warped Tour. Well apparently second time is the charm, because my video was infinitely better, and I felt much more confident about it. While some of the applicants went the route of creative, commercial-esque videos, I chose to just talk about myself and let my personality show. I've gotten better at talking to a camera, and I felt like this video was a good reflection of my personality. I also worked to create a buzz about ZooLoo, and when they put the interns up to a viral vote, I worked to create a buzz about me and ZooLoo! Apparently something I did worked, because I made it to the second round of the intern contest.

I'm really excited about this whole thing. While I don't yet know exactly what ZooLoo is... all my research leads me to believe I will like it. And I definitely think that I could fit into the world of the ZooLoo company. So be sure to check out ZooLoo, check out the other applicants and contest details on the ZooLoo blog, and help me to spread the ZooLoo word! Promote what I'm sure will be an awesome website, and help me out by posting blog entries, twittering about ZooLoo, joining my Facebook group, and just doing anything you see fit!

You guys are the greatest, and I'm so excited about the community I've been able to mobilize these past few days. I can't wait to see it grow, and I hope I can also help to grow the ZooLoo community this summer!

Okay... this time I'm coming back for real.

I feel like a failure when I look at my blog and there is no update in the past few days-- Let alone the length of time I've let my blog go now! Unacceptable. I can't believe all the changes that Blogger has made in the time I've been gone... I can now email in blogs and photos? Awesome. And there's a "monetize" link... Not sure what that's all about. I guess Blogger probably takes a big chunk of users' earnings, so it's in their benefit to show bloggers how to properly utilize AdSense. I'm one of those people who needs the "monetize link," but I really don't care that much. I'm not blogging to make money... although my blog has raked in a grand total of $5.98 since I first logged in in July. Um... Score?! So not that this needed an entire blog post... but I feel better about myself when I post, and the fact that people have been commenting on random old posts lately shows me that, apparently, you like it, too! So I'm back.