I’ve slightly touched on the concept of the importance of a good website in a recent blog, but this week in our Digital Media lecture we explored the topic even more. Websites are essential to marketing. It’s a way for people to gather information about a product or person with the click of a finger. Seeing as how we are now living in the digital age, a personal website is starting to become as important as a resume. We have an upcoming assignment where we have to design our own website about anything we want. This got me thinking about website’s themselves, and their importance in society today. Website’s used to just do basic things: show some pictures, maybe a video, have an info page, contact information etc. But they were all pretty one-sided. By one-sided I mean that-when visiting a website- you knew that you weren’t having a direct connection with anyone (chat sites excluded). But recently there has been an innovation that combines the informative side of a website with the interactive side that a company can now bring to the table.
We talked about various interactive websites that allowed the visitors of the websites to get involved in an activity and feel as though they are a part of something. Whether it’s going to a location, finding a clue, and submitting online for a reward – like the Halo fans got when they were allowed to play Halo 2 before it was released, or something like what Nine Inch Nails did. We watched this video in our lecture that amazed me on multiple levels. It started when someone found a USB in a bathroom after a Nine Inch Nails concert and took it home with them. They uploaded it and long story short they transcribed the sound frequency and turned it into a digital signal and noticed that – when extremely zoomed in – the sounds were made out of numbers. The fans called this phone number and followed a whole bunch of other directions that took them to an abandoned warehouse and they all went willingly. The end result was a reward of a free private concert for the dedicated Nine Inch Nails fans. Fans of bands, products, games-they all love things like this and it in turn is a very effective marketing strategy.
We also talked about the history of games in the lecture and how they have the ability to create an augmented reality. I’m not into video games or computers games so when Laurie asked the class to raise their hands if they were gamers I didn’t put my hand up. Then she clarified that she didn’t only mean video games, but even people who play games on our their cell phones. As she said this a statistic was put up on the board about the amount of people our age who play games. My initial reaction was that it must be wrong, but then I realized almost all of us do fall under that category. We all use games as an escape from our world, even if it’s playing a simple game on our phones or iPod’s. Apparently 97% of us use games as a diversion from our everyday lives. If you want more statistics on percentages of various demographics you can go to http://pewresearch.org/pubs/953/teens-video-games-and-civics. When looking on this website the statistics astonished me. It’s crazy to think about how reliant we are on technology. Whether it’s to make websites to market ourselves or products, interact with people all around the world, or entertain ourselves on our daily commute. Where would we be without entertainment that we can hold in the palm of our hands? Who knows. All I know is that I’m excited to see the amazing things that are created within the next decade, and I hope I’m the one the creates some of them.
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