If you haven't heard, tomorrow - October 26 - Yahoo is finally shutting down GeoCities. This makes me so sad. My very first website ever was hosted on GeoCities. And thanks to archive.org's wayback machine, I was able to find it and see it again today. But more on that in a moment..
This got me thinking about how the Internet has progressed for me. I was lucky to be at an impressionable age when the Internet was really starting to get going..I was young enough to embrace new technology, but I was old enough to remember all the changes. I got to see the evolution of the Internet from the old to Web 2.0 and beyond. It's been a weird and interesting journey.
A video I shot over the course of last fall/winter alongside my friends and associates Aaron and Katie and edited was chosen by Ben Stein to be a finalist in the YouTube Video Volunteers Spotlight: Animal Welfare contest. Out of the top ten finalists, voting by the public will decide the top three, who will be showcased on youtube.com. This would be great for Cat's Haven, who have no advertising budget.
Before college, I had never used Adobe After Effects. The first time I opened it, my head exploded. I instantly hated it.
My first project in AE was an animatic starring my mother, the lunch lady. It turned out pretty decently, but it frustrated me so much. It got lots of laughs during the showing, so at least the storytelling was good.
When it comes to preserving memories, I'm usually more apt to grab a still camera than a video camera despite being in the video field. With a still, you can get a frozen moment that represents an event, and it can end up being really timeless. It eliminates all the flaws really easily and exists as a single split second of time. In general when you're talking about pre-WW2, still pictures are what you get. I'm fairly used to seeing this era is frozen bits and pieces and I like it that way because everyone seems perfect and classy and timeless.
But then occasionally you see a video from an era that didn't really have much video, and it's almost kind of shocking to see the people in the pictures moving around. They seem like still life in the photos, almost like they don't really exist. But then suddenly they're moving around and being regular ol' people who don't even know what's coming to them in the next 70 years, wearing clothes and walking around on what looks like a movie set.
I saw this video posted on Mashable this week. The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam released it recently. It's the only known video of Anne Frank. I think the whole somewhat strange feeling of seeing figures that don't normally have 3 dimensions in this form is furthered by seeing someone so iconic as Anne Frank. This video is from July 22, 1941, a little under 5 months before WW2 started.
With her diary having been published for 50 years, it's easy to forget that she was once an actual person. She was once a little girl who lived in a building and peered out of her window to see a bride and groom walk into the street. I think this should be shown to kids when they are assigned to read her diary, as a reminder that it is in fact NOT fictional.
This is another reason I love video. It can capture a whole scene so vividly even on 30 second of black and white. With everyone having a video camera in their pocket these days, this feeling of finding a small treasure in a video long past won't continue.
In short, this is what I have determined the difference between Twitter and Facebook Status Feed is:
Facebook Status Feed: "Kylee Wall said blah blah blah."
Twitter: "Blah blah blah said Kylee Wall."
Facebook is directly linked to your full profile, among your friends, and the importance is placed on YOU saying something.
Twitter is linked to a small avatar and an ambiguous screenname and requires a click through to see a tiny snippet more. It places the importance on what is said, with who said it being an afterthought. This is why retweeting became a regular occurence, whereas on Facebook people rarely copy/paste witty statements their friends make. What their friends may have said belongs to them. Not to mention Facebook creates a thread so you can comment on how witty they were...
That's how I see Facebook Status and Twitter differing.
