OTW Fannews: Social media wins and losses

Banner by Erin of the post title next to an image of Tom Hiddleston leaping from behind the Tumblr logo to nab the Twitter bird

  • With both fans and entertainment projects utilizing social media, it’s important to understand the playing field. Mashable cited Dr.Who for knowing “How to Keep Secrets in a Social Media World” while The Guardian looked at Tom Hiddleston’s publicity skills. “Hiddleston though doesn’t seem to be going through the motions, which is why it works. Like Jennifer Lawrence, his is an unfiltered realness that is fast becoming the ultimate asset in post-Twitter, post-PR Hollywood.”
  • Aside from celebrities utilizing social media to go straight to the audience, Mirror Online‘s use of a One Direction fan to write about 1D day will likely be one of many efforts to connect to fans’ by utilizing their voices in published pieces.
  • Not Literally Productions used fandom’s practices to create a parody version of Icona Pop’s “I Don’t Care,” titled “I Ship It”, and are offering the single for sale, moving from social media to commerce.
  • The Verge discussed how facilitating more connectivity among fans can backfire. Sony PlayStation 4’s ‘Playroom’ allowed users to broadcast themselves to other gamers. “Sony was seen to be rushing to slam its ear to the ground, picking up current video-game trends without truly understanding them.” As a result, “[t]he rise, rapid descent, and subsequent banning of The Playroom on Twitch is a lesson for Sony. Racing to be part of the fastest-growing subsection of the largest entertainment medium in the world is more difficult when the people who inhabit that space already are entrenched, and have their own specific ways of doing things. As for the worrying content: it may just be human nature that given a camera and a means to communicate, we’ll do so in a way that is by turns ingenious and disturbing.”

What social media fandom trends have you been seeing? Write about them on Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

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