Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by The Shiznit on July 11, 2012 at 5:41pm

Had to throw this in as an afterthought for the lulz.  hahahaha

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Permalink Reply by Lore on August 15, 2012 at 12:35pm

How dare you link a Nickelback song on here Shiznit!  That awful song is playing in my head now and I didn't even have to click the play button.

Anyways I've been thinking about trying to do a blog of some kind so I could hone my writing skills and vent outside of facebook about politics and religion.

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Permalink Reply by Marko Bilić on July 12, 2012 at 3:53am

the problem is, there's so much crap on youtube and all those sites being uploaded every day, it's really hard to make a breakthrough. 

But I think there are some things that interest a lot of people in general, and if you incorporate those things into your plans, you will have much bigger chances of succeeding. 

A few things that come to mind are sex, girls, money, fast cars, games, humor, food, or some kind of REALLY freaky shit that will be enough to spark some interest.

This may sound a little douchy, but you have to take into consideration that over 90 percent of internet users are people who are looking for something sex related and possibly funny. 

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Permalink Reply by The Shiznit on July 15, 2012 at 3:58pm

Yeah, YouTube and many other sites have changed; and it's definitely a lot more difficult these days to get noticed.  And I also think that you have a good point about the 

"things that interest a lot of people in general," 

and I've mentioned to a few people recently that I think we need to find a way to engage "average" people around here more, like with topics that they can easily understand and get involved with.  We would have to make things a little easier to handle for the masses, so to speak, because most people out there are just not very intellectual or philosophical; and they really don't want to stress themselves out trying to solve any problems -- they just want things neatly wrapped up for them and presented in packages with pretty bows.  hehe

Some of the recent suggestions that I've heard along this line recently are that we attempt to cover recent news items more often, as well as "hot topics";  and {one that I've repeatedly heard again & again}  that we should add a few more Forum Categories.  Now I like both of those ideas; but I also think we will need to be very careful with the last one, to ensure that we do not change the very nature of what I-Power is all about, and why it it was founded.

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Permalink Reply by Sorlaize on July 17, 2012 at 7:30am

It's not the content that's at fault, or the site.. people will make it what they want it to be.

If you are complaining about people not wanting to be activists that's not something that should necessarily change for all people, I mean, who would make such a claim? That's what I read off your comment.

If you want a lot of attention on youtube it has to be warranted, for it to legitimately happen and stay like that. This doesn't happen until someone happens to create something of value for every viewer. Your problem in becoming famous isn't in hte content on youtube that already exists; it's in making something that's better than what other people can already create for free or very low costs/work/effort. Cat videos are real valuable entertainment; you can't just denounce them and say they're worth nothing because they're not philosophical. That's what we call a dictatorship I think.

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Permalink Reply by The Shiznit on July 17, 2012 at 11:53pm

Cat videos are real valuable entertainment; you can't just denounce them and say they're worth nothing because they're not philosophical.

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Permalink Reply by Bart on July 16, 2012 at 2:23pm

I would choose reddit. It seems likelier to attract people that would actually take the time to read the posts on i-power.

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Permalink Reply by Sorlaize on July 17, 2012 at 7:46am

>to actually achieve a type of celebrity status online for the purpose of accomplishing such things. 
Boy, that's not something I expected to ever actually read online. haha

First you need to have a great cause, something that's interesting. It has to warrant attention not for the sake of being updated on a story, but for new and engaging information. I look(or looked) for new Ron Paul speeches because they were like a brand that connected me to the insightful stuff that I could actually engage with intellectually unlike speeches from other politicians. Websites with regular feeds on a certain 'brand' of content, they are worth something if the content is always something legitimately new AND interesting.

Sadly, though, the truth of the matter isn't always helpful to us. Unless you have a REALLY great cause with particular value, it may be that people won't give you attention as much as someone like Athene. Athene is a personality with his own 'story' so he's also riding on that in a primary sense. Like Julian Assange.

also: it's never the website that's the main reason for fame. Again, look to the fundamental reason of why people keep updated on a particular topic. Ask yourself, "Even if I could get people reading my blog every day.. isn't that a waste of their time? What would they get from it that's better than anything else? [And if nothing: doesn't it make sense that the 'attention economy' works like it does?]"

So, you need a very specific cause, to get continued exposure, and you need to be the best speaker about it. Otherwise, others will beat you to it (which is what I call a win/win scenario: best person does the job, and millions of people are able to enjoy something a little more for the same actual cost or less).

What you could do is develop a particular brand of activism.. although, I don't really know how you get A LOT OF PEOPLE interested in activism in general. The very nature of the word implies that those who are active are not behaving normal :/  .. and indeed that's a core societal problem I would say; nothing a video or brand can fix by itself.

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Permalink Reply by Dries Spans on July 17, 2012 at 4:28pm

For "the celebrity status" I would go without a doubt for Youtube. I got to know almost every internet celebrity through Youtube. I can't say that I even found one through Reddit or Facebook. I like to know the face/personality behind the articles, tweets or messages and what better way to do this then by video.

As for how to gain that status I'm not certain but I thought of some possibilities:

- You can make content specific for one cause/group (and thus target a subgroup of IPower) and make connections that way.
E.g. the latest news/activity/development about cause/group x.

- You can make content about everything happening on the site.
E.g. summarize the latest "hot" topics with views and opinions in an entertaining way.

I don’t know if Ipower has any official Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Reddit account,  but if so: You can let the users make content (for their groups) and submit it somewhere to be publicized through these channels. An admin can then review them and if suited post it with these accounts. This way you group everything a bit more up, draw attention to IPower in general and give people a chance to post “anonymous” (although I doubt that is a real barrier).

Off topic: I would use every widespread medium available to spread the content. You can make content on YouTube and link it on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and visa versa. Your target audience is probably not in one place.

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Permalink Reply by The Shiznit on July 17, 2012 at 11:44pm

 I would use every widespread medium available to spread content. You can make content on YouTube and link it on Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook; and visa versa. Your target audience is probably not in one place.

The shotgun approach.  Yeah, this is an idea that seems to keep popping up in our voice-chat discussions.  I-Power does indeed have Facebook & Twitter accts, but they haven't been used in a very long time;  so I guess I'll ask Reese about granting us access to use them soon.  ;-)

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Permalink Reply by SparTom007 - Tom on July 22, 2012 at 4:34am

I'm thinking youtube videos with reddit links and we abuse the reddit algorithm by all ipower members upvoting the link at the same time (cos reddit moves posts higher up if lots of people vote at the same time)

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Davies on July 26, 2012 at 12:30am

Something that gets ignored an awful lot is podcasting. I'm a huge podcast subscriber (listen to around 20 of them) and I see a lot of people in this game enjoying rather high levels of success. You do have to know a little bit about audio editing (which is easy to learn), but if you have good, steady content you can get quite an audience podcasting.

You get the added benefit that getting listed in the iTunes store is practically free advertising depending on what category you are in.

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