Unfinished

Does community customization mean that consumers are creating their own products? Even professionals have begun to mimic the processes used by “amateurs” and by social media constructs. Here Ron Howard is part of Canon’s Project Imagin8ion. Which is using user generated content from social media sites as the basis of inspiration for a short film. What is interesting is that Canon, an electronics company, is supporting itself by subtly urging uses to use its products to create and share their content, which then supports social media sites such as Flickr and Youtube (where the content would be uploaded to) Canon creates products > Users purchase product, create and upload to social media sites > Canon uses that content which inspires more production of that content > inspires new users to purchase products, or current users to upload more > Canon makes money. Canon is selling users their own content. This is the case with all social media. Though it is interesting to see a company that creates physical objects using this tactic to inspire the purchasing of it’s own products. This is an ad for the video game Gears of War 3 which allowed users to decide what happened in part of the story of the video game. Again, an instance in which the consumers choices are being sold back to the consumers, although not on the scale or to the degree of social media sites. Manovich writes, “Game producers, musicians, and film companies try to react to what fans say about their products, implement fans’ wishes, and even shape story lines in response to conversations among cultural consumers.” (P. 329) “To oppose the mainstream, you now have plenty of lifestyles—accompanied by every subcultural aspect, from music and visual styles to clothes and slang—available for purchase.” Manovic (P. 324)