Man, what a week. A ton of interesting developments in media and the online communities that I’m interested. Here’s a quick recounting (if for no other reason, so I can get it down).

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us
Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, becomes an “overnight” YouTube star with his brilliant little ethnographic film Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&eurl=[/youtube]
He then takes it a step further and posts it to the Mojiti site where visitors can tag it with their own comments. While the Wesch’s video can be taken to task for what it doesn’t contain, it’s a great little peice and it will be interesting to see how this affects the production and distribution of ethnographic films.

Bloggers at the Libby Trial
As I mentioned in an earlier post, bloggers and citizen journalists got direct media access to the Lewis Scooter Libby trial. Their content is being syndicated by the AP. This has brought more attention to the field of Citizen Journalism.

New York Time Editor Talks About its Online Future
Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the New York Times dropped what seems to be a bombshell in an online interview:

I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either.

Sulzberger went on to break down how the online model would actually be more cost effective for the times. It’s the first time that I’ve seen anyone acknowledge this.

Edwards campaign hires and sticks with bloggers
The gist is this: John Edwards campaign hired Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, two well known blogging pundits to help manage his online presence. A number of groups, most notably the Catholic League, protested the move noting that Marcotte and McEwan have made a range of inappropriate remarks about Christians and other groups on their personal blogs. Edwards ends up stuck between a rock and a hard place:

He could either keep the women and have to answer for the at-times vulgar and intemperate writings on their personal blogs or dismiss them and face a revolt by the left-wing blogosphere, which is playing an increasingly important role in Democratic politics.

Edwards, via his official blog, announces that while the content of the posts in questions “offended” him, he keeping Marcotte and McEwab on his staff. Both Marcotte and McEwab post their own responses as well. This one has it all, clashing of speech communities, pundits, journalists, and politicians. I can’t claim to have my head wrapped around it yet. I expect were going to see a lot more cases like this in the weeks and months to come.

Yahoo launches Pipes
I’m not quite sure how to describe it. Pipes is a new visual programming tool from yahoo for combining data feeds. Like I said, I can’t quite explain why yet, but I think it’s important. If for no other reason its going to allow non-programmers to begin to create web applications mash-ups. I’m still not quite sure what I need to mash up. But if I can figure that out, I’ll let you know.

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I’m sure there’s more. There always is. I’ve fallen out of touch with things at YouTube. To my knowledge there still hasn’t been an official announcement about revenue sharing to the community. Still lots going on across the board.