Metacritic.com/film Part Deux

When sites have both experts and user reviews, many of them mix the two and melt them together. Which I never find to be a good option for readers & users to come to the site to find. Although I always like the idea of having both types of reviews, there needs to be a difference in either design or concept, that separates the two different reviews. Luckily Metacritic does that. They do this in two different ways. The first way is separating the reviews in different areas, and the 2nd is giving the two different grading scales.


Firstly the site has a way of letting you know, with colors, whether a movie is good or not. There is a three level rating system; red meaning bad, yellow meaning average, and green meaning good (pictured above). When you select a specific film you instantly know what reviewers (both experts & users) thought of the film. The difference between user & expert ratings is that the experts ratings is based off of a scale of 1-100. This gives a critics review to be much more specific and pin points more precisely what they thought of the film. On the other hand the users reviews is only on a scale of 1-10. It is nice to see though sometimes the difference between the reviews of experts & users. For example, Predators received a 54 by critics (which is yellow) but users gave it a green 7.0.


Overall do I find the site to be credible? Absolutely. They seem to have a great system that is determined to be the definitive site for compiling reviews from all things film, tv, games, & music. Their system is easy, helpful, and I think more precise then Rotten Tomatoes. I also like that the users vote is shown above, but not spotlighted like the critics reviews. That comes first, and user reviews come 2nd on the site, which in the end makes Metacritic an overall credible site.

Review: Metacritic.com/film

The first thing I thought of when I started viewing the site of Metacritic's film page, is "how is it different from the more popular movie review site Rotten Tomatoes?" Both have an overall rating of every movie, which is compiled from critics from around the country, and both let users give the movie their own rating as well. The big difference between the two is that Rotten Tomatoes has moved beyond just rating movies and compiling critics reviews, but has moved into more of an overall movie site. With articles about movies, trailers, photos, etc. Where as Metacritic is strictly a review site. The other large difference is Metacritics grading scale. Metacritic has a weighted system of reviewing. For example if Roger Ebert gave a film a 10/10 review, and someone from lets say the Philadelphia Reader gave that same film a 5/10, it is weighted more towards the more distinguished reviewer. It is much like a grading curve is many schools/colleges. If you are interested in more of the specifics of their grading they have a large page discussing it here.


Metacritic's main purpose is to calculate the overall average of reviews for a film. Both by critics and by the users. Which I think is always handy because there is usually a gap between critics and audiences. For example, Transformers 2 was nearly hated by every movie critic (getting a 35 out of 100 on Metacritic), but still made just over $400 million at the box office. That is why I like the idea of having a user rating for each film.

What does the site allow you to do?
For the users, the only two things you can do on the site are post your own rating on the film (only out of 10, not 100), and read critics reviews for the film. And this is possible for any film that is on the site, old & new. You can search through their critiques from Best & Worst of the Decade, All Time High Scores, to searching a specific critic and checking out all their reviews. But beyond rating and critiquing film, the only other thing for users to participate on the site is the user forum. There you can discuss the top film of the year, Oscar choices for 201o, or the worst films of the year.

Overall I really love the site. I find it less flashy and catch-phrasey then Rotten Tomatoes. It is more to the point, and I like their grading scale. More prominent film reviewers should have precedent over others who are unknown. This keeps the difference between professionals and users. Much like what we discussed earlier in the semester with Andrew Keen. My other favorite part of the site is that it is not as black and white as other review sites. It is not "this film is bad" or "this film is great!" it lets you go into the grey area and see how the film is actually reviewed. You can do this by either reading the review, or more quickly seeing the overall score the film, which is based out of 100. This allows more breathing room for the reviewer and the reader to get a more detailed review about a film. This is the best thing they ahve going for them. Because whenever I am reading a review and it says that it's bad or good, I always want to know at what degree is it awful or amazing? Metacritic.com gives you that grey area with an easy to read site that is great for any film lover.

Tagged: Part 2

Common Thread
To delve deeper into the site, I thought the only way I could so was to join the site. Although many of the features are much like my Facebook page (upload photos, friends list, etc.), there are some differences in it that I stated in my earlier post. But what I find more interesting are the users on the site. Now obviously they don't just have a giant page of who is on the site, but when I try browsing for friends the most prominent people on the site are African American males and females Why? I have no idea. The site has pictures of all races and genders. The members are all over the country, so the site isn't just popular in one city/state. Of course there are other races and genders but it seems to be predominantly African African men & women.

Official & Unofficial Writing
When it comes to the writing of the site, it is an formal type of writing. It is all bullet pointed and very proper. Not old english proper, but it doesn't try to be a member of the site. And there is certainly a unified voice of officialness on the site. When it comes to the user generated writing, that varies of course from person to person. But overall, like all social networking sites, I think the writing is low level and to the point. I'm not sure if there is a term for it, but its the type of English supplemented to get to the point in less characters. Love is luv, cause is cuz, talk to you later is ttyl, and so on. But that is the case with nearly every social networking site I have come across on my time on the internet.

Overall I don't find the site to be that interesting or that useful as a social networking site. I see how they are trying to expand the medium of SNSs but I don't think it's enough. Adding a few games and a few questionaires isn't going to make you the next Facebook. And I think that's what every SNS should be striving for, being the next best thing. This site seems to just add on to the old basics. Even the template (pictured above) is much like Facebook & Myspace and doesn't try anything new. I don't think I'll be keeping my membership to the site since I already have email, Facebook, and plenty of real life friends. But perhaps for the lonely this could be a good tool to meet internet strangers, but I am unsure if it would work.

Social Networking: Tagged.com

When it comes to social networking, the first two sites I think of are Facebook and Myspace. Although know Myspace has pretty much died off, besides it's music pages, and Facebook has taken over the market of social networking. There are still many other sites that try and be the same or different from Facebook to try and get people to join their site. Tagged.com is one of those sites that is trying to stay apart from Facebook, stating as a slogan, "Tagged: a different kind of social network." But is it really different from the big dogs?

Mission: Tagged
Tagged tries to differentiate itself from Facebook and other SNSs by stating, "Other social networks are for staying in touch with people you already know. At Tagged, we make it easy to meet new people." Their overall goal seems to not stay in touch with old friends, but to make new ones either platonic or not. "Tagged is the place where people can discover hundreds of new friends or just meet that special someone." They say you can do this through their "social games, friend suggestions, browse profiles, group interests, and much more." So the overview of their site is to meet new friends or to meet that special someone, not so much keeping in contact with old friends.

Interaction
To keep you interacting with the site you can upload photos, videos, play games, and browse strangers profiles. You can also give out "luv" to friends of yours. Which you get three of every day. There is a "luv meter" to show you how much luv you've recieved from your friends. In the instructions of this it states, "Give Luv and get Luv to increase your Luv Meter! And since I am a new member to the site, looks like I have no luv.

Along with luv, you can also give gifts to your friends. But it will cost you....gold. There is a system on the site, and instead of money as your balance, it is measured in gold. But the gold isn't real gold of course, it is just the word they gave to points basically. And how do you earn gold? You buy it! Either through opening up a new checking account as HSBC, or starting a new account of Netflix. Or you may just pay for gold:

This seems to be one of the many ways the site makes money. The site boasts, "Over the years Tagged has grown to be one of the largest social networks in the world and among the most successful too." But besides luv and Gold, the site has many other features for you to meet friends or lovers. They encourage you to join groups as a good way to meet new people, along with games. This is a way to meet people with common interests that you may be compatible with. Groups range from animals to sports, and the games range from Farm (much like Facebook's Farmville) to poker.

Overall the site tries very hard to give you every option possible for meeting new people. Although they do leave it in your hands to meet someone new, they give you many venues to meet different people. You can meet people through photos, gifts, games, groups, common interests, or just searching for people named Henry. Either way it would be hard not to meet people on here, since they give you multiple venues to do so. Is it a successful venture? According to them it is, but I'm not sure how useful the site is. It seems that many people are using it, somewhere around 80 million members, so it would be hard not to make new internet friends/significant others on the site.

Template Swith Implications

The template of your blog is one of many key ingredients to making it successful and viewable. As I posted in my "Top Five Blog Tips," having a template that compliments your subject and creating a synergy between the two is key. For my Science Fiction Review blog, I wanted something that complimented the usually dark and spacey feel sci-fi films. Here is the current template:

As I stated above, I wanted something that would compliment the feel of many of the science fiction films I will and have been reviewing. Most of them are either time travel, space epics, dis-utopias, or future wars, so the dark background with a white text seemed to be fitting. I wanted viewers to feel comfortable with the subject matter, which you can do with your template, to make them feel welcome. It is a template overall that I have enjoyed and thought worked for the blog over the semester. But what happens if you switch it up and try something new?

Alternate Template #1: Watermark


This is a template that just doesn't work with what I am writing about. It is light, colorful, and has dandelions......just doesn't work. This is the exact opposite feeling that compliments science fiction films. Now if I was writing about nature, kittens, or balloons for numerous blog posts, then yes this template would work. But for dark science fiction films, it just doesn't work. It doesn't create the type of synergy I am looking for. It's not as if I am writing about death, gore, and the morbid, but I am writing about films that take you to other worlds, meet alien beings, and have time traveling robots, and dandelions just don't fit into that equation. This is an example of a template not complimenting the blog, which I think off puts readers and confuses them overall, I know I would be confused by this.

Alternative Template #2: Awesome, Inc.


Now this design takes what I had before and makes it only better. It is dark (black, grey's, and white), which is the tone of my blog, but also contemporary. It isn't just blocks of posts, pictures, etc, it seems to separate everything nicely. I also enjoy the borders it puts around each image, which sets them apart even more so then the 1st template. Another separation it sets forth is between the post and the background. The background has a simple diagonal line design, while the posts have a dark grey design, which is a subtle way to differentiate the posts. Overall I think it is a stronger template since it seems to be even more appropriate for what I am posting about, which in the end all that matters is that it compliments your writing and is almost unnoticeable to your readers.

Top Five Blog Tips

The general community outside of the blogosphere seems to look down upon the blogging world. I remember around the 2008 election, many pundits and talking heads of Sunday talk shows would look down about the murmurs and advice of the bloggers. Why is that? I think it may be a generational gap between the bloggers and the haters. But perhaps this gap could be forgotten or stepped over if they followed my (or my peers) top 5 blog tips! That may be a gross overstatement which could not be proven to be fact, but what the hell. Here is my top 5 list to help improve your blog:

#1: Interesting Subject Matter
What are you bringing to the table? What is going to make someone choose your blog over another? Just like with any good photo, story, film, painting, you need to hook your audience and reel them in. How? Try to be original. For example, I wanted to a blog that was somehow film related. Then I widdled that down from film to science fiction, then from that to reviewing sci-fi films. You want to try and bring something new to the table. Especially since the internet is drowning in "me me me" blogs, as I call them, try and step outside the box and bring in something different.

#2: Template Compliments Subject Matter
Many sites and blogs just don't work and aren't successful due to that. I think one reason for this is that the template of the blog does not fit the subject matter being written about. But when it does you have great synergy with text & visuals. This brings people back to the page because they feel it works overall as a blog.
Example: perezhilton.com

#3: Visuals That Support Blog
One of the big problems I have with many blogs is the lack of visuals. At the same time I don't think there should be more pictures/videos then text, but I do find some blogs are large blocks that are hard to get through. There needs to be a balance for the audience. One blog that does an excellent job of keeping a balance of visual hooks and interested subject matter is SlashFilm.
Example: slashfilm.com

#4: Hyperlinks
I have found the use to hyperlinks to be beyond useful. I like to place a lot of visuals from the films, on set pictures, pictures of directors and actors working, and screen-caps of the films, but find that not all of them can fit on the blog without it being cluttered. With the use of hyperlinks you can add more information into your words without cluttering your page. Also using it to inform your audience more is always a great tool. For example hyperlinking to an article, game, or video that you simply can't fit on your page. It's just an overall great tool to use to expand your blog without doing it physically on your page.

#5: Don't Make It All About You
With everything else it is not black & white, there is a grey area here. It may just be a pet peeve thing with me too, but I don't want to read about what sandwich you ate yesterday or why your friend isn't texting you. This is a problem I feel is deep rooted in many of my generation, self indulgence. With Facebook status updates, Twitter, and blogs, it seems to be all about the culture of "me me me." Some may find it interesting, but I don't seem to. Now there is nothing wrong with talking about yourself or adding your personal views, but don't fall into the realm where the entire blog is about you. Unless your Brad Pitt or Obama, most people (hopefully) won't care about what underwear your wearing. But like I stated earlier, it is not black & white, and it is Ok to put your opinions, views, or feeligns into your blog, just don't make it a diary.

Content Blog Review: io9

I was working with my composer a few months ago on my new film and somehow we began discussing blogs and how we like very few of them. He then pointed to me to this site: io9. It is a blog geared towards anything related to science fiction. As their manifesto states, "io9 is addicted to science fiction because it's the storytelling branch of prophesy. We'll be writing obsessively about scifi in every format: books, movies, TV, Web, comics, games, art, music, and fashion."


After following the site for a few months, I have fallen head over heels for it. It covers everything and anything a fan of science fiction would be interested in. From new news about old favorites to images of nebula's in space, and so on. The purpose of the site is to spread geek news to the hungry masses. Although I can't say I'm looking for much of the information they are giving, I always find myself interested in what they post. Their content is strong and interesting, and without just rehashing news that any other site can give you, they have lists, top tens, and plenty of other information that is only native to their site. This is their strongest attribute, it is the hub of all great news for someone like me or others that love anything sci-fi.

One of my favorite organizational tools the site uses is that every post is tagged to a subsection of the blog. For example, if an article appears on the site it is tagged to a subsection of the blog. Such as images of space are tagged under "spaceporn" or some crazy image of a Ghostbusters ghost as a puppet is tagged under "holycrapwtf." Everyday I seem to find a new subsection in the site and since they are constantly posting to the blog it seems that it is growing at a rapid pace, therefore the site is deep and informational.

Another thing that I love and respect about the site is that the information isn't watered down or brought to a lower level to be easily accessible to all newcomers. The site is for sci-fi fans and tailors to their needs and their level of writing. The writing of each article is well done both linguistically and informational.

Overall the site is the perfect blog for sci-fi fans of all kinds. From the Trekkie, to the astronomer, to the Phillip K. Dick fan. They tailor their site and information to the entire spectrum of fans, and that is the most respectable part of io9.com.