Old vs. New

You must be wondering how to differentiate new media to old media. It is pretty simple. New media has the five C's and old media do not, let take a look at them:

• Communication. The communication part of new media are your blogs and wikis. In the past we communicated through letters and limited phone conversations. Today with new media we can communicate with people across the planet within a instant.
• Collaboration. With the invention of wikis, now we are capable of creating a document, a encyclopedia, a employee manual or plan a vacation with friends. Wikis are the best way to write or plan something because it is easier to create, erase or modify something in a document.
• Community. With the creation of social networks, we can always be in contact with friends, family members and even clients. It is not just a coincidence the fact that many corporations have Twitter accounts or the costumers can be fans of their favorite store on Facebook. It is a new way of people connecting with each other with out have to carry a bunch of business cards.
• Creativity. Nothing says more user generated content like YouTube, but we can be limited to that. Today there are mash-up which combine tools that we can use online with other tools we use online. An example of that is a mash-up with Google and Facebook that can locate on the map all your friends. Every day there is a new mash-up created by users like us and there is much more to come.
• Convergence. A great example of that is our fax, scanner, printer, phone, photo printer machines. There are other types of convergences such as: software (mash-ups), consumption (listening to a Internet radio station while reading the NY Times Online and syncing your ipod to your music library), roles (the user is also the developer which is also the web designer,...), media (websites like joost.com can mash everything your Facebook friends are watching on YouTube, what online TV show they are watching, what are they doing) and disciplines (bioinformatics, where we combine biology and technology to have computer created hearts so we could study them without having the real thing in front of us).