OK, I admit it. Tumblr has killed my blog. Well, not really killed it, but it certainly has decreased the time I spend blogging on Random Sarah and looking for new content to blog about.

Last week was Internet Week here in NYC, and in the few days since I have had a lot of time to reflect on this past year of me being a part of this amazing community. I have been spending the majority of my time lately looking for a full time job, and that has put a lot of my passion projects on hold.

I got into this “new media” space because I was passionate about online video and I stumbled upon Social Media by accident. I was perfectly happy going on facebook and reading apple rumor sites. I had almost no desire to be on twitter, to be a blogger or a podcast creator. Then I started watching video podcasts and I realized that I wanted to create content as well.

As much as it seams like I’m busy, I know that it is not an excuse for letting my passion for online video fall off. What’s it All About has hit a few bumps in the road, and I feel as if I am back to square one with the project. However, instead of being discouraged I have decided to modify what I was doing.

Very often people will ask me questions, either on twitter, or via email. For example, the other day someone asked my about #followfriday best practices. I get asked questions about social media all the time. So, I am just going to start answering them on video, here in my room. For right now I am thinking that I will just put these videos up here on Random Sarah because I am not really sure that they are part of the What’s it All About brand, and I’m not really sure what that brand is anymore.

You can ask me questions on twitter or shoot me and email

I would love your feedback since you have all been an amazing part of this journey.

p.s. I am still working on the user generated “I am a geek” video, but so far I only have 5 submissions so keep them coming!

this is a reblog via fimoculous:

So here we are again — playing Nostradamus in media, technology, and pop culture — with 36 predictions for 2009:

1. Hatahs: 4chan digitally antagonizes an entire race of people into self-inflicted genocide.

2. Facebook: By the middle of summer, you realize that you’re logging into most websites via Facebook Connect. You get a creepy feeling in your gut about this, but it’s so damn convenient.

3. Politics: After a freak caribou attack injures Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sarah Palin joins The View.

4. Newspapers: At least three major daily newspapers cease to exist. The most likely members of the carnage: the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

5. Yahoo: Fuck it, Lycos buys it.

6. Twitter I: Facebook finally buys Twitter, but only after a price war with Google ramps it up to a ridiculous nine-figure valuation. Unsurprisingly, this is Twitter’s big plan “to make money.”

7. Twitter II: But seriously, just like those stories in 2001 about people who [shock!] make a living off of blogs, the “Twitter professional” will somehow become a reality.

8. Twitter III: A major news event happens that no one live twitters. NYT writes three stories (Styles, Tech, and Media) about this phenomena, quickly dubbed “Twitter Shock.”

9. Starbucks: After trying everything else imaginable, they introduce a new “buffet” option, which is a surprise hit.

10. Daughter Moguls: In the most convoluted assassination plot ever devised, Christie Hefner, Shari Redstone, and Elisabeth Murdoch join forces to commit triple patricide. Vanity Fair dedicates three eInk covers to the incident, with heads that morph from father to daughter.

11. Magazines I: Some rich kid on the west coast launches a magazine called Charticles, which consists only of… yeah. Choire Sicha commits suicide in his St. Mark’s apartment by paper cutting himself to death with the debut issue.

12. Magazines II: Monocle raises its newsstand price to $1295.00.

13. Magazines III: Doy, of course Portfolio goes under. The final cover story is mysteriously about cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney.

14. Gossip Girl: In the Christmas ‘09 episode, Chuck and Blair finally fuck again. The recession ends.

15. Subscriptions: Against all seeming rationality, several new online subscription publications show up on the scene.

16. Where The Wild Things Are: You know what? The movie actually does suck. Gen X icons Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers are pilloried by a millennials who claim old people just don’t get it. They’re kinda right.

17. New York Times: After Brian Stelter notices that David Carr has refriended Jayson Blair on Facebook, the New York Times asks Carr to take a drug test. Upon failing, he returns to Minneapolis to run City Pages, which ends up being the last remaining alt-weekly at Village Voice Media.

18. Online Video: Something’s gotta give. Two of the “big” three — Revision3, ON Networks, Next New Networks — cease to exist by the end of the year. And when 23/6 and Funny Or Die expire on the same day, Alley Insider’s headline is “Funny Or Dead In 24/7.” Normal people have no idea what any of these things are.

19. Terrestrial Video: Something’s gotta give. One of the “big” five is morphed into a cable outlet.

20. Daily Beast: Tina Brown uses her consulting role at HBO to pitch a reality series about her own website. No one thinks it will go into development, but then Aaron Sorkin and Mark Burnett sign on. Julia Allison and Arianna Huffington are super pissed.

21. Tina Fey: First woman knighted. Now Oprah’s pissed too.

22. Google: They do a lot of stuff that no one expects, but the surprise application of the year is some sort of mashup between three core Google products: Reader, Chrome, and Docs. Oh, and maybe Android, just to make this pshit sci-fi.

23. FriendFeed: Not only does your mom still has no fucking idea what it is, but your friends don’t either.

24. Publishing: 49 books are published that chronicle the end of publishing.

25. Music: Proving that fake stuff always wins, Lonely Island’s album debuts platinum — the only album to do so this year.

26. Lara Logan: Dueling February covers of Parenting and Playboy.

27. Gawker Media: Nick Denton predicts armageddon, using copious Excel graphs to elucidate his point.

28. Mad Men: After negotiations break down with AMC, a rumor floats that a movie is in the works. It is eventually released in 2012 on the same day as the Arrested Development movie.

29. Diablo Cody: Released in September, Jennifer’s Body becomes the first young adult movie since Heathers and Clueless that resonates with grown-ups. While you try very hard to think of a new reason to hate her, Diablo casts Sasha Grey in her next film. Backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash ensues.

30. Words: Webster’s Dictionary names undershare word of the year.

31. Online Media: Trying to take advantage of cheap labor, hundreds of “me too” small startup publications launch. They will call themselves “online magazines,” but they will be blogs.

32. Microsoft: They! Will! Suprise! You! (Actually, no they won’t. You hear this every year. Their online version of Office will be begrudgingly cool, but it will have one severe flaw that renders it unusable.)

33. Apple: After Biz Week’s “Is The Innovation Over?” story appears, Steve Jobs retires at the end of the year, surprisingly citing health reasons.

34. Education: 37 percent of the people you know go back to grad school.

35. Digg: It does not get bought and Kevin Rose does not go on a date with Jennifer Aniston. Every boy in the Valley weeps at a shared realization: their sense of worth is over-valued.

36. Rupert Murdoch: He dies in a freak yacht accident. Sumner Redstone, Padma Lakshmi, Barry Diller, David Geffen, Rachel Sklar, Hoobastank, and Shaquille O’Neill are also on board, but all survive. Foul play is suspected, and an investigation reminiscent of the board game Clue ensues. A rumor spreads that Murdoch’s cryogenically frozen brain is in an Anaheim basement next to Walt Disney’s frontal lobe and the Arc of the Covenant. Michael Wolff sells his next book, The Brain Eaters, for $10 million. 17 people buy it; 4 read it.

via valleywag.com – I’m the first to admit that I wanted to see the Web kill Hollywood. It just ain’t happening. It’s finally dawned on the studios that you can now pay artists even less to produce content, and pay YouTube absolutely nothing to distribute it. The problem is you have to sell your own ads — but the studios and networks, unlike indie content creators and Valley startups, have armies of ad sales people still at their command. And it’s still a hits-based business. So while it’s great to have all the creative freedom in the world, you’re still going to have to wait tables and get coffee for producers while working, unpaid, on your own projects and pray to the ghost of Mae West that something ends up with mass appeal. What does success look like in the wake of the online video revolution?

A lot like it used to — everyone’s still working to pay their agent, their lawyer and their accountant. No one producing video for online distribution is even thinking about hiring a maid, gardener or driver yet — not even Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. And if you think Google AdSense will cover those costs, you’ll probably end up begging for change on the boulevard of broken dreams. Or maybe the off-brand Spider-Man will have a heart attack and you can take his place amusing tourists. Licensing deals, merchandise and sponsors are still the only ticket to Tinseltown riches. And old showbiz types will milk young upstarts for every penny on that end. (Photo by Steve Zaslavsky)

read more | digg story