A possible move poster for our film No Time Like the Present (working title). Click through and check out our film’s website as well!
Ok, so clearly job searching is on my mind. But I swear, I didn’t find this article because I was looking for it. It did make me think, though: why do resumes have to be so boring?
what do you think of Pinterest? Do you use it? Love it? Hate it? Don’t get it?
Out come the haters: The Pinterest backlash intensifies
Some people can only handle so much Ryan Gosling. The sudden rise of Pinterest, which surged in popularity around the first of the year (as this chart illustrates perfectly), seems to have caught some off guard, with many questioning the phenomenon much the same way Twitter initially got criticized for being about nothing. But with the site already the subject of copyright questions (in one case making a lawyer and Pinterest fan totally freak out), it was only a matter of time before the deep-thought hand-wringing began. A couple of notable samples we’ve seen recently:
- one MacLean’s writer Lisan Jutras criticizes it for being strongly feminine, but only on the surface: “This domain is sort of like a girls-only clubhouse, but it’s not about expressing innermost desires, just surface desires—for hair, shoes, nail art, a boyfriend that exists in soft-focus black-and-white.”
- two Thought Catalog narrows down the appeal of the service in a single damning line: “It’s the first Nora Ephron movie that you have to log into, and yep, you guessed it, there’s a wait list to join.” Their problem is stated plainly in the headline: “Pinterest: The depths we will go to not read.”
» A couple quick thoughts of our own: It’s possible that the success of Pinterest may reach a little bit of a plateau at some point because of the shape it’s already taken. It’s growing quickly, but the best social networks are formless in terms of the content. Anything goes on Tumblr for the most part, for example; same with Twitter and Facebook. With Pinterest, the culture has kind of limited what can work there, at least for now. It feels like, even if it hasn’t been spelled out, the parameters have been partially defined. And for businesses, minus a few obvious verticals (say, you sell clothes or artwork) Pinterest is not necessary or even desirable for building a strong brand. It could be, though, if it was repositioned slightly. These are some of the things the site will struggle with as it tries to grow. if we were them, we’d figure out ways to encourage shapelessness, so as not to scare new users off.
Fun fact: Thomas Eakins’s painting The Concert Singer is housed in a wooden frame in Gallery 111 at the PMA. If you look closely, you’ll see that Eakins carved music notes all along the bottom of this frame. They correspond with the opening bars of the Felix Mendelssohn composition that the model, Weda Cook, is actually singing in the painting.
I never noticed! In a weird coincidence, I stumbled across a Prezi I did my Sophomore year on Thomas Eakins and his role in American art. And I find this post right after. The internet works in mysterious ways…
Your Tumblr blog and Twitter account are more important to some employers.
Is it ironic that I’m putting this on my tumblr?
To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about this. Granted, I don’t think companies are totally discrediting the value of a resume, and I agree that resumes rarely give a complete picture of who a person really is. But I also question whether a tumblr or twitter can accurately capture a persons accomplishments and experience, and show whether that person is a good candidate for a job.
On the flip side, blogs and personal websites are infinitely more complex than a resume. They are full of thoughts, images, videos and multimedia that have been created and curated by that owner, and give a richer, more accurate understanding of what makes that person tick, and how their thought process works. But even more, they are full of links and nodes that connect that person to an infinitley more expansive web, that in my opinion, more accurately shows the interconnectedness of the world.
If it comes down to getting a job, however, and someone is looking at my tumblr right now, I hope they like what they see :)
Interesting debate. Definitely something I’ve experienced in classes, but I’m still not sure which form I like better. But I’m intrigued by what the English Professor at Stanford is doing.
Across the country, blog writing has become a basic requirement in everything from M.B.A. to literature courses. On its face, who could disagree with the transformation? Why not replace a staid writing exercise with a medium that gives the writer the immediacy of an audience, a feeling of relevancy, instant feedback from classmates or readers, and a practical connection to contemporary communications? Pointedly, why punish with a paper when a blog is, relatively, fun?
Because, say defenders of rigorous writing, the brief, sometimes personally expressive blog post fails sorely to teach key aspects of thinking and writing. They argue that the old format was less about how Sherman got to the sea and more about how the writer organized the points, fashioned an argument, showed grasp of substance and proof of its origin. Its rigidity wasn’t punishment but pedagogy.
Their reductio ad absurdum: why not just bypass the blog, too, and move right on to 140 characters about Shermn’s Mrch?
An interesting comparison. One world is based on content creation, the other on content dissemination. I hope the two can reconcile before we see a SOPA II.
Silicon Valley and Hollywood: so close geographically, yet so distant digitally and philosophically. You would think we’d understand each other better. In the Valley, we circulate pitch decks. In Hollywood, they shop around scripts. We strive for exits, while they sell distribution rights. They have record labels, we have venture capitalists. They have agents, we have recruiters. People on Sunset Blvd. obsess over the next “hit” that will draw viewers, ears, or butts in seats. On Sand Hill Road, we toast to market disruptions and business model innovations. Ultimately, both are working towards bringing transformative experiences (content and apps) to market.
