Creativity

One of the most amazing features of new media is the way it fosters creativity. The expanded array of options and channels of communicating your personality that new media offers is seemingly never ending. From Instagram offering users the chance at editing the lighting, texture, and filter of their photographs to make them look almost professional quality, to websites like Vine which encourage the movie director in us all to come out and begin to edit, chop, and put together works of visual wonder. Another way new media can foster creativity is through websites like Twitter, through which companies can receive customer feedback directly and even utilize customer suggestions to help create new products or develop changes to optimize existing ones, making the world a better place for both consumers and suppliers. In a NY Times article that focuses on how companies use twitter, it states, "Economists have long thought that producers — the people making products and running companies — are naturally the ones coming up with new ideas, Professor von Hippel said. In fact, he said, consumers often come up with ideas for products, and companies wait on the sidelines to see if they have mass appeal" One of my favorite examples of how new media fosters creativity is the Design byME website introduced by Lego, where "fans can use Lego design software to create their own models. Lego then sells the designs, effectively offloading the design cost to fans." In my opinion, this idea is pure corporate strategy genius, offloading costs to the consumer, while at the same time obtaining new models and designs for free. Pretty creative!




Citation:

Miller, Claire Cain. "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers." The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 Oct. 2009. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.