In this short piece, reporter Bruno Navarro interviews Scott Schuman, creator of The Sartorialist, a popular New York City-based fashion blog with an aesthetic that generally centers on classically dressed adults. Schuman speaks briefly of his interest in fashion, generated as a young boy reading GQ and furthered during his career as a showroom manager at Valentino (which ended when he decided to become a stay-at-home dad). Unlikely many other bloggers, Schuman knows nothing of journalism – a fact which Navarro praises, arguing that it is The Sartorialist’s simple style and positive tone that have led to its immeasurable success. Furthermore, unlike the proliferation of blogs whose witty, catty tone takes a stab at some of fashion’s biggest names, Schuman provides little text, and generally lets the photos speak for themselves, choosing only to add text when he wants to point out a specific detail, like a hemline or collar. Schuman’s work makes evident his great knowledge and love of fashion, and has gained him jobs taking photographs for Esquire Magazine and Style.com.

Although The Sartorialist is an extremely popular fashion blog (Technorati ranks it number 361 in the worldwide blogosphere, as of March 7, 2007), Navarro downplays Schuman’s power as a foreseer of the cool. Instead, Schuman emphasize personal details of Schuman’s life (he grew up in Indiana and recently left the industry to become a stay-at-home dad) and notes that he has no journalism experience and rejects the catty critiques favored by many other fashion insiders, thus painting him instead as a regular guy whose photos speak to the greater public. The underlying message seems almost a reiteration of the Great American Dream, in which the Internet provides the new means for achieving bigshot status in whatever industry you choose, as long as you’re sincere and love your art.

Clearly, Navarro is a bit overly optimistic. First of all, anyone who has ever visited The Sartorialist will tell you right away that Schuman isn’t just an ordinary guy. He has a keen eye for high fashion and tends to photograph people wearing outfits that cost upwards of $1,000. Second, his discussion of colors and details is complete and impressive, as he points out features of a particular outfit that would go unnoticed to the untrained eye. Navarro also downplays the fact that Schuman worked for Valentino, one of the premier Italian designers in haute culture – and a fact which posits Schuman as more of a fashion insider than a regular guy. Furthermore, while Navarro’s celebrates Schuman’s success as a success of the every man, he fails to mention the almost 300,000 blog posts tagged as “fashion” on Technorati, which do not receive nearly the number of pageviews as The Sartorialist and have not led to such opportunities.

Yet overall, the thrust of Navarro’s article seems right on – the world of fashion blogging clearly does allow for people outside the fashion industry to comment on and influence what is popular – and in that respect, Schuman should act as role model for all aspiring fashion bloggers.

Here, Riekert adopts Gladwell’s term to refer to street-style fashion bloggers whose keen sense of fashion results in documentation of the some of globe’s newest and funkiest looks featured on the web for all to see. As a result, fashion industry executives, rather than hiring street teams to seek out “cool” looks, are turning to fashion bloggers in order to ascertain what is in style. This occurrence is widespread and Riekert identifies several companies whose soul purpose is to sift through fashion blogs in the hope of determining the next big thing.

Riekert argues that while these blogs provide a valuable service to the fashion industry, they also democratize the act of coolhunting. “In the end, the price the companies pay for this 'free' information is that they don't have exclusivity,” she explains. Yet coolhunting does not just apply to the fashion industry; indeed, corporations focused on almost any aspect of culture or technology frequently turn to blogs in order to ascertain what the next big trend will be. Like Gladwell’s version of coolhunting, online coolhunting is valuable because it provides up-to-date and cutting-edge information. Furthermore, the interactivity of blogs helps generate further dialogue, as readers comment on posts and debate trends. In the end, ideas debated and favored on the web can be translated into real products created by the industries for the marketplace.

In general, Riekert combines interviews with bloggers and media companies and web statistics to form a solid argument, yet her adoption of the term “coolhunter” to refer to fashion bloggers seems to deviate slightly from Gladwell’s original designation. Unlike the coolhunters of the 1990s, today’s coolhunters are not tied to industry insiders but work for themselves. Rather than reporting their finders directly to a fashion corporation, they post their findings online. Thus, fashion industry experts must go through an extra step in order to access the information that the coolhunters have amassed. This extra step is crucial because it grants both industry insiders and the general public the same information at the same time. Thus, readers are providing feedback in the form of comments and discussion at the same time the fashion industries are designing their new lines. The result is a line of fashion directly influenced by popular opinion.

Yet while many fashions captured by fashion bloggers end up being adapted by the masses, just as many of these fashions are ridiculed or rejected. Although Riekert never explicitly states that fashion blogs make the so-called “cool” subjects featured on blogs susceptible to the (sometimes cruel) opinions of the greater blog-reading public, she ends her article with the mention of a German blogger whose blog features tee-shirts with faux underarm hair – a trend which will likely (or at least hopefully) be rejected by the masses. Extrapolating, one can glean that this more accessible form of coolhunting also strips the cool of some of their power to dictate the fashions, as any new trends must be approved by the masses before they are translated into profitable market goods.

In this article, Zamiatin explores why fashion blogs have attracted so many readers in the past few months. She attributes their growing popularity to two major factors: a sense of immediacy (blogs respond to what is happening currently, and provide updates more frequently than magazines, which are generally issued once a month) and a candid, often humorous writing style not found in fashion magazines. She briefly discusses the recent efforts among fashion bloggers, such as the editors of Coutorture, an online fashion blogging community, to bring together all fashion blogs in one place where users can find them all quickly and easily. Such a community would help democratize fashion by allowing for a multiplicity of voices and allowing readers to leave feedback.

Zamiatin comments that some of the more popular fashion blogs concern themselves with celebrity fashion, thus treading on ground traditionally covered by the mainstream fashion press. However, Zamiatin does not think that fashion blogs will eclipse traditional media such as magazines – instead, will they supplement mainstream media by providing new, current information for fans to consume and discuss.

Zamiatin’s discussion of immediacy and style as two distinguishing features of fashion blogs can be widened to describe much user-generated content created in today’s participatory internet culture: YouTube videos are known for their quick stream-times and often satiric content while web comics such as Achewood or Toothpaste for Dinner are updated daily and offer ridiculous, humorous content. A fashion blog community, such as Coutorture or ShareYourLook.com (see entry) would act as a sort of YouTube for the fashion industry, allowing the best blogs to rise to the top and gain the most pageviews, thus placing fashion even further into the hands of the masses.

Zamiatin is probably correct in arguing that blogs will not displace traditional fashion reporting, but she misses one of the more obvious reasons why this is so: the advantage of an actual (as opposed to virtual) magazine is that you can roll it up, toss it into a backpack and read it in the park or on the beach. While Sidekicks and other devices that allow users to access their email remotely are growing more and more popular, there is something about curling up with a magazine that can not be replicated with a tiny Sidekick screen.

Furthermore, while Zamiatin argues that fashion blogs democratize fashion culture, one could also argue that by focusing on celebrities, many blogs actually reinforce the cultural distance between celebrities and the greater reading public. Instead, it seems more likely that street style blogs, who random stylish strangers, have the potential to democratize fashion by portraying it as something exemplified by ordinary people.

This article examines how online fashion bloggers are gaining more and more credibility with industry insiders who are attracted to their large numbers of readers and hope to win them over. As a result, these bloggers are granted advertising deals with major industries and are greeted with open access to fashion shows and events formerly accessible to major media companies only. Top-ranking blogs can also be sold for considerable amounts of money, especially among media companies looking to strike it rich in the world of the elite.

Bloggers also wield considerable power because their snarky, critical comments leave designers fearing an online trashing. Other designers seek out bloggers in the hope of gaining extra publicity. Finally, many designers and media corporations recruit bloggers to come and work for them, hoping that bloggers’ keen sense of style will give their company a coolness boost.  Fashion-blogging represents a quickly growing industry, with revenues only expected to rise as online advertising becomes increasingly popular. 

A well-researched article, Dodes incorporates comments from several top fashion executives and photo-bloggers with statistics from Technorati (a blog tracker) and BlogAds (an agency responsible for placing advertisements on top-raking blogs.) While the article uses the data to draw reasonable conclusions, it neglects to consider differences between blogs that cover street style versus those that cover couture or celebrity styles. Although Dodes’s failure to differentiate between different types of blogs makes the article appear as it if speaks for them all, when analyzed closely, Dodes seems to focus only on the latter two types. Thus, while she draws a connection between fashion bloggers whose posts about couture and celebrity style may gain them insider status, she does not mention street-style bloggers and never suggests that the writers of such blogs might have a different relationship with the fashion industry.

Nevertheless, the implications of this article are enormous. First of all, Dodes credits fashion bloggers with making the secrets of the fashion world available to anyone who cares to seek them out via the internet. It also posits fashion bloggers as independent and increasingly powerful experts, almost akin to a ruling aristocracy, who are not tied to any one company or designer, but who can praise or criticize different labels as they see fit, and who have commanded the attention of both media companies and fashion industry bigwigs. Finally, Dodes posits a capitalist superstructure (not surprising for WSJ) which maintains that control ultimately lies with whoever influences the masses, and that bloggers succeed because they are more in touch with reading audiences (and thus more likely to influence their liking of a particular item or design) than the industries themselves.

This blog covers "how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa," as well as looking at the effects of voter-generated content, social networking sites etc. For example, the attention paid to the number of friends a particular candidate has on a site like myspace is particularly interesting when thinking about the Howard Dean campaign and its inability to translate as an e-candidate to a real-time political contender. The contributers seem to represent a fairly broad political spectrum, and are ostensibly against "partisan" arguments. The bloggers include the Internet director of Dean's 2004 campaign and the e-campaign director for Bush-Cheney 2004.

This is my primary source of information for researching the ongoing efforts of the hopeful presidential nominees for the 2008 election. In particular, I'm curious to compare John Edwards' efforts to those of Howard Dean and speculate a bit on whether or not popular e-candidates have a shot at competing against campaign giants (with massive campaign contributions) like Obama, Clinton, Guiliani and McCain.

 

This blog covers "how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa," as well as looking at the effects of voter-generated content, social networking sites etc. For example, the attention paid to the number of friends a particular candidate has on a site like myspace is particularly interesting when thinking about the Howard Dean campaign and its inability to translate as an e-candidate to a real-time political contender. The contributers seem to represent a fairly broad political spectrum, and are ostensibly against "partisan" arguments. The bloggers include the Internet director of Dean's 2004 campaign and the e-campaign director for Bush-Cheney 2004.

This is my primary source of information for researching the ongoing efforts of the hopeful presidential nominees for the 2008 election.  In particular, I'm curious to compare John Edwards' efforts to those of Howard Dean and speculate a bit on whether or not popular e-candidates have a shot at competing against campaign giants (with massive campaign contributions) like Obama, Clinton, Guiliani and McCain. 

Ch. 1: “Electronic Political Discussion”

This chapter offers an overview of various online communications, including electronic email lists, Usenet and blogs. Davis addresses the question of whether or not online discussions make any difference in political processes, institutions or societal behavior and ultimately decides that the prophesized utopia of direct democracy has not yet been achieved. The obstacles facing such restructuring include: inequality in the levels of accessibility and the fragmented nature of electronic political discussion. Even the more tempered notion of deliberative democracy faces hurdles - most notably human reliance on technological solutions.

This chapter is a helpful summary of current online discussion forums and briefly pulls apart the kind of Trippi-esque claims of revolution. I'm going to utilize the rest of this book in order to examine the broad claims of internet revolution which, in the case of much writing about the internet, seem devoid of factors like accessibility.

The vast majority of teens in the United States, 87% of those aged 12 to 17, now use the internet. That amounts to about 21 million youth who use the internet, up from roughly 17 million when we surveyed this age cohort in late 2000. Not only has the wired share of the teenage population grown, but teens’ use of the internet has intensified. Teenagers now use the internet more often and in a greater variety of ways than they did in 2000. There are now approximately 11 million teens who go online daily, compared to about 7 million in 2000.

Fun video!

Interesting web 'art' based on expressions of feelings gathered from blogs

ALCTS has established a new blog.   The primary focus appears to be discussion of "controversial statementsts", which will also be the focus of the 2007 Midiwnter Forum "Definitely Digital: an Exploration of the Future of Knowledge on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of ALCTS."

The vast majority of teens in the United States, 87% of those aged 12 to 17, now use the internet. That amounts to about 21 million youth who use the internet, up from roughly 17 million when we surveyed this age cohort in late 2000. Not only has the wired share of the teenage population grown, but teens’ use of the internet has intensified. Teenagers now use the internet more often and in a greater variety of ways than they did in 2000. There are now approximately 11 million teens who go online daily, compared to about 7 million in 2000.

EAS028
 

What is Elbows?

Elbows is a collection of great mp3 blog posts and is meant to provide you a snapshot of what's going on in this new genre of blogging. Please take the time to visit each of the blogs listed on this page to learn more about new artists and buy their albums and, when you're through buying up all the CDs or iTunes tracks, click on some of the blog's sponsors so that they may keep providing us with such great information.

Blog post compares an incredible jack white coke commercial with a very similar japanese music video.

Someone has a blog about Carrie Fisher, and refers to the PennTags page on Carrie Fisher.

"This blog consists of items selected from more than 1,000 pages of reports filed by FBI agents watching my grandfather, Manny Cantor, a member of the Communist Party in New Jersey between the years 1932 and 1956. FBI surveillance of his activites began three weeks after Pearl Harbor and continued periodically until his death in 2003. All materials presented as they appear in the FBI files."

Just doing my weekly stalk of the internet for mentions of PennTags, and here's one that my technorati feed missed.

A long, annotated list of sites and products that allow some form of note taking.

A blog post looking at the ways people use delicious and highlighting that just as much of the stuff on delicious is junk as the reset of web.

Mashable is a blog covering Web 2.0 startups, peer production, user-generated content, revenue sharing, social software and the web as a platform.

"Provides commentary on open access, scholarly electronic publishing and digital culture issues."

"Running list of research papers, editorial appointments, and other content and actions results in freely available scholarship by researchers at CalTech. Created by CalTech librarians.

Peter Suber's OA news blog.

"Provides news and commentary about the intersection of law and technology, with a focus on copyright and licensing."

Review of the three top blog software.

Really, I'm just testing out the new posting function. Nice.

This is one of Nature's new blogs. The other blogs are specifically related to individual journal titles, this one is about science and web technology.

RSS feed.

This is the Tagteam Blog, where we keep track of the work of the Tagteam.

Peter Suber is the guru of Open Access, so much so that I believe he is no longer teaching but devoting his time to this lobbying for this issue.

RSS 

Written by a techincal services librarian from California.

Catch her feed here. 

Michael Stephens' blog, my favorite blog for all things innovative in the library world.

RSS

Michael Stephens' blog, my favorite blog for all things innovative in the library world.

RSS 

Gary Price's lengthy blog, he is the wizard for uncovering information resources.

RSS 

Steven Cohen from Information Today.

RSS 

Jenny Levine's view of the Library world.

Catch her feed here.  

Written by K.G. Schneider.

Here is the RSS feed.  

Written by Aaron Schmidt. 

Here is the RSS feed.

This blog is one of the few blogs devoted to both race and politics.  Though there are many blogs out there that talk about these issues, this site is overtly about African Americans and politics.  It is interesting becuase it shows how diverse, yet specific blogs can become.  Though it is not the only type of blog like this, it is interesting because it allows for an African American opinion over the blogisphere.

This NY times article focuses on the ethics behind blogging.  It examines the if there should be a code for bloggers and if they should be held up to the same standard as other print medias.  Since bloggers are considered amatuers by nature, they fall under the radar.  Shear attempts to consider whether bloggers should be held accountable for their actions because of the surge in the number of bloggers over the past couple of years.

This page talks about the future of blogs and the new way in which media is going to be transmitted over the internet. It talks about the rise of RSS feeds and how they are overtaking the blogisphere on the internet. The article shows how RSS feeds outnumber almost all other forms of media on the net.

This 2002 book is a very good resource to use becuase it is a look at the potential influence of online forums in politics. Primarily dealing with online voting and voter registration, it is a look at the best potential ways to find out information as both a voter or activist. It takes a very detailed look at the use of the internet in the 1996 elections and how this election was somewhat of an experiment to figure out how to best use the internet in politics.

This is a journal entry about rhetoric and persausive ways in which internet blogs can influence people's opinions. It is a critique of the good and bad sides of blogs. Primarily focusing on the bad it talks about the issues that blogers face when trying to manuver their way through the blogisphere. Though it is not overtly about politics, Krause article raises key issues about the problems faced when lookin at a blog.