“For old television shows, there’s Hulu. For college lectures, there’s iTunes U. And now, for video about art, there’s ArtBabble.” -Kate Taylor, New York Times

ArtBabble.org just launch as public beta. I gave it a brief run through and it looks great. It looks young, nice, clean, and is full of potential. It holds a lot of lectures and videos that focus on art, including videos from PBS’s “Art:21.” What separates this video site form others are the “notes.” Notes are a series of little blubs that run down the right side of the video. As the video plays the slug hits bookmarks and the “notes” scroll up. Click a note and you get links and other information about what was just mentioned in the video. It reminds me of youtube links but it doesn’t generally subtract from the experience.

There seems to be no video yet on New Media or Animation, however there is Film. I’m sure that’ll change shortly. The Indianapolis Museum created and runs the site and I’m sure they want to establish it as a serious virtual forum or web theater focused on tradition art. I can’t imagine that they would not have considered adding New Media Art content so the best reasoning I can think of, is to avoid the appearance of just being a TedTalk clone or another damn tech site.

My username on Art Babble is grahamGrafx

As anyone reading this would undoubtedly know that during the Valentines Day weekend Tumblr offered users the ability to give virtual valentines day cards (and if you are aware of it you can skip to the next paragraph). Users were able to choose another person on Tumblr and send a special post to one specific user that can only be seen on the user’s dashboard, not their public blog. Each user got one free Valentines to send to anyone else on Tumblr, and it cost $2. They got a choice of 4 preset images and they could add text of up to 75 characters, short and hopefully sweet. If a user wanted to personalize the card with their own image it cost the user an extra $2.
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This in my opinion is a stroke of genius on the part of the Tumblr guys. These Valentines Day cards possessed a real value, and I’m not referring to value stickily in the sense of dollars. I mean that the Valentines really meant something. In the world of the internet and virtual space it’s hard to give value to something that doesn’t exist. Online services can have a sort of value and online stores that sell physical things and deal with money have value focused on the physical realm. The Tumblr Valentines is something that exists almost entirely as a virtual item that has real value.
You can argue that the value is also in Tumblrs service of “delivering” the valentines day cards, but this isn’t something new or worth paying for. What is worth paying for is the thought of actually sending the Valentines Day card. The initial card with a default image is free and comes across like a ‘cheap Valentines Day card.’ That’s not to make it sound negative, (even though no one sent me shit!) it’s the type of Valentines Day gift you give a friend to just say “thinking of you.” It’s kind of like buying someone a box of Sweethearts. It’s not the cost of the gift, it’s the thought that is meaningful. To pay for a virtual item to send over a blogging platform to someone, feels more valuable. “I actually spent money on ‘nothing’ for you.” So not only did Tumblr find a way to give something virtual a value, but they found a way to gave something virtual an emotional value. They accomplished emotional value by making multiple Valentines Day cards cost money and allowing you to send it to just one person at a time. A person of your choosing on the Tumblr platform got a Valentines day card. The pure fact that I’m bitter that no one on Tumblr loves me most… … :( proves that the cards have emotional value.
Where is the emotional value in “poking someone” on Facebook? It’s relatively the same idea without attaching a love holiday to it. It’s valueless because you can do it as many times as you like to as many people as you like. The “poke” has no value what so ever.
I know what most people reading this are thinking, and I’m aware that the bigger purpose of the Valentines Day card’s is to give a revenue-less web company revenue, but I can’t imagine a better way of doing it and Tumblr deserves a pat on the back for it. They did it in a way where people didn’t feel forced or uncomfortable giving them money. They did it in a way that the people that gave money wanted to give money, and those that didn’t weren’t alienated. They also retained a humanistic tradition in a virtual space, an element of human interaction that doesn’t change with much time nor any technology. The tradition of exchanging Valentines Day gifts extends beyond any form of media and technology.
And the best part is that all of those elements; value, emotion, humanistic tradition, obtaining a revenue to make the company and thus the platform stronger, is that they made for a closer and tighter knit community that makes being a part of a happier experience… …at least thats true for all those that got cards :(.