Location, Location, Location

So seeing as I accidently read and blogged about beloved Google last week, I though I would take this opportunity to provide my take on Location Based Services.

Here it is: I am NOT sold on Location Based Services and honestly I do not think I ever will be from a consumers perspective. Consider our discussion of Blippy, I know people get excited when they buy an expensive item, but I just do not see the allure of informing everyone that you spent $400 on a pair of boots. And thats just the big stuff who is really going to be interested in following your day to day purchases, I realize corporations could benefit from following company spending but, I honestly do not need to know that my neighbor spent $10.50 at the grocery story and $5 on their skim chi latte, in my mind reading a digital recipe is not that riveting. Obviously, digitizing and projecting ones purchases from a marketing perspective is a veritable gold mine of information that says a lot about you as a customer, but in my mind you are (as the consumer) not receiving any added value from signing up for Blippy. Marketers benefit, but what do you get? Announcing to the world you just bought a new LCD 48 inch TV? In providing marketers with our consuming information we are just giving them more information so they can try and try to sell us more stuff. With Blippy specifically I just do not see the allure because you are fostering an asymmetric relationship, you as the consumer are giving your information without receiving anything, not a discount, not a coupon just, maybe bragging rights - if anyone actually cares enough to read your Blippy page period. This seems harsh, but to me Blippy seems drive and be driven by American consumerism, everyone buys stuff, but does the world really need to know about it?

Beyond Blippy, however I am still not convinced that these services are the wave of my future. In my mind I really do not see the added value of these services beyond the dollar discount here and there. Sure its nice when you can get a discount, but for someone who does not shop religiously at the same stores or have a coffee ritual that I live and die by, I just do not see the need. Just because my phone informs me that the Gap is having a sale or that Ben and Jerry's is offering a $1 dollar scoop night deal, does not mean I am going to stop what I am doing and rush over to take advantage of the discount. While some people might have time for "a game layer on top of the world," I am more of a point A to point B type and LBS seems to play into spontaneity. I cannot foresee myself walking out the door, especially in my suburban small hometown and seeing where the winds of LBS take me.

Not to mention old fashion discounts still work just fine. For those places I do shop at regularly, like CVS and Shaws Market I have a loyalty card, which in my mind gives me a discount or free things without a cell phone and without spouting my purchasing information to the world. Not to mention, my loyalty card is giving me a pointed discount, I arrive at the cash register and items on sale will immediately factored into my total bill. I am not being sent to CVS to take advantage of the $1 off on shampoo when what I really want is a sandwich from the deli next door. To be sure, I acknowledge that by using a loyalty card I am giving a specific company my information, but my loyalty card does not keep track of how much I spent with a company's competitor. While the Holy Grail in marketing might very well lie in LBS as a consumer this just seems creepy. Our world is so digitized and so much of our purchasing history is available online, but to give firms that much more information about my spending habits at their store AND at their competitor's just seems very big brother.

I also have to wonder is there ever a flaw in having too much information? If a firm knows how you spend your money and where, does it really help them when all other firms have the same information. Knowing that you buy to bagel in one place and your coffee in another, is a company really going to be successful in winning you over when your competition is fighting just as fiercely? I also wonder if this will be the undoing of small, individually owned businesses. If a mom and pop shop is competing with the resources of a large company, who can afford to offer a discount to entice their customers away from the mom and pop shop, how can a small shop compete with that? Small individually owned businesses do not have the luxury to cut their prices or offer weekly discounts.

Call me a skeptic, but for my personal consuming habits LBS do not seem to be apart of my future. What are your thoughts on signing up, if you are not already?

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

As a follow up from our last class discussion Nick Carr's article could not have been more appropriate. I realize of course that our last class was quite some time ago so just to refresh your memory we spent a good deal of time discussing the implications of social media changing how we act and socialize in real life. This article may not be about socializing, but arguably about something more important, how we read, learn and process information due to the rise of the internet. The author Nick Carr, a professional writer, poses a thought, "My mind isn't going - so far as I can tell - but its changing." Now this change he argues is due to his decade long presence on the internet.

Last class we discussed the appearance of a "change" in our social behaviors in the real world due to our increased use of social media. However, the conclusion I came to from our discussion was that this change is not so much an actual change in our habits or social interactions, but more of a proactive consciousness about what is put on the web. Our discussion further my conviction that people are not changing their behavior, merely their social media usage so it more accurately reflects how they chose to share their personal information in real life. Consider a student with pictures of drinking or illegal activity on the web. That student would never share with an interviewer that they excessively drink on the weekends. Hence, making their pictures private on the web or not posting them all together is not actually changing their behavior (they are still drinking and taking pictures), but reflecting the way in which they engage with authority figures in real life. Adjusting privacy settings or controlling the content uploaded to the web, is not a reflection of changing someone's real world behavior, but making them more conscious of the way its displayed on the web. This need to privatize personal information, as one does in the real world, has become more popular as more figures of authority have joined online networks. The entrance of these moral compasses however, definitely benefits online these communities because it makes people reevaluate what is appropriate to post online and more reflective of real world standards.

Now that I have given my two cents on an apparent "change" I want to discuss the implications of an actual change. This change is occurring in how we think and process information, due to the rise of the internet. First off, I must say that this article, while not rooted in scientific studies or stone cold facts, explained a lot about why I am the most distracted reader when it comes to long articles or academic text. As an avid reader, I don't see the internet infringing upon my ability to read a good book, but when I am reading for the extraction of information I tend to run into some problems. I am the type of person who drives my mother nuts, I do just about everything at 100 miles an hour including using the computer. Not only is my use of a computer a flurry of high speed interactions, but the way I extricate the information seems to reflect my need for speed. The article mentions a study conducted by the University College London, that examined the computer logs of visitors on two popular research sites and found that people were practicing '"a form of skimming activity,' hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source." This study could not have more accurately captured my viewing habits on the internet. It is very rare for me to spend more than two minutes reading an article and even rarer if I return to the article ever again. Now, to be fair I am not doing research, but reading news articles or pop culture pieces, however I think this study explains why staying put on a particular research site or particular academic article and revisiting it several times becomes so difficult. I have been conditioned to have information instantly at my finger tips through my persistent use of the internet, so imagine my frustrations that I cannot process a long research article just as quickly as I found it. In thinking more about my online reading habits there is definitely a correlation between my dislike of reading long articles on computers. Whenever I have to read a long article pertaining to school I have to print them it, otherwise I tend to zone out, get distracted or jump around from place to place on the internet, until, invariably I make a pit stop on Facebook that turns into a 25 minute departure from what I was supposed to be reading.

Thinking more about my need for speed when ingesting information on the internet and this phenomenon that "we may be reading more today...But it's a different type of reading," I feel as though these tendencies are the roots of our identity as a multitasking generation. I see a direct correlation between our tendency to read many short articles, rather than one long article and our need to be watching TV, listening to music, talking on FB chat and doing our homework all a the same time. This scattered fragmentation of attention baffles some, but I think I better understand its appeal, rather than focus all of your attention on one big effort, fragmenting you time and attention between lots of little things makes the tasks appear less odious and allows you to complete several tasks at once. Granted, it is for this specific reason that when I really need to get ONE important done now the very first thing I do is unplug myself: no phone, no internet, no TV and if at all possible NO COMPUTER. All of these things in their own way are a black hole of unproductiveness, coupled together say goodbye to any hope of writing that 10 page paper.

So, my question for the week: Do you think the success of Twitter and people's fascination with Twitter is driven by this change in the way we read. Can you think of any other social media tools or technology that further reflects this change in how people process information as a result of the internet.

Community Relations 2.0

Forgive me tonight, there are several ideas I want to explore in my blog post tonight, so forgive me if it seems somewhat disjointed!

Firstly, this week I had the opportunity to read Professor Kane's article on "Community Relations 2.0" (don't worry Professor Kane I really enjoyed it and found it to be very insightful). The article, coauthored by several members of the information systems department here at BC, was written to explore the ways in which community outreach has changed due to the persistent rise in social media. What the article did really well, was pick a focus. Rather than use numerous industries dealing with the evolution of social media, the article stuck with the healthcare industry, making note that the findings based on the healthcare industry could be likened to a wide array of industries. The article through a focus in healthcare, breaks down the enhanced power of social media into four specific ways: Deep relationships, rapid organization, improved creation and synthesis of knowledge and better filtration of knowledge.

Now onto the good stuff. The first thing I wanted to discuss stems from a quote provided in the article, "40% of Americans say they have doubted a medical professionals opinion or diagnosis because it conflicted with information they'd found online". I read that and went, WOW 40% is a lot of people, especially when you consider a time when you were told, don't believe everything you read on the internet. Now obviously the reliability of information on the internet has increased immensely since its inception, especially when you consider the stunning accuracy of Wikipedia. In a recent study done by Lara Devgan from Johns Hopkins University, " a sample of Wikipedia medical articles did not contain a single egregious factual error... the vast majority were considered by researchers to be appropriate references for patients". So here in lies my thought, how do you balance the trained knowledge of a professional who has real life experience and attend at least eight years of college to enter into the provision of medical care with the increasing reliability of information online that is not only been proven to be accurate, but progress more quickly in the acquisition of new information and knowledge? While I most certainly see the value in online communities like Patientslikeme.com and the ability to aggregate and share medical information, I still question the safety of patients who take it upon themselves to generate "the first real-time, real-world open and non-blinded study", especially when the trial occurs within months and not years. I think my interest with this subject matter stems from the fact that we aren't sending doctors to medical school for nothing and while there is value in the collective information that can be found on the internet I feel like I have has skepticism about its validity drilled into my head. In my mind just because Web MD. says it doesn't make it true.

The next and completely independent thought I would like to explore is actually some what related to my blog post from last week. For those who missed it, I decided to play the devils advocate and explore the negative impacts of technology and social media on our generation's interaction with our peers. Another aspect of technology and social media that I did not cover, but came up in the lead example in Professor Kane's article, was this idea of today's "hyperconnected world". Connectivity has its pros to be sure, the world is smaller for one and information travels across the globe and back in the blink of an eye. BUT, this connectivity is demanding more and more of our time. As tools and social media become more and more mobile, there is this perception that someone is available ALL the time. No longer does the workday consist of a 9 to 5 day, rather through Twitter, texting, Facebook, email and thousand other tools people are expected to read and respond to queries and complaints any time day or night. Lets just put it this way, just because it is the weekend does not stop an angry blogger from posting a comment at 3am on Sunday morning about a grievance it has with a company. One of the "Mandates for the Social Media Team" in this article is to "continually survey the online landscape to identify potential threats", the issue of course here being the continually. This continual ability to be connected and in contact with those from work really seems to blur the lines between ones time at work and time OFF from work. Social media of course waits for no one.

Thinking about this blurred line, brings me back to last nights conversation about limited access to Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and other communication tools at work. Thinking about our conversation in conjunction with this expectation of perpetual connectivity, whether you are in the office or not, makes me question if its fair for companies to deny their employees the right to access their personal lives within the office, when a company at any given time can encroach upon their personal lives?

One final idea I wanted to touch upon, which was mentioned in "The Mandate for the Social Media Team" was Mandate number 3 "Engage Online Communities". I thought this mandate really encapsulated why Communispace gets it right. The reason they have found success is because the communities they create allow for companies to develop an online presence, so that "people can talk to [them], not just about [them]". Providing customers for a forum that allows them to feel listened to is essential to succeed in harnessing the powers of social media. At the end of the day it is all about the costumer and whether or not they feel satisfied with a company. If a customer is dissatisfied with a company or specific product, a company can use this negative and further improve their company by listening to their customers and giving them what they want. But again it is this idea of a two way conversation, rather than an angry outcry from the consumer.

I don't have a final question for the week, but I think there are several strewn throughout my post!

The Devils Advocate

This week I read the case "How Large U.S. companies can Use Twitter and Other Social Media to Gain Business Value". While informative and very systematic in its assessment of the corporate use of social media, I found this case to be rather dry and less than inspiring for my blog post. So, this week I have decided to finally take on the role of the devil's advocate.

I have decided tonight, to finally write about the pervasive and fairly addictive role that technology has assumed in the wake of my generation, which has prompted myself and many of my friends to comment, we were born in the wrong generation.

It cannot be denied of course that our society has benefited from the technological innovation and improvements that have occured, including improved medical care, access to information and an overall raised standard of living. However, while the world has become increasingly smaller as connectivity has exponentially increased, I tend to question this connectivity and the quality of the social ties that are formed through various forms of social media and texting. While their is something to be said about becoming friends with the click of a button, can you really call that person is a friend? The world of social media while instant, is really just an overwhelming collection of loose ties, but can you really say that all these ties are worth as much as 20 strong ties? Obviously it depends on your end goal, but considering these ties in a non job hunting capacity I would have to say no. For me I truly could not call the majority of these flash boiled, instant "friendships" actual friendships. When I consider my best friends, there is no doubt in my mind that they would do anything for me, but can I really say the same for the 1,135 other facebook " friends" of mine. While mediums like Facebook and Twitter serve as good means of bolstering and allowing for maintenance of close friendships, I think it is impossible to truly create something as personal as a friendship when your interactions are NOT in person.

And yet I cannot turn on the TV without seeing at least one commercial for Match.com or various other digital dating services. I think one of the reasons I am most envious of my parents' generation is that communication and friendships were about the people and not about the tools of connectivity. Sitting here in the library, I cannot walk two feet in any direction without seeing at least one kid on facebook, everybody is doing... myself included. And there in lies the problem, if you aren't doing it, what are you doing and how are you connecting with your generation because Facebook has taken on a life of its own. Just in the past six years since Facebook's inception, the Facebook culture has led to the creation of virtual goods, farms... you name it, but sadly it is also creating these weakened, impersonal and digitally based relationships. I feel like people get so caught up in the tool that they forget why it is there in the first place. If we spend half as much time actually WITH the people we are "stalking" on Facebook I feel people get a deeper, more substance based bond rather than a mere superficial "wall to wall" connection. As people's tendencies become predominately Facebook focused and introverted, I feel that they are missing out on the real world social interactions that are so important in life, not to mention stunting the potential growth of strong long term friendships that go beyond the superficial surface.

So, there is Thing One and obviously there is Thing Two in the realm of social media and communication. Thing One being Facebook and Thing Two being TEXTING. If there is one thing that drives me crazy it is the obsessive texting culture that has slowly consumed our generation. Cell phones are great and all and I really don't know how I would contact anyone or make plans without one, but the idol chitchat that occurs via texting is infuriating. Any given time or place, it is completely standard to see a smattering of students, at the very least, heads down staring intently, as they type feverishly away while staring at the tiny display of their mobile device, while simultaneously ignoring the real world unfolding around them. The worst being when two people are sitting at the same table and one of them is so completely consumed by their digital conversation that they forget to listen and contribute to the real life conversation unfolding in front of them.

Apart from being consumed by our cell phones, in our ever pressing need for speed and instant access, texting also means we must forgo quality conversation and interaction that you gain from personal interaction. More and more I hear people stressing out about the subliminal messages within a text message because so much is lost in translation that texting become somewhat of a complicated art form of decoding. When you speak to someone in person there are never such issues because feelings and emotions shine through and make it very clear as tot the meaning of a message. I can't bear the thought of everyone walking around heads down so all consumed by messages that in effect are more trouble than they are worth.

So sure there is the practicality component, but in the grand scheme I ask, are the tradeoffs worth it? In our attempt to stay connected, are we not hoping on a runaway train and getting dragged along, riding full speed ahead towards past the point of no return?

Communispace is the Case

Knowing nothing about Communispace previously, I thought this Case Study was a very intriguing look at a company who has successfully maneuvered into the market of providing "actionable" recommendations for managing a firms brand. After reading this article I am left with no doubt as to why Communispace has become a leader in their market place.

A large reason as to why Communispace has seen success in my opinion is their facilitation of information between the customer and the company. I know they were the topic of much controversy in our last class, BUT while reading the Harvard Business School Communispace Case Study, I could not help but draw a parallel between the active participants in communities created by Communispace and consumers creating ads from our reading last week. Obviously there are very distinct differences that set the two categories of consumers apart, however I would be remised if I didn't touch upon the core unifier between the two groups. The two groups likeness comes from their need to be heard. As I mentioned in my blog post last week, brands today are used (generally too much!) to define who we are and used convey a message about our beliefs and opinions, thus being such a big part of their lives consumers have started to say something personal about the brand in return. It is this need to be heard that made me draw a distinct parallel between the Communispace community members and consumer creators.

However, after expressing a need to vocalize their wants, opinions and general questions these two groups of consumers deviate. For members of the Communispace community participation is, again hardly about monetizing their time, but rather "about having a direct voice to a company, category, or brand they care about". For community members it isn't just about getting their ideas out their, but seeing that their opinions matter and will be put into ACTION. While consumer created ads might be airing their complaints or reflections on a particular brand through their personally created content, members of a Communispace community are able to give a truthful, open and emotional response that will actually be taken seriously. I think this is a primary example of a forum in which consumer grievances can be heard and responded to without an agenda. Companies are also able to maintain the element of control that is vital to their brand management. This platform works so well because consumers feel like not only are they being heard, but responded to. Not to mention corporations are gaining from this as well, as they are able to aggregate information, opinions and solutions to better build their brand.

Creating a community alone however is not a recipe for success. Communispace harnesses several other elements to strengthen their platform. One of those elements is the time component allowing for the generation and growth of a community. In a day and age where need for speed is so overreaching that if it isn't instant, it isn't, Communispace has the right idea of taking it back a notch and letting the data do its thing. As Diane Hessen said, "communities provide a continuous flow of information, not a snapshot in time". Rather than try and force the data out of their community members Communispace looks long term because it is the broad insights that develop slowly. However, Communispace provides several methods allowing companies to take the pulse of a community intermittently. Hardly the big picture, but tools such as Front Page Reports or Email Snapshots allow for an immediate assessment verses the analysis of long term trends. The other area allowing for the success of Communispace is their development of interactive, fun and engaging activities that members of the community perform to provide feedback for companies. If participants are bored and not passionate about their participation, they are not going to be valuable participants who will offer useful feedback. One of the more unique activities Created by Communispace to hold interest while gaining information, was to have a community create a virtual slang dictionary, which allowed Communispace to generate content for an ad campaign designed to truly resinate with their targeted demographic.

Clearly Communispace is doing some great things. Now I must ask, the case study ended on a cliffhanger, and it is not clear whether Communispace took on the WOM client Simmons, what would you do and why if you were Communispace. Knowing what you know about the company and the formative opinions of two Communispace employees, if you were Diane would you lead Communispace past the point of no return?

Ad Lib: When Customers Create the AD

So its official, "WE'VE GOT THE POWER" - as consumers it has been a long standing tradition that when it comes to marketing and advertisements we fulfill the role of the passive recipients, merely taking what is thrown at us and, majority speaking , simply ignore the advertisers message. However, this is hardly the case anymore, as the article "Ad Lib: When Customers Create the Ad", demonstrates, today, "it's the consumer who runs the show for the most part... in fact forget the consumer label altogether"

I found this article to be very representative of the viral video culture that has taken hold of our generation, largely as a result of YouTube and simplicity of uploading video content to the web. However, this article is hardly assessing how one uploads a consumer created ad, but rather why they would want to create such content in the first place. It then proceeds to assess the implications of these consumer created ads from the vantage point of business firms and the different reactive stances they must uphold, as a result of this new interactive, 2 way dynamic between corporations and consumers.

One of the most striking things that this article brought to my attention, in its assessment of why consumers are creating these ads, is that consumers do it purely for the enjoyment and passion they have for a brand. In a world where brands have come to make a statement about who people are, consumers have taken it upon themselves to say something personal about the brand. Now what is most striking however about these creations is the fact that "their creation is not so much related to sales directly, as it some inner spur or impulse". Now, this really says something to me. In this day and age, where marketing behemoths spend billions of dollars annually in the hopes of gaining just one extra percent of market share, we have consumers creating ads just because they can and for FREE, no less! People have become so passionate and opinionated about specific brands and corporations that they, with no monetary incentive, have taken it upon themselves to make an opinionated statement for the rest of the world to see. And for good or bad, companies have been forced to react and embrace the ever-occurring trend of consumer creations.

While the article touches upon a variety of responses to such consumer based ads, one method I wanted to mention, as it relates to our class discussion is the strategy of facilitation. One of the very successful add campaigns that became a topic of discussion both on our twitter feed and in class is "The Old Spice Guy". Unbeknownst to me, the entertainment and humor I found in watching the "The Old Spice Guy" perform customer driven skits, such as the infamous proposal, was a combination of both consumer created ads and the art of facilitation on behalf of Old Spice. These types of ads have become so common and often go viral on the web that I wouldn't even think of it as a marketing move on behalf of a company. And while the article makes it very clear that this approach is hardly for everyone and that validation of a consumer created ad by a company can result in grievous consequences, the companies who get it just right could be onto something. I am sure most people are of course familiar with the Mentos in Coke YouTube videos (if not I am linking it below) that hit the web a couple of years ago - well apparently while I was in the process of being highly entertained by the sky-high geysers of coke I was also being marketed to?

So I suppose my question for the week is this: Is the marketing of the future moving away from the artfully constructed corporate ads, in favor of videos and multimedia, facilitated by the internet and social media, that market a brand so effectively that we are completely unaware we are being pitched a product?

So I just couldn't resist here are two of my favorite videos, which are also (I guess?) selling us something?

Here is one of the many Mentos in Coke videos:

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and my personal favorite, created by Southwest Airlines:

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Collaborative Minds: Facing the Realities of Social Media and Technologies Far-Reaching Implications

I must begin by saying, wow. As we shift our focus this week, away from the Fairy-tales of Facebook and the communities of Twitter, I am already astounded with the very interesting perspective presented in Chapter 10: The Power of Thinking Differently of Don Tapscott and Anothony D. Williams' Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Let me start by saying they certainly have spurred me to think differently this week.

To this point our class has been very much focused on social media tools and their implications for us as consumers and for business firms, but in a very much narrow scope. Now, however, after assessing these tools and their various implications, we go one step further with Wikinomics. The Power of Thinking Differently, breaks down the wall between consumers and firms and encourages the development of collaborative relationships between the global community and corporations, which enhances both the consumer experience while increasing the profitability and marketability of a firm.

One of things I found most striking in the exploration of what it means to think with a "collaborative mind" was the fear and stigmatism surrounding companies' willingness to open source areas of their company. The whole first portion of this article indicates the primary issue preventing corporations, consumers and contributers from breaking down the doors between innovation, external input and innovation is age old conventional wisdom. Wikinomics makes it very clear that open content is not going to be explored or employed by traditional media establishments because for these aged firms open-sourcing is a perpetual threat to old businesses and their intellectual property. Companies steeped in legacy seem to be stuck, choosing to view innovation and prosumer communities as an attack. My thoughts on this resistance to embrace new methodologies are of course confusion and annoyance. In the business world today, the need for speed is ever-pressing especially with regard to agile response to consumer demands. So, WHY would these companies, who have tested time, refuse to engage in collaborative infrastructure to allow them to keep testing time? Today is not 10 years ago and most certainly not 50 years ago, these firms must come to acknowledge "a well mannered economy is not today's reality" because "stability is dead". As much as they want to fear and fight change, these companies will pay the inevitable price in remaining static.

In conjunction with this fear of change, Wikinomics also touched upon the decreasing value of telecommunications and given the availability of free internet the impending demise of telephony's ability to generate revenue altogether. It is only a matter of time before Telephony will be free. What I find to be most interesting about the impending demise of Telephony is the manner in which these telecommunication's firms are attempting to salvage the situation. What is this salvation you might ask, well for all intensive purposes, they are interested in cordoning- off the internet into different levels of service, as customers on a plane are divided into first class, business class and coach. Essentially it is the aim of failing companies to AUCTION OFF THE INTERNET to the highest bitter. This to me is the most backwards and futile thinking this industry could possibly adopt; my advise to these firms, get with the times or get lost. In these companies looking to save themselves they are in turn extinguishing innovation and collaboration.

It was this idea of a free internet that got me thinking. What if a company controlled your internet connectivity speed, search engine capabilities and overall experience. At what point would consumers effectively pay the price from not paying a price? As it stands right now the internet is in a class all its own from previous communications mediums, architecturally it is constructed on the basis that "nobody owns it, everybody uses it and anybody can add services to it". By construction alone it is built to foster collaboration, which really makes me question, why is an industry so unwilling to change that they would gladly scarifie the intrinsic collaborative value of the internet, just so they can bolster their dwindling revenues?

So I pose the question, Facebook on their login page made the statement, "sign up its free, and always will be", but what if the internet is no longer free? Can you foresee a future where you must decide to pay for a premium internet connection or just settle for regular internet?

I would give this article a (10/10) I think its approach and perspective were refreshing and insightful while still holding relevance to our class. It really made me think of how much I take traditional media, not to mention the internet for granted.

Follow the Tweets

The article, "Follow the Tweets" by Huaxia Rui, Andrew Whinston and Elizabeth Winkler, presented a very interesting method in which businesses or companies could use Twitter to gage interest in a product or predict sales. I found this alternative idea of using Twitter, especially interesting, given the distinct purpose that Twitter serves our class needs and method of communication.

The primary message from "Follow the Tweets" claims that by using Twitter and tweets on a trending topic, based upon positive or negative word correlation, businesses can allow for the prediction of product sales. Then based upon the predictive information they can decide where to increase inventories. In order to prove their theory, the article digresses into an example where this method of tracking positive word correlation before, during and after three movies opened at the box office over a given weekend. The study concluded that positive tweets directly corresponded with the success of the three movies at the box office opening weekend and beyond.

However, I must say, I am rather skeptical of a company's reliance on Twitter to predict EVERYTHING. While I think movies are an appropriate example of predicting popularity, on both opening weekend and in the weeks following, I would be hesitant to say that this means of prediction would work for all products and companies. This comes from the standpoint of how I see Twitter primarily being used. For me and many others I feel that Twitter serves as a platform to reiterate information they have discovered on the web, namely noteworthy articles, videos and pictures. I feel that the corporate presence on Twitter, from a selling standpoint, is often frowned upon and seen as an encroachment upon users' online experience. I know that I am far less likely to promote a sale at taking place at a department store than I am to tweet about a particular article I found on the web. I think this is one of the issues overlooked in this article, not everyone is going to be interested in promoting businesses and projects through their Twitter. The thought of me posting "@jcan great sale at Macy's, you should check it out!", in my mind winds up sounding like a sales pitch and all around generic. And if companies were to engage in this behavior, I would be inclined to consider it spam.

One thing that has cropped up again and could be the one saving grace of this strategy, is the idea of the influencer. In the, "Specifically executives need to know section", the article mentions that companies need to be aware of the influencers, but disregard athletes and other celebrities, rather they encourage executives to seek out those who are active in the Twitter community. If they can harness the influencers to promote their products and sales without making it sound corporately engineered then they may just be able to make this work. Now all we need to know, is the jury still out on whether or not those influencers exist?

For me this article did not really cut the mustard, while it offered the one movie example it really did not convince me that sales can almost always predicted on the basis of Twitter traffic. I also feel it is encouraging a form of marketing and sales pitches that have been widely frowned upon on Twitter and other social media tools. I go to Twitter to with the intention of sharing and reading aggregated articles from across the web or tweeting @ friends. I still don't see the appeal of companies marketing their products through Twitter. So what's the deal am I being overly skeptical, would people embrace this method of marketing to the extent where it predicts sales?

Facebook Fairytales

Modern-Day Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirit?

So, while this blog makes sense given the chapters I read.... I made a grievous error and simply read the first 10 chapters of Facebook Fairytales, rather than a mix of 10 different chapters. So, keep that in mind when reading my post for the week because I can completely relate to the online memorial which I have since read about and have personal experience of, sadly, using Facebook for this purpose.

While I liked the preliminary 10 chapters of Emily Liberts amusing and touching read on the remarkable occurrences that have taken place as a result of the Facebook revolution, I was still left wondering were these occurrences truly "Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirt"? While there were both undoubtably touching and moving accounts in Liberts compilation of stories, I can't help but to be skeptical of the notion that Facebook is this earth-shattering mechanism by which modern day miracles are taking place.

Not to belittle the touching stories and heart-wrenching tales of several individuals mentioned in Liberts' book, however for some reason I seem to be unable to regard these stories with the same seriousness and authority as I would have if they had taken place through a different medium beyond Facebook. I don't know if it is because from day one, in growing up with the tool (as someone put it yesterday), Facebook, while it has been a momentous means of staying in touch with all of my friends, family and the like, as well as, uploading photos, sharing videos and creating events, is such a mundane part of my everyday life that I could never put it on this level of being a life changing tool. When you use a tool like Facebook for such mundane means it is hard to believe that people can view the tool as revolutionary, let alone life changing.

And yet for the people mentioned in this book, that is exactly what Facebook did, change their lives? The one story I really connected to was the story of Chris Hughes use of Facebook during Barack Obama's campaign trail. There are the obvious reasons of course as to why I enjoyed his story, he took a tool and retooled it to market and appeal to a mass audience for political motives and made use of a demographic crucial and largely unaccounted for in voting numbers by using a built in social network, to which a large portion are members or have access. However, there is more to his story than his innovative use of Facebook in the political campaign. The reason that this story resinated with me was because Chris Hughes has grown up with this tool, literally. From the moments of its conception in his college dorm room in 2004, to his use of the Social Media Network in the 2008 presidential campaign Hughes has been involved in Facebook's innovation every step of the way. So, needless to say, in being current with the site from day one and has never lost something or someone to be rediscovered years later.

I don't know if its because I cannot relate to rediscovering old ties because all my ties are current on the network, but I really cannot seem to relate to this idea of taking the plunge into joining Facebook and reconnecting with someone I have not spoken to since Kindergarten. I use Facebook in a day to day, up-to-date, methodology, where as the generations who proceed me use the tool to take a walk down memory lane. Facebook (for me) is all about recording the current memories, in a sense, I am archiving and reaffirming what I already know. So I must ask, in considering Facebook and these stories within this context that have... I have to wonder, have I been so consumed by the next big evolution in technology that I have been blinded to the importance of the residual effects of Facebook.

Is the Tipping Point Toast?

I found it very ironic that I happen to select Clive Thompson's article "Is the Tipping Point Toast" this week; ironic because this summer apart from spending my daily commute into New York City sleeping, I had the opportunity to read both Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and his compilation of articles in What the Dog Saw. Even more oddly enough, last night, during our discussion on tie strength and the ideas of betweenness-centrality, density centrality and eigenvector centrality my mind kept jumping back to Gladwell's analysis of mavens, connectors and gatekeepers. I kept having this notion that if these connectors could be found in the flesh, why not in social media as well. Flash-forward to the end of Thompson's article, did I, by his standards, waste my hourly commute this summer, is Gladwell completely full of it? Is the world just too complicated and yet we are attempting to explain and study a natural order that is beyond the grasp of science?

With those pensive notions out of the way, one thing I want to comment on more specifically, which I found to be both very humorous and applicable to our previous class discussions, is how Duncan Watt got his start in the study of trend research. How exactly you might ask? By studying the chirping of the snowy tree cricket, of course. Not only did I find this funny, but I immediately thought of its likeness to Twitter. Change the animal from a cricket to a bird and the chirp to a tweet and what you have is an electronic social media site essentially mirroring the spread of chirping (information) through the cricket network. Not only did I draw on this direct parallel, but I also focused again on this idea that things take place on the internet and in social media as they do in natural life, but differently. Here you have this preliminary viral spread of information through a network, the biggest difference between the two however, stems from the scope at which this information has the ability to spread. Twitter, among other things, offers the unique ability not only for a tweet to spread like a contagion, but to do so on a global scale. However, as the worm on Twitter demonstrated yesterday, the sheer scale and volume of a network has its drawbacks. Information is inherently looking to break free, but if a network is exacerbated to its fullest potential can we stop this information when we want to? This capability seems obvious in the natural world, as the natural world possesses natural limitations; crickets are by no means above these limitations and like it or not they cannot swim so the issue of viral transmission can end at the edge of the ocean, but where is our ocean or fail-safe switch in social media. Can it be argued that there is too much influence and no good way in which to turn it off.

Although I feel like I am bouncing around a lot today in my post, I also wanted to comment on another parallel between gatekeepers, betweenness-centrality and the award winning show Mad Men. Last night when we were discussing connectivity within a network based on nodes and ties and who actually was the most connected, I was especially interested in the comparison between the formal and informal structure of an organization. The notion that true connections within a business are based upon informal ties I find to be reinforced more and more; its not just about who you know, but in what capacity. Although the Vice President of a company has a far superior rank to the President's secretary on a traditional hierarchy, the VP still has to go through someone else to get to the President. This idea, "reach the gatekeepers, and you reach the world", not only thoroughly excites the pitchmen mentioned in Thomson's, but made me immediately think of the show Mad Men on AMC, which apart from being a standout show, really emphasized the power of the informal social network. While Sterling Silver (the marketing madhouse, home to the characters of Mad Men) obviously has the head honchoes, executives and all around important people, as Joan explains to Peggy (a new secretary at the firm), the people you want to be best friends with don't have a corner office, they are the women who operate the switchboard. What good is it if an executive has something important to say, but they don't have a line of communication to say it on? During the period of time in which Mad Men is set, the walled garden of Sterling Silver's organization was made especially high by the fact that the only way to communicate time sensitive or important information, ultimately flowed in and out through a single source, piss-off the switchboard operator and kiss your job goodbye.

While I acknowledge that the channels of information today are far less restricted, I do not feel that we can entirely disregard the importance of certain individuals in a social network. Maybe "influentials don't govern person-to-person communication", but they cannot be disregarded entirely. While we can come up with statistics, evidence and evidence that refutes evidence, what good does it do us? In studying how social ties and strengths are effected and affecting could we in fact be overanalyzing. Are we in fact trying to explain and oversimplify a natural order beyond the realm of exact science, can you really put a statistic on influence. Are we in fact, simply underestimating context and relativity because as Watts says its not "possible to will a trend into existence".

I really enjoyed this article for its relevance and use of current material, much of which I also have read. It allowed me to challenge and question my initial thoughts- there are two sides to every story. (9/10)

Crisis of Community

Upon looking at the reading list for this week, "The Wikipedia Revolution: Crisis of Community" immediately caught my eye. As I had indicated in my previous post, on Professor Gallaugher's text, Wikipedia still ceases to amaze me every time I consider the shear volume of content and information regulated by the people for the people. Not to mention, the pervasive stigma surrounding the validity of Wikipedia's content. Obviously with this in mind, it was only natural that I delve into the "The Crisis of Community".

In examining this particular reading, I was struck by several specifics. The first of which relates back to a brief discussion we had yesterday about the necessity of training people in the realm of social media - you cannot simply give people tools and expect them to know, not only how to use them, but to do so effectively. Social media and the Web 2.0 has become such a force to be reckoned with that while everyone from grandma to my seven year old sister is doing it, to be truly harnessing the power of the web, be it for monetary value or personal value, you cannot expect magic to happen. Social Media more and more is becoming a trained profession that requires time and a skill set to use effectively, despite the fact that 10 years ago this was hardly the case. With this parallel in mind, I was particularly intrigued by the evolution of the Wikipedia User:RickK. RickK really provided an evident example of just how rapid the evolution of the social media skill set truly is. Back in 2003 RickK, after just a few short weeks of being an active editor and contributor to Wikipedia, was nominated to be an administrator. With just six votes in his favor, RickK rose to the rank of administrator without even understanding what is was that an administrator did. With this in mind, flash forward to 2007, nominees to become an administrator on Wikipedia "[ran] the gauntlet" , requiring more than 1,000 edits and at least three months of experience on the site as an editor to even be considered. In the space of just four years, something that was '"not a big deal"' became a privy position. One thing that continues to amaze me about the innovation and expansion of social media and the web is the sheer speed and volume at which they expand. People often view change as a bad thing, however if people stop and stare, these innovations will pass them by, leaving them with a missed opportunity to take a tool and make it work for them. Social media and the web are of value because, as four years in the life of Wikipedia demonstrate, one must not shy away from the notion that the demands of social media and the web 2.0 are continually expanding and it is our responsibly to match those demands with expanded knowledge of what the web can do for you!

On a completely different note, the other issue raised by this article, which I actually found shocking was this mentality of "assume good faith". Wikipedia's mentality upon taking things at face value, while noble, is hardly embracing the realities of society. There is a good reason as to why my parents have told me time and again never to talk to strangers, be it on the web or in the living flesh. This idea seems to piggy-back what we were discussing in class about how morality exists on the web, but in doing so it does not necessarily mirror its role in the real world. Specifically, if you met someone and they claimed to be a professor with a pHD, you would for all intensive purposes believe them, especially if you saw their diploma or took one of their classes. However, if this person was simply posing as a professor and this information came to light, they would likely face sever consequences, as they are for all intensive purposes falsifying their identity. And yet the user Essjay on Wikipedia did just that, except he did it within the online community, and got promoted for it! In fact the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Whales, "[didn't] really have a problem with it"!

So I guess this leaves me with my question, why is it that we do not hold individuals accountable for their actions on the web in the same manner that we would in a physical face to face social network? When it comes down to it there is still a human interaction happening, there might be a computer in the middle, but at the end of the day two people are connected, albeit by fiber optics. And yet, in the split second that it takes for data to fly between the two, why is it that people do things that would never be tolerated in a face to face context?

Peer Production, Social Media and Web 2.0

In reading Professor Gallaugher's chapter on peer production and social media, I found extensive overlap between not only our class and the text, but even more specifically, the text and our class discussion yesterday, which we based around "Here Comes Everybody".

The first aspect of the reading that related heavily to our discussion was again this idea of the antiquated and bland technology making for the most interesting social media implications. A very appropriate example, as I am posting on one right now, is the blog. The blog, once known as a medium for posting online diaries, has developed itself from very humble beginnings, to public blogs numbering in the hundreds of millions (no thanks to me). Blogs have been so common placed that "blogging is now a respected and influential medium". Over the course of the last ten years blogs have gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. And now as they sit at the other spectrum things really start to get interesting. Who would have thought 20 years ago, even 5 years ago that newspapers would be dying out, however in the last few years online news content has increased exponentially, leaving their paper predecessors in the dust. And with no limits on page size, word count or publication date the sky is the limit when it comes to blogs. It is no surprise therefore, that in our need for detail and depth that mainstream media sources are supplementing their content with blogs. Who knew blogs could have a hand in bringing down the NYT?

Further expanding upon this idea is the sheer size and success demonstrated by Wikipedia. One of the widest known Wikis in cyberspace, Wikipedia, like all other wikis, stems from the simple idea of "what you see is what you get". It is upon this simple platform that a highly accurate home to the wisdom of the crowds has spawned and contrary to popular belief, thanks to an active and up-to-date wiki community, is very accurate. The excessive amount of not only information, but accurate information, could never be possible if it weren't for the relatively simple and collaborative nature of the wiki.

I would also like to draw further upon the idea of blogs policing companies, be it their performance, product or response to the social media scene. I was extremely intrigued by the portion of chapter 6 that briefly touched upon the rise of an entire industry, as a result of this shift to the web 2.0. Online reputation management has grown exponentially in the past few years as companies have discovered that failing to address the online community is as good as playing with fire. Monitoring social media commentary is no longer a part time job, it is a force to be reckoned with. As we move even further into the depths of social media and online marketing, management of a corporation's image will rely even more heavily upon this new industry and will demand even more techniques, tools and methodologies to allow companies to put their best foot forward both in print and on the web.

One final thing I would like to draw attention to is IBM's use of social networking, as it appears to be very pertinent to our classes experiment with virtual attendance. As much as 42% of IBM's workforce works from home, thus requiring employees to rely heavily upon social media tools and virtual work groups to make it easier to locate expertise and specialization within the firm. As I think about IBM, I think not only about our experiment in class, but ten years down the road when it could be the norm for students to "attend" lectures via their computers. Technology, as it has proven time and again, has the ability to take something as common-placed, required even, as attending class and make it an antiquated notion of the past.

Rating: I would rate this article at a 3.0-3.5. It is exceptionally applicable to our class and provides a lot of material and cross over examples. It is interesting, though long winded at times.

Social Media Overload

With multiple wikis, facebook, twitter and now a BLOG its official I am having social media overload. More to come, later today, as I will be blogging about Peer Production, Social Media, and Web 2.0!