Social Media & Web 2.0 Discussion

1. Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

We first discussed actual TV shows and advertisements which utilize the "homegrown" practice in current media. Advertisements such as the E-trade Baby Commercials and TV shows such as The Office are examples of this. However, we view the amateurish simulations more as a style and a fad, not necessarily a revolution within the production industry. While some companies and shows choose to revert to the user-generated production techniques, such as personal cam-corders, the remainder of the industry continues to move forward with the high-tech advancements production has made. Also, in producing much of the "homegrown" media, advanced technology is still being applied while trying to simulate user-generated content. It is an approach certain advertisers have decided to take, in an effort to seem relevant to their audience. Over time, user-generated content will most likely progress further as it has since it started. New user-friendly cameras and computer software are becoming readily available to the average person, requiring less professional skills, and so we think that as top production advances, so will the actual homegrown production.

2. Find a news article and write down tags you would use to define what the article is about. Now goto http://delicious.com/ , digg.com or another tagging site and see how others have tagged it. What did you learn from the differences or similarities in tagging?

Does Facebook Deserve the Hell it's Catching from Greenpeace?

Our tags: Social networking, Facebook, Greenpeace, economy, norms, politics, groups, coal, energy, renewable resources

Their tags: coal, Facebook, Greenpeace, social change, social network, social psychology

When comparing our tags with the tags from Digg, we found that the majority of our tags were the same. From these similarities we concluded that the main ideas and most important parts of the article were universal and apparent. However, there were a few tags from Digg that differed from ours. We found that as a group we gave more specific and detail-oriented tags, while Digg focused more on the holistic and general ideas in the article. For example, we tagged "renewable resources" and Digg tagged "social movement" and "social psychology." A possible explanation is that Digg users tagged broader terms, but since we were conscious of doing a good job tagging we were more thorough and specific.

3. Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?

Transparency is such an important concept because it disguises intentions and viewers deserve to be aware of the alternative motives behind what they see and read. Basically transparency regards the loop hole for advertisers and other social media in which they find ways to mask what they are doing or saying in order to make it more appealing to viewers.

Transparency is more important in the online world. It arises moral as well as legal issues. When viewers watch television they more aware of what is and what isn't an advertisement, however the transparency that is heavily present in the online world often fools its users. An example would be if a big corporation has formal plans and intentions of getting their message across the internet, but hires a smaller distant company to disguise its origin. In the online world, it is much easier to remain anonymous from your contributions, such as blogs. When viewers read blogs they are more likely to trust that the blogger is being objective, rather than being paid off to endorse another company or product.

Article Regarding Celebrity Tweets

Do Celebs Get Paid to Tweet About Products?

The Persuaders

What in "The Persuaders" surprised you (or not)? Name one new thing you learned about marketing or politics from watching the film. Name one new thing you learned about yourself from watching the film, or one thing that the film reiterated about yourself.

In the segment "The Science of Selling" I learned about the codes, or unconscious explanations of why we buy what we buy. I found it particularly interesting that a single word can capture someone's attention, interest and then favor and sell so much better than another word. I liked the example of cheese, being marketed as alive over in European countries, yet here in the United States it was marketable once you considered it "dead" being put in a "body bag"(plastic wrapping) and then placed in the "morgue"(refrigerator). I learned that what one needs is truly disconnected from what one buys and that when asked why you've bought what you've bought, the rationale doesn't make all that much sense.

From watching the film, I kept finding myself nodding in an understanding with a lot of the points that were made. As far as brands being considered colts, I see myself as member to a number of "colts." Products no longer market what they do or how they are the best at doing it, but now emphasize more what the product means. This big idea convinces buyers that you are getting more than quality, you are now belonging to a new community. I personally have a mac and can admit to buying it for just that reason. I also find that whenever I go into New York City, I will end up at a Starbuck's because I think it's fun to fit in with the city stereotype of walking the streets with a Starbuck's coffee in hand!

"The Persuaders" begins by questioning the increase in the amount of advertising we typically encounter in our daily lives. How would you assess the amount of advertising you see? Too much? Too little? Just right? In your view, what difference does it make to know that people today see much more advertising in their daily lives than people 20 or 30 years ago?

As an advertising major I now pay closer attention to the number and content of advertisements I encounter on a daily basis. We absolutely see much more advertising now compared to 20 or 30 years ago and in many different forms. Essentially every medium somehow directly or indirectly advertises brands and products. I can recall watching a segment on E! about celebrities tweeting about products without saying it was an advertisement and they were being paid to do so. It was controversial because so many fans faithfully follow celebrities and trust their brand preferences, but they deserve to know what is a real preference and what is a paid endorsement. As opposed to 20 or 30 years ago, our society has become more materialistic as consumerism has skyrocketed. Naturally if more people are going to keep buying more things that they don't really need, advertising agencies and companies are going to continue advertising more and more. We probably see advertising much more than we should, but personally it has become so discrete we hardly know we see half the advertisements we see.

As an advertising major I look at these ads more with a critical eye and it is amazing that so many attempts are useless but also that so many are truly effective and influential. Advertisements; commercials, billboards, print ads in magazines, direct what we buy, create cultures, and set the bar for social standing. Twenty or thirty years ago I don't think the ads had to be quite as creative and abstract as they are today to stand out amongst the many competitors.

Front Line: Digital Nation Part Two

Watching Digital Nation was an informative and eye-opening experience. I wasn't surprised to see the woman commentator's family, all wrapped up in their technologies, whether it was the father and son on their laptops at the kitchen table or the two young children playing around taking pictures on the mac. However, the effects that this technological revolution are having overseas in Asian countries were until now unknown to me. I was familiar with the video game craze over there, but to hear that there are actual giant rooms where you can go and play video games all day long was surprising. Most of all, the fact that someone died doing so because lack of food and water was pretty disturbing. The intervention camps for children showed how addicted these kids really are! The disconnect from the real world is crazy.

Furthermore, the U.S. army recruitment took me by surprise as well. Of course most children playing know that the game is not real, but being present in that environment and receiving praise for how well they play could subconsciously influence some of the young minds to believe this is their calling or spark an interest in the army. I don't find this to be moral or ethical in any way. As seen in another segment of the video, if some kids can come to believe they actually swam with whales due to a virtual simulation, how can we contradict ourselves and say that the virtual war simulations aren't having some effect of those who play.

Finally, I found the U.S. all digital schools to be really interesting. It was really weird to me that the assistant principle could tap into all of the kids' computers and watch what they did, even if they were using their camera as a mirror or taking pictures. Kind of creepy actually. I think that integrating computers into the younger generations' educational lives as a learning tool is a good idea, however there should be some separation from the computer otherwise all childhood activities such as playing around outside with other kids will be lost to technology.

Front Line: Digital Nation

Today's society proves to be very different than past times. I honestly can not remember what it was like to not have a computer or cell phone or i-pod. The upcoming generations have these electronic devices at their disposal. Though these technologies make us more accessible and provide for a quicker and easier lifestyle, in watching the first few clips of digital nation it is clear that with the positives come some negatives as well. The video spoke of multi-taskers, which I can admit I am guilty of, and how they honestly believe they can handle all they take on. In watching those kids who claimed to be multi-taskers score poorly on the experimental tests it made me realize that I too am probably not as good of a multi-tasker as I believe myself to be. It was also very interesting to see the perspective of the professors and how they face the struggle of keeping their student's full attention. Not only must that be frustrating but in watching the video it seems so disrespectful to waste time on anything but the class you are showing up for. Being there physically just isn't enough. I wonder if I would just focus on one thing at once if I really would retain more information and get more done. I definitely am going to try to keep my cell phone out of reach while in class and see if it makes a difference.

McLuhan Collage

For my collage, I chose the Kindle. The Kindle is Amazon's latest electronic book which features newspaper, magazine as well as book access through a light weight book sized product. My collage represents both what the Kindle offers as well as what it gets rid of. In the center, the garbage can is filled with books, magazines, and newspapers, which can be considered the content of a kindle, and is spiraling towards extinction along with a tomb which reads "Print Media is Dead." In each of the four corners is the message the Kindle delivers. The lower left corner represents the introduction of the medium itself. The upper left corner represents how the Kindle is environmentally friendly by saving paper, therefore acting as a green product. The bottom right corner shows a negative impact of the Kindle demonstrating the struggle of employees to keep the print media industry alive. Finally, the upper right corner represents the speed, ease and accessibility that the Kindle offers, generating a faster, simpler reading experience.

Web 2.0 Definitions

User-generated Content: refers to various types of media content which are produced by end-users, those who use the product, and are publicly available. Its applications range from news to gossip and its content includes all digital media technologies, such as videos, blogs and wikis.

Long Tail: is a retailing concept in which a wide range of unique items are sold in relatively small quantities, usually in addition to selling a few different popular items in large quantities.

Network as Platform: is the concept of turning what used to be desktop services on the local computer into services run on the Internet. The network allows for the development of a universal Web operating system which is unique because it is independent of the traditional individual computer operating system.

Folksonomy: is a system of classification derived from the practice of collaboratively creating and managing "tags" to annotate and categorize content. This practice is also known as social or collaborative tagging.

Syndication: makes website material available to a number of other sites. Most often, web syndication makes web feeds available from one site in order to provide others with a summary of that website's recently added content.

Mass Collaboration: results from large groups working independently of each other on a single project. The collaborative process is mediated by the content being created, not by direct social interaction.

Computer Supported Collaboration: is technology that affects groups, organizations, communities and societies, such as voice mail and text messaging.

Hosted Services: allow individuals and organizations to create and publish their own websites to the world wide web.

Web Applications: are applications which are accessed online through a web browser rather than applications which run on the operating system. The term may also refer to a computer software application that is hosted in a browser-controlled environment.

Social-Software: are software systems which allow users to interact and share data, such as social sites like Facebook, media sites like Youtube, along with commercial sites like Ebay.

Video-Sharing Sites: are websites which allow users to upload and share digital video content with other users, such as YouTube.

Wikis: are websites which allow users to collaboratively edit and produce online content via a web browser, such as wikipedia.

Blogs: are websites, usually maintained by an individual who regularly posts commentary, descriptions of events or other material such as graphics or videos to be viewed by other users.

Mashups: are web pages or applications that combine preexisting content from two or more external sources to create a new service.