http://libn.com/youngisland/2012/04/27/social-media-takes-center-stage-in-business/

Hello my friends!

The end is creeping up on us ever so slowly, and I am wishing that is comes very soon! I for one am getting very ready for summer and really looking forward to it. The article that I looked up for this blog post today is about how social media is playing a big role in some types of businesses. The interviewer asked a few different types of questions about social media to a group of individuals at a company. The article is mostly consisting of a long video that is filmed. The man in the video is the one who has written the article and it is him doing a seminar of sorts for companies and social media. One of the major points that the author brings up is the legality of social media demands from companies.  The author states, “The ease with which companies now engage in social media marketing and branding means intellectual property rights and privacy rights may not always be properly respected.  Companies must be mindful of these social media legal issues, or run they run the risk of exposure to costly litigation. And employers have recently started requesting social media account information during interviews, but few realize that social media use in the hiring process may expose a company to a host of potential legal issues and state and federal laws.   I stressed that employers should plan ahead before deciding to delve into social media in the hiring process.” So, what the author is talking about is that it is not really worth the potential risks to the companies of being sued by employees. I would tend to agree with the author.

Hopefully this will change soon!

PJ

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20443117/maryland-first-state-ban-employers-from-demanding-workers

Hello my friends! I cannot believe that there are only two more weeks of class left in the semester! It has gone by very fast and we will soon be Sophomores and Juniors. But the my post today is not about how times fly, but it is about my post from last week. There has finally been a state that has stepped up to the plate to ban companies from demanding that their employees give their social media passwords up when the go to work. This state is: Maryland. The measure, which handily passed the legislature earlier this month, keeps managers from snooping on password-protected content, a practice advocates of the bill say violates privacy and intimidates job seekers and employees. This is extremely important for the work force because now there is a presedent in place. Other states can look to this and make decisions on whether or not they want to impose this same law to protect their citizens. To me, this is a major step to start to win this war against the companies. With this new law in place, it really shows that there is actually some people out there protecting our freedoms. What the companies were doing was compleyely wrong, and I for one and glad there is something being done about this. In the future, I hope that there will be more states that will adopt this law so there will be protection for us when we get into the workforce once we graduate.  

PJ 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/04/11/investopedia79181.DTL

Hello my friends!

Today I will be talking about an article that I found from the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper and talks about a hot topic being discussed: employers asking or demanding the social media passwords from their employees. The article first gives a great overview of the problem. The problem, as the article tells us, is that employers are looking to hire people and know they are trying to hire the right people, but feel that they should take a deeper look into their employees before they decide to take a risk and hire them to represent their company. The article then goes into discussing some of the various reactions that a potential employee could do if this were to happen to them. In the article, they talk about that the most effective way for the employees to react is to take the employees to court. By taking legal action and bringing this to the courts attention really is the best course of action for employees wanting to be hired. It is totally wrong for employers to do this to their future employees or even current employees because this puts them into a really hard situation. Do they lie to their employers and say they do not own a social media page or do they give them their passwords and risk that they find something worth firing you over. Again, it really is difficult because they are doing this in their own time and should not be required to do this. Hopefully soon it will all work out!

Stay safe my friends!

PJ

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/idUS180710+29-Mar-2012+BW20120329

Hello My Friends!
I hope you all had a nice break!

So the topic of my blog post today is about how social media gives companies and advantage. Now, I know some of you would be thinking that it would more likely be a negative than a positive. Before reading this article I would have agreed with you. I saw social media being a negative for reasons such as people saying negative information that might not be true about the company and spreading it all over the internet. Once I began to read the above listed article, then my perception of this all started to change. The article talks about how the companies use social media to their advantage. There was a survey taken that said over three thousand respondents to the given survey said they use to market their products and services, generate leads, answer questions, conduct research, and gain new business. And recently, I have also seen an example of this. On Facebook, I follow one of the local businesses that I like: Hot Table. And they used their Facebook page to conduct a survey from their most dedicated customers. The owners of Hot Table wanted to know where they should put their new location. To me this is a brilliant move to go more online with this kind of stuff because for one, it is totally free! You do not have to pay to have a Facebook, and you can spread all of your information around quickly and to the customers you want to reach. So, I guess we now see where the next generation of marketing is going to take place!  

Take Care!

PJ

http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/kony-video-proves-social-medias-role-youth-news-source-pew-455365

Hello my Friends!

            Ahhhh Spring Break 2012 is upon us. Some of us are going to nice tropical climates where the weather is nice and warm, while others of us are just staying at home and relaxing during our time off. Well, as we have seen in Kony 2012, there are some children of Africa being enslaved to fight in an army. Now you might be asking, how does this relate to social media? I would ask that question as well, and he is the answer. Social media (the only thing I have seen on Facebook in the last month) has been spreading this message around like wildfire. We see it in our newsfeeds or on our Twitter pages, the information about this “Kony” character is everywhere. The article talks about how we (people aged 18-29) are more likely to have found out about the Kony 2012 project than any other age group out there. The article also mentions how we have not gotten word of this through traditional causes, oh no. We have gotten all of our information about this movement from social media. To me, this is an extremely important trend. If we can now start spreading vital information around on various social media web sites then we can most likely get more information faster. This is sort of similar to the entire situation with the tornados in the mid-west recently. A lot of the information about the disasters were spread via social media and more people found out faster. So really, even though the older generations complain, social media can actually be a good thing!

Enjoy your Breaks!

PJ 

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120303/NEWS01/303030069/Social-Media-Videos-tweets-spread-word-about-tornado-destruction?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CLocal%20News

Hello my Friends!

Today my post is about how social media has affected the tornado damage in the Midwest. The article had a focus on how there has been an impact from social media and videos on the Internet spreading the news about what has happened in the Midwest in the past few weeks. In general, social media and newer technology in general has really improved the ability to get updates and up close views of these storms. As we have seen from this most recent storm system, there was a man who got the funnel on camera. This person took the video, and put it on YouTube at 3:15, and a little while later, 15 minutes later to be exact, he was fielding questions and taking calls from international reporters. The article also talks about social media in a positive way for helping. The National Weather Service (NWS) actually gathered weather information from people who were on the ground at the time and posted about the storm cell using social media. The social media sources also led to gathering of more reliable pictures of the events as well. The media looked through the various social media sites for different experiences from people on the ground and used their pictures and sights for their own media coverage. Overall, this is actually pretty good for the media in general. The media gets what they want; more reliable information that the people want. And the people also win because they get information from the news that actually is what happened.

Have a good week my friends!!

Hello my friends! I hope that your all of your weeks were relaxing and productive. Today I am going to just mention a new topic that I will be bringing up today is about the news media today and how not to always believe everything that you hear. We expect that our media is just the news, and totally unbiased. But sadly, this is not the case! Sometimes a lot of the media sources have ulterior motives and there are other people behind the scenes. For example, we all know that Fox News is not exactly, “unbiased”. We see that there are some different slants that they put on the news. But, they are not the only ones that are biased. We can see that NBC and other main stream news channels are also slightly slanted in a certain direction. Now, I am not saying that these news sources are totally unreliable and you cannot rely on them, but all I am saying is that there are motives behind everything in the news and media. So, we should take everything lightly, and look to many different sources of information in order to get our information. For example, I look to many different news sources for information. I do watch Fox News for many different programing information and at the same time I look to the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe to balance me out a little bit. So, the moral of this story is if you pay attention to only one news source, you will definitely be slanted!