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!