Social Media and Web 2.0 and Transparency in Social Media

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 prodution values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

I don't think that production value will continue to drop. I think that all there will always be some amateur user-generated content used in production but there will always be professional and high quality production content. In terms of television and commercials I think that some things will call for a more personal or amateur look due to the content. Almost as though the content was caught accidentally, as in a The Sonic commercial or Paranormal Activity movie, these are real people in a realistic situation. But this does not mean that all content will need to emulate this amateur look. Professionally produced content will always remain in the lead though and dominate the production business. Although some media will try to emulate amateur content often seen on the web I do not think that this will take over the industry. Amateur user-generated content is not the norm in production and I do not think that it will become the norm in the future.

Sonic commercial ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjY9VGEUdGs )
Paranormal Activity Trailer ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDNjFJUyUz4 )

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

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/02/22/general-toyota-recall_7375159.html?boxes=Homepagetopnews

My Tags:
Toyota
Recall
Subpoena
President Akio Toyoda
auto industry
safety issues

Digg Tagged:
criminal investigation
automobile
Securities and Exchange Commission
Los Angeles
House of Representatives
Wayne State University
management consultant
conference
fine line
Tokyo Stock Exchange


I had the main concepts as tags and I figured that some of the more important names, such as the president and themes throughout the article would be tags but I learned that this is not necessarily true. The more well known and important names and topics were tagged as opposed to main themes. There were also a couple of tags that I would not have picked out as one of the main themes or ideas throughout the article.

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

I think that now because Facebook and Twitter are so popular that transparency has become even more of an important issue in the social media world. The internet allows for all kinds of transparency issues, someone can pretend to be anyone or anything else through sites such as these. This causes all kinds of accountability issues and honesty issues. Companies can be reflected negatively and it is completely out of their control but it is important to maintain control over their information and content through these websites. It is far easier to read someone when face to face than through the internet. There is no way to check out someones accountability through the internet and far harder to find the direct source of the information. I'd say that in the offline world it is easier to deal with transparency than in the online world.

The Persuaders

"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?

In our daily lives we are constantly being bombarded with advertisements. As society continues to move forward we, as a group, are becoming far more materialistic. This is proven with the amount of advertising we are subjected to every day. In order to really make an impression with advertisements it takes either shock factor or repetition. The advertisements feed off of each other so in order to compete to get their message or product out they need to advertise as much as their competitors. I personally think that it is too much advertisement right now. If the main objective of advertisements was to produce the best ad and not the most often shown ad we could decrease the repetition and possibly increase the message within the advertisement. There are so many outlets for advertisements now. They are everywhere we look; on the television, internet, newspapers, magazines, on the sides of menus, billboards, on top of taxis, etc. We cannot escape advertisements in today's society, it has definitely increased in our daily lives since 20 or 30 years ago and I believe that if we continue like this it will only increase more.

Where are things headed in the future? What are some possible scenarios that could play out as far as the direction that future persuaders may take their marketing techniques.

As advertisements continue to get less broad and much more personal and intimate the advertisers can better target their market. I think that as far as marketing techniques they will need to continue to really reach smaller targeted markets. Instead of just putting mass amounts of advertisements out it will be more beneficial to improve the messages within the advertisements and try to reach out to the target audience for that message. The advertisements placement is one great way to reach out to select audiences, placing ads where their demographic frequents. The main objective of advertisements need to change from amount of advertising to the message and the audience of these ads.

Digital Nation Part 2

After finishing the second part of the Digital Nation documentary I realize how influential the new technologies are in our society. Not only just in the US but all over the world technology is having an incredible effect on our communication skills and norms. In Korea children are now being put into intervention programs to reduce their computer addictive personalities. They cannot remove themselves from the computer games and lose a realistic outlook and connection with the real world. The documentary specifically dealt with one camp where children were sent to reconnect with the real world and old fashioned forms of fun, playing outside, playing board games, using their imagination, etc.

In conjunction with this computer game addiction the documentary discussed these video game centers which work with army recruitment. Many people are very against this approach because video games are not a realistic view of war. I was so blown away and surprised by this new approach, it does help them to recruit new people, but children cannot fully grasp the reality of a real world war situation through a video game. Children should not have to be drawn into war by the unrealistic views of video games which is only fun and games to them.

I do however think that it is naive to think that all of these new technologies are negative and are changing children for the worst. Although technologies have definitely changed our society without a doubt it does not mean that this is a negative change. I believe that there will always be new developments and our society with constantly be changing. This does not mean that it is a bad change but it does however mean that we need to be constantly adapting to these changes so that we can use them to our advantage. Every new development we come across will have obstacles but we need to learn to use them to our advantage so that these are tools for growth and not negatives.

"Digital Nation"

After watching the beginning of the Digital Nation documentary I realized how amazingly connected our society has become. We cannot go anywhere without being connected to technology in some way. Students are now being taught how to use technology in conjunction with their education. We are constantly being ambushed with new forms and uses of technology. Given any day we wake up and begin our day with technology and continue throughout our day with technology. Throughout our day we are constantly attached to cell phones, internet, computers, television, smart phones, etc.

I also do believe that because we are constantly doing so much at one time that this generation has become a multitasking generation. We all think that we are 'expert' multitaskers although I am sure we would be better off not multitasking as much as we do, it is unavoidable now. We are never just doing one thing at a time and when we do attempt to do one task we find our mind tends to wander. With our society so fast past and constantly evolving if we do one thing at a time it is as if we are not using our time to the fullest.

In terms of multitasking in the classroom I think that there is no avoiding it. Teachers can try to prevent it by restricting use of cell phones, laptops, etc but then our minds tend to wander. It is extremely difficult for us to remain on one subject, especially during a lecture. Although there are many negative aspects to the use of technology now there are so many positives that outweigh the negatives. I cannot imagine a day without the use of technology, our society has become so attached to technology, we would be lost without it.

Final Collage

The images within the collage represent different aspects of the Blackberry phones. The backgroud of the collage shows some of the different applications in the Blackberry App World that Blackberry offers such as facebook, pandora, different games, etc. Within the collage there are multiple different blackberry phones. The Blackberry icon is in the bottom right of the picture as well. I added an image of the bbm screen which is a specific texting/instant messaging application for just blackberry users.

Web 2.0 Terms

Terms:
User generated content refers to various kinds of media content, publicity available, and produced by end users.
Long tail is a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities.
Folksonomy is a system of classification derived from practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.
Syndication is when website materials are made available to multiple other sites.
Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, modular in nature.
Computer-supported collaboration is research that focuses on technology that affects groups, organizations, communities, and societies.
Hosted services is a type of internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible vie the world wide web.
Web applications are applications that are accessed via a web browser over a network such as the internet or intranet.
Social software encompasses a range of software systems that allow users to interact and share data. This computer mediated communication has become very popular with social sites like Myspace and Facebook.
Video sharing sites are internet websites that allows useers to upload video clips and then stores them on its server.
Wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor.
Blogs are types of websites that are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
Mashups are web pages or applications that combine date or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service.