Future Technology and Social Media

My roommates and I do a lot to make sure that our house and ourselves are as ecofriendly as possible. Typically we make monthly goals of how we can be better consumers, or save energy or water, and reduce waste. We are going to compost this summer, and of course we are really big on recycling. Once people figure out about this it is always followed with questions about why we choose to go through the “hassle” of doing this, or a lot of people assume that we are just really big hippies and leave it at that. Many of our conversations about stuff like this always end in the fact that there needs to be a huge cultural paradigm shift in how we view consumerism, and environmentalism. This whole intro may seem confusing when talking about technology, social media, and the environment, but the point all comes from this article that spurred my thoughts about how this paradigm shift could happen. The article explains radio-frequency identification tags (RFID tags) and how they are the size of a grain of salt, cheap to make, and they are used to track individual items for various reasons. It gave the example of creating a device that will sit at the bottom of your trash can and read the RFID tags that are in items that you throw away. While this seems useless there were immediate benefits that I could see coming from this.

First this is a great way to keep track of what your waste is and how much you are recycling and things like that. I also think that it would be a really cool feature if you could track where your waste goes or where your recycling is taken and used for. With this information, it would be so easy to share and create social media that encourages more people to keep track of that. I instantly thought about having company competitions with who had the least waste, or recycled the most, or something like that similar with how companies create competitions for weight loss or something. 

Second with the same technology there is communications that can happen with phones that are in the area and reviews on certain items and services can be so incredibly specific that this would be beneficial for businesses to tap into that information. 

Mostly what I found to be the most interesting was just the potential for awareness on a topic that I am passionate about. If we make being ecofriendly a social thing, or even a normal everyday life of living, this technology could be a huge part of that movement. 

Mobile Apps vs. Internet Browsers

I went to the new business building here on USU's campus today and used one of the study rooms for a group project meeting. On the table were instructions on how to download an app on my computer that would then allow my computer to connect to the TV, similar to Bluetooth. The whole reason why I tell this story is because I am always confused when instructions call for me to download or look up an app on my PC, because I only ever think of apps as something that is only available on my phone. As we talked about earlier in the semester the shift of just the language that we use for things with social media shifts a lot and I think that this is one of those moments. I always think of apps as just being available on my phone. This language shift shows that there is an actual paradigm shift happening when it comes to apps and how we use them. Forbes even goes as far to say that the mobile browser is dead. I think that this is so true, in a sense that very few people use mobile browsers anymore and more and more businesses have apps that are specifically designed for their company. When I look up a business that I want to order something from, or do more than just see their hours (I would just google that), I would look for an app before I looked for their webpage. This is mostly because it is quicker for me to get to and the interface is actually meant for a phone and it is easier to access things.
Something that I find interesting about the graph that was in the Forbes magazine was that majority of the time that people spend on their phones is gaming. Maybe this is just shocking to me because I probably have two "game" apps on my phone that I only use sometimes. I think that gaming on your phone isn't ideal because the physical phone is small and I feel like there are things that would be better/easier to do on a PC or a phone. The graph in the article also shows the small amount of use that is in browsers, and I didn't even realize that there were browser options that weren't google, this is possible on a phone? As a consumer I probably under utilize apps, but I think that when it comes to using my phone, I still use apps way more that I use a browser.

Viral Videos

This topic is a huge topic area to cover. I think that I am just going to take a few viral videos that I think are notable case studies of points that I think are interesting about viral videos. Most of these are based on the fame that is gained through viral videos. Some people want this fame while others don't. Also the rewards/benefits that people gain from their videos can be pretty crazy too. Here are some examples. The first video that came to my mind when viral videos came up is one that is often quoted by my best friend and I while walking around campus and noticing vans, this comes from the "Damn Daniel" vines that have gotten a lot of attention. After they got so much attention, as sometimes happens, Ellen invited them on her show and interviewed them about their journey to fame. It started when Josh took a video on his snap then people thought it was funny so he continued taking them, and then uploaded it to Twitter where it gained it's initial traction. From there Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and a ton of other news sources talked about it on their feeds. While on the Ellen show they were offered a life time supply of vans, that they then donated to charity. While not a video, there is Alex from Target who gained fame from a teen girls posting a picture of him on Twitter and ended up on Ellen as well. He didn't want this fame and the attention was actually something that was overwhelming to him.
Viral videos are something that I feel little people have control over. Sometimes candid videos are the ones that go viral, while others try really hard to create a viral video, then the one they don't expect or want to are the ones that go viral (cough cough Travis Chambers that we have heard from this semester). Viral videos can be really effective in telling what a culture likes and how they communicate. Viral videos can also be used effectively by businesses and activists to gain awareness or action for a campaign. Yet again I feel like it is difficult to control and know what makes a video go viral and how exactly it is going to be perceived.

Search Engine Optimization

For this post, I honestly had to do a little more searching to find out what this weeks topic was actually about. A common theme that I realized through different subjects under the umbrella idea of search engine optimization is that they are all meant to target certain consumers, but more than that make a certain ease for consumers as well. In class, the backlogs of what companies do to target customers has come up frequently, and most of the class acts uneasy about this and are somewhat creeped out by how personal and specific it can get. Overall, I would argue that how specific they can get a target audience is a good thing, because it is a better experience for the consumer. I know that when there is an ad about something I find ridiculous it is annoying, but if more ads are more applicable to me than I am happier as a consumer and things are more convenient for me. I think that search engine optimization does a similar thing in making the experience of the consumer more convenient. Geotagging, while effective for a business because of customers based on location, is also more convenient for people searching for whatever service that business has to offer in that area. I also thought that it was somewhat ironic that when I googled "search engine optimization" there were a ton of paid advertising at the top....for of course, search engine optimization for companies who help other companies do search engine optimization stuff. Silly. Lastly, I think that newsrooms and infographics hold the same theme. They are made to make things more convenient as well as interactive for the targeted audience. A good infographic is going to catch a reader's eye and have specific synthesized information. The better it is at meeting that criteria the more effective it tends to be. Most search engine optimization tools all come down to the idea that it is mutually beneficial for companies and targeted audiences, because of the convenience for the business to advertise and the consumer to see and act on it.

Management Platforms and Tools

This blog topic is probably the one that I have known the least about this semester, and I think it is because I don't really put that much work into my own personal social media, but I can see the needs and potential benefits that organizations can get out of this. I might repeat a little from last week because that was about organizational communications and I feel like these two topics go hand-in-hand with one another. The only social media management platform that I have had experience with is Hootsuite and it is a very useful tool. When I used it I was an intern and most Mondays would be scheduling tweets for the rest of the week. When looking more into Hootsuite for this post I noticed that it will also help you track mentions that you have on Twitter. I think that this would have been very helpful to use as it was an organizational initiative to keep track of when we were mentioned in articles and other media and we had a master list that was open for everyone to add to when we saw that. I also used a few different tools to shorten URLs when I was writing tweets that had links. I sometimes even use this in my own social media if I need to. Shorter URLs mostly help with word count in twitter, but sometimes they just look better in a different post that I can't hotlink a word, or that won't post the link without the URL there. For both scheduling posts and shortening URLs there are many different forms and platforms available and from my experience there isn't too significant of a difference between them to have a favorite to use, but again I haven't needed to use either extensively.
While looking up things to talk about on this blog I found a social media management platform called Dashburst, and I was pretty impressed with what it could do. It has a lot of the analytic side that most platforms have but it also has the capabilities of connecting with all your forms of social media and "bursting" out one post to all of them. I could see this being useful in my own social media, because to be honest most of my Facebook posts are just shared from Instagram, and I am too lazy to make a whole other post in Twitter. With Dashburst you just make one and it sends out to others. Another feature is that is updates you and can even automatically post when artists, people, creators, that follow post something as well. I think that this is a nice feature because again it helps just take everything into one form of social media, while helping manage all of the other platforms as well. I can see this being extremely beneficial for organizations as well.

Organizational Uses for Social Media

When I think about social media, I think that I first think about how I use social media, then I think about how organizations use it. Social media can potentially benefit every organization, but I think that it also comes with potential harms as well. The interaction between customers and whatever organization is involved, is key to maintaining public relations, reputation, and business. Organizations can also use social media to better communicate within the company as well as communicate outside of the company. In this blog I am mainly going to focus on the experiences that I have had or noticed that organizations have used. The summer after my freshman year of college I had an internship with a non-profit where I helped with social media, specifically with topics that we were working on as an organization. One tool that I found to be very helpful was Hootsuite. This tool made it possible to schedule tweets in advance so I didn't have to constantly tweet throughout the day. This was especially helpful when we would release a new poll, or we would have a constant feed with quotes from people signing our petition. I would get a build-up of quotes, then in one afternoon schedule tweets for the rest of the week or month. It was really easy to change the time or day of the tweets, so if something did come up and we wanted to wait to tweet something until a better time, we could easily go in and change it in Hootsuite. This helped me manage my time better and that way I could maximize the amount of work that I got done. This was also nice because we could prepare graphs, statistics, and much more, and instead of having to save it then pull it back up to tweet it once the study was released to the public, we could create the posts at the same time we made the visuals. It may seem like a little thing, but it saved a lot of time and made things much more efficient. Along the same lines learning how to hashtag hunt was a very helpful skill. This internship made me more comfortable using a hashtag in the middle of sentence instead of waiting until the end to list all of the hashtags. As talked about in class we often used #utleg #utpol because the issues that we were working on directly involved decisions that were affected by Utah legislators votes. This was important for people in the Utah legislator to see and people outside of it to know who to talk to about the issue.
On another note besides this I have noticed, and we have talked about it in class, that the public sphere of social media is important to organizations, This is a place where dialogue is fairly open to everyone and there for everyone to see. It is important that organizations use this to promote their brand and initiatives as a company in how they interact online. This can be through sharing news coverage of the organization, offering promos, showing success stories, and many more ways. When I think about organizations that I follow on my social media all of them have a strong sense of getting clear, simple, efficient information out and responding in the same way.
Organizations who use social media get many benefits from doing so, but we have also seen how in the process of trying to use social media for that benefits other organizations have ruined customer relations and it has actually done more harm than good.

Basket Ball Cop - Case Reflection

Basketball cop is another great example of how social media can be the leading influence on an initiative or a campaign becoming successful through social media. The fame that Bobby White gained through the viral video of him playing basketball with local kids that were called in for being too loud, has created a whole foundation that is aimed to help lower crime within impoverished neighborhoods. This is an idea that wouldn’t even exist or have enough support to get started if it wasn’t for the viral video. As we have seen a theme in class, when there is a problem that is made viral through social media there is often a go fund me to follow up quickly. In this instance I feel like it is a good thing and that the money is going to a trusted place. They have posted pictures of Bobby with kids that he has given new basketballs and hoops on the gofundme page and they even hosted a basketball game just this week that was between some of the local kids and police officers. I think that this is a really good campaign because the kids now look up to the police officers within the area and see them more as allies than as enemies or people to be afraid of. This is especially important as other media would probably tell these kids to not only be afraid of the police officers, but that they are hated from them and they are discriminated against by the police force. The Gainsville Police Department was quick to jump on the attention that the video was getting and commented with links to their twitter page, which is actually pretty stellar. I don’t know of many police departments that have such a strong following base, but because of the video the GDP has now gotten more attention with other programs that they have been working on that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise either.

This is important to establish as good relationships within communities like that can keep more kids out of growing up in crime and it just creates a safer environment for everyone. The idea has spread to other police stations that want to implement similar programs in their neighborhoods, with the idea that if kids have the resources to play basketball that it will keep them out of crime and creating a support system in the community. #hoopsnotcrime was started with the original video and has now gone internationally viral. I think that this is a good thing that can encourage other communities to take the same action and positively help better their community by simply donating basketball hoops and basketballs to neighborhoods that wouldn’t otherwise have them. I would be really interested to know that if this viral video didn’t catch the attention of Shaq how the circumstances would change? Would there be enough attention to get this much support enough to start a whole foundation? Shaq showing up and playing a game with these kids significantly changed their lives. He also paid for them to attend an NBA game, another opportunity these kids would not have had were it not for social media and the viral video.

Beyond this incredible initiative that has been started I also think that it is interesting to compare reactions that the public has had to this viral video versus the viral comment that we had a case reflection on early this semester with Killroy’s Bar. The gofundme for that received so much more attention and money that completely passed the amount needed for the victim’s medical costs. The basketball cop gofundme, which I would argue has much more of a positive impact and an actual need, hasn’t received nearly the amount of money as quickly as the other. I think that this is a shame. This comparison is a good example as to how social media can be disappointing when people rather support an outrage rather than a positive community program. I think that this is not a rare occurrence. There are several really important and deserving causes that receive little attention while other stupid things get a ton of attention and therefore money.