What Is Facebook Thinking?

In Tuesday's class we learned about the newest application that Facebook is going to be adding to it's ever growing list of functions. The latest addition is going to be a part of "Facebook Beacon" which promotes ads on users actual news feeds. This new function is basically going to allow everyone who is a friend with you, be allowed to see exactly what you buy. (By putting a cookie on your computer that keeps track of what you bought with your credit card. If you are logged onto Facebook the same time you are buying products, than it will be added to your news feed).

At first I was like this is pretty cool. It would really help to keep people updated on what is new out there and what people are interested in, but as the class got further into discussion I remember thinking that this is a total invasion of privacy. We shared stories about how something as special as asking someone to marry them was ruined thanks to this new application. (After a person bought a ring the purchase showed up on his news feed and everyone from his girlfriend to his friends saw it, as well as the price!) This new application takes it just one step to far. This to me, just seems like Facebook is ready to start making some serious money. Think of all the companies that are going to pay them to advertise for them, when really they are doing no work at all. It seems like a win-win situation for Facebook. So many people are on Facebook and I am sure that when a new recently purchased item pops up on people's news feeds that people are going to go and check it out. They may not buy it but they will probably remember the website and use it to look for other products someday.

But this could cause a serious problem. What if people buy something that they do not want to share with the world? Facebooks PR team should get ready for a lot of complaints, and get ready to write a lot of new releases to explain why and how this could possibly be a good idea. I really do like Facebook (especially when it was more simple back in the day) but I don't like this new application. I hope that they don't end up messing up what I thought was a good social networking site.

Outrage for Injustice

Here is the video that my group and I made in our social media and PR class. The theme was to show people the realistic truth about what happens to animals in slaughter houses and why people should go vegetarian.



Click Here to Watch the Video!

Fantasy Sports

This is a little different form of social media but to me it can be classified as a type of social networking for sports fans. What I am talking about is fantasy sports. Fantasy sports is people getting together (from anywhere) online and building a team in sports that they think will be the best. These teams are created by real people and compete in real competition every week.

I play both fantasy football and fantasy basketball so those are the two that I am most familiar with. These leagues can consist of families, friends, or random people. They can be found on a lot of different sites, but the two main ones being ESPN and Yahoo. This could be a great way for people to test their sports knowledge and be competitive. This is not just a game, it is taken seriously by most people. Some people even host draft parties to pick the players that they want on their team. The players even offer trades between each other, and pick up players from waivers throughout the season. If a player gets hurt in real life than they are hurt on your team as well, and they need to be replaced in order to continue getting points. Even the top teams go to the playoffs seeing who will become the champion. Lastly, players can communicate with each during game times through something that is very similar to instant messaging.

Fantasy sports are very unique because it is just another form of social networking, but in a competitive sense. It can be linked with social media and pr because fantasy rankings are talked about every week before games on sports shows, even press releases are written about the ever changing ranking of players. Also, these rankings can be found a lot of different places online. Here is an example of the top ranked quarterbacks in fantasy football this week. If your a sports fan and want to compete you should join a fantasy league.

Publishing Viral Video & Youtube

This post is in response to the assignment that the class had to read that focused on viral video and Youtube. We have been working on a video in class for the past week and a half now. When starting this project I simply thought that it was just going to be for extra credit, but after seeing my groups completed project I thought that it was really fun. It was amazing to see that so many different things (pictures, clips, etc.) could be combined to make an interesting video, and something that people have never seen before.

The article talked about how there are a lot of different videos that can go viral. These videos can be made by someone like me and you or a company itself. We have looked at a lot of different videos that have gone viral in this class. Some of the videos have even been popular enough to be turned into commercials. The two that come to mind are the Mcdonald's commercial and the Apple Itouch commercial. Both of these were made by regular people and after being posted to Youtube, they were recognized. With so many people using the web, Youtube has been a great way for people to get something out there.

Look at the video's that we made in class. We had an array of topics that dealt with certain issues. Even if our videos may not go viral they are going to get viewed by some people. This is one of the reasons why the web is so great. Youtube can also be great for pr. Not only is it a way to do cheap and easy promotion, a lot of companies are going to be in need of some good pr and crisis management after some videos are posted. Take the Comcast viral video for example. The worker slept for over an hour. After people saw this they were probably outraged. I am sure that Comcast hired some good publicist to right there wrong. I really liked this article and in case some of you did not read it I put the six ways that the article mentioned about how to maximize viral videos potential.

1. Keep your video clips short, preferable under 5 minutes. Most people browse through a number of videos when visiting sites like YouTube and Google Video, and may be unwilling to give any one video too much of their time.

2. Ensure that your video has interesting, entertaining or provocative content. If it doesn't "wow" people, they will have little incentive to share it with other people they know, or across their social networks.

3. Be cautious about including commercial or promotional content. The most powerful short videos are those which are purely entertaining. It's when people click through to your site that the time is right to add your sales message.

4. Don't plan on creating just one video. It is hard, if not impossible, to accurately predict which videos will enjoy wide, viral distribution. Our own testing demonstrated that some videos were shared more than ten times as much as others. So plan on creating a series of clips, and learn from the one which performs the best.

5. Optimize your video clips to maximize distribution across social network sites, use tags and bookmarking links to help people find, save and share your videos.

6. Create videos that multiple people (possibly some of your customers) appear in. The best team of viral marketers you can hire are people who appear in your video and pass the video to their friends and family.

Stupid Filter!

How many of you out there are tired of getting ridiculous comments on your blogs, myspace, facebook, whatever? It seems that this problem may be able to be alleviated in the future. I was reading an article titled, "StupidFilter Blocks Comments Online" and it states that this stupid filter will be able to block dumb comments from appearing on people's pages.

What this new creation will basically do is keep those unwanted messages off of your page by separating the good messages from the bad. If it senses that a person's comment is no good it will not allow them to post a message, until they reword it to make sense and be relevant.

I don't know how many times I have gotten really dumb comments and have had to erase them. It is both annoying and time consuming. But, at the same time sometimes I like those comments that only make sense to me. What if me and my friends have something that only we get, is this stupid filter going to block those things just because it doesn't understand them? Also sometimes I don't make the most sense when I write. I think that I will get a lot of messages that say I have to reword the things that I am writing to make more sense.

In the long run I think that this will end up being more annoying than anything.I would rather take the time to go and clean out my unwanted comments. Not to mention that this filtering could cause a big uproar. This product is going to need some PR help after a large group of people are angered for being called stupid. What exactly defines a stupid comment anyway and why should a tool online get to decide that? Shouldn't the person who has the comment left on their page get to decide that? I don't think that this filtering will last for very long... What do y'all think?

Order A Drink By Texting

I just read an article titled, Text Message Your Drink Orders At British Pub. This article brought forth to my attention (even more) how far technology has come. How many of you have been at a bar before and have stood there forever waiting to get a drink? (that is if you are 21 of course) It seems that the British have made it very easy to eliminate this problem. If people at British pubs are tired of the lines all that they have to do is text message the order to the bartender and there beer will be right out.

I am not quite sure how this works but from my understanding it seems that one can get on the Internet from their phone, and connect to the pub's homepage to find the menu there. From that point all they have to do is find the drink they want, and then send it to the bar's computer. This seems easy enough, but I can't help but wonder if the process is really that simple?

I do not know about Britain but let's take the United States for example. I know for a fact that a lot of places are very strict on serving to underage people. It would be a big waste of time if underage people were playing jokes on these bars. (How exactly would they be able to check people's Id's if they are ordering through text message?) This could be a really big loss of profit for them, not to mention a big legal issue if they served to minors. Also, the article stated that if drinks are ordered through a text message 10% is added to the cost of the drink, not including the tip, or the Internet fees from the person's cell phone provider! At this rate one drink could end up being very expensive. (too expensive for this to even be worth it)

This new service will probably be in need of some serious PR over time. This type of issue is one that a lot of people could find to be unethical, or like I said earlier a lot of issues could rise from this (underage drinking, problems with the system, people feeling cheated in to paying so much). This could also use some PR to help promote the new service. Why I think that most new things happening in technology are very cool, I have to admit that this one is dumb. It really does seem like it is more work than it is worth.