Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom (20:11) The head of the immensely popular photo sharing service shares some of the company's secrets to success.

http://www.reuters.com/video/2011/07/01/france-stunned-by-apparent-turnabout-in?videoId=204338311&view=204338311&sp=3400&refresh=true

Google Executive Chairman Schmidt Says He ‘Screwed Up’ in Social Media

Google Inc. (GOOG) Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said he “screwed up” in the area of social networking when he was chief executive officer of the world’s largest Web- search provider.

“I clearly knew I had to do something and I failed to do it,” Schmidt said yesterday of his efforts to help the company excel in social media. “The CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” He was speaking at AllThingsD’s D9 Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-01/schmidt-singles-out-google-apple-facebook-amazon-as-leaders.html

Social Media in the work place

So here is a great article about social media policy in the work place. It features advice on how to get employees to adhere to social media guidelines at a company and how to use social media to enhance conversations in the work place. In class we discussed the positive and negative implications of using social media in the work place. I think that as we move into the future and social media becomes an integral part of our lives, guidelines must be set in order to avoid potential problems. While it might curve creative processes, it is a way for business to actually use social media without running into trouble.

http://mashable.com/2011/05/02/social-media-policy-tips/

The Power Of Social Media.Book becomes bestseller before it's published; still doesn't even have a publication date. "With out social media 'something like this would have been impossible even a few years ago'”

A Whim, A Book, And, Wow!

By REYHAN HARMANCI

Published: April 28, 2011

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When Adam Mansbach, author of “Angry Black White Boy” and “The End of the Jews,” posted on Facebook last June to “Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, ‘Go the — to Sleep,’ ” he was not serious. He was just tired: his then-2-year-old daughter, Vivien, refused to acknowledge bedtime.

Public Diplomacy Shifts to Social Media

Recently, I found this interesting article that America.gov, a major global public diplomacy website is shutting down. States Department that organized the portal decided that the portal is not as effective anymore. It decided to switch its efforts and information to social media. From now to distribute the information they will use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Is that a good decision? In my opinion some organization are blinded by today’s technological progress and development. Social media interaction can be very effective. However, not until it is used appropriate way. The State Department cannot forget that the aspects of social media is not anymore for sending information but also to engage the public and create relationship with the target audience. Without this concept in mind it is sure that its attempt could be a big failure. Many companies and organizations found out about it very fast by spending most of their promotion budget on social media while not forming a good SM strategy, which in consequence brought to a huge losses.(example: Pepsi Refresh Project) But let’s see what the future will bring for the State Department and its public diplomacy shift.

What do you think about this?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0411/Public_diplomacy_shifts_to_social_media.html#

The Royal Wedding Will (Also) Not Be Tweeted

While the internet has been a buzz about the upcoming Royal Wedding, the actual ceremony will not be tweeted by those attending. Thanks to a signal blocking technology that will be installed at Westminster Abbey that will disable cell phone use, no one attending the Royal Wedding will be able to send out Tweets, etc during the ceremonies. I guess we will just have to rely on the other millions of channels that will be...

(like the title reference to Malcom Gladwell's article? haha)

Twitter Hedge Funds?

As we all know, the power of social media is endless. However, its potential is being tapped into by many different institutions including the financial industry now. Recently, an investment firm set aside 100 million in capital towards a Twitter hedge fund, which would be solely used to monitor Twitter in order to collect data on where to invest.

They outline 3 main reasons for why the relationship between social media and trade is starting to take off, which all contain really interesting information.

• Today, computers make most trading decisions. Some estimate that between 46 and 73% of equity trading volumes in the U.S. are made by these high-frequency systems, which are designed to use computer speed and processing power to crunch massive amounts of data and seek small profits on enormous trading volume. A system that can reliably make a few cents per trade on hundreds of thousands of trades per day is quite valuable to a firm.
• Social networks have unique qualities that make them particularly well-suited for the machines that now dominate Wall Street. The sheer amount of content produced on social networks is enormous and continues to grow. The content production itself is a voluntary act. Even the ways with which social networks interact with one another –- the so-called semantic web -– make content production across multiple networks extremely quick. And of course most social media content is public at some level, especially when a carefully programmed algorithm is doing the searching.
• Other competitive advantages are going away. This growing enthusiasm for social content isn’t so much borne from newness as it is from necessity. As the BBC recently reported, the speed at which high-frequency trading can function is approaching its physical limitation. Speed is a competitive advantage for these platforms but it’s quickly becoming ubiquitous. If and when speed –- called “low-latency connectivity” -– is further commoditized, firms will require a new way to get a leg up on the competition.

Check out more here: http://mashable.com/2011/04/27/wall-street-social-media/

How much for a week without...

How much money would it take for you to give up Facebook for 1 week? That's basically what one study asked, and the results kind of surprised me. Why? Because Facebook ranked last, or least valuable for communication, behind email, texts, and voice calls.
How would you rank them? Do you think that will change as more people adopt Facebook's new email feature?

Social Media Policies

We have had some discussion in class about social media policies, notably the lack of such policies in organizations engaged in social media. Here is an interesting article that discusses important elements an organization should include when developing a compliant social media policy. The article also mentions that once a policy is in place, it should not be filed away and forgotten. The policy must be reviewed by all stakeholders on an ongoing basis in order to ensure appropriateness and effective implementation.

I find it interesting that someone can make an annual report of one's life filled with charts and graphs about the restaurants they had visited and the days they had traveled — just like the annual reports sent out by companies, but with personal details. Daytum.com makes software to help people tabulate whatever they do and turn it into a chart. Facebook users also have a tool for building graphs of personal information. It was built as an experiment by TouchGraph, a company based in New York City that specializes in visualization tools.

I personally think it is very helpful for a company to present the information and organization's activities in a form of a graph or a chart, but I don't see the value in presenting my personal life in a form of a chart..

Read full article here.

Watch Twitter Happen!

This video, which introduces the NYT's Project Cascade, is very intriguing for 2 reasons:

1) It shows people how messages are spread through the Twitterverse, or, "visualize sharing activity." (very interesting to watch)
2) I also think this will be the future of how people measure ROI - not monetary, but by actually looking at how far your message/article spread and through what connections.

The last big question is - what will these tools enable newspapers to do? How will it shape their online development? And how might it prompt them to change their Twitter strategies?

Social Media Resume

How to write an impressive social media resume:
1) Start by clearly identifying what your Social Media forte is.
2) Showcase your strengths and abilities.
3) Use your history summary, with numbers.
4) Let your presence be known.Your resume should connect the reader to every single social space you touch so they can see all of your work, profiles and influence easily and quickly.

Read the fill article here.

Tracking File in iPhones

Here is another article about the privacy and new technology. Apple iPhones and iPads record their locations in a hidden files, the report came from a technology conference in San Francisco said. A new hidden file periodically stores location data, apparently gleaned from nearby cellphone towers and Wi-Fi networks, along with the time. The data is stored on a person’s phone or iPad, but when the device is synced to a computer, the file is copied over to the hard drive, the programmers said. Looks like we need to think about privacy breach and security problems with any new device we are using

Farmville, Continued...

To continue the discussion about Farmville we had today in class. The New York Times wrote a piece about the popularity of Farmville a year and half ago.

I thought this part was the most interesting:

Of course, real-life farming is quite a bit messier and more dangerous than FarmVille (perhaps just one reason that FarmVille players outnumber actual farmers in the United States by more than 60 to 1). Yet some of the game’s biggest fans are farmers.

In Online Games, a Path to Young Consumers

This article in the New York Times, is about Internet advertising reaching young kids. Companies, like General Mills, often sell sugar cereals and junk food, and are using multimedia games, online quizzes and cellphone apps to build deep ties with young consumers.These tactics mix advertising and entertainment and cause concerns of children advocates.
While commercial advertising is prohibited during children's programs on TV, Internet ads can successfully reach young consumers. I think if the marketing is aimed at improving children's diets, it can be understandable,but it would be very hard to draw the line between "positive" and "negative ads".

Facebook on Campuses

This article by USA today features Facebook use on college campuses across the United States. Facebook use was measured by the amount of people that like its Facebook page. Harvard, is the only top 10 university among the 10 universities with most overall fans. The rest of the schools are large state Universities with huge athletic programs. The amount of fans on a page tells a lot about a University's brand. However, this is not a good measuring tool for measuring which colleges use Facebook the most.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/04/07/colleges-bring-campuses-to-facebook?PageNr=3

Spotflag

Spotflag is a social media platform that allows people to post announcements about parties, events, service meetings etc. You can search events by distance and event type. Others use Spotflag to check in at a location throughout campus. This platform was tested at American University and has had positive responses. However, it seems as if this platform is really taking pieces of other social media sites. It will be interesting to see if a site like this can survive in the clutter of the social media world without offering anything new.

www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/blog/social-media-tool-places-campus-events-in-the-spotlight

#Liamisgale

So I am a huge fan and stalker of The Hunger Games which is this young adult book series now being adapted for the screen. Everyone should check it out. 

On social media related news, the series has a huge fan following. As the new stars of the film have been announced, one blog called The Hob decided to have a Twitter viewing party. They had their followers turn on Liam Helmsworth's movie The Last Song (terrible, I know) at the same time and discuss him, how he is going to fit the roles and basic feelings about the movie.

When searching their #Liamisgale, I found that they had 362 tweets! I would consider that a pretty big success for a same blog viewing party. What do you all think? Is this the wave of the future?

Politics & Social Media

Thought this was an interesting combo given we will be viewing "The Social Network" later today...Zuckerberg/Facebook/Obama.

So when not the subject of movies or at the receiving end of the ire of Facebook members, Mark Zuckerberg is making news hosting high ranking members of the White House ... foremost, President Obama...and other politicians and celebrities. This past Wednesday at Facebook headquarters in Palo, Alto, California, Zuckerberg conducted a town hall meeting with the President, which was streamed live on Facebook. Some referred to it as Obama 3.0, the beginning of the President’s bid for re-election in 2012 by harnessing the power of social media just as he did for the 2008 election campaign. The President made reference to this power when he talked about how there is nothing we cannot solve if we put the same energy and imagination into the political process as we put into Facebook. Social media has been an effective communication tool for the President thus far. It will be interesting to follow the President’s use of social media in the political arena over the next year as he pursues his re-election bid.

Amazon EC2 goes down, taking with it Reddit, Foursquare and Quora

Cloud computing issues bring down Social media sites Reddit, Foursquare, Quora and others due to Amazon Web Services suffering network latency and connectivity errors yesterday.

For those of you that don't know, including me, Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a computer network. In the traditional model of computing, both data and software are fully contained on the user's computer; in cloud computing, the user's computer may contain almost no software or data (perhaps a minimal operating system and web browseronly), serving as little more than a display terminal for processes occurring on a network of computers far away.

Quora even has a fun ‘down’ message: “We’d point fingers, but we wouldn’t be where we are today without EC2.” And a funny YouTube video.

One of the sites that was down includes xtranormal, it has been down since yesterday. It's strange how we have come to expect for these sites to work all the time and when they don't it's a real disappointment. If a site is down to resolve issues and for maintenance, is it acceptable to you? Would you return to the site?

Access the full article here.