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.