Class Reflection

This class showed me the other uses for social media besides just personal use. Social media is a useful tool for businesses to utilize to promote themselves in the digital world. I think that everything is going online and inorder to stay competitive companies need to put themselves out there on social networking sites. My goal is to stay current with social netoworking and stay involved with at least one social media site. After the readings from class I am nervous of what the future holds for us, we can't lose who we are to the internet. People still need to be able to function and hold conversations without feeling the need to look at their devices.

Individual Presentation

My individual presentation is now up at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTnz-qHhFdA&feature=youtu.be&hd=1

Information Systems and Social Media

Social media-based systems is an emerging field in information systems. Social media-based systems can be used to observe and collect information about users and then using the information to create advertising recommendations. Two ways the system can obtain recommendations is through a Content based method which measures the similarity of the recommended items to the ones the target user has previously viewed, liked or disliked. The other method is Collaborative filtering, the system makes recommendations to the target user based on the opinions of users/friends who share similarities to the target. Social media is a growing industry making the information about the users for marketing purposes highly valuable.

A Time and a Place

Social media is a usefully tool for sharing thoughts, staying in touch with friends, or just knowing what others are doing. Since the smart phone revolution we can use Facebook, twitter, etc essentially wherever we want. The mobility and convince of having this whole other world tucked in our pocket has gotten out of hand. Movies theaters need to remind the patrons not to use their phones during the movie so they don't distract others. There's just certain times that everyone needs to learn isn't acceptable or polite to be spending time on their phones. Times that I personally feel that people should stay off their phones is during family dinner or out to dinner with friends, during movies, during class, when someone is talking to you, even when you're hanging out with some friends. Why keep checking what others are doing online when you're physically with people. I violate these too but I try to avoid it. Technology is becoming too depended upon and we don't know how to socialize or function without that little phone in our hand.

Twitter's Use For Businesses

This blog was inspired by Nick's post from a week ago. I think that many people instantly think of Facebook when they think of companies using social media, but twitter has been growing as a platform for businesses to advertise. My favorite company account on twitter is Taco Bell's. They use humor to promote themselves in their tweets.

I think that Taco Bell's sarcastic humor makes people pay more attention to their tweets and definitely increases the number of followers that they have. Not all companies can follow Taco Bell's style of tweeting because it could not be appropriate depending on the goods or service they provide. But I think that if other restaurants became more parody like they would see a huge increase in followers and activity on twitter.  

Klout Score

Professor Melton mentioned this thing called a "klout score" multiple times and I had no idea what it meant. I logged into klout with my twitter and have "a steady score of 32". After researching what my klout score means I learned that it is ranked from 1-100 and is based on your online influence. 32/100 isn't very influential, but it really doesn't matter because I'm not trying to run for an office or promote a company.

CMMA Presentation

We recently gave our final presentation to members of the CMMA board. I felt that it went very well and that the board members can use suggestions that we gave them to hopefully help them reach the crowd that they are hoping to. The one thing I'm not sure about is if they realize that utilizing our plan is a lengthy process. They won't gain the following their hoping for right after creating their Facebook or linkedin.