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.

Morbark Field Trip

Driving out to the factory not knowing much about Morbark I remember us joking about what the facility would be like thinking it would be some small dirty place. So pulling into the parking lot we were all impressed at the size of the building followed by the impressive lobby area. As we toured the upstairs offices then the factory floor I couldn't help but be impressed by the elaborate bar code system they had implemented to cut down on time spent looking for parts. After awhile of walking the floor it did start to feel a bit excessive but I was still impressed by the shear size of the place. Morbark seems to really have everything together as well when it comes to their website management. It's very organized and well laid out for customers visiting the site. Overall I think that the trip to Morbark was a valuable experience, it showed me all the different pieces and jobs that have to come together to make what they do possible.    

Everyday Changes

Social and digital media effects our daily lives more than we may realize. If you look at the different sites that college use on a daily basis: Facebook, twitter, instagram. You'll see that people post with the desire to show off or feel recognized by receiving likes, favorites, etc. How much effort goes into these pictures or posts that could be put to better use if this digital environment didn't exist? I've recently been watching That 70's Show on netflix and personally I think I would prefer growing up in a time where everyone didn't know what you were doing and everyone wasn't mindlessly staring at their lit up screens. I think that social media can have its benefits, but I feel like it is being over used for stupid nonsense that wont matter 1 day from then.  

Checking out of the book

I haven't been able to completely lock myself out of social media or technology, however I have been off Facebook for about a year now and haven't felt a need to sign back in. When deleting Facebook you are prompted with a list of questions for the reason you're leaving followed by pictures of you're "friends" saying they'll miss you. I find that deleting my Facebook eliminated stress from my life; I no longer mindlessly scrolled through my timeline looking at everything people I haven't talked to in years were doing. Not having a Facebook does have it downfalls though, certain iphone/ipad games and apps ask you to sign in with Facebook and reward you for doing so, for example signing in on candy crush can get you extra lives from other Facebook friends also playing candy crush. I am happy with my decision to get away from Facebook, I do have a twitter and I think that its easier to control the content you view on twitter compared to Facebook. Eventually a new social media site will come out that will trump Facebook and twitter but until then I'll be waiting my 20 minutes for my life on candy crush.

Alone Together

Today people can always be heard, can be wherever they want (virtually), and they never have to be alone. It is important for children to develope the capacity for solitude. People no longer know how to cope with being alone, they associate being alone with loneliness which are two different things. 

We are losing face with conversation; loss of eye contact. There's a desire to see to see who wants to reach us and to have a constant connection to everyone though use of a device. Leaving a phone out during a conversation can greatly change how involved the other person is making them feel like the person is waiting to be interrupted by their phone. "Conversation takes place in real time and you can't control what you're going to say" some teenagers don't like having face to face conversation because they feel less in control compared to text conversation where there's more time to think of their response. 

It is very important for children to learn how to be bored and alone without it being thought of a bad thing. We are in a time where being bored is no longer tolerated as refered in the video as the "boring bits". 

The video talks about creating device free places such as the kitchen, dining room, and car. Dinner with the family encourages good in a growing child. Being on a phone during this time takes you away from the dinner table. 

I think that if we stay on the same path that we are going then communication among humans with really suffer.

Measuring Selfworth

After watching the Louis C.K. feature in class I thought it could make a good blog topic. Social media and cell phones in general have changed the way we communicate with one and other. 

My generation was right at that age to be effected by this new technology. I remember wanting a cell phone in 7th grade because most of my friends had them. I didn't have a cell phone til 9th grade and couldn't text til my senior year. And even now kids are getting cell phones in elementary school. 

MySpace, Facebook, twitter and whatever social media comes next all have something in common. The users crave numbers. How many friends do they have. How many likes or retweets can they get on a post. People need that feeling of being recognized.

As Louis C.K. said, people hold a sadness inside and need to feel in contact with someone at all times. Social media has provided people the opportunity to communicate with a large group of people fairly easily. 

In my opinion social media has gotten out of control. How did our parents survive without? They seem fine. All this new technology is supposed to make everything easier but it seems to only cause more problems. Not even going into cyber bullying. 

This whole post became a sort of ramble of things to come to my head. But sometime this week I'm going to unplug myself from social media and have another post about how it went. 

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO would certainly help the the CMMA because when Google searching "CMMA" the results are: Communications Media Management Association, Central Minnesota Manufactures Association, and so on with no sign of our CMMA. In order to find it one has to search "Central Michigan Manufacturers Association".
Ways Google determines the ranking of sites is through Crawling, Indexing, and Serving results.

• Crawling is the process in which Googlebot discovers new and updated pages. As Googlebot crawls through each site it detects links and adds them to the list of pages to crawl.
• Indexing is the compiling of all the pages Googlebot crawled into a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. Also processes key content tags and and attributes, such as Title tags and ALT attributes.
• Serving Results searching the index and provides a result determined to be most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by over 200 things, one is PageRank. PageRank is the measure of importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages.Each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your PageRank.

One problem that could be occurring for the CMMA is that whenever referencing themselves on the site they use "Central Michigan Manufacturers Association" and never "CMMA". Which in this case GoogleBot would never pick up on "CMMA" and Google search would never come up the Central Michigan Manufacturers Association for a search of CMMA.
 
  

Principles of The Social Organization

The CMMA has work to do to meet the principles of mass collaboration. They need to get participation from the community to provide content and learn what the community wants to know. The CMMA lacks transparency, unless you are a member the site provides very little information. A way to improve this would be to create a facebook page or something similar where public information could be shared and discussed. The main concern right now would be creating a public page that anyone can see and contribute to.

Social Media Saturated Environment

How can education in your field be adapted to fit the new social media saturated environment?
My field of study is Information Technology. My education on the subject can be adapted to fit the new social media environment by utilizing social media as a way to help users trouble shoot problems they may be encountering on their computers, smart phones, tablets, etc.
An I.T. professional could answer basic questions that social media users submitted via some social media site that links to another site.
This idea is a little impractical because the I.T. personnel would be answering questions for free, but possibly if the device needed further servicing then the company could provide the service.
Best Buy Geek Squad is a good example.

Mobile Devices in the Work Place

The use of mobile devices are used by members of the CMMA as seen when my group met with them last Tuesday. Right now the function as a convenient way to read and compose emails. While working on the floor cell phones are prohibited because they are a distraction and therefore a safety hazard. While not on the floor mobile devices like the iPhone and Android can be used to communicate with one and other via text or email. Once the CMMA adopts social media lets use facebook as an example, mobile devices could be used to update their page with pictures and news, read and answer comments, or even share links. The use of mobile devices for the CMMA's cause would only be needed by a select few of board members in charge of running the site and since phones aren't allowed on the floor everything listed above could be done as easy or easier from a desk top or laptop.      

A Promising Future?

Who Owns the Future, Preface and chapter 1. The thought of humans creating technology that is slowly making ourselves inadequate is a scary thought, even though it's been happening for years. For example, the auto industry, replacing factory workers with machines and leaving thousands without jobs. 

"We're setting up a situation where better technology in the long term just means more unemployment". Technology is growing at an exponential rate; this is obvious if you look at the technological advances from the past 10 years compared to the 10 years before that. 

The chapter discusses free information vs paid information, like all of you I would love for all information to be free as google already makes it seem, but if paying for certain information would hold a strong middle class and not leave us in a hyper-unemployment state then I would strongly support that. Who Owns the Future should open our eyes to what could be happening as we grow up, graduate and compete for jobs. But will you be competing against a human or a machine?

CMMA

The business that I have picked is the Central Michigan Manufacturers Association or the CMMA. This organization is a group of manufacturing companies from the central Michigan area. They don't have much experience in the field of social media and are trying to reach out to a younger crowd to possibly draw them into the profession. I am a part of the group working with the CMMA to help guide them in the path they are seeking. Challenges that they are facing is which direction to go with social media in order to make themselves more known and extinguish the thought that manufacturers are a bunch of wielders who work in a dirty shop doing heavy labor. They already have a website but if you're not a member it doesn't have much to contribute. By branching themselves into social media they can get whatever information they want known available and easily communicate with individuals who are interested.

Chapters 3 & 4 The Social Organization, Meshy

The CMMA doesn't really follow the the principals outlined in chapters 3 and 4 of The Social Organization. However they do understand what they'd like to achieve which is the first step to following the principals. Right now the CMMA website is primary a tool to be used for the members, their goal is to create a way to communicate and inform non-members. Using the "Six F" model of attitudes towards social media I would place the CMMA as "formulating" because they wish to be more organized and strategic in its use. I would say that the Central Michigan Manufacturers Association is not a "meshy" business. They aren't very involved with social media and all business done by the companies in the CMMA, I imagine is in the more formal way of filling out an invoice.

CMMA and Mass Collaboartion

The six principles of mass collaboration are: participation, collective, transparency, independence, persistence, and emergence. The Central Michigan Manufactures Association makes use of mass collaboration but is really only useful to the members of the CMMA who can sign into the members portion of the website. The use of the six principals is weak to say the least. There is no transparency and unless you were a member nothing is available to see. It is collective in the sense that the website is a place were the members can communicate with each other and schedule board meetings, etc. For the Central Michigan Manufactures Association to truly make use of mass collaboration would be to make a facebook, blog, or some other space where people can go to learn, read, and comment about the CMMA.  

First post: A New Digital Age and You Are Not A Gadget

A New Digital Age explores the positives of technology and its effects on the people. You Are Not A Gadget explains the negatives of technology, how people are being locked in to certain technologies. I believe that technology presents both positive and negative results. While making things more convenient it also brings out the laziness in people. Locked in is a problem because it holds back possibilities.