dani w

I feel for Harky’s mom who has struggled with the way United treats their customers. While we haven’t had anything to the same extent, my family has also struggled with United airlines one time too many. A few years ago we finally decided we would never fly United again, regardless of the deals we could get. We do the same, and also encourage anyone who asks not to fly with United for fear of having to deal with their lackluster customer service. One would think that after such bad press, they would take the steps to start improving their reputation. 

I agree with Hartky’s suggestion for companies to please admit their weaknesses and urge their customers to give them another try. 

hartky:

In United’s case, the only way they could go about “immunizing” a viral audience is to take pointers on how to change from their biggest critics.  While spending time and effort trying to make it right, by offering Carrol flight vouchers for example, are a good way to “sweep the problem under the rug” but in the long run will not help them retain customers and gain new ones.  They have to admit they were wrong and are extremely sorry for their actions on a global stage, on every platform. Going above and beyond the call of apologetic duty is the only way they are going to right their wrong.  Speaking from personal experience, when I was younger my mother had over 4,000 dollars of her personal jewelry lost on a flight, most of it was sentimental gifts from my father and other family members.  Outraged, my mother asked United if they could help her out.  To no avail. They offered no compensation and showed no signs of sympathy for my mother’s loss.  Since that day, we haven’t flown with United and urge family and friends to also abstain from their flights. This is another good example, just like Carrol’s, of extremely poor customer service and unwillingness to help. Companies that see tons of profit need to be humble and admit when they are wrong and do their best to fix it.  This would be their best step to correcting this problem.

In terms of Sharethrough, your message needs to be clear, concise, and appealing to a global audience if you wish it to be a viral phenomenon. Humor can apply to everyone and usually has a great reception if done properly.  Also, a title is key.  If the title doesn’t grab the attention of people immediately, it’s not going to be successful at all. Social satire can also be worked in to the benefit of the advertiser.  With things like the “Occupy” movement and the upcoming presidential election, there is a lot to work with.

Dan— I always like reading your responses so much. I never once thought about the Roomba when I responded to this question! The power that social media has (I’m thinking especially in this case, Twitter,) is just so remarkable. This also reminds me of what we talked about in class when Professor H showed the “United Breaks Guitars” video. United would have never come under fire for this if it wouldn’t have been for the social media. They would have simply shuffled him through the phone lines and made no effort to solve the problem. 

danfelder:

smosunmc2011:

Question 3 focuses on monitoring the message, and specifically what it means for society to have the technology at hand to monitor the message in the way we do now.

In our discussion about the viral phenomenon we discussed how conversations are going on in the social media about businesses and…

The power of social media in regards to tracking responses of individuals to events is incredible. It’s an information goldmine that you can dive deep into and haul out secret treasures that never before were in your grasp. This knowledge can give you real time feedback to your company’s policies, product changes, customer innovations and applications and far more. A great example is the Roomba vacuum cleaner, which was originally marketed for its functionality but later, once the team saw videos and pictures posted by their customers dressing up their robot vacuum, they realized their customers saw it more as a kind of pet… And later changed their marketing as well as coming up with product skins that allowed customers to dress their Roomba like a cat in addition to other animals. A survey or focus group would never have been as effective as tracking the social media. The responses to government policy can be even stronger if you track them.

But discussing the rights of privacy becomes a significant issue. I feel that people should have to agree to let their information be disclosed before it is tracked, and using this information in any way without permission or a warrant would constitute an illegal search. However, this is a reality that isn’t exactly feasible. For now we’ll have to wait and see just how serious the lack of privacy becomes before taking hard legislative action. Hopefully we’ll see the costs far lesser than the benefits and we’ll all have been frightened over nothing. Hopefully. We jsut don’t know enough yet.

The perfect combination of bluegrass and classical. So beautiful 

This question reminds me a little bit of the questions asked about privacy during week two or three. It’s hard to have an answer that sits on the fence for this question, but personally I think being targeted for brand recognition is okay, and being watched by the government is not. 

In my opinion, there is a lot that the US government is not telling us about the level to which they monitor citizens through social media avenues. The other day I was listening to NPR’s host question a CIA correspondent over whether or not the government tracks tweets of citizens of the Unites States traveling abroad. The correspondent’s answer seemed carefully rehearsed and planned, so as not to reveal the full extent to which social media is used to keep an eye out abroad. The truth is that even though my information is open source, it doesn’t mean that I would want to be analyzed based on what I tweet or post to Facebook.

I feel that even though I’m leery of the privacy issues that the government monitoring social media would present, I feel differently about being targeting by branding. While I do think there are limits on everything, I don’t worry when I saw an ad chosen for me by Facebook based on my location. Whether or not I’m going to click on these ads, I’m much more likely to if they’re relevant to me. The fact that I want to go into a career related to PR and Marketing in the future may make me a little biased though. 

smosunmc2011:

Question 3 focuses on monitoring the message, and specifically what it means for society to have the technology at hand to monitor the message in the way we do now.

In our discussion about the viral phenomenon we discussed how conversations are going on in the social media about businesses and…

I am a big fan of mashable.com as I feel that it’s very relevant to new media, and more specifically social media. I found my “what I want to talk about” article there. The app is called Foursquare and while it may not be what people typically think about when they think “gaming,” it is very much a manifestation of what I feel like the future of gaming is going to be.

It’s fairly new to the social media world, as it was started just back in 2009. It allows people that have smart-phones to “check in” at places they visit. Whether that is while you’re traveling across the world, or just at your favorite places Foursquare encourages you to say you’re there, and share it with your friends. The more checking in you do, the more potential you have to earn badges, and display them to friends. My favorite badge that I’ve earned is the “Swarm” badge, which you earn from checking in at a place where there are more than 150 people already checked in. I earned mine when I checked into the Portland Brew Festival last summer. 

Overall Foursquare is admirable, because it has taken a fairly normal app, gamified it, and marketed it to people like me who are less skilled at traditional forms of games. Genius! 

smosunmc2011:

As we’ve talked about in class, for Part V on “What’s Social about Games?”, we’ll be talking about whatever you want to talk about. I’ll do the first lecture on 15-Nov to introduce the subject. From there, we’ll talk about the things you post on your Tumblr.

The assignment in brief is for you to…

Geoff agrees with me? Holy smokes what am I doing right? :)

lanbox:

daniaw:

This question really gets to the heart of what social media does, and strives to do. After thinking about the question, I realized my answer is a little bit of a copout, but what I feel is right nevertheless. I believe that social media creates an avenue to promote public events, such as protests or sit-ins but also allows people to feel like they’re getting into the movement, without lifting more than a finger. 

I have several friends who feel like they’re very involved in political and social events because of their connection through social media, but when you take a closer look, they’ve really done nothing to further the movement.

Alternatively, I also have friends who have been very much a part of social media, and used it to their advantage to further a cause they’re connected with. Whether it’s getting updates to their phones or reading the site’s twitter feed, they’ve used these connections to connect themselves to the cause and go out an get involved. 

Whether or not people choose to get involved or just keep track, events are now getting an unbelievable amount of “coverage” from citizen journalists. Free publicity is good publicity, isn’t it? 

smosunmc2011:

Part III - Question 2

Question 2 focuses on whether or how political deliberation in the social media makes a “call to action” in the real world.

Although we haven’t looked closely at the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street, we have included references to them where useful. These are both…

I believe you are completely in the right here. With the innovation of faceless opinions and creative quirks regarding social media and politics, it almost seems sad that there are a large amount of people who feel up to date and involved with what is going on currently. Although I feel like it is sad, I too fall into this category form time to time. For instance, with the Occupy movement, for those of us far from the reaches of Wall Street, it was a spring board for us to begin our own movements. With the massive amount of Occupy movements coming up around the country and the world, it has allowed us who are closer to these movements, to get involved. Personally, I believe it is solely in the user to take a stand and learn what they need to at first, but if they truly don’t feel associated with the material and the cause they have learned about, to step back and let the professionals take the lead. Just because someone posts a picture claiming to be the 99%, doesn’t mean they are willing to help the movement.

This is fitting for our class…

Hash tags on protestor’s signs, showing how much of a presence social media has within the #occupywallst movement.

Personally, I think that social media is one of the things that stirs homophily. Ties aren’t being loosened by the fact that people are connecting through the Internet over a cause, but instead are strengthening. It is true that it seems more effective to come together on the streets, but is the avenue for promoting such a reaction not a source of strong ties? Without social media, events would be less publicicized, less attended and known less on a broader world scale. These things are all giant portions of what a “call to action” is, and I think social media is the best source of promotion for an event, no matter what the size.

joyaddict:

smosunmc2011:

Part III - Question 2

Question 2 focuses on whether or how political deliberation in the social media makes a “call to action” in the real world.

Although we haven’t looked closely at the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street, we have included references to them where useful. These are both…

As for this, i think that Social media, does dampen the drive for people to be called to action, and to go out into the streets.  As we discussed in class on the Egypt rebellion, it was more of the ruling power cutting off the internet that more or less angered people and caused a big influence on people in the street.  It also caused the world eye to be on them, the fact that they tried to cut off social media from getting any more bad publicity on the topic put everything almost in motion.  I think that social media might sometimes have a call to action but it is not as potent ad homophily, and people actually seeing and/or hearing about a problem.  Also, the idea of strong ties is completely relevent, the idea of having people out there phisicly around each other is far stronger than when they are on the internet.  So, when considering if the internet can be a call to action or if it is actually a damper, i would think that it would be a catalyst but not a cause for a call to action.