Will Rocket Shoes Be The Next Facebook?

Technology is an interesting topic. New and innovative technologies are even more interesting to talk about. When I think of new technologies that will be coming in the future I think of things like hovercrafts, rocket-shoes, and fancy gadgets. 

These things may seem immature and childish, but let a girl dream okay? The point is the future is an unpredictable and exciting thing.

For example, according to Thomas Friedman, less than 10 years ago “Facebook didn't exist, Twitter was still a sound, the cloud was still in the sky, 4G was a parking place, LinkedIn was a prison, applications were what you sent to college, and Skype was a typo.” This statement is absolutely crazy to think about because of the general acceptance of what these terms mean now.

The norms of today didn't even exist ten years ago. Facebook was created in 2004 (source), Twitter was created in 2006 (source), and Instagram was created in 2010 (source). These social networking sites don’t feel like they are new and exciting technologies, however, they didn't even exist when I was in elementary. Although Facebook feels kind of old school and little ghetto sometimes, it really is a new technology in the overall picture. Due to the rapid acceptance of these social networking sites they don’t feel new or exciting – they have become the social norm. It’s rare to find someone without any social networking platforms than someone who does.

So the real question is what will the norm be in the next ten years? Maybe this girl’s dream of rocket shoes will be a norm by the time I turn thirty. Who knows? But one thing is for sure; technology will continue to change and improve. There will always be new technology coming out and the acceptance rate will become faster and faster. We need to be ready for these changes and be able to adapt.

Apps, Raps, and Baseball Caps.

Let's be real, my title has nothing to do with this article other than it rhymes with apps. It seems that everyone has used or at least heard of apps. But, to those who maybe don’t understand all of the new technological jargon, what are apps? But really?

Apps is a cute little abbreviation for applications. Simple enough. But, in all actuality an app is a piece of software. There are apps for all different electronic devices such as the internet, your computer, or your cell phone. I’m mostly going to focus on applications for smartphones, because these seem the most popular and familiar to everyone. (Check out this article if you're not 100% sure)

I found an interesting article on applications and what they say about our personalities. A research was conducted where the analysis of data such as app genre, variety, and usage revealed types of personality categories which were then named “Appitypes.”

Whether this research study is valid or not is undecided, but it is interesting that we live in such a technologically advanced world that people believe they can determine our personalities just based upon the applications that we purchase and use. This article didn't list the actual “Appitypes” that it referred to, but it would be interesting to learn what they are.

This article did state, however, that according to the research, games (38%), social networking (35%), and music (29%) are the most downloaded applications; while social networking (31%), games (29%), and utilities (25%) are the most commonly used. I find it really interesting that games and social media are both the most downloaded and most used. Does this mean that people purchase smartphones merely for entertainment rather than the utility of the phone? I know that I am guilty for being addicted to a game on my phone (Candy Crush – don’t judge, it’s fantastic) and for managing my social media platforms on the go, but is that worth the amount I pay to have data on my phone plan?

I’m not saying that playing games or checking out Twitter is a bad thing to do on our phones. This girl is more than guilty of that. But, I do think it’s time we re-evaluate the use of our applications on our phones. Are we bettering ourselves due to all of this new technology or are we bettering our Candy Crush score?

Viral Vids

Viral videos are clips, animations, films, etc. that are spread quickly through online sharing. The majority of these videos are humorous, but really any type of video can go viral. As this article explains, there are three categories of viral videos:

1. Unintentional Viral Videos: Videos that were never intended to go viral, but due to the popular content in the video it is rapidly shared amongst individuals online.

For example: Numa Numa

2. Humorous Viral Videos: If you put a funny video online, it will spread.

For example: Charlie the Unicorn

3. Promotional Viral Videos: Videos designed to go viral with a marketing message to raise brand awareness.

For example: The Force: Volkswagen Commercial

I’m assuming that none of those example videos are new to you, that’s because they are all viral videos. It seems that if you brought up one of these videos in a conversation with someone they would have at least heard of them, if not seen them. So, what exactly is the right formula for creating a viral video? We know the three categories, but not every humorous video on the web goes viral... so what is it?

Well, according to this article there are three essential attributes to create a successful viral videos:

1. Psychological Share Motivation: You’re video needs to have some type of psychological motivation which has three categories within it:

   -Emotion:

   -Identity and Self Expression

   -Information

2. Easy Share-ability: If you have a great video but it’s complicated or confusing to share, nobody is going to share it. This isn't a huge problem due to easy sharing access on sites such as YouTube, but this is still something that needs to be considered.

3. A Data-Driven Strategy: If you’re trying to make your video go viral you need to figure out which sites generate the best sharing, which users are most likely to share, what time of day content is most often shared, etc. It is crucial to back up your video with good data information and a distribution strategy.

So, whether you are creating a video with the intent to go viral or just posting something for your friends there is always a chance that it will go viral. Moral of the story: be aware of what you’re posting on the web. 

The SEO and Social Media Road Map

If you don’t know what SEO is, you’re not alone. Check out this fantastic article and video to understand it a little better.

So, that’s really great. But, how does SEO and social media relate?

These two tools go hand in hand when it comes to online marketing. You can’t really utilize one without the other and be successful with your online footprint. As a company, this is so important to understand. Sometimes companies focus so much on having good social media without even considering their SEO, or vice versa.

To have optimum success, you need to have useful social media content that can be discovered via search engines. Obviously, web users turn to search engines to find needed information these days and if your content isn’t easily found then it won’t be useful to customers.

This article helps us understand that social media and SEO need to have a social media road map in order to be successful.

There are five steps on this road map:

1. Find the audience – understand who they are, what they like, and what they do.

2. Define your objectives – usually driven by sales or wanting to be discovered.

3. Establish a game plan – focus on content and interaction.

4. Create a tactical mix – find out where your audience interacts and shares content.

5. Measure your goals – Goals should line up with objectives and can be direct or indirect.

To summarize, as this article states: Content + Links = Search Engine Success. That seems simple enough, but it is critical to understand how social media and SEO relate so that companies can see optimal results with their online marketing.

Social Media: Classroom Ethics?

With social media become more popular, there are new regulations and ethical questions that need to be considered. Social media can be used in so many positive ways, but along with that there are plenty of negatives that go along with it. The main point I want to hit on today is the ethical topic of social media and productivity.

Because social media is relatively new, companies have to create new policies and regulations to enforce the productivity of its workforce. There have been plenty of studies done that have found a correlation between social media use and decreased productivity in a work setting. It’s obvious that if you are tweeting a funny joke instead of filing paper work you probably aren’t being ethical at your job. This seems like an obvious comment. But, the question that I want to ask is, is using social media in the classroom ethical?

I can’t tell you how many times I have been sitting in a class and not listened to a word the professor said due to me browsing on social media sites. Is it ethical to choose to not pay attention in class? In a work setting this would be considered an unethical use of time, but employees are being paid to do something. As a student, I am not being paid, so where is the line of ethical versus unethical behavior at school?

I honestly don’t have a set in stone opinion on this matter. We’re adults. We’re paying for our education. But, we also need to be respectful. Is respect ethics? I don’t know the answer to all of these questions, but it is something we need to decide for ourselves. After thinking about social media and ethics in the classroom, it made me want to be better at paying attention and not looking at Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter for an hour. It’s really up to us to decided if this is ethical behavior or not.

Click here and here for more ethical social media articles.

Managing Social Media: Aggregators

There are so many different social media platforms out there that it’s hard to keep up with all of them. For me, I go through phases. Sometime I like to stay really updated with Facebook, other days I’m all about Twitter. Trying to manage all of these accounts and stay up-to-date with all of your friends can get frustrating and tiresome, which takes out all the fun of even having these different platforms. Luckily, there are services out there that can put all of these different networking sites into one window; they’re called social media aggregators.

The whole purpose of social media aggregators is to put all of your different platforms into one place for your convenience. There is a great article that talks about how to simplify your social networking through these aggregators. This makes it easy to see what’s going on in the social media world without having to change screens every couple of minutes.

There are so many cheap and useful aggregators out there. This article tells us what they believe to be the top five aggregators on the market today.

1. Flipboard

2. Glossi

3. RebelMouse

4. Hootsuite

5.  Flavors.me

Each of these aggregators has a free basic account available for use. These aggregators would definitely benefit the typical personal social media guru, but these can also be beneficial to a company. Can you imagine trying to manage social media for a large business? This simple tool could help manage huge amounts of customer feedback through its social media platforms. By having everything in one place it would cut out a lot of non-value added time from employees’ schedules.

Overall, I think that this is a fantastic tool for managing social media accounts whether for personal or business use. Life is more enjoyable when it’s simplified, and this is just another tool to simplify our online-selves. 

Social Media: Platforms

We all use social media in some way or another. In today’s world there are so many different social media platforms available to us at the click of a button. This includes anything from YouTube to blogging. There are six main groups that these different platforms seem to fit into: blogging, collaboration, image-sharing, micro-blogging, networking, and video-sharing. This infographic shows some examples of social media platforms and where they fit within these six categories.

Platforms allow users to communicate with others and share content. It is a huge benefit that we, as social media users, take advantage of. This really is a phenomenal tool right at our fingertips. Along with all the benefits of social media, however, there are some disadvantages. This article states a variety of concerns that social media platforms create.

One concern it discussed was negative health consequences. According to a study done in 2010 by the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, extensive social media use correlated with unhealthy behavior. This unhealthy behavior was categorized as drinking, smoking, and sexual activity.

Another concern was isolation. Although these social media platforms are to bring people together, it actually can create mental, psychological, emotional, and physical problems regarding isolation. This is because users are experiencing a decreasing amount of time in face-to-face communication and more time using these platforms to communicate with peers.

The article also touched on some concerns that have yet to be studied. These include decreasing productivity, encouraging poor grammar and spelling, privacy, and cyber bullying. We don’t understand all of the negative consequences of social media use, but we also don’t understand all of the positive consequences either.

All of these social media platforms listed above can be used in a positive or negative way. It’s important to understand the way we can use all of these different platforms for our benefit. As the old saying goes, too much of anything is too much. We need to be careful of how extensively we use these platforms, but remember that they can be used to our advantage as well.