Final Blog..(maybe?): Takeaways from MI621

As a grad student, I frequently ask myself what have I taken away from each of my classes. Had I asked myself these questions in middle school (when I first started using social media), I would have unequivocally responded with something trivial like “good grades” or “stuff.” Similarly, when I registered for this course, I expected to leave the course knowing a couple of fun facts about Facebook and Twitter. Reflecting over this past semester, I did accomplish these expectations; that being said, my takeaways from MI621 encompassed much more than that. Though opinions will vary, I believe that a takeaway is not just a simple fact-set or data, but rather a concept that when learned alters or challenges your prior perspectives. Looking back over the semester, I can say that had two major takeaways from this course: 1) The ways in which social media influences society and vice versa, and 2) how social media redefines business models.

Social Media’s Perpetual Sync with Society

When I first registered for this course, I initially perceived that we would learn about the many ways that social media is affecting current society. What I’ve come to realize throughout this semester is the relationship between social media and society is much like that between two devices that sync with each other; though there have been many times when social media has affected current society, there have also been times when the converse has happened.
Social Media has affected many different aspects of our society. It has made us re-evaluate our current notions of privacy, influenced our current working habits, and revolutionized our perception of what is “current.” Furthermore, social media has created new ways for us to do things from providing commentary (live-tweeting) to job searching (via LinkedIn and personal branding on social media).

That being said, despite influencing many aspects of our society social media is ultimately just a vehicle; the impact from the use of the social media is dependent on the user and can differ from the social media’s intended use. For example, throughout this semester, Twitter has been used 1) to raise awareness of charities, 2) to promote activism, 3) to develop a personal brand, 4) to distribute news in real-time  5) to bully others, and 5) to facilitate gang activities, amongst other things. As social media continues to be integrated in current society, the societal impacts will continue to develop.

Finally through the perpetual sync between social media and society, we have discovered an intersect between the two via communities created through social media. Examples of these communities created within social media include forums, hashtag communities on twitter, and crowdsourcing/crowdfunding ideas.

Social media’s BIG role in SMALL businesses (& large businesses too!)

Another takeaway from this course was the business implications that social media had on large and small businesses. Before this class, I thought that the Facebook and Twitter accounts for businesses were nothing more than obligatory steps to keep up with the times. Throughout this semester, I’ve been able to learn how social media is being used and how it is redefining different aspects of businesses. For example, in large businesses, social media was used primarily as a way to seem more intimate and relatable. By employing the 3-M model, companies are able to interact with their customer base and reinforce customer loyalty. Furthermore, social media has revolutionized different aspects of business such as customer service, and R&D/Market Research. Throughout the semester, I’ve learned about social media’s critical role in smaller businesses. We’ve learned how social media has key in the development of the food truck industry and independent artists and how social media can be used as a cost-effective and more successful substitute for traditional forms of marketing. Finally we learned about the business of social media; through studying the downfall of past social media websites and current actions/events of the 4-5 giants in the technological industry, we gained insight on how social media will develop in the future.

Mini-Takeaways

Though the above topics are my major takeaways, there were other small insights that I took away from the class that I wanted to highlight:

1. Inside Scoop –  Throughout the course I felt I had the inside scoop on the new different aspects of social media and technology, which made me feel pretty cool. Some examples include prezi, pinterest, and levelup. Though I personally dislike the smugness of first adopters, I now understand the motivations of their actions.
2. Snack time = EPIC –  I thoroughly enjoyed snack time throughout the course of the semester and really wished that it was required for all once a week night courses. Other than the free-dinner aspect of it, It really helped get us recharged for the final half of the course, which if applied to some of my other courses would have been absolutely helpful.
3. Diversity of the Class – I really appreciated the diversity of the class. Being an MSA student with the majority of my classes consisting of the same homogeneous group of students, this class was a great relief. I learned a lot from the many different perspectives of the people in the class from insights of facebook from its beginnings to its applications in the “real world”.
4. Blogging – I really enjoyed blogging this semester. As noted in my first blog, I had blogged via Xanga in the past, but
   throughout the course I was able to be exposed to a completely different blogging-style. Because this style was so different from my previous blogs (which were more journal-like) I’m currently at a crossroads on whether I want to continue blogging and if so, how to go about it. Time will only tell!

Ultimately, if I continue blogging or not, I really enjoyed this course and appreciated having the opportunity to delve into this topic more than I would ever have the chance to otherwise.

The Unfriend Phenomenon: Unfriending on Facebook

As social media continues to grow as our personal branding platform, we’re taking a more active role in social media pruning. We are not only actively managing our posts and posts related to us, but also re-evaluating and eliminating our existing connections. This unfriending/unfollowing phenomenon is quite interesting because though much of social media’s power has stemmed from the vast number of connections it has created, this phenomenon is starting to show that the (relative) value of a social media platform is not directly correlated with the number of connections made.

Why do you Unfriend?

Though one can “disconnect” with others on a variety of social media platforms, this blog is primarily going to focus on unfriending.  Christopher Sibona, A Ph.D. student from the University of Colorado Denver Business School conducted a study in which he surveyed more than 1500 Facebook users/twitter followers about the reasons why people unfriend. Based on the responses, he concluded that top 3 reasons for unfriending were:

1. Frequent, unimportant posts: Though it may seem exciting to the poster, posts about mundane things only become more mundane as they aggregate.
2. Polarizing topics like religion and politics: These topics tend to make people uncomfortable and/or irritated, especially if there are continued posts.
3. Inappropriate posts, such as crude or racist comments/photos/wall-posts: Self-Explanatory

In addition to the top 3 presented in the study, I included 3 of my own reasons below:

• Negative Post Overload: Though the occasional complaint is appreciated, a constant stream of negativity makes people uncomfortable and either concerned or irritated.
• Facebook Ad-Friends: If the extent of the “facebook friendship” is limited to the friend advertising to you via unaccepted App/Event requests and one-sided messages to support XYZ, the “ad-friend” is just an unnecessary source of clutter.
• Who are you?:  The Facebook friend that you met that one time years ago…somewhere…but it has been years since you two had any interaction…and he/she doesn’t have any other added networking value…so…yeah.

Have you ever unfriended someone on Facebook? If so have you done it for any of the reasons above or others? Furthermore, are you guilty of any of the reasons above?

Below are other highlights from the study:

• The study showed 57 percent of those surveyed unfriended for online reasons, while 26.9 percent did so for offline behavior.
• The study also found a dominant-subordinate hierarchy in Facebook friend-relationships: Those making friend requests stood a much higher chance of being abruptly unfriended and those doing the unfriending seemed to hold the upper hand in the relationship.

Post Unfriending Awkwardness & the Friend/Follower Distinction

The study also noted that though some reported being deeply hurt at being unfriended, others were more amused than traumatized. Sure enough, post-unfriend/follow interactions have the potential to be very awkward. I unfriended an acquaintance a couple of years ago because he posted frequently about uninteresting things and wasn’t necessarily my favorite person. Within 48 hours I had gotten texts and calls asking why he got unfriended; the explanation that followed was far from simple.

I think much of this awkwardness stems from different perceptions between “followers” and “friend” and how has changed from former views. Before, when the “bigger is better” mentality towards social media was more prevalent, followers and friends were essentially the same; they were connections. As social media pruning continues to grow in popularity, however, people are starting to review “Facebook friends” more like their normal friends. This obviously can present problems when people amassed facebook friends under different premises.

 Do you think there’s a distinction between Facebook friends and other social media connections (like Twitter followers) and has that changed from past perceptions? Have you had any awkward unfriending stories?  What do you think about the Dominant-Subordinate relationships in Facebook relationships presented in the study?

Long Distance-Relationships, Communication, and Social Media

At some point in each of our lives, we have been in a long-distance relationship. Though long-distance relationships are traditionally viewed as romantic relationships, the definition can be extended to family and close friends. Whether it be from going away to college, studying abroad, moving for work, etc, the distance creates challenges in maintaining our relationships. One of these challenges is the increased difficulty in communication. Though technology and social media have helped in effectively meeting this challenge, technology and social media have also had impacts on the nature of the relationships themselves.

The Forms of Communication Over Time

As noted above, technology has directly affected the nature and amount of communication available to people in long distance relationships. The above infographic (though primarily dealing with romantic relationships) shows how this communication has changed over time. Prior to the advent of technology communication within long-distance relationships was primarily through letters and calls. Though these were direct forms of communication, these forms were somewhat limited in nature and restrictive in amount (due to long turnover in letters and costs in long-distance calling). With the advent of technology and the introduction of e-mail, chatting, texting, though the nature of communication was still somewhat limited (to text, with an occasional photo), it allowed people to interact more because the speed of the messaging significantly increased. With the introduction of video chatting (skype, toxbox, and google+), people are able to get as close to a in person interaction as they can. In “Pixelated” by Jeremy Passion, who was highlighted in my last blog, he discusses about the struggle of maintaining a long-term relationship even with all these advances.

Do you think that these forms of communication can fully sustain a long term-relationship or will the parties always feel something lacking?

How Social Media Fits Into This

Social Media has also definitely affected long-distance relationships, but in a slightly different way. While the above forms of technology deal with direct communication, social media provides people in long-distance relationships with both a direct and indirect component of communication. With Facebook and Twitter, you can directly interact with people via messaging, @replies, comments, etc, but you can also stay connected by just looking at their feeds/timelines. This “hyper-connectivity” allows us to “catch up” with any person at any moment in time. Location-based apps like foursquare even allow us to locate where people are at a point in time. Though social media allows us always to stay connected, this also provides a disincentive to actively reach out to each other which can take a toll on our relationships. Looking back as a recent grad, it amazes me how quickly I’ve lost touch with several of my close friends from undergrad; though it is more likely coupled with other factors, I question if some of this result stems from the disincentive created by social media.

Have you ever experienced similar situations? Do you think social media has made us complacent in managing our relationships?

The Value of Other Forms of Communication

With social media making communication much more convenient, one has to question the value of other forms of communication relative to social media. Take birthdays on Facebook for example. On your birthday, you normally get a significant number of wall posts on Facebook, and often times a handful of them are from people in your network that you barely communicate with. Despite the large amount of posts and how great the aggregate amount of posts make you feel, each individual post does not have that much value when compared to a birthday call or a hand-written birthday card. Though technology has posed a serious threat to industries such as the publishing industry, technology and social media has increased value on more traditional forms of communication on the basis that “it takes more effort”.

What do you think about this? Do you think that technology/social media renders other forms of communication obsolete or strengthens their value?

Singer-Songwriters and Social Media

Before the advent of social media, people pursuing careers in music underwent a fairly traditional, but arduous route. Songwriters would compose music, perform in numerous venues, and record demos (from funds out of pocket) in hopes of getting signed to a recording label. Furthermore, if the artist was lucky enough to be signed, the completion of their recording projects and its subsequent commercial success depended on numerous factors (check out this article from NPR for more info about the costs of creating a hit song). Though YouTube has set off the careers of fairly mainstream artists like Justin Beiber and Charice Pempengco, many independent musicians have also been able to leverage YouTube and other social media to establish fairly successful music careers. Though this new route does not often result in Beiber-levels of fame, it allows musicians to pursue their passions and achieve levels of commercial success with reduced costs and maximized control over their creative content.

Step One: Publish Content

One interesting quirk about this new route is that songwriters begin their journey by not only posting their own song compositions but also covers of other artists’ music. Though there are many venues that musicians can post their content (such as Soundcloud and Myspace) the most common website used is YouTube. The covers, which are often adapted to showcase the musician’s individual style and nuances, help create interest for the artist and in turn for their original works. For example, the YouTube channel of Melissa Polinar (@mpolinar), a singer-songwriter from Texas, has a healthy balance of covers and original works. Below is her cover of “I Can’t Make You Love Me” (opb. Bonnie Raitt) and her original song “See the Stars” feat. Matt Cusson and Eddie Halter.

 

Step Two: Grow and Nurture a Loyal Fan Base

Once their content starts to garner interest, the musicians use social media such as Facebook and Twitter not only to promote their content but also to build connections and interact with their fan base. For example, through social media musicians can get feedback about which original songs people liked the most and what covers people would like to hear. Jeremy “Passion” Manongdo (@jeremypassion), a singer-songwriter from San Francisco, CA did exactly that; In early 2011, Jeremy Passion asked his followers on Facebook and Twitter for song requests and took the responses he received and created the first “The TwitBook Medley,” seen below. As to date, there has been 3 more installments of the “TwitBook Medleys”

In addition, through social media musicians can network with their international fan base to increase opportunities to perform in different venues and gain revenues in the process. Ultimately, through effective management of the musician’s social media’s presence, the artist develops a loyal fan base that will actively support his or her future endeavors.

Step Three: Crowdfund Your Initiatives

Once a musician establishes a loyal fan base and enough original music to create an LP or EP, he or she can utilize crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter to raise capital for required album recording, production and distribution costs.  Since fans have considerable interest in the project due to the album consisting  of previously posted original songs, they are more willing to support the musician’s project financially. Furthermore, crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter offer rewards (such as digital/physical copies of albums) for pledges; this structure creates an added incentive to fans because they can essentially “pre-pay” for the album via pledging. Many artists, including the two mentioned above have successfully used Kickstarter to fund the creation of their albums.

In addition to funding recording, musicians can leverage their fan base to support other initiatives that they are passionate about. For example, AJ Rafael (@AJRAFAEL), a singer-songwriter from California, initiated an annual charity concert called “Music Speaks,” which “aims to spread awareness about Autism, and encourage action that would improve the conditions of the lives and families that it affects.” The concert benefits the charity Autism Speaks, a charity dedicated to funding global biomedical research into the causes, prevention, treatments, and cure for autism, and has ran every year since its inception in 2009.

As noted above, with the use of social media, independent musicians are able to share their music and gain commercial success with greater ease.

Have you had any experiences discovering/interacting with/supporting independent musicians through social media? Do you think this will be a growing trend for musicians in the future? What actions do you think record labels should take in regards to covers on YouTube?

How Social Media Makes us all Celebrities

In Mike Schneider’s (@schneidermike) presentation about SoLoMoCo during last class session, he stated several times that with the advent of social media “brands are acting more like people and people are acting more like brands.” Similarly, this methodology can also be applied to celebrities. With social media, celebrities are acting (or expected to act) more like normal people, and in turn we are acting and becoming more like celebrities. While social media provides a platform to exert influence and promote our ideas like celebrities, social media has also made it difficult for us to separate the public and private portions of our lives; therefore like celebrities, social media forces us to actively manage our privacy in order to keep this separation.

Our own Personal Paparazzi:

Celebrities often have a slew of photographers following them around everywhere documenting their every action that they do in the public to the public. The publicizing of all of these minor details blurs the lines between our public and personal personas, which could lead to negative repercussions. For example, a teen celebrity popular with younger kids may have their reputation come under fire as they engage in more adult activities as they come of age; with paparazzi, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain this divide.With social media, we each have our own personal paparazzi. Though it is not as definable as a crowd of strangers with cameras, each one of our family, friends or acquaintances that have a smartphone or easy access to social media makes up our personal paparazzi; everywhere we go, we are checked in places and tagged in posts and pictures. Though we can mitigate this by watching what we post and asking to be de-tagged, we ultimately have limited control over what is posted about us. Furthermore, once a post enters the realm of social media, it can easily be saved and made permanent. Though it is not common for our actions in our personal lives to significantly impact our professional lives, there are aspects of our personal lives that we would rather not share with our professional network, let alone the public.

The Tabloid Effect

Similarly, since all of celebrities statements are publicized regardless of the circumstances, comments by celebrities are often taken out of context and misconstrued. This can be illustrated from the covers of tabloids; comments taken out of context are often placed as a provocative headline, and followed by a creative story misinterpreting the comment. These misinterpretations can affect the public perceptions of the celebrity. As users of social media, we are also vulnerable to these risks and consequences; a simple inside joke between friends or a complaint on social media are perfect examples on this. Though these comments seem innocuous in context, other people in our network may misconstrue these comments for much worse and change their perception of us. Furthermore, because of our “paparazzi,” we can be implicated for comments that we did not actively post on social media;  though our family, friends and acquaintances rarely post on social media with ill intent, it is easy for them to not realize the implications a post could have on people other than themselves

Followers, Fans, and Facebook (& other social media) Stalkers

One reason that social media is making us more like pseudo-celebrities is that we can exert influence by leveraging the power of disseminating information to numerous people in real-time via social media to generate interest from others. That being said, social media also can garner us unwanted attention, much like celebrities. Social media makes it easy and fairly convenient to gather personal information about a person without their knowledge. For example, with the advent of Facebook timeline,someone can easily go to a period in our lives and learn all these personal details about us. Because it is less likely that we actively managed our social media presence in the past, these details that we did not want to share with the public are more likely to come out. And like politicians and other public figures, our past if brought up could significantly impact our future.

Is there anything that we can do to mitigate these factors or should we just accept this minimized level of privacy as inevitable?

Dangers of Social Media: Bullying 2.0

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With kids starting to use social media at younger ages every year it’s becoming increasingly important to monitor how they use it. After the small discussion about social media and bullying in our last class, I was curious to see how bullying has changed as the social media landscape evolved throughout the years. When I first started using social media, I vividly remembered people bullying others using AIM and Xanga. Much has changed since then, but bullying and the lasting effects associated with it have remained consistent. If anything, current social media has made cyberbullying even harder to detect and prevent.

New Level of Anonymity:

Initial cyberbullying (such as anonymous hurtful messages) was at least somewhat direct. With current social media, bullyers are able to have an additional layer of anonymity with the same if not increased impact. The introduction of social media websites that have re-tweeting/re-blogging features and. loose controls over multiple accounts such as Twitter and Tumblr is a perfect example of this. It’s easy for a kid to start a rumor or say some disparaging comments about another person in one or two anonymous accounts and and have it spread in a matter of minutes via re-tweets and/or re-blogs. And though re-tweets and re-blogs are somewhat traceable, bullying facilitated through hashtags are even more difficult to track.

Example of an attempt at cyberbullying on Formspring.me

In addition to twitter and tumblr,  Formspring.me, a social media website that invites people to anonymously  ask and respond to questions, is essentially a breeding ground for bullying. Formspring’s target market basically consists of self-involved teenagers and the anonymity provided by the website provides added incentive to cyberbully others.

Growing up Desensitized:

With social media providing people to bully indirectly, bullies are exhibiting less restraint than they would have had they bullied in person. Furthermore,  with internet trolling and flaming being commonplace throughout the internet,  impressionable kids growing up in this environment are being taught that it’s acceptable to say things to someone online that they could could never utter in person. Due to this, kids and teens could be so obsessed with the power of being able to say whatever they want that they don’t realize the gravity of the content of their words  and the damage it could do to others.

Asymmetry in knowledge of Social Media:

Though it is a generalization to say that teachers and parents are laggards when it comes to social media, many of them are inept relative to the kids and teens that use social media on a daily basis.  Because of this, many teachers and parents might not be able to prevent or even detect bullying before lasting effects are made.  If kids get beat up or people spread rumors at school, that can be easily detected and potentially prevented before getting out of hand. Conversely, cyberbullying via social media cannot be detected that easily and with current social media bringing information to people faster than ever, bullying can easily lose control and lead to grim consequences.

Have you ever been or knew someone who was a  victim of cyberbullying? What should be done to help combat these new forms of bullying? Should there be an enforced age limit for social media use?  And to what extent should the social media websites be responsible for the misconduct that occur on their sites, if at all?

From Middle School to Grad School: Views on Social Media

For a significant portion of my life, I have used some form of social media. When I think about my views on social media from my first involvement in middle school to today, I am surprised to see how similar they are. Much has changed since middle school (both personally and social media wise), but the fundamental reasons why I use social media has not; if anything, they’re more refined.

The Beginning: Middle School

A Community of Friends:

I first started using social media in middle school to be able to connect with my friends. Being a shy awkward kid and having somewhat overprotective parents, I didn’t have an abundance of friends and had little time to spend with the few I had. Fortunately, social media became a key tool in changing that. Through numerous eProps, Friendster messages and Myspace profile comments, I was able to build and develop those “tried and true” friendships that many young teens needed to survive. As I established these connections, I was able to create a community of friends that slowly grew over time.

A Platform for Expression:

Exhibit A: Silly picture from early HS

I was also drawn to the content within social media. It was exhilarating to have complete control over all the content that I would post and even more exciting that people outside of my immediate circle would be able to see it. Once realizing that social media was a wonderful platform for expression, I took full advantage of it. If anything, I most likely overshared; I taught myself HTML and Photoshop (all now forgotten) to create customized pages for my Xanga and Myspace, wrote blogs about almost every aspect of my angst-filled teenage life, and posted a lot of silly pictures.

Almost 10 Years Later: Grad School

A Conglomerate of Communities:

What first began as a supplement to my social life, social media would grow to have an integral role in almost all of my personal relationships. Furthermore, the semi-defined community of friends that I created through social media has greatly evolved since middle school; It has grown into a conglomerate of abstract groups based on all of my professional and personal interests. With a simple hashtag on Twitter for example, I can connect with numerous other people around the world studying for the CPA or obsessing over the new episode of a bad reality TV show. Though I realize that there is great power in being interconnected with so many people in real-time, I am still not sure on how to take advantage of this power to further my future interests.

Focusing the Expression into an Online Identity:

Though social media has undergone many changes over the years, I still consider it an amazing platform for expression. With social media’s exponential growth, any post of content can link me with hundreds of people around the world instantaneously. That being said, social media’s growth has also made the boundaries between personal and professional information increasingly difficult to maintain . Though the existence of social networks such as LinkedIn and the privacy settings for Facebook and Twitter may make it seem like our personal and professional lives can be kept separate online, I know that everything that I post on social media will become part of my online identity. Since I will soon enter the workforce, I have started to take steps in consciously developing an online identity that can complement my future personal and professional goals. However, the task of creating a focused consistent identity is definitely no small feat. I hope that after taking MI621: Social Media for Managers (from which this blog is born), I’ll be able to actively maintain my online identity and fully utilize the power of social media to do so.

First Test Post

Testing to see if everything is working. More to come soon!