I also chose twitter for my Social Media project and although I was not thrilled to be involved with twitter because I felt like it was for people my parents age, I learned a lot from the experience. My impressions of twitter when I first learned about it were that it was pretty silly, for older people to connect, and kind of creepy, since everyone was supposed to know what you are doing at that moment. The other problem was I heard all about it from my father and aunt who are in their late 40's. I was not interested in joining so they could know my everyday whereabouts. Once I was "forced" to try it through this project, I had an open mind going into it, some of my friends were into tweeting but it was not an everyday thing.
It was somewhat of a hassle trying to remember to update my twitter page and it was not all that exciting in my opinion to talk about what I was doing at the moment. I could only tweet from a computer and when I am on the computer I am either at work, in class or doing homework. Boring! Eventually, I realized I could tweet and post links to things I was interested in and this was much more effective and interesting. I also don't prefer the 140 character limit. I understand the reasoning behind it, "short, sweet and tweet!" but I don't like it, it could be slightly longer. I noticed that just based on my profile (without putting a picture up even) I had weird, creepy guys start following me right away. I'm not sure why or how they found me but I didn't like it at all. I didn't feel safe.
Overall, I am still not a very big fan of twitter, it does not interest me to go out and read other individual tweets, I would much rather be on facebook which is more interactive. I think that it is somewhat beneficial for businesses so they can see what people are saying about their brand, but I personally find it of no use.

Caitie and Becca's Twitter Experience

Twitter has become the latest craze over the last year, with all of the twitter followers writing under 140 characters per post. We found that using twitter was sort of fun because we had to come up with new creative answers to the ever famous question "What are you doing?". The site has a great idea to keep it simple but maybe a little too simple.

What we learned
We learned that Twitter was a much more popular site than we ever thought. When the little boy was supposedly in the balloon flying around in Fort Collins, Caitie looked up what people were saying about it on Twitter and over 1000 people had said something about that breaking news within 30 seconds!  We never realized that so many people would be talking about breaking news.

Twitter is also a very mobile website. We never realized that we could get texts on our phone about what other people were saying and that we could also update our twitter from our phones. Twitter also has iphone applications as well as a blackberry application.

We also learned that many businesses are on Twitter. Many of these businesses are figuring out that their readers can read many businesses updates on their Twitter page instead of having to go on 10 different business websites. Many businesses have realized that many people are reading their Twitter updates and are giving their readers great deals on their products and services. 

What we liked

We like that there are many people on Twitter as well as the fact that we were able to update our twitter right from our phones.

What we didn't like

We didn't like that we had to figure out ways to keep our posts under 140 characters. We also really didn't like that the website was a little too simple.

Facebook Lessons Learned

At the beginning of the semester Regina and I knew how to sign on to Facebook, change our status, and a few other simple things. Over the course of the project we have learned to create a group, create events, and utilize other Facebook tools to bring people together. I believe that there is still a lot for both of us to learn about Facebook and how it can be used. More directly related to our course, I believe that the business has only begun to scratch the surface of marketing on Facebook.

Over the course of the coming years I think that Facebook will be an important part of our culture. Business will have to take care when they market on Facebook. If they go after this media platform too vigorously, they may push users to a different less cluttered platform. In the end I think that if businesses are smart they can use Facebook for many different applications to improve their position in the market.

Emily and Emily's SL

Second Life is a very interesting concept. We went into it thinking it was some sort of game that was absolutely free, yet we were wrong. It turns out Second Life is a living economy within a virtual world. To get anywhere in SL you must first purchase currency, called Linden dollars. The Linden dollars can be used to exchange for any number of things from virtual hot tubs for a SL home, to an evening gown to wear to the disco. The whole idea of Second Life isn’t that of a game, but literally to have an alternate existence in a virtual world.

If you are not familiar with it, Second Life is difficult to start and has a rather large learning curve. You have to learn the basics of walking, flying, gesturing and communicating before you can effectively do anything. You are started in a virtual land surrounded with signs offering tidbits and information on the basics of SL. After you learn these basics, you can feel more comfortable entering a different area with more people present. Here you are able to enter in to different events ranging from an invisible band concert to the opening of a theme park. It is also possible to buy a home or even set up a business.

In second life, there are an infinite number of ways to alter your appearance. You can change your body shape, hair style, and face structure, not to mention the millions of different apparel options available. The issue once again is that to get any sort of legitimate apparel, you have to have access to Linden dollars, so you better pull out your Visa. The outfits that appear on the spring runway are in the range of L$10,000 which is around $39 dollars.

Communication comes mostly in the form of chatting with people in close proximity to you. The catch is that since Second Life is available to anyone anywhere, there is no guarantee they will be chatting to you in English. We had lots of trouble with this and couldn’t ever find anyone that we could have an actual conversation with because they were all communicating in another language.

While second life was interesting, we do not personally feel the urge to continue using it. It all depends on your perspective of how much of your actual money is the virtual goods and services are worth. It is amazing to see that people actually construct buildings, apparel, and countless other items, and are able to turn their Linden dollars into actual income. The whole idea of this virtual world was astonishing to us, and we are glad to have a better understanding of it, but do not plan on visiting Second Life on a regular basis.

Randi Kinn & Jordan Ervin's Blog

Well, Jordan and I decided to do a blog for our social media project. Neither one of us had ever created or written a blog before this project.
We chose to do our blog on something that everyone in this class could relate to, Dwire Hall.
Our blog consisted of a combination of pictures and written words. We went all around Dwire Hall taking pictures and mental notes on the various aspects of the building.
After sifting the numerous pictures and telling various stories of Dwire Hall, we narrowed things down to 5 blogs entries.
Each of one our entries has one, if not more, pictures accompanied with little snippets of information, along with our take on the given situation.
We encouraged the entire class, along with our friends and families to check out our blog and leave their own personal comments.

WHAT WE LIKED
We really liked being able to upload the pictures and really create the scene we were talking about for everyone. Instead of just trying to tell people what we were talking about we could actually show them.

WHAT WE DIDN'T LIKE
There really wasn't many options for customization. We didn't really like our setup options. But, since we are using blogger for free....there's really no room for us to complain.

We hope to keep this blog alive and running beyond the duration of the class.
In case you haven't checked it out yet here's the link below!

http://www.coloradouccsdwirehall.blogspot.com/

Twitter: leah_N_sarah

The twitter-craze going on right now is hard to miss. Although we both are social networking fanatics, we never truly jumped on the twitter bandwagon until now. Since we both have seen that Facebook is an effective internet communication channel, we thought it would be beneficial to explore the tweet world. Our primary assumption was that it was similar to Facebook and that the learning curve would be simple. However, after opening our account we soon discovered its differences.

What We Liked
Overall, the account was pretty straightforward in establishing a profile. The domain name, the design/settings, and the "what's happening" feed were easy to understand. To create a list of followers (which we acquired a total of 33) we found that creativity and active participation was a must. We also found that once we began to update our statuses on a regular basis, the tweets began to unfold in a story-like manner. That is, we created our own style. For every message we found something humorous or unique and included an e-commerce website. We also liked the ability to find others by searching under keywords. Although a little creepy, a handful of our followers found us in this manner (i.e., rock-climbing, health, and gear).

What We Didn't Like
Initially, it was difficult to gain followers. Although we could easily follow others at the click of a mouse, we found that they weren't always reciprocating the action. It was also difficult to find specific people. Twitter prompts you to search through your email account, but if you don't have gmail, aol, or yahoo you cannot use this method. Finding your friends seemed very tricky. In Facebook, it will pull up users that semi-resemble who you are searching for. With twitter, this isn't the case. You had to know their exact user-name and the system is case-sensitive. The best way to find friends is by looking through your existing followers friends list.
Another downside is not knowing who the user is unless you extensively go through their profile. For example, Sarah was following one of her friends but realized later that we had been blocked. Sarah then went onto facebook and addressed the issue, and he was bewildered by the fact. He explained the reason for blocking us: there are some "scandolous" account users on twitter and he thought we were one of them.
We also didn't appreciate the spamming. Lately, we have been receiving a large amount of "direct-messages" with advertising website urls. In clicking one, we were caught up in the mix and our account was "hacked" into. We wound up having to change our password. Also in regard to direct-messaging, twitter doesn't post alerts for new notes. You have to actively check it. Facebook on the other hand, gives you alerts via email.

Conclusion
Although businesses/everyday-Joe's are currently obsessed with the little birdie communication tool, we just aren't. Throughout the project, we constantly made comparisons to Facebook. Facebook wins hands-down in our book. It unlikely that we will keep our account, let alone set up individual accounts. It was fun to collaborate together, but the cons far outweighed the benefits. And what the heck is up with the @ sign?! Just plain silliness.

Social Media Project summary

Twitter was a very interesting experience. Before this we have never logged in or tried twitter before. After using twitter a few times we were able to notice the effectiveness that it has as well as some of the limitations. We agreed that it was a very effective communication tool, and completely simple to use. Having the ability to notify your followers of any particular information that you would like your audience to know. This helps to save time rather than contacting each individual separately, and if you choose to only want to contact certain individual(s) then you have that option as well by sending direct messages. The service also allows you to block anyone that you don not want to know or follow your tweats. Although it is useful, most social media site such as facebook, and myspace has same or similar ability. Thus we did not quite understand what are the key competencies of this website, and we were sure that we are not the only ones. One competency that we found out later on though is that it is just like text messaging on mobile phone, and considering how much people text now days to communicate, it does make sense that this site got popular.

The size of the information that one is able to post is rather small (only 140 characters) in some situation for both the poster and the reader. Yet, it is making it simple, quick, and convenient to post a twit. Also, it is very easy to read a sentence rather than a paragraph. Twitter allows the user to use it as a mobile service instead of a stationary communication tool. We did research as to why the question “What are you doing?” is the standard inquiry. The answer was simple and made complete sense. It helps the average and individual who wants to post a response answer this effortlessly and helps users initiate a conversation. “Because you are always doing something, even if it is incredibly mundane.”

After a little research about twitter we were able to find out their goals and a few ideas, and it sounds like they have a bigger picture in mind than what they have already created. Wanting to become a global communication tool using any device that is available to the user at any particular time. Everyday there are many suggestions as to what twitter should do to improve but there can only be certain changes and improvements that will and can be made at certain times. Twitter is trying to maintain the original concept that everything works together rather than a single touchpoint. One of their main goals is to adjust how the UI works.

Some of the limitations for twitter would be the number of characters that are allowed per posting. Only allowing so much information to be transmitted can be frustrating if you have to explain a little more with out having the message misunderstood. Users are limited to the amount of posting they are able to make in a particular time frame. we think one statement said that it was like 70 in an hour. We were not able to experience this and I would be extremely surprised if someone actually complained about that. Another would be being able to follow a conversation (conversation threading). we did experience this through our twittering experience that we are conduction through our group project. We have like 50 followers and it is hard to see if they are talking to you and you have to search for the last thing that they posted. We are able to send direct messages but then there might be certain information that you would still like others to see, especially if it is a frequently asked question. The main posting would possibly help others be enlightened of what they might inquire or might inquire in the future. Uncertainty or just not knowing can be dangerous. We were able to keep a conversation thread with Neil and John’s group only because they were online the same time as we were (This is mainly because we are using PC to use twitter though. As mobile twitter user increases, this will no longer be a limitation). One of the last limitations that we noticed was that we were only able to post texts and links, and not photos or videos. This might be something that they could consider modifying.

Brock and Zach’s Twitter Journey

We both decided on Twitter immediately because we really had no idea why it was becoming so popular, what it even was, or how to use it. We were actually a little excited to be able to gain followers and our main goal going into this was really to see what the fuss was all about regarding Twitter. Because we are quite familiar with the social media landscape, like Facebook and MySpace, we wanted to see if Twitter maybe tied in to make these experiences better or enhance it in any way. Below are our likes and dislikes.

What we liked
We did enjoy following certain celebrities like Shaq or Simon Cowell because it’s kind of cool to see what these guys actually do during a day. And this is why it is a great outlet for communication with other people who may want an updates on your life and to connect with someone who may be overseas or in another state. Twitter was also quite straightforward which we really liked because it was easy to post and follow someone else’s tweets. Another thing that we enjoyed was the ability to tweet from our phones with the appropriate application, and these can be found on nearly every Smartphone now.

What we didn’t like
We hate to admit it, but our list of gripes was much longer than our list of benefits. The one that comes straight to the top of the list is its redundancy. Twitter is so straightforward it’s both a blessing and a curse. We loved that it was so easy use but there are no alternative activities besides tweeting. This gets extremely repetitive and honestly quite boring after a while.

Also, does anyone actually think Twitter is that fun if you’re not a celebrity? We found that after a while people were nice but not very interested in what we were doing. Shaq is really the only person who can tweet about eating a hotdog and actually have people interested. I believe that if you don’t have a tight knit group of followers, that interest starts to hit the decline after a while. It’s to the point where your ability to personalize your profile on Twitter is so limited that you might as well be texting.

Lastly, it just seemed like Twitter was being used for promoting someone else’s product or service, not just connecting and making your tweets meaningful. We found this to be a huge downfall because it takes away the genuine aspect of social media. If you know that most people are on there just to sell you something, you start to be leery of almost everything and the amount of spam is just insane when it comes to this promotions. If this is not controlled, people may start remembering all of the reasons they hate junk mail and close their account.

Final verdict

Overall, our experience was pretty good. We thought that if used properly, Twitter can be an incredible source for communication. It can enable people to connect like never before. Like a spouse overseas in Iraq or a grandmother in another state who wants updates on how her family is doing. If Twitter can maybe give more options to personalize your account, enhance other social media sites, and avoid spam, it could grow even larger than it already has.

YouTube Get yourself noticed visually

On our marry way of trying to complete our social media project we, Richard Moore and Jacob Rice, thought about using YouTube. that was the easy part of our project. Next was how can we make a topic from class funny. The seven C's... thoughts of pirate gig went through our heads, both agreed to, no! How about the creation of websites in a YouTube video, after waking up from the thought of doing a mono-tone narrative of how to videos we sleepily said (yawn) no! How about Opt-in and Opt-out, the ideas of a flooded email box came to mind, Jacob mentioned if a person came out pestering you of great deals only offered for you. That was brilliant! The filming of the video only took two hours, editing around three, and the ratings are still coming and views keep going up. The video had very little views just from YouTube, we added a link to our facebooks to increase the word of mouth advertising and that was the key to the success of the video. Our recommendation to everyone that wants to start a YouTube video is to pair up with Facebook or Myspace to increase the viewing audience.

Please feel free to view our video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NmcQRVH8RE

Neil and Jon Twitter Experience

From our experience with Twitter, we have come to the conclusion that it seems to be more meaningless than actually providing any value. The advantage of Twitter is how well you can waste your time by getting involved with a conversation that most often than not is just meaningless. Twitter can be beneficial because you can get information quickly, but email and instant messaging can provide the same features. From a marketing standpoint, you can have all the followers on Twitter, but it does not convert into any actual profit benefit. What happens on Twitter is everyone else is advertising their products, so when you try to advertise your products no one cares because most of everything is just spam. Other disadvantages to Twitter are that it limits your messages. Most of the direct messages that we have received were spam. They also use Twitter on the news which just waists airtime and does not add any value to the news broadcast. Also, everyone else that we have asked also considers Twitter to be silly and meaningless. It seems that the people who most benefit from Twitter are those looking for gratification and attention (a.k.a. celebrities).

The Use of Twitter

Matt and I wanted to create a twitter account to see what all the excitement was about. You hear about twitter all over the place, whether it be on ESPN about athletes tweets, or on the local news. It seemed like everyone was on twitter and we wanted to see what we were missing. We had both used some social media sites and knew about them. The main one we each use is Facebook, we each have an account and check it around once a day.
We started our twitter account and actually ran into some issues at the very beginning. We had trouble figuring out how to follow people for a short time. Once we got past that, we realized we had no idea who we wanted to follow. We needed to think of someone we had enough interest in to hear what they had to say at all times of day, there is a real possibility of finding someone who says whatever is on their mind, and lets face it, no one needs to know that much about one person. We decided we would follow newscasters and of course professor Gruen.


There were a couple useful things with Twitter, but overall we did not see the point. we liked the fact that professor Gruen could put up announcements about class and we would be able to see them quickly. the problem with this fact is that he could send out an email and we would see it just as quickly. The most beneficial use of Twitter is the news part, it allows newscasters to reach a large audience quickly without having to go on the air. There is a lot of potential in Twitter for sharing important information quickly. They could use some changes, there is a large use of useless tweets, and we do not see this ending anytime soon. If you choose who you will follow wisely, you can have an enjoyable Twitter experience. Overall, we decided Twitter isnt right for our needs, it is essentially a Facebook status update withour photos or extra information about the person who posted it. Technology is so fast at sharing news today, that there are many other outlets than Twitter to get the information you need.

Twitter

When Twitter first came on the scene, I said that I would never use it. I had an unnatural scorn for it, as I associated it only with following what celebrities were doing. I could care less what Ellen is doing today. Then I started seeing businesses using Twitter. I'm still not convinced that it's an effective marketing tool.

I suppose that a large part of it hinges on what age your target demographic falls into. It seems like a large majority of people over the age of 45 don't even really know what Twitter is. Of those, some of those individuals may use Facebook but will probably never use Twitter. I can safely say that my parents will NEVER use Facebook or Twitter. I'd be willing to wager $1 million on it.

I think that one of Twitter's major drawbacks is the 140 character limit. "Tweeting" was fairly straight forward but I found other things to be counter-intuitive. I'm a fairly computer literate person and I still don't know if I ever figured out how to send a direct message to someone. Did you ever get that message Brock?

Is second life the life for you?

Still asking if second life is for you? Ask your self what are you into in first life? It a Friday night and you and your friends are going to have some fun what would you do? What ever that one thing was why would you not be able to do that in second life with your friends from the other side of the world. If your thing is going to the club give it a “shot” is second life or take that shot in second life. In second life things can be just as real and just a much fun As they are in first life. In second life you never have to be concerned about getting hurt or getting busted. Maybe the club and party seen are not for you and you enjoy shop then second life is the place for you. You can be at any mall with in seconds and looking through goods that are custom made for you. Still not your thing why should you have to get out of bed and drive to class every day. No need just join one of the major universities that have a campus online. Online school is already around I know, but with standard online school how do you have lecture or communicate with other people ?email?. Why not sit in class and see the professor lecture, be able to ask a question with you real voice have a debate. Groups project cake just get everyone to meet and share ideas back and forth like we do every week. As you can see the possibilities are endless.

Build it bigger and better in second life. Second life is much more than a social media networking site. As we looked at last time second life allows large amounts of customization to your avatar, but it also allows you to customize the world around you as well. With in the game you are a owner of space and it is a real world market. With in the game you make and spend Linden dollars and for the big players they will spend real money to buy property and build highly custom building. The premiss of building is second life is very simple, but form there it can become complexed. You start with six set shapes and from there you take these shapes and change them by pulling sides in and out. It is much like a stack and play system, but things must be well balanced and placed or they will come crashing down. Many of the major companies or people who have money to spend will out source the building and design to firms with in second life. These firms build buildings that look like buildings in first life and things we only wish we could build. Still not sure second life is for you? Log on and check it out for your self!

Twitter Experience

The original plan for me using Twitter was to get my friends into it to.  I failed epically.  I don't know if it is because of the age group of my friends (24-28), but they thought Twitter was a silly idea and none of them would actually create an account.  The usual response was "Why would I make use Twitter when FaceBook can do that", and I also got "Why would I ever want to tweet?". The good news is that some students from class wanted to follow my Twitter, and I've seen some interesting tweets.  My favorite of which was a can of bacon. 

Sadly I did end up following Brittney Spears, I know, but I wanted to see what on earth celebrities Tweet about.  Brittney Spears mainly tweeted about her shows and posted links to some pictures.  William Shatner used his Twitter to say when he was making appearances and to promote things like his website and online store.  These were really generic tweets.  I followed Sidney Crosby the hockey star, and he did a better job of making his tweets more personal.  The surprising thing is that Brittney Spears, Alex Ovechkin, and Tom Gruen's Twitters were hacked during the time period of the social media assignment.

Here are some funny celebrity Tweets  I found:

Jessica Simpson - I just woke up from a dream where I was told that if I ate a meatball sub I'd have to pee all day.  Why would I dream that? I had to pee.

Dane Cook - How should one refer to their great grandfather if he was actually a huge asshole?

Taylor Swift - Just cried after seeing the wal mart commercial where the mom drops her daughter off at college.

Using Twitter was okay but I don't think I'm going to keep using it.  I thought I might catch on to it but I found it was just something I did when I was bored.  When I was sick and stuck inside for a few weeks it was cool to do status updates but I don't think anyone really cared.  I recommended in the marketing plan for my internship recently that they create a Twitter so they can post announcements, articles, stories, and so on.  Its part of a plan to build an online community and reach younger age groups with MS.  I believe Twitter can be effective in this sense.  I found it limiting that you can only type so many characters, and you can only post links to videos and other content.  Being able to personalize the layout of the Twitter is a little limiting, and I have found it Twitter to be limiting in that some people won't use it because they think its childish, even though people 35-49 are the largest age group of users.

Blogging about Blogging

I'm finding it hard to take the idea of writing a blog entry about my blog seriously. Does anyone else get the Esheresque feeling from this? I can't continue without sharing the best webcomic about the layers here, though if you are easily offended by language, don't visit the webcomic: penny arcade ad infinitum

Now that we've all recovered from the humor in using one outlet for social media to describe our experiences with another form of social media, lets talk about my awesome blog.

I first got my blog this summer but had temporarily let it die since I had to move unexpectedly and was really busy with school. I have a store on etsy.com where I sell my crafts and patterns to make some of my very original projects. A few other crafters that I really admire who sell their work on etsy all have blogs. It seemed right that I should have one too for my customers and followers to enjoy.

My blog isn't as simple as just having a blog. Words only get you so far when trying to convince people to place custom orders from you or purchase your other items. You need pictures too. I got a flickr account to manage the photographs for my blog since wordpress has a limit to the picture and video storage on their servers. I also have been working to encorporate my youtube account with my blog and flickr account. So far I have loaded one of my more creative youtube videos on the sidebar of my blog through the vodpod widget. I really enjoy the content creation but can't stand the effort it takes to upload the content to the different websites and get it all talking together to create one cohesive blog. I'm currently looking at setting up a blog at blog.thehairballz.com so that I don't have to deal with wordpress directly and have a bit more control over my blog. Blog.thehairballz.com would be a subdomain of the website I built for the company and host through dreamhost.

I've started to publicize and share my content by making my contacts on facebook and etsy aware of my blog, flickr account, and youtube account. I have also recently found that many of my friends working on novels for nanowrimo are also very interested in my crafts.

This topic is relevant to the course because it is marketing for my own online store. So far I've made about a hundred bucks without much trying. I hope that after graduation I will have more time to build my craft company and to sell more of my original patterns. Selling patterns is great, you make the nice PDF one time and then email it to anyone who clicks purchase. It's very easy.

If any of you are interested in all aspects of crafting and some really bizarre projects, be sure to follow me. You'll find me at thehairballz.wordpress.com.

Andre and Carre's Twitter Experience

Advantages of Twitter
Today, socially connected people are frequently using the status updates on social media networks such as MySpace or Facebook to communicate. With these social networks and blogging becoming more popular, it was probably only a matter of time before someone came up with a hybrid of both. Thus, microblogging was born with Twitter being the most popular and used service. Twitter is a platform for friends, family, or fellow students to communicate through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one of the simplest questions: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? It’s easy to use and navigate through and above all: it’s free! (Scott, 243)

That said people generally use Twitter to keep other people (those that have chosen to become “followers” or subscribe to another’s tweets) updated on where they are and what they are doing. Gaining a following can also benefit a business as they might be able to gain insights into their target markets or get feedback on their ideas. Thanks to the ubiquity of Twitter via mobile devices, people are able to let the world know what they are doing anywhere, anytime. Twitter users can choose who they follow e.g. family members, friends, celebrities or politicians. People use Twitter to post information that is much more concise than a blog and more casual than an email (Scott, 243).

Every marketer or advertiser should be aware of Twitter these days. More importantly, they should be able to understand how people use this social network and microblog in order to apply it as an advertising tool. The most important aspect – from an advertising perspective – is that you do not use Twitter simply as a channel to talk up your brand, products, or services. To successfully channel its power as an advertising tool, it is important to also listen. This will allow marketers to understand what their consumers need. By applying that need to the brand they can get people interested in their newsfeeds as well and therefore market something on a rather subliminal level to them (Scott, 244)

Twitter’s Limitations

Despite those advantages, Twitter still has many drawbacks including the limited number of characters allowed in a post, the credibility of the posts, privacy concerns, and spam. Twitter limits the size of posts to 140 characters, forcing participants to be much more concise in relaying their thoughts. We found that if we had more to say, we would need to post a link. That is what many other users of Twitter do as well. Frequently, tweets are linked to YouTube, Digg, blogs, or newsfeeds so that followers can click to get the full story. This doesn’t make Twitter a “hub”, but rather an unnecessary stop along the way to getting credible information.

Credibility is another issue on this SNS. As guest speaker Victoria Selfridge pointed out, many who re-tweet do not check the credibility of the original story and very quickly, inaccuracies can spread.

Many on Twitter use pseudonyms in order to protect their privacy because Twitter is easily searchable using search.twitter.com. This site allows you to search for keywords and view the tweets of all who have mentioned them.

Finally, as many of us in the class had found out, spam is a problem on Twitter. Spammers often target new members of the site because they are the most likely to accept a follow request from those they don’t necessarily know. According to mashable.com, Twitter is in danger of following MySpace, “... where fake accounts are abundant and the majority of friend requests are from small businesses pitching a product or scammers trying to sell their fool’s gold” (Moon, 2009).



Moon, Bernard. “Twitter Spam: Three Ways Spammers are Filling Twitter with Junk”. 15th July 2009. Mashable: The Social Media Guide. http://mashable.com/2009/06/15/twitter-scams/#

Scott, David Meerman. The New Rules of Marketing and PR. John Wiley and Sons. New Jersey, 2009.

Amandaandrachel on Twitter

Twitter is used by many as a way to broadcast their ideals and connect with friends in a virtual world. It is also used by small and large companies alike to promote customer relations, create a bond with their ideal markets, and push their marketing agendas. Since Rachel and I both have never encountered the social media network, we decided to take the opportunity to join the Twitter network for our social media project. What we've learned from this experience is that is difficult to convey what you're trying to say in a 140 character limit; we've also learned that the range of people using this media is limited.

Because of Twitter's limited reach and lack of personalization options, it is less conducive in terms of allowing users to connect with others. Perhaps what we see as a shortcoming is what makes them so successful. It is a major appeal to have your location and personal life kept secret, something FaceBook and MySpace broadcast to anyone whom visits your page. However, this doesn't allow any "followers" who don't already know who you are to get a sense of what you're about.

After giving Twitter an honest effort, we have come to the conclusion that FaceBook is still our preferred social media website for the time being. They do have incredible potential as they currently reach a more mature market; however, it is somewhat lost on the younger age range.

Is Second Life right for you?

Still asking your self if second life is the place for you?It is often asked why do I want to act like someone that looks fake and participate in a fake world? The is simplest of answers is because the complexity of the programing feels as close to real as you can on a computer. As we progress with in our quest to learn about this online space we stopped to take the time to make our avat

ars look like they belong in second life.

We really got a feel for how detailed you can make your avatar. While editing our avatars we started with the face and fou

nd that there are more than sixty setting to edit the face alone. Moving on to the

hair about twenty five setting to adjust from color to style. This complexity is there for the whole body, and what is ev

en more astonishing it’s free!!! Just imagine what you can do with the services you pay for. This level of realism is only incre

ased when you add in the your real voice. Most avatars on

Second Life are controlled by people who are hooked up to microphones. When you approach someone in second life it is much like having a real conversation. If you are still asking your self if Second Life is for you check back for more updates.

Facebook Events - A great way to get the word out

Over my brief experience using Facebook I have encountered many applications. Games like Mafia wars, and applications like watergun fights are pretty popular with the crowd I keep up with, but one of my favorite applications has to do with events. Down in the bottom left corner of your Facebook homepage is a little icon of a calendar page. By clicking this icon you can start the process of creating an event. Events can be anything from a child's birthday party to a scheduled lecture in a class that you attend (as may of you can attest). I think that the events icon is important because it is a very easy way to get the word out to people about something. For businesses this could be particularly powerful. Businesses who have a large following of people as group members could send notification of sales, links to special coupons, or value added information on products and services. Since events are so easy to create and share they can make advertising something very easy. The events function also allows you to keep an RSVP list of people who have confirmed that they will attend the event.

So the next time you want to get the word out about something, consider using Facebook .

Final Thoughts on our LinkedIn Project from Pam and Alex

From Pam: Watching the video presentation about LinkedIn in class a few weeks back I would like to share a few observations regarding my interaction with this site. One of the main goals of the site as demonstrated in the video was to connect business people with others that might be of assistance to you. In particular this might be a consultant or service provider. I think this would be a great benefit to a company but I do not see that the site is being used for this purpose very often. Perhaps this is due to the economic times we currently are experiencing as most people are asking for you to recommend them as a part of their job search, not to obtain customers for a business or service that they already provide. I have not seen any “real” business to business development occurring. With that said, most companies have a policy regarding job recommendations and who is authorized to make them. “Friends” on LinkedIn regularly ask for recommendations and I wonder if people are considering their company polices, how or where these recommendations might be used. I even had someone write an entire posting that they wanted me to do on their behalf. This was no less than 200 words. The immediate problem for me was that while everything in the recommendation that he wrote might have been accurate it had nothing to do with the way I personally interacted with him. Needless to say, I pointed out that I was not the appropriate person to make a recommendation for him or at least the one that he wrote. While I could say certain things they would need to be limited to the interaction that we actually had. I have not heard from him since. I thought that the “Groups” area of the site would be helpful to me as well. And to some degree it has been. My biggest disappointment is that while I can be a part of a group and make postings, my posts always fall below the administrator of the group. This might put current information below the administrator posts. In particular if they are posting a lot. Your post is emailed to everyone in the group so if they look at it when it hits their email then they would be aware of it. However, this now seems like double duty…email and the LinkedIn Group. It feels as though you are pretty much in the group to “hear” what the administrator has to offer and very little back and forth occurs between the members. I feel this site will continue to grow and evolve but do not find it incredibly useful to me at this point. With that said, I have not dedicated enough time to find the real value in it for me and may be moved to a different opinion as time goes on.
From Alex: My LinkedIn experience was positive. I had the account for a while and did nothing with it. Because of this project I am active in LinkedIn and my resume is updated. I have used it as a social site. I found some old business contemporaries and high school chums. I am building a base of potential employment referrals through groups and have even found things that my company is doing on LinkedIn. While I have participated in a few group discussions I have not initiated a discussion so I haven’t encountered the problem that Pam did. I was reluctant to ask for a recommendation but someone who I know sent an unsolicited recommendation to me. Of course I reciprocated because I have recommended Michael in the past, even before LinkedIn. My biggest mistake was accepting someone who I probably should not have added to my group. While his resume is exceptional and he has a long list of contacts, this person has a reputation for being a jerk. I am not sure that I want him as part of my group. I still spend an hour or two a week on LinkedIn. I intend to spend another few hours one day soon refining my resume, putting more into groups and making contacts. I have a contact from Florida who is a therapist/motivational speaker and I have a contact here in COS who does business seminars. I plan on getting them together to see if they can do business together, with an expectation that if they do, I’ll get a commission for setting them up. Even if I never make a buck, this was a fun experience!

Twitter V. Facebook Part 2

I still have been lured into Facebook over Twitter. I am not new to social media, and I still have yet to discover the gold behind Twitter. It's use for marketing capabilities are limited to the early adopters, as many laggers may not even know what this technology is. It limits the way you can express yourself by limiting characters, and makes it hard to see if anyone cares about what you are saying. Facebook is incredibly easy, and more personable. Although in response to competition, they have been making annoying changes as of late, bugging you to add more friends, or "reconnect". The pros of Twitter- emotionnless Tweets to all your twits. Facebook- a socially "acceptable" waste of time. They both win in their own right on this post. I feel myself not caring anymore...which may mean I feel the next big thing coming on......

Twitter the New Myspace for Music?

Purpose

For my social media project I made myself a Twitter account. I had heard alot about Twitter but was not sure who the target market of this social media's purpose was, or how it had differentiated itself from the masses of other social media sites. The people I choose to follow were primarily musicians. I purposely choose some little-known internet based bands and some of the more popular mainstream groups. I wanted to see if these groups of musicians had figured out how to monetize themselves through Twitter.

What I Found

Unfortunately it seems like the little internet based bands were the only musicians that knew how to use Twitter. 3Oh!3, a Colorado based band I followed seemed to use the site the best of any of my followees. They sent tweets of new single releases and let all their fans know which cities they would be in next. Some of the other internet based bands seemed to use Twitter more to communicate with fans on a personal level. Kina Grannis would tweet questions for fans or report on what she did during the weekend. Interesting if you are a fan, but fairly useless. The biggest disappointment was with the bigger musicians on Twitter. Lady Gaga has tons of post, most of them irrelevant. Other big bands I followed made a Twitter account but haven't actually sent any tweets.

My suggestion to these big bands are "Stay where you know, Don't Delete Your Myspace Profile." It's the sad and unfortunate truth.

Lesson Learned

My first lesson learned was I did not have a clue how to work with my Twitter account. I managed to stumble through and find a few of the bands like I liked. A problem I ran into was that some bands, Paramore for example, have at least ten possible Paramore accounts that were set up. It was impossible to tell who was really Paramore. Another problem was the lack of users. Of the thirty or so bands I searched for there were maybe 12 I could find. Ironically when I was listening to the radio Sean Paul was being interviewed and asked if he had a Twitter account yet. He didn't really seem to know what it was but said he would have his publicist look it up. Finding followers was another problem. For the longest time I was steady at six followers. It wasn't until I fell back onto the old tried-and-true approach of emailing my twitter account to classmates that I finally ended up with 17 followers. I am not sure I will keep my account after this class.

Amanda and Rachel~Social Media Project

Hey Y'all, Amanda Clark and I have collaborated together to join Twitter! We are hoping to learn the in's and out's that Twitter has to offer! We would love for you to follow us, so please do! You can find us at http://twitter.com/AmandaandRachel !!! Tweet us up! Thanks.

Andre and Carrie - Social Media

Hello everyone! Andre and I have started a twitter page at http://twitter.com/AndreandCarrie. Please follow us!! We would love to get your opinions on all things UCCS. Our first question? What do you think is the BEST thing about UCCS? I personally think that the professors are amazing. They are always available, always willing to answer questions. They are a tremendous resource and you can learn so much from them if you take the time to ask! What do you think?