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.