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.