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.