Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blogging, fakeawish, farrah, goldblum, Media, michael jackson, social networking
I was at the beach yesterday, so I found out some interesting news second-hand, through a series of text messages and phone calls, some true and some not.
1. Michael Jackson is dead. I heard about this pretty early, from Heather, a friend of mine in WV. She was irritated that the news was released before it was actually confirmed. The story is sad though; he was a musical genius and beloved by so many people of so many ages. I was a big MJ fan, from ‘Off the Wall’ until he made ‘Dangerous,’ (Rolling Stone, 2009). This is around the time he started to really weird-out and became less an artist who made news, and more of eclectic multi-millionaire who also made a little music from time to time. I prefer to remember MJ as he was at his best (and this picture was on my wall, so it holds a special place in my heart.) He will be missed.
(Retrieval info below.)
2. Farrah Fawcett has also passed away. This I heard over the phone from my boyfriend’s dad that this had happened. I liked Charlie’s Angels and also recall watching her in a few made for TV movies, as well as being shocked by The Burning Bed. It was the first I had ever heard of domestic violence (and admittedly, it made me scared to get married, well until my mom explained the movie to me.) It appears that NBC aired an hour-long special on her last night, “Farrah Fawcett: The Life and Death of an Angel,” and will air “Farrah’s Story” which is a two-hour documentary which she filmed herself on her struggles over the last 2.5 years with cancer, (NBC.com, 2009). Quite an interesting take on cancer and how it ravages the body and soul, this is something I would watch. On a side note, when I did a search on Farrah Fawcett, before I hit enter in the Google search box, one of the suggestions that popped up was ‘Farrah Fawcett Playboy Images.” I guess there are people out there who wish to remember her in a different way. I choose this one; goodbye Farrah.
(Retrieval info below.)
3. While talking to my friend Sami in Tacoma about the news of day, she echoed Heather’s irritation that the ‘news’ was released before it was actually confirmed. I told her that from what I have learned in this term that this is how we will be getting our news in the future; from a number of unconfirmed reports and half truths which we will then need to sift through in order to find the truth. She seemed incredulous and I told her it’s as easy as someone among the first responders texting the news to a friend, who then puts it on twitter, where it gets picked up and posted either to a blog or to iReport. From there, the newshounds then pick up so many of these stories that they take further verification measures and release the news. This news was so hot yesterday that my BF wasn’t able to access cnn.com on his mobile because the servers were bogged down!
Well, oddly enough, Sami also mentioned that she heard that Jeff Goldblum was dead. He is not, but it took awhile to find out from where this ‘news’ came. It seems that there’s a site, FakeAWish.com, which “generates fake news stories reporting the death of celebrities when their names are entered,” (SBS, 2009). Why does this site exist? Who in the world has this much time that they created this fake news site? How can this ridiculousness be stopped?
Here’s some real news that I can be sure is true…the aforementioned Heather is pregnant! However, I heard about this from my sister, who saw it on Heather’s MySpace page, before it was confirmed by Heather herself! That’s social networking for you. Regardless…Congrats Heather and Corey!
References:
Farrah Fawcett Photo. (2009). Retrieved June 26 from http://photos.ecanadanow.com/farrah-fawcett-Anal-Cancer.jpg
Michael Jackson Photo. (2009). Retrieved June 26, 2009 from http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kb4mTDJLT6c/Ry95xUYev1I/AAAAAAAAAJQ/bGVCBLja-54/s400/michael-jackson-thriller.jpg
NBC.com. (2009). “Farrah Fawcett: The Life and Death of an Angel to Air Tonight.” Retrieved June 26, 2009 from http://www.nbc.com/news/2009/06/25/farrah-fawcett-the-life-and-death-of-an-angel-to-air-tonight/
Rolling Stone. (2009). “Michael Jackson Discography.” Retreived June 26, 2009 from http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/michaeljackson/discography
SBS. (2009). “Goldblum ‘Dead’ in Online Hoax.” World News Australia. Retrieved June 26, 2009 from http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1033981/Goldblum-’dead’-in-online-hoax
Imagine if you could know when your favorite cheesecake or coffee cart was going to be on the corner below your building? This may seem like old news to some of you, especially if you work in a major metropolis or are very techno-savvy, but to me this is a pretty cool usage of new media. A wide variety of food carts are available around Cooper Square in New York City and these carts are latching onto the Twitter craze because it allows them to “broadcast their changing location, advertise deals, and keep up a customer base,” (McCarthy, 2009).
And the trend has reached across the country to LA where a recent tweet stated, “Kogi verde is coming to Koreatown! Wilshire and Ardmore! @ 11.45. Bring it!” from Kogi BBQ. Kogi is a new business delivering Korean BBQ tacos since November 2008 and is now growing from 2 trucks to 4 due to a Twitter following of over 20,000! Shin, the blogger and twitterer for Kogi says their following sees it as a treasure hunt and the hunt is so popular that many nights the trucks run out of food.
McCarthy states; “It fits: were there a culinary embodiment of short-and-sweet Twitter, it would be the food truck, mobile and ultra-niche and in the midst of broad yuppie popularity that some say will be a lasting cult following and some are still pegging as a fad,” (2009). And this type of food venue creates new careers for those once in the media business. Thomas DeGeest, founder of ‘Wafels and Dinges’ in NYC has more than 1,200 followers, and is finding success. It should come as no surprise; in his past life he was a social networking consultant for IBM. He offers discounts for customers who have come to the truck, give the secret password of the day or do an impression of a peacock.
Part of the success and fit of these two types of business are the same. They are easy to set-up, easy to maintain and cheaper to operate and advertise than a traditional marketing plan, or a traditional restaurant. And get this…some food truck operators are looking into using Sprint GPS to make it so you can find them even if you are not on Twitter. This would be handy if you are a tourist in the city and want to check it out, or are a travelling business person who doesn’t have the convenience of being in front of your computer or being able to type while working your route. (As a former outside salesperson, I can tell you that knowing where to find a good meal, and a cheap one, when you have only 20 minutes between appointments is sometimes hard, especially when you aren’t as familiar with your surroundings.)
So that’s all for now from the S.I.N…this is Rachel, OVER & OUT!
Reference:
McCarthy, C. (2009). “When Twitter Met Food Trucks.” CNET News. Retrieved June 3, 2009 from http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10242185-36.html
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blogging, E3, iPhone, mobile, obama, palm, SMS
From my twitter follows:
1. New Palm Pre: the Palm OS answer to iPhone. Pro’s and cons are listed. One con is the sticky keys (if you have a Centro you know what this means.) These are girl friendly (fingernails), but boys (big hammy fingers) must have tested this and wrote the list.
(Retrieved from above URL)
2. Lynda.com: how-to do all kinds of cool things online. (This is on my blogroll now!)
3. A list of toys and games from E3. E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009) is wrapping up today in Los Angeles at the Convention Center. Go here for a list of new hits:
(Retrieved from URL below.)
4. Pres 2.0: “The State Department project intends to utilize a mobile system to send highlights of Obama’s speech live via SMS [from Cairo, Egypy today] to anyone who registers for them on America.gov.Anybody with a cell phone can register for SMS updates of the speech, no matter the nation in which they reside. One of the goals of the innovative project, according to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, is a broad effort to reach people internationally. On top of the SMS speech highlights, users can add to the conversation by texting back. The State Department will post a swath of user-submitted comments on a separate web page. This is an attempt to engage the global community on a scale we have never seen tried with mobile phones,” (Parr, 2009.) You can find out more by going to Ben Parr’s blog on Mashable at
These are just some little tidbits to get you thinking. Later!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blogging, conversation, Dale Carnegie, IMC, Jeff James, marketing, Mythology, prezi, social networking, twitter, WVU
I attended the IMC Weekend Dinner on May 29th, and sadly my life has been very busy, so I have needed a little more time to get some notes down. Sorry! If you missed the dinner, it was fun and I felt the Keynote Speaker, Jeff James, was entertaining and his address was very relevant to what we are learning in class. Jeff James is a native West Virginian who founded Mythology, a company which focuses on market management and growth. He feels that in order for marketing to be effective and successful it has to “craft a compelling narrative” and that 95% of organizations of all sizes are “struggling on how to have a conversation” with their customers and clients, (James, 2009).
Here are some other highlights (some stated and some thoughts I took away):
1. He discussed that in the process of writing his speech, he consulted others in the field via Twitter. He asked these professionals about what he should speak on. He then created a PowerPoint presentation to emphasize his points, but somehow this was lost when he delivered to the IT people. However that wasn’t as important as the running joke of the lost slides and that a colleague told him that PowerPoint was yesterday’s news and that he should have done the presentation in Prezi, a new type of interactive presentation creator. For more info, go to , and if you click on ‘Learn Prezi in 4 minutes,’ you can actually play around while you watch the video. Very cool!
2. James also discussed a book, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Li and Bernoff. In this book, the authors discuss the many roles of persons involved in marketing culture; (creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives) and the parts they play. Creators contribute, critics are evaluators and reviewers and collectors find and link things so they can be followed. This could be considered a ‘technographic ladder’ and James offered this question: “How do you empower people at all levels?” This is what many companies are trying to answer.
3. A discussion on news and its accessibility offered this thought from an associate at the Charleston Gazette: “social networking accelerates the news cycle.” This is because writing an article for print is time consuming and a tweet is immediate. Tweeting about your upcoming article allows others to be part of the creative process and creates demand for the article before it is completed or printed. This is preferable to the scenario of working on a great article and having no one read it because it’s buried on Page 9, Section B.
4. Twitter allows an organization to see the Everyman Point of View. It is the opportunity to get honest, real time feedback…whether you want it or not. However, it cannot be implicitly trusted. Just because anyone can post ‘news’ does not make it newsworthy. In a sense, social media can create a false reality. Just as the internet can be used to find up-to-the-minute news, it can also be a way for anyone to broadcast their views. These views can be illegal, immoral, slanderous, degrading, and hateful. We have become so dependent on this source for news that we may trust its content without thorough evaluation. The old adage was “let the buyer beware.” Now it seems more fitting to “let the searcher beware.” You can find any number of sources on the web to solidify your story so it is concrete and seems like immutable truth. Watch where you find your validity!
In the last several minutes of the address, James commented on Dale Carnegie’s book from 1936, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ And he mentioned several ideas that translate well into marketing any organization today.
Retrieved June 4, 2009 from http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B001MBV64U/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
• Become genuinely interested in others-get to know your clients, and their customers. Nothing is as effective as doing your homework and finding out what theur needs are so you can ascertain how to fill them.
• Smile-the electronic version of this may be color, space, ease of reading and navigating (through a site), interactivity and fun, pleasant images, etc. The design of your site or other marketing materials are how you ‘smile’ at those who view it.
• Remember that a person’s name is the sweetest sound in any language-Don’t forget who you are talking to. Even though he or she may be different than you, don’t forget who the most important element is to your business’ success.
• Be a good listener-when you ask someone their needs, be sincere and listen to them. If you are asking the right questions and keeping an open mind then they will tell you what they want or need of you.
• If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically-Don’t wait to get ‘called out’ or caught in a bad situation. You are accountable for your actions and inevitably someone will find you out. Today, not only will one person find you out but they will broadcast your ill-judgment for the entire internet-connected world to see…on every possible portal…in every language.
• Let the other person believe it’s their idea-You can plant the seed and water it, but you can’t tell it to grow. If you want to reach agreement, then give people all the information they need to believe they should do what you want, whether that’s buying your product or quitting smoking or whatever you are marketing to them.
• Throw down a challenge-if you ask people to step up and you do it in such a way that they want to step up to meet it, they will.
A few final quotes from Jeff James that may keep you thinking:
“Individuals have the power, not institutions.”
“Social Media is the product development process.”
“Visibility is accountability.”
References:
James, J. (2009). “Keynote Address.” Observed May 29, 2009 at Milan Pushkar Stadium, Morgantown, WV.
Prezi. (2009). “Learn.” Retrieved June 7, 2009 from http://prezi.com/learn.
