Archives for posts with tag: Social Media
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Social Media – Making us all a bit less sociable

January 14, 2009 //
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I read a worrying post on the BBC the other day which discussed the evolution of social media and how it spanned the age demographics.  The author described a scene in his house on Christmas day in the living room.  With the TV showing the Christmas special of choice, for the family you had dad (the author) sat on an arm chair laptop on lap, twittering and blogging away.  Mum, similarly adding comments to her forum of choice whilst checking her news feeds for updates and the two children, iPod Touch in hand, using Facebook and messenger to chat with friends and engage with their own private networks.

Now I’m as big a geek as the next man.  I love finding the latest social tool to have a play around with.  I Twitter, use messenger, have a Facebook and a MySpace account (although the latter as been redundant for a long time).  But the thought of a family sat around on Christmas day silently tapping away on iPods and laptops depressed me slightly.

I don’t think I’m being too old fashioned when I say that Christmas should involve spending time with the family and actually engaging in some form of non-digital communication!  And it is not just in this scenario I see this happening, the workplace is just the same.  People emailing and messaging colleagues a question when they are sitting on desks less than 5 yards apart.

It seems strange that the ability to engage and communicate with people thousands of miles away means we communicate less with those closest to home.  Is this the way of the future?  Digital chat and social media replacing old fashioned speech and face to face engagement?

I sincerely hope not.  As much as I love using online social media tools I’m also rather fond of meeting and speaking to people face to face.  I have technophobe friends who refuse to have a Facebook account or personal email address giving the response, “If I want to speak to someone Ill just ring them.”  Whilst I am not going to go to that level of extreme as I see the benefits of social media tools away from connecting with friends, I hope for all our sake that the picture painted by the BBC reporter is not a sign of things to come.

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Categories Social Media

Make or Break Time for Twitter

January 8, 2009 //
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The next few months is potentially the make or break period for micro blogging social media application Twitter.  Users of the tool have increased significantly in recent weeks as publicity has grown and awareness of the tool has increased accordingly.

Reports of Twitters use during the Mumbai terror attacks and a recent derogatory article by the mail online caused a major spike in Google searches for twitter and today its infrastructure creaked and crumbled under the strain as its users experienced down due to technical difficulties at twitter HQ.  Twitter doesn’t make any money so there is minimal investment in infrastructure from its founder Evan Williams (creator of blogger which was sold to Google in 2003).

twitter-searches-spike-after-mail-online-article

Twitter is due for even more increased exposure and coming weeks as it is set to be discussed by Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry on the return of The Jonathan Ross Show on Jan 23rd.  Fry and Ross are users of the social application and are set to discuss other celebrity users.

This is likely to increase Twitter’s users and website traffic significantly in a short period of time and considering they are having issues with current levels I hope they are investing in new servers as we speak!

I current trends continue and further awareness can be gained Williams and his fellow board must be hoping for a quick sale to one of the big players with the ability to harness and monetise the Twitter traffic effectively or potentially tie Twitter in with existing social media tools.

But in order to do so Twitter will need to prove its stability over the next 1-3 months or it could be game over and a party like Google may just decide to build its own solution to take its place.

Its going to be a very interesting and important for Twitter and as a fan, I hope it survives and finds its buyer.

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Categories Social Media

The Digital Community Shows it Charitable Side

January 7, 2009 //
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The blogging and digital community has shown its charitable side and raised over $10,000 to help an Abused wife and her children.

Blogger David Armano started the appeal on his blog, Logic + Emotion, for Romanian immigrant, Daniela and her 3 children who are struggling financially since Daniela filed for divorce against her abusive spouse.  At present Daniela, Brandon, Daniela and youngest Evelyn are staying with David as they try to get back on their feet and he appealed to the blogging and digital community to help raise $5000 dollars to support them.  At last check they had raised $12,663.60 and rising well in excess of its target.

David used the popularity of his blog and also his connections on social media tool twitter to raise awareness of the appeal and it has spread like wildfire around the social media community.  I found out about it through a tweet by someone I follow on twitter and the amount of retweets I have seen already is obscene.  The twitter community has taken hol of this story and is showing that even in the hardest economic times people are willing to show their charitable side and help the needy.

The Digital Lookout has made its donation, if you would like to contribute follow the link below.  Do your bit, and pass the message on.

Daniella’s Apartment Fund

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Categories Social Media

If You Don’t Have anything Nice to Say, Don’t Say Anything At All!

January 6, 2009 //
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That’s what my mum used to tell me when I was little.  Whenever myself or one of my siblings would criticise each other, or anyone else for that matter, this would be the response.

But here I relate this comment, not to sibling rivalry, or petty disputes, but to the world of social media and blogging.  I have been thinking about this for a while but it was a post by new media lisa which made me realise that others felt the same and how widespread the practice was!

If you have something to say, something useful which will benefit others, then say it, if you don’t, keep your gob shut and just listen!

I have been guilty in the early days of my blog, of rushing to release a news story in the hope of being the first, without adding anything of value to the discussion.  These days I try to stop and think about whether I am adding anything of interest to the debate or just regurgitating a story, if the latter, then don’t bother.  Sit back, let the news story unfold and wait for a more interesting post to come to mind.

Similarly with micro-blogging tool twitter.  I’m at the point now when I am going to stop following some people who tweet every 10 mins with some useful gumf that is of no interest.  If you have found a good news story, fine, got a new blog post, ok, even taken a good picture or commenting on the weather, acceptable, but please don’t give me a minute by minute commentary on your day, I don’t care that much!

I tend to tweet maybe once or twice a day when I have something to say, the rest of the time I am busy doing real work!

So there you have it, as new media lisa says, be extraordinary, and as I say, keep it shut unless you have something to say!

Co-incidently, the digital lookout is now on twitter! So if you want an update each time a new post is made, then you can follow me.  I promise only to post when I have something to say!

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Categories Social Media

Google Calls Time on its Social Experiment

November 29, 2008 //
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Ok, so I’m a little behind in reporting this one but Ive been a little busy lately!

After entering the world of social media with the launch of lively.com only 4 months ago (google launches lively.com) Google has performed a huge u turn and pulled the plug on the virtual world which will be binned completely at the end of the year.

According to the google blog this is to allow it to focus it efforts on its core, “search, ads and apps business” but it is surely and indication that things weren’t going so well for lively.com and that the global credit crisis may even have reached as high as the big G, forcing them to cut unnecessary out goings and focus on core business units.

Now 4 months doesn’t seem like a fair amount of time to allow before deciding something is a no go, but lets face it, lively.com never appeared to have much going for it in the first place.  A virtual world which would sit in websites through applications and allow users to interact with the need for a central portal.  The format of the avatars was more sims than second life which would attract the youth audience, but how many teenagers have their own website? myspace and facebook page maybe but nothing which is stand alone.

Proof that even the strongest are susceptible to making mistakes and making knee jerk investments in the latest craze.  The difference?  Google was man enough to admit its error and is also rich enough to make 100 more in the hope that one of them is the next big thing!

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Categories Google, Social Media
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