I just walked out of my last college class I will ever have.
It’s bittersweet– no more papers, midterms, finals. No more football games or student ticket lotteries. In two short weeks, I’ll leave this place I’ve called home for the last three years. But there are a few things I’ve gained throughout my academic career that I’m taking with me.
Warning: this is going to be a sappy post.
Everyone has that one teacher they remember from college who actually reminded them that learning can be fun. For me, that teacher was Gary Kayye, and he is the reason behind this entire blog.
I first heard Gary speak at a PRSSA meeting back during my sophomore year in the fall. He showed us this youtube video called Socialnomics, which is a book by Erik Qualman titled “How Social Media Changes the Way we Live and Do Business.” I was mesmerized for the entire four minutes and I just needed to know more about this so-called social media revolution we were living through. Gary continued to say that he’d be teaching a class called “New Media Technology and its Impact on the Futures of Advertising, Marketing and PR” and it would be offered in the spring only. The following fall, he would teach the second branch of the course, “Branding of Me,” for which NMTIFAMP would be the pre-req.
My stomach dropped– I was planning on going abroad in the spring, which meant that I wouldn’t be allowed to take either of the courses. I actually went home and deliberated not going abroad because I was so certain that whoever this teacher was, and whatever this class entailed, it would be perfect for me.
I bought Qualman’s book as an homage to the guy who had literally changed my entire outlook on my future profession. I changed my priorities– I started to tell people I wanted to go into social media and social marketing instead of traditional PR. I took the book with me to Italy and I used quotes from it to enhance my cover letters. I spoke intelligently about the social media revolution on phone interviews, and eventually, landed an amazing internship at Ogilvy PR on the Digital Influence team because of it. My entire prerogative on careers changed just from that one PRSSA meeting with this super hyper, little-bit-intimidating adjunct professor whom I had never heard of.
When the time came for me to register for classes last fall, I noticed that something must have changed in Gary’s schedule, because NMTIFAMP was being offered in the fall. I immediately registered for the class, even though that put me in a total of 19 credit hours for my fall semester in college. I didn’t care, though, because I knew it was for me.
Gary’s class turned out to be everything I’d hoped it would be. On the first day, he told us that we would almost always be allowed to keep our laptops open, and pretty much do whatever we liked on them. He subscribed to the idea that our generation is built of multitaskers and any professor who says “shut your laptop” is doing us a disjustice. He encouraged us to Tweet and share on Facebook about the class. He would come in and introduce us to some crazy-new-turn-of-the-century technological invention that we’d never even imagined. Within the eight months that I’ve known him, I’d say a dozen of these things have been covered in major news sources. I loved every second of it, knowing that I was hearing about things that were changing my future industry– things that most professionals didn’t even realize were happening.
The entire time, I was learning. And Gary made it so fun that I didn’t even realize it. His energy is second to none. I don’t think I took a single note all semester, but I was enjoying it so much that I remember it all.
I just finished up my second semester with Gary in his “Branding of Me” course– a class that’s geared at getting us prepared for the professional world by making a web presence that is everything having to do with our personal brands. Hence my blog.
In a few short months– armed with my PR degree– I will enter the workforce. Three years ago, I had a very different idea of what I’d be doing for my first job. I can’t say I have a crystal clear version of it in my head now, but I know it all changed during that PRSSA meeting.
So thank you, Gary. You have inspired so many of us to pursue our interests and our passions, and you’ve taught us all some crucial lessons on how to live life. Your classes were the most enjoyable I’ve had in my entire life, and you will truly be missed!
I, like many other adamant Apple users, have always taken great pleasure in knowing I owned a computer that was invincible to the viruses that sometimes plague PCs. Whenever I’d hear of a friend’s computer crashing from some terrible Malware, some part of me would feel great relief in knowing this was one bullet I would always dodge.
Unfortunately, a recent turn of events has proved that even Apple, the best of the best, isn’t invincible anymore. A trojan called Flashback has successfully targeted and infected 600,000 Macs to date. I learned about it about a week ago when the story was the front page of my college newspaper– some 200 students’ laptops were hit by the virus, flooding IT with complaints of crashed hard drives.
Naturally, lots of tech journalists have taken to the web to analyze how it happened, what this means for Apple, and how the company could conduct some damage control. A story on Information Week argues that the reason Macs weren’t being targeted for viruses in the past wasn’t because they were more secure, but because attackers got a lot more “bang for their buck” by writing Windows viruses instead. I doubt this will make even so much as a dent in Apple’s profits, but it’s interesting and not at all surprising that no one at Apple has made an official statement regarding the issue. It has, however, come under much scrutiny for waiting three months to release a security update. I’d have to wager that the company was unwilling to admit that their flawless and invincible software was anything but. Now I don’t know much about fixing software and correcting virus issues, but I’m sure that a company that employs some of the best tech engineers in the world would have had an able staff on it within minutes, if that were the course it went.
Sounds a lot like the way the late Steve Jobs handled the iPhone 4 antennagate issue back in Summer 2009– avoidance is better than admitting you’re wrong. Someone’s gotta tell this company to start treating its customers– the ones who have contributed to its billions in success– with a bit more respect.
I’m in an advertising mood today. Blame it on the 10 episodes of Mad Men I’ve watched as I’ve procrastinated doing any work. As I watched an episode dealing with media buys for the Nixon campaign, I wondered: Imagine if Don Draper and the rest of the original Madison Avenue men could see where advertising is today.
When I entered college 4 years ago and didn’t have the luxury of DVR in my dorm room, I would spend most Fridays catching up on my TV shows searching websites like Surfthechannel.com or Channel131.com for commercial-free versions that would save time and energy. The quality wasn’t great, but it was my only free option if I’d missed my favorite TV show, as there were few, if any, broadcast networks that included “Full Streaming Episodes” on their websites back then. (This was also the time when movie-piracy was at its peak, though legislators didn’t catch on till right before SOPA— sites like MegaVideo made the process of attending a movie almost obsolete as far as most college students were concerned.) As a mature adult now, I can finally see how detrimental this was to the media industry as a whole. They were losing money, their Neilsen ratings and counts couldn’t possibly have been accurate, and advertisers were probably left with poor results for their marketing efforts. 
Then something happened almost overnight in my opinion. The advertisers started gaining wind of this shift to consumers tuning in online. Maybe it would have happened anyway with the video revolution. In any case, they teamed up with the big networks and brought us the option of full-streaming videos. With a small cost: the ads that people had tried so hard to get away from were to be forced upon us in these crystal-clear quality, streaming videos. Then came the iPad and Kindle apps. And that’s where we are today.
Obviously, there were great benefits in this: Advertisers were again able to quantify their impressions again and had this additional media spot to consider. Networks were still making money. The shift to online video allowed advertisers to target their ads to a more appropriate audience, and the justification was that online video ads could enhance the viewers’ experiences. Gone were the days when the public would sit in a living room and be fed ads that, 80% of the time, had no significance to their lives– new tech advances like cookies and browser history could show the marketers just what kinds of ads would fit well with each particular segment. Sometimes, ads could even be interactive.
I understand the attraction from a business standpoint. At first, I even welcomed and applauded the fact that the media industry had caught on: as a Journalism major concentrating in advertising and PR, I knew my future would one day depend on it as well.
But as a consumer, sometimes I wish we could go back four years to the times where my viewing experience wasn’t being interrupted every 10 minutes with videos that I am forced to watch. The reality is that people are still unhappy with this arrangement: why else do people continue to pay for $1.99 for commercial-free episodes on iTunes, or $10 a month for membership to sites like Hulu+? (For the record, my younger sister is so impatient that she continues to buy all her missed-TV shows on iTunes. She will also never watch a TV show when it first airs out of her complete detestation for commercials.) Bernard Gershon over at AdAge.com shares my sentiment in a piece titled “Are Online Video Ads Wasting Your Time?” He writes that consumers don’t like being forced to do anything, including watching 15 to 30 to sometimes 90 second video ads that disrupt our TV shows– “and for an industry that doesn’t lack for innovation, we’ve yet to come up with an alternative” to it.
Imagine if advertisers could receive credits for all would-be impressions that are skipped, access new forms of data (who’s skipping, what time of day are they skipping, what type of content is yielding higher skips) and create a natural brand affinity due to the positive association with a skip-enabled pre-roll?
DVR was created so that people could skip commercials. Well, isn’t the option to skip online video ads next? And what if advertisers could find a way to quantify those skips and still make money on the impressions? I’ll be interested to see where this goes in the next few years. In the meantime, I’ll
I had mentioned JK Rowling’s Pottermore site in a past blog post titled “The Hunger Games from a Social Standpoint” for its failure to launch on time back in October 2011. Well, Potter fans, fear no more: JK Rowling’s free site has officially launched for all fans of the series! It includes additional writing and insight from the author that will add to the magical experience of the books, in addition to digital games, magical missions, etc. Users actually get assigned a Hogwarts house and a wand, making this digital initiative all the more interactive and personal.
I qualify as magical: Score!! via http://www.pottermore.com
I was granted access to Pottermore a few minutes ago, and at first glance I will say the graphics look very nice, and it’s great to see the inside of this magical world through JK Rowling’s eyes, rather than solely the directors and producers of the Potter movies. You will definitely need a good internet connection to load the site. Just a little thing– I would have liked the cursor button to morph into something more on clickable things, as it isn’t exactly obvious which items throughout the story are supposed to be clicked and which aren’t. One of the kinks that I noticed within the Beta version a few months ago is that I often found myself “trapped” within the site, unable to get out of certain screens without utilizing my browser’s “Back” button– in other words, a web-designer’s nightmare. Pottermore seems to have figured that kink out now. Also, this is definitely more of an educational tool than it is a game, which I guess makes sense as the Harry Potter sensation has included countless video games and even tablet apps (Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4, anyone?).
One user's interpretative drawing of Dumbledore and his Put-Outer. via http://www.pottermore.com
Rowling has sprinkled little tips and thoughts throughout each chapter. After every “Tip,” users may leave comments and even drawings, allowing a great opportunity for both conversation and personal interpretation. The theme of “Magic” is, in its essence, a very subjective experience, and I think it’s great that readers will have a more moderated place to share these perspectives. You can also use the comment boards for questions you may have about elements in the chapter. When I was younger, I remember searching blog forums on MuggleNet for any posts that addressed my questions. Now kids can pose hypotheticals right there on the Pottermore, and bounce their ideas off one another. You can even “Like” the comments people make, though it does not link up to your Facebook page: it is a strictly ‘Pottermore-only-Like’. From what I can gather, Sony has definitely done a good job in keeping Pottermore separate from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter– I can’t even seem to find the respective social site icons once you enter the chapters. I think this is important as the target audience for this site is younger kids. As such, you may also “Report” any inappropriate comments, assuring that the site remains PG. All these social elements make Pottermore essentially a social media community for a very niche group of people.
It will be interesting to see what kind of advertising dollars will go into the site, as I noticed there are no banner ads as of now. Although, I’m not sure that Pottermore will need ad dollars to keep up, as it is making money in a different way: About two weeks ago, Pottermore officially launched its E-Book store where fans could purchase digital versions of the entire Harry Potter Series, available only for Kindle and Nook e-readers. The bookstore, which topped sales of £1 million in just three days, is the only place readers can buy the digital versions of the series, although Amazon and Barnes and Noble have been able to market it on their respective tablet bookstore apps. (I guess Apple’s iBook store missed the boat on this one as it did “The Hunger Games” trilogy, which is still not available on the iBook app.) Regardless, I’d be willing to bet that the Harry Potter books are among the fastest-selling E-Books in history by the end of this year.
As an adamant reader of the books and fan of the movies, I’m very excited to see the Potter magic continue even after all seven books and eight movies have been released. Just imagine what it means for the younger part of the digital revolution who will get to grow up alongside the books, movies, and now this interactive web experience.
By now, you’ve probably all heard about Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of the popular photo sharing app Instagram. The mobile app, at only 18 months old, has over 30 million registered users and has, since the Facebook purchase, been ranked the Top Free App in the iTunes App Store. The app also garnered 5 million downloads on Android devices when it debuted less than one month ago. Recently, investors valued the company’s worth at $500 million… so, the question going through everyone’s mind naturally was what made Zuckerberg so inclined to throw in an extra $500 million?
Source: WSJ
Last semester in my New Media Technologies class, my professor predicted that Facebook’s newest venture would be to take over the photo sharing market. He showed us a prototype of the then-only-speculated Timeline and cover photos, and some snapshots of what photo viewing would look like with full screen options. One can only assume, therefore, that Zuckerberg’s acquisition of the company was done in hopes of creating a monopoly on the mobile-app/photo-upload market. Facebook wants Facebook to be the first app you click on when you pull out that infinitely-valuable smartphone in your pocket. Instagram was impeding on that space and thus was going to become a very dangerous competition to the social network. From a Mashable article:
The photo-sharing app is essentially everything Facebook wants to be on your mobile phone. Facebook wants people using its mobile app to share photos of what they’re doing with friends and to share their location -– something Instagram users have no problem doing.
With Facebook’s pending IPO, there was too much risk in not purchasing an app that was not only formed under the premise of creating content, but then sharing it. An article written on Mashable earlier this week noted that content creation has been on the horizon for some time now (case in point: Pinterest), and prior to the Instagram acquisition, Facebook had been pretty much all about sharing content, not creating it (unless you count status updates).
There’s been a lot of speculation that Facebook will end up ruining the Instagram experience for users who have grown so attached to the app’s independent, hipster-esque feel: Twitter overflowed with the complaints of users crying that they’d be deleting the app. But several sources claim that this could be the best thing for Instagram and and its 13 employees (who are now worth $77 million each). Look what Google did for YouTube back in 2006, right before the convergence of TV and internet. Facebook has acquired not only the mobile platform, but a team of brilliant individuals capable of building this kind of app. I think it will be interesting to see what this merger means for both companies, and how it will change the user experience.
This is an issue that has come to my attention several times in the last four years. As a college student, I cannot tell you how many times a professor has reminded us “be careful with what you put up on Facebook!” and “don’t post any pictures you wouldn’t want your mother to see!!!” etc. etc. In fact, before spring break, one of my professors went so far to remind us not to get caught in any of those “Spring break moments that ends up all over the internet!”
I have had Facebook for seven years now, since it was just a brand new social website strictly for college and high school students. At this point, I use it to keep in touch with friends from my high school, and to chat with my friends in college or from abroad. My profile has excellent privacy settings, so that when you search my name, all you see is my profile pic and cover photo, and maybe my school. If you are friends with me, you can see my wall, things posted on my wall, my friends, fan pages I’ve joined, and my Info– none of which I consider incriminating evidence. I keep things like photos I’m tagged in, as well as albums I upload, limited to a very small number of close friends– say 5 or 6– and myself. Among those pictures may be the occasional funny face, red solo cup (*note, I am 21*), or, God Forbid!, a snapshot of a fun girls-night-out spent dancing ridiculously. This is not to say I’m embarrassed of any of these pictures, they’re just not what I would want someone who was just meeting me, or hardly knew me, to see upon a first impression. Which all makes sense.
However, here’s where the debate fits in. There has been an ongoing discussion of whether or not employers, or future employers, should be allowed access to your personal Facebook page. Meaning they would be able to see allllll the photos, info, messages, etc. that in my case,only I have access to. In my Ethics class, we had a pretty long discussion of how you would react if, on a job interview, the HR rep were to turn his monitor around and say “Ok, everything looks good here, now if you will, just login to your Facebook page and let’s have a look.”
Would you walk out? Would you respectfully decline and most likely risk losing the job opportunity? 
I’d have to say that in my personal case, I would most likely decline, and suggest that they instead friend me in order to see the information that I have deemed acceptable to my acquaintances. If I go to great lengths to assure that my personal stuff be kept personal (between me and those 5 or 6 best friends) then I see no reason why an employer would need to see it. I understand the importance of representing the company that you work for in the most respectable way at all times– which is why I would keep all photos private and any inappropriate wall posts deleted–but I don’t see the fairness in putting someone on the spot in this instance. As I’ve mentioned, I definitely hope to go into a social-media-based position after graduation. I worked on Facebook pages all last summer at my internship, and I have a pretty good grasp on what fanpages mean to companies and brands. However, I don’t feel that my work as a PR or advertising pro should in any way, shape or form, allow access to my personal details. I have made public what I feel is appropriate to make public.
Mashable has written two stories in the last two weeks regarding this issue. One, titled “Facebook Takes a Stand Against Employers Who Request Passwords” was actually written in regards to Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which explicitly warns against sharing your password with anyone, regardless of their position. To do so would be to put the employer (or coach, professor, HR rep, etc.) at legal risk!
Another article, titled “Educator Suspended When she Refused to Show her Facebook Profile” discusses a teacher from Michigan who was fired after her supervisors requested to see her Facebook profile after learning of a funny/mildly inappropriate photo she had posted. From the article:
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives struck down an amendment that would prevent employers from asking potential employees for Facebook passwords. In response, several senators say they’re drafting similar legislation to try again.
Maybe in the case of an educator the situation gets a little stickier… but rights are rights, right?
I think this is an issue that won’t go away any time soon, but it will be interesting to watch how it develops in the upcoming years, as social networks become more and more utilized in the workplace.
Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard about this little thing called “The Hunger Games”– you know, the book-turned-movie that has literally gripped the nation for the last month or so. I am a HUGE fan of the books (I read all three in less than a week) and was so obsessed with the movie that I have seen it three times since it came out. (I justify that last part by telling people I take pride in personally participating in the record-breaking box office sales. Makes me feel like I’m achieving some sort of world record or something.)
Anyway, besides it being an amazingly addicting book series with a first-class female protagonist and an adventure filled/slightly morbid plot line, The Hunger Games has also done a great job promoting and branding itself leading up to the movie release date, especially from a digital and social standpoint. The Hunger Games Facebook Fan page, with close to 3.6 million “Likes,” has an average engagement rate of .90%, the highest engagement rate at 2.10%. Compare that with the Twilight fan page, which has .20% and .36% average and highest engagement rates, respectively. What makes The Hunger Games a more successful social expenditure is the fact that it has invited its fans into the world of Panem– when you register on the website, you become a citizen are even assigned a career and a specific in which you live! There are even separate Facebook pages for each respective district, which you are urged to visit after you are assigned your home. From an article I found on Ignite Social Media:
“Once you have completed this process, you are prompted to join your district on Facebook. Each District has its own Facebook page complete with a district mayor, recruiter and journalist. These individuals are fans and genuine enthusiasts of The Hunger Games who participated in elections, held earlier this year on the Facebook Wall and were chosen by ‘The Capitol’ to be administrators. The mayors act as leaders for the Districts, and are responsible for celebrating its citizens and relaying communication from the Capitol on Facebook. The recruiters help spread the word through the Districts primarily on Twitter and the journalists (who are established bloggers) receive ‘tips’ from citizens and periodically write about Hunger Games news.”
Talk about hitting all your bases– you’re capturing audiences through Facebook, Twitter and blogs, and spreading the message through far more channels and to exponentially more people.
Through all these positives, however, comes one negative. Gaming company Funtactix was set to release a game called The Hunger Games Adventure on March 23, as one further promotion for the movie release. (Writers over at Mashable thought it kind of weird that they would choose to release it on the day of the movie release, rather than say a week or two before hand to create even more hype. I kind of agree with that too… makes me wonder…)However, March 23 came and went, and no sign of the game, and to this day, the game has yet to go up. Developers claim that select users can be invited in to experience a Beta version, but Mashable reports that those users also haven’t gotten any word of it. To me, this sounds a lot like the failed attempt at JK Rowling’s website, Pottermore, which was set to launch in October but is still, to my knowledge, in Beta mode. In any case, I hope they can resolve the issue soon, because I’m gonna be all over that.
So kudos to the marketing team at The Hunger Games for launching such a great digital campaign, and involving its fans in such an original and highly-interactive way. I hope this can be a lesson to future “big-name” movie releases.
I’ve always been the person people go to for tech advice. For everything, from Apple to HDMI cables, I’m your girl. In the last two days I’ve received texts from three separate people, one asking when I wager the new iPhone will come out, the other asking when the best time to purchase a new MacBookPro would be, and the last asking me which content management system would be best to start her personal website.
The internet is also my best friend– I seriously cannot go more than 20 minutes without googling something. My mom makes fun of me because she still can’t quite get the name of her laptop correct, let alone know how to navigate the internet! (“Is it a MacAirBook? Or an AirMacBook? Or just an AirBook!??”)
And lastly, as any other Gen-Yer graduating with a major in PR or advertising will tell you right now, I love social media. Maybe it’s because I grew up alongside it, or maybe just because I am, by nature, an extremely social person. But something about the connectedness got me hooked on Twitter and Facebook long before they were cool. (Or at least I like to tell myself that, haha!)
So I started this blog to merge all of my passions– technology, the internet, social media– and to share examples in which they have all lent themselves to the futures of advertising and PR. I’ll comment on stories, industry news, or just share things I happened to learn about that day– whatever’s relevant and stands out!
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy!
SocialBitsandBytes 