Being a Digital Social Networking Platform - Coursework Example

? BEING DIGITAL SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORM Here of Being Digital Social Networking Platform The recent development of new social media—Google plus reflects a growing awareness of the importance of social networking. There are hundreds of social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn to name a few, that many people are using daily. Internet technologies have achieved more milestones that before, which have paved for the introduction of new technologies such as Web 2.0. Successful social media refine their objectives, focus on the target audience, apply a strategy, implement the media using specific tools and hardware, and sustained their media through refinement. Best practice # 1: objectives of the media Identifying the objectives of the social media is the first best practice when developing a social media. This is a critical phase the help in deciding what the social media will do. This objective is the main thrust of the House party, therefore, shaping all subsequent practices. Objectives of a social media have more influence on the features and the operations of the social media under development (Evans, 2010 p. 291). To refine this objective, the task of keeping all students informed about parties in campus must be broken down into simpler tasks that students can achieve using the social media. For instance, students can use messaging, chats, and writing notes on their walls. Best practice # 2: Knowing the target audience Understanding the target audience forms a critical part of the developing the House Party social media. To understand the audience, it is critical to evaluate the characteristics of students, and tailor the services according to their needs. For instance, most students use their cell phones to access social sites. In addition, student prefers sharing content such as photos or video clips with one another. Segmentation of the audience is a necessary step in defining the audience and meeting their needs (Powell, Groves, & Dimos, 2011, p.114). It is also valuable to determine the average age, location and gender of students, and how they access internet. Most important, it is essential to understand how students communicate with other student about parties and how these parties are organized. This information will be helpful in deciding on the strategy. Best practice # 3: Applying a strategy Selecting a proven strategy is one of the essential tasks of building a reliable and efficient social media (Golden, 2011, p. 56). With consideration of the users of House Party, the strategy will centre on the development of a social tool that will accomplish the above-identified objectives, and for a specific audience (University students). The social media must allow other students to create party events and other to join them. Typically, the strategy will be to mimic the usual activities that university student engage in relation to parties. Best practice # 4: implementation-picking the right tools With a well-defined social media—House Party, it is essential to select the right tools to implement the above strategy. Successful implementation require both software and hardware resources to design, build and run House Party giving it an online presence. The required are:- a) Computers: The developers of House party will require 3PC and 2 Macs. In addition, one Server will be required, as well. Developers will use two PCs will be used to develop the social media using website authoring tool selected for this project. These PCs will have all software using in building House Party. The Mac’s will also help in creating stunning images that will form part of House Party. Dell Precision workstation with Dual Core i3, Windows 7 professional, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard drive, and Intel graphics will cost with 17” LCD screen will cost$ 1169. Two Macs each with 2.5Gz speed, 4 GB RAM, AMD Radeon graphics adapter with 511MB, 500 GB hard drive will cost $ 1199 apiece. These Macs will help in producing graphics for the website. For a server, Dell Power Edge R310 that can fit into a chassis has Intel Xeon processor, and I Tb of space cost $ 857 and is perfect for testing the site. b) Camera: A camera is required to capture images of university location as well as other images for use in developing House Party, as for advertising the service. Nikon D500 has the best features to complete capture-stunning image. The Camera has an 18-55 focal length and a LCD to preview images. This camera is fit for the job and cost $ 800. c) A wireless router will be necessary to connect all the computers and server into one network. This router will create an environment where development will take place and where file can be uploaded to the online servers with ease. A cisco Aironet 1142 wireless access point that cost $ 450 is the best contender. d) Adobe CS5 premium needs to be purchased. This software should have multiple licenses allows many installations. This suite will have Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for creating and editing photos. The suite also has Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Catalyst that will be used to develop the social House Party. These tools will allow developers to code and debug the social media on the go. However, the software comes with a cost of $ 1899.95. e) Antivirus software is also necessary to protect the development resource from viral attacks. Symantec Endpoint protection for five users will serve all users. This software will cost $24 per user for a single year. This software will ensure worms and virus do not disrupt the development process. f) Other free software includes: i) Browsers such as Internet explorer, Mozilla Firefox and internet explorer will help in debugging House Party. This free software will ensure that the social media is compatible to users. ii) Servers such as Xampp or MAMP will be required to simulate the internet and therefore, test the application online. These soft wares have no cost. iii) Editors such as Notepad ++ and other software such as Java runtime environment will help in building House Party. g) A suitable domain name and hosting service must be purchased in order to host the website and have students access it within campus. The hosting service must provide unlimited space and bandwidth. He must also be providing multiple servers that will reduce delay and increase access time. The hosting service should also be proving other services such as Google analytics’ that can help in evaluation performance of the House Party. Using this service will help in development more efficacies by refining the services based on data from Google analytics. Best practice # 5: Sustaining Listening to the students and making positive improvement is another best practice that will make House Party remains a preferred social media. This practice will entail running data collection tools like e-surveys and collecting data (Safko, 2010, p.). Using the data collected, running House Party will be much easier as people will see their view reflected with developer creating more feature for the social media. References Evans, D 2008, Social media marketing an hour a day, John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey. Golden, M 2010, Social media strategies for professionals and their firms: the guide to establishing credibility and accelerating relationships, John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey. Powell, G, Groves, S, & Dimos, J 2011, ROI of Social Media: How to Improve the Return on Your Social Marketing Investment, John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey. Safko, L 2010, The social media bible: tactics, tools, and strategies for business success, John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey. Read More