Social Media, Writing for Apps, and Discoverability - Coursework Example

A Professional Blog of Campus Media Name Institution’s Name Date Rationale In this portfolio, I wholly focus writing a blog. I am a journalist student who recently arrived in Australia to begin my Masters Degree. Because I am still settling into my new environment, I decided to focus on PUBL90006’s subject material for my blog. Every week I read the set readings, look over the questions the tutor has set under the ‘Review your reading’ tab and I extend this through reflection and further search and reading on my own. My main focus is on the three topics in PUBL9006 which interest me the most: social media, writing for apps and discoverability. Over the semester I write seven entries on these topics, reflecting on them through the professional framework of journalism. Given the fact that my portfolio is rich in text, I used Word Press theme designer for text-heavy subjects and elegance (The 60 Second Marketer, 2014). Development of Social Media Social media is increasingly becoming an integral part of the current modern society. They are basically internet sites which have empowered people to freely interact, share and discuss information about everything including their own lives through the use of multimedia which includes a mix of not only personal videos but also words, audio and pictures. Accordingly, such internet sites are capable of helping both individuals and groups to not only create but also share content through engaging or involving themselves in one to one interactions. Social media are known to reflect through various forms which include micro blogs, social bookmarking, digital storytelling, writing communities and scrapbooking (Curtis, 2014). They also include blogs, message boards and forums, wikis, virtual worlds, tagging, social networks, and news, collective intelligence, podcast portals and image and video sharing. Some of the most popular social media sites include among others: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, You Tube, Snapchat, MySpace, WordPress, Instagram, Blogger, Flickr, Second Life Reddit, just to mention but a few (Easy Media, 2014). The development of social media can be traced back to late 1960s. The description below provides an exhaustive overview with regard to the inception of social media and its development up to the current times: 1969: the first commercial internet service provider; CompuServe was developed using dial-up technology. 1978: the bulletin board system (BBS) was invented by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis to inform friends about meetings, share massages through postings, and make announcements. 1979: Usenet was developed as the first bulletin board that had capacity to connect both the University of North Carolina and the Duke University. 1984: introduction of “Prodigy online services” which later on developed to become the second biggest “online service provider 1990” after CompuServe. During 1994, dial-up sales of connections to the “World Wide Web” or WWW was pioneered by Prodigy as well as Web publishers hosting services. 1985: opening of the American Online (AOL) service 1989: commencement of the development of the World Wide Web (www) by Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) based in Switzerland. 1992: the first online community for college students and young adults; Tripod was developed. 1993: the World Wide Web (WWW) as a technology was created by CERN. Similarly, the students at the University of Illinois at “National Centre for Supercomputing Applications” for the first time displayed the graphical browser or the “Mosaic”. Furthermore, by then there were more than 200 servers online. 1994: Geocities were started by Beverly Hills Internet; users were enabled to create websites. Earthlink was started as an online service provider. The information superhighway was the name people used to refer to the internet. By this time, there were more than 1,500 web servers online. 1997: more than one million sites were available on the web, commencement of blogging. For instance, SixDegrees.com enabled users to create online profiles and friend listing, the American Online (AOL) Instant Messenger made it easier for online users to chat. Consequently, an online “course management system” known as “Blackboard” was invented. 1998: Internet search engine and index; Google was invented 1999: the first online social network; Friends Reunited achieved online prominence 2000: the dot.com bubble burst was invented in the business and commerce world. More than seventy million computers across the world were now connected to the internet 2002: the social networking website known as the “Friendster” became open to the public in the US 2003: Myspace was launched, Linden Lab, LinkedIn and Digg were also founded. 2005: Bebo, News Corporation, Facebook were launched. Storing and retrieving of videos was started by You Tube. The web pages online by then were 8 billion 2006: MySpace became the popular social networking site. Indexed Web pages by Google were more than twenty five (25) billion with more than four hundred (400) million queries daily. 2007: Facebook developed a Facebook Platform which made it possible for third party developers to establish applications (apps) on their site. Apple released iPhone and Internet smartphone. 2008: Facebook actually became the most popular and known social networking site and thus surpassed MySpace 2009: Twitter was introduced 2010: Google launched Buzz to compete with Facebook and Twitter 2011: The social media platform became virtually accessible in different parts of the world and become an important part of the global community. Social media commerce started increasing exponentially, sharing of personal information via social sites started raising privacy concerns. 2012: more than two billion people around the globe were using the internet and also social media platforms. People started connecting to the internet via handheld devices such as e-readers, game consoles, and handheld music players. By then the top ten most popular social networks by were 1. Facebook 2. Blogger 3. Twitter 4.Wordpress 5.LinkedIn 6. Pinterest 7. Google+ 8. Tumblr 9.MySpace and 10. Wiki. Facebook subscribers reached 1 billion (Academia. Edu, 2014). Characteristics of Social Media in Schools Social media platforms have the following characteristics: i. They provide users with free web space where they can upload content ii. Users are given unique addresses that singularly identify them/web identity. These addresses enable users to post and share content iii. The users are also empowered to build their online profiles whereby there are asked to key-in their personal details including name, date of birth, address, school/collage, professional details. The site then connects the users by mining data. iv. Social media users are encouraged to update their personal and professional details thus making the site a platform for connecting with relatives and friends. v. Real time content uploading; users are provided with tools to post content in real time which can be text, audio, images, videos and/or symbolic likes and dislikes (Easy Media, 2014). vi. Users have the ability to comment on posts made by friends and relatives; enable conversations vii. The posts have time stamp something that makes it easy to follow posts. Characteristics of different forms of social media LinkedIn: This was founded in 2003 as a social network for business. LinkedIn allow users to post a resume as well as interact through the use of private messaging. The site actually operates on an assumption that users or the people personally interact with each on the site. With time other features have also been integrated which includes groups, advanced profile features, real time updates, and question and answer forums MySpace: Founded in 2003 and became the most popular site in 2006. MySpace allow users to customize their profiles, post music emanating from different artists, they can also be capable of embedding videos from even other sites. Initially, communication was through private messages, bulletin send out to all user’s friends, public comments posting on user’s profile. MySpace also has a blogging feature. The Instant Messaging client on MySpace allow users to chat with friends. The site has also been integrated to have real time status update together with news feed Facebook: Developed as a Harvard’s only social network in the year 2004, however, it rapidly expanded to other schools, businesses and by 2006 it was accessible to everyone. By 2008, Facebook became the popular or common “social networking site” in the world. Facebook allow users to post photos and videos. The site also has instant messaging/chat and apps. Users have various methods of communicating including private messaging, writing on the walls of other users (Curtis, 2014). The wall posts are visible all friends of those users and not the general public. Users have the ability of changing their privacy settings which makes it possible for different users who were online to see different parts of the profile that were based on the relationship such as “friends of friends”, “only friends” and “everyone.” Accordingly, Facebook users have the capacity to post notes which were visible to all their friends. In addition to that users are able to also comment on or like a friend’s posts (Academia. Edu, 2014). Ning: This is a platform that is used for the establishment of niche social networks. These networks hosted by Ning, can however be capable of taking their own personality thus also allowing own branding. The first widely used social networking platform due to the fact that it was simple and easy to use as it enabled non-technical users to create their own social networks. Ning does not require coding and programming. Flickr These social networks allow users to create groups, create profiles, photo pools, organizing images, adding friends, and videos into the photo sets. Users are given an opportunity to license their photos by Creating and Commons and retaining all copyrights. You Tube In the first video hosting site and sharing site; users were able to upload videos of up to 10 minutes long and even share them. In addition, the videos can be embedded on other social networks, forums, and blogs. The You Tube also allows its users to upload HD videos. Similarly, You Tube provide services to TV shows as well as movies under license of holders of their copyrights. Other features of You Tube include: ratings, channels of the user’s favourite video creators, and comments. Twitter Was invented in the year 2006 and it gained exponential popularity in the subsequent years. Twitter provides real time status updates. Twitter also enables creation of third party sites and apps; this has made it to be a multi-service platform. Twitter clients manage and update followers; there is also Twitter trends tracker; and there is also service for photo and video posting directly to twitter. Instagram This is the newest form of social media that is exponentially fast, beautiful and fun to share ones life with friends. One can take a video or picture and choose a filter to transform its appearance and feel then post to Instagram. This technology also allow users to share with other social media forms including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and many more. It is ultimately a new way of seeing the world (The 60 Second Marketer, 2014). Content of social media can be closed to our life The content of social media can be closed to our lives through restricted access, when the growth of the site stagnates and/or becomes obsolete in the market. Restricted access can be due to political issues; for instance, in Turkey Twitter was shut down for several hours. Some individuals had used social media leaked wiretapped recordings which compromised the government’s reputation prior to local elections. Court orders were issued to block the social media sites that users had used to post audio recordings together with recordings showing evidence of alleged corruption in the government. The government took action against Twitter as a protective measure. Accordingly, watchdog organizations can also necessitate the closure of social media content to the public due to privacy concerns. For example the Turkish telecoms watchdog organization BTK strongly advocated for the closure of Twitter in turkey due to numerous privacy complaints raised by citizens with regard social media. In the same light, these watchdog organizations can foster the removal of some content from social media sites which they deem not appropriate for the public. The matters can be taken to court, court orders issued, and with regard to the court’s decision the social media content can be blocked from the public (Academia. Edu, 2014). Furthermore, social media network providers can also shut down social networking service thus not allowing users to access the content. For example, Orkut; Google’s social networking site that had been in use for approximately ten years and widely used in India and Brazil was shut down. The site was closed because it could not compete competitively with its competitors like You Tube, Google+, Facebook, and Blogger. The latter was shut down to enable Google to focus on Google+ that is less of a social networking stream and more of a unified user identity system in effort to improve other Google’s Web properties. The Okrut users’ accounts were permanently removed from their Google accounts. The Orkut profile data, photos and community posts will be exported in conjunction with Google Takeout. The spread can be wide and targeted The users of social networks including social entrepreneurs have to share their mission with an audience that is wide including their employees, customers, as well as the communities they help. Regardless of this massive social media benefit, the message can be lost in the noise. However, due to the ever increasing technological innovations messages can now reach a wide targeted audience. By using social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Skype and email one can target a wide spread audience (The 60 Second Marketer, 2014). One can also create his/her own social network in a niche area like a company and/or an educational organization where people from within that organization can discuss various issues. This network does not need to be sophisticated like Facebook; however, it should provide a platform where people easily share ideas, comments, photos, and thoughts. The e-commerce together with internet based companies have a wide range of cost-effective email marketing strategies; they can use direct mails, retention mails, and external email advertising. The future Given the ever increasing advancement in social media technology over the past decade and current times, it is a clear trajectory that social networking is still a growing industry and much is yet to be seen. For instance, people particularly Gen-Y individuals will become famous within a very short time; become famous for five seconds. They will have the capacity to create one viral video which will propel them to fame through You Tube. In the same line of discussion, the society’s attention span is continually shrinking while value placed on digital things that have no much value is increasing; for this reason, it is highly expected that 15-second-fame will incredibly grow further (Academia. Edu, 2014). Social media is also creating technosexual age whereby different social patterns are being created which have massive impact on the way individuals engage. The social networks have eliminated the time lag and distance something that is substantially closing the gap between physical and digital courtship. Despite the fact that social media being unable to replace face-to-face engagements, the increasing mobile dating trends will propel social serendipity plunge. In this regard and due to social media dating market will be mostly defined by instant gratification, efficiency, together with increasing individual curiosity. For example, not only do individuals know about other people’s personality and interests with no delay, but they also think of ours. Social media is there to stay, since the inception of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and Instagram, they have been on a continued integration to suit the prevailing and upcoming trends. For example, there have been numerous questions about the future of Facebook, however, the company has cleverly and continually acquired start-up companies like Ascenta, and WhatsApp, this will automatically transform the company from just being the world largest social network site to a bonafide tech giant. The virtual reality will meet social networks; Facebook’s clever acquisitions included acquisition of Oculus; this is a clear indication that the company is planning for a virtual reality. Zuckerberg the co-founder and CEO of Facebook said that virtual reality is the platform for tomorrow; this will have a major impact on how people communicate, work, and play. There are still more big changes to online social experiences to come. State of affairs of students attends in social media Students have a wide range of benefits using the social networks; it is sometimes regarded as a natural fit for education. Using open access that some with social media, students have extended access to information as well as to experts in their learning fields which is extremely beneficial to learning (Academia. Edu, 2014). In essence, the sites extend the learning environment beyond the course given the fact that most platforms are not expensive while other can easily integrate into a course management system. For example, online students engage in social media activities that directly linked to their career and education goals. The following are state of affairs of student attends in social media: Class assignments and communication: many instructors as well as students use social media for communication and collaboration. Some universities provide resources for blogs together with Twitter assignments which can easily be adapted and be used across different disciplines. Twitter using its rating feature can be used for in-class announcements and polling. Career development: career centres in universities and colleges offer numerous services that are aimed at helping students prepare for and meet their goals of employment after graduation. Social media platforms aids students from career planning to job search; career centres use social networks for these purposes. Universities now have the “Get Connected” option on their websites to help students. Online presence: one of student’s benefits by getting involved with social media is creating their professional online identity. Potential employers as well as recruiters are continually using the internet and social media in particular to investigate about applicants. By having a strong social identity positions in a professional light which can ultimately result into a positive difference in the individual’s next job search (The 60 Second Marketer, 2014). References Ning. (2014). Build and Cultivate your Own Community of Readers. Retrieved on 3rd November 2014 from http://www.ning.com/ Curtis, A. (2014). The Brief History of Social Media. Retrieved on 3rd November 2014 from http://www2.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/NewMedia/SocialMedia/SocialMediaHistory.html Easy Media (2014). 7 Key Characteristics of Social Media. Retrieved on 3rd October from http://www.easymedia.in/7-key-characteristics-of-social-media/ Academia. Edu. (2014). Instant Messaging Social networks. Retrieved on 3rd October from https://www.academia.edu/3249738/Instant_Messaging_Social_Networks_Individual_Relational_and_Cultural_Characteristics The 60 Second Marketer. (2014). Top 52 Social Media Platforms Every Marketer Should Know. Retrieved on 3rd October from http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2010/04/09/top-52-social-media-platforms/ Read More