Revisiting the social media press release

This past week in class we discussed social media press releases and the death of the traditional press release. If you want a good example of what a social media press release entails take a quick gander at Shift Communications prototype.

To put it simply, the Social Media press release works as a place to aggregate info about your topic using various social media tools to display and present multi-media information. It functions best when you combine smartly, such as using Youtube embedded video, with a podcast link, and a del.ico.ous page with links to relevant content.

I think one the main things I'd like to revisit when looking at the concept is its readability and streamlining the concept. There is such a thing as focusing on catering to all the popular social media tools which can quite simply bog down your template. Especially if your business is taking a look at employing various SM press releases you want to consider a method for organizing, streamlining, and being able to update your information.

For example, the press release should contain a link to where all the main videos shall exist rather than bogging down the press release by linking every video. As well wherever the playlist of videos is located, they need to be named and tagged accordingly for easy viewing and finding. It is these simply types of organizational methods that need to be examined and implemented to keep the social media press release relevant and useful.

No one wants to be a pirate.

Instead of my usual post, today I present a video created by myself on the topic of the Somali Pirates. The main reason I created this video was to discuss not what the pirates are doing but rather why they are doing it. No one wants to be a pirate and the only reason Somalis have gone this route is to solve some of their problems.

While this doesn’t justify their criminal actions, it does behoove us as citizens of the world to examine why they are doing these actions and see if there is anything that can be done to resolve the issue without simply resorting to violence.

Ever since the bloody rescue of the captured American captain, Somalia is back in full frontal view of the American viewing audience, which hasn’t really happened since the Black Hawk incident back in the 90’s. Letting this problem linger since then is one of the many causes of the issues Somalia is facing.

Since the fall of the state back in the 90’s Somalia has been in constant turmoil over warlords and gunmen. This has led to a very destabilized society without any source of money, food, or growth.

Along with this issue, one of Somalia’s main sources of food, its seas have been facing major issues over the last few years. Overfishing from foreign boats who sign dubious deals with the “government” has taxed on villagers only source of food leaving many fishermen to take to arms to feed their families.

As well, one of the major concerns is the illegal dumping of toxic waste by foreign countries in the waters of Somalia. These actions threaten an already taxed and debilitated food source for the poor country.

These last two reasons have been cited by Somali Pirates as their primary concerns and justifications for their actions. They view their pirating and ransoming as a way to pay for food, medicine, supplies, and the removal and clean up of these illegal-dumping activities.

And with the spread of wealth as the money gets spent, the Somali citizenry becomes complacent with the use of illegal money to support their lives.

People shouldn’t have to resort to these activities simply to survive, and as citizens of the world in this global society we should look at solving the problems that are causing the criminal activity, not just punishing it. No one wants to be a pirate. We shouldn’t give them a reason to be.

The CNN/Ashton kutcher 1 million followers thought.

Well, twitter recently had a little event between CNN and Ashton Kutcher. For a quick read up mashable has a good report on it.

For many this "event" and milestone for twitter has for many brought Twitter into the mainstream, in general Mr. Kutcher claims it as a new changing of the guard going from old style news feed from the mainstream media to that of news from the common social media "reporters" comprised of twitters and other social media users.

However, in response to this, I think it must be remember that while the access of information has grown and sped up, I also believe that the issue of factual content, objectivity, and unbiased reporting becomes even more important. While mainstream media has changed from the objective news source to that of biased news for many who get their news from the internet, it should be more and more apparent that we require a change in the old media. An evolution for it to adjust to the new information world.

So in general, am kind of for and agaisnt the Kutcher claim. I'd rather see an evolution of the old guard to adjust to the new world. Thoughts?

On the topic of "Viral Videos"

One of the major things to come with the proliferation of Internet technology is the ability to access and upload web video.

This was the topic of conversation for our lecture this past week.

One of the most interesting things that we came upon were some of the figures about web video such as:
-total videos uploaded to youtube – 78.3 million
-average video length- 2 minutes 46 seconds
-time it would take to view all of this 412.3 years
-average age of uploader: 26.57

Of course those numbers are constantly changing, however the point I'd like to examine is what really makes a viral video viral.

At our discussion we discussed that for the most part there are 4 types of web video:

-business generated

-business generated but customized

-business initiated, user-generated

-user-initiated and user-generated

These categories tend to be the general kind of videos that we as users experience. However, my thoughts are what makes a viral video, and do any of these in particular make better viral videos?

In general, one would assume that business backed videos with seo campaigns and marketing campaigns can push any video to be a "viral" while the more user-created may have a harder time or requires a bit more luck to really reach the same level.

We learned that it really doesn't take that many people to begin the cycle of sharing and take a video viral, but in general does a marketing campaign, seo campaigns take away from the quality and notion of a viral video? Do we really worry if a viral video needs to be user-created and initiated?

Thoughts?

Second Life: A Response

This past week, we had a presentation in class about SecondLife . For those who don't know Second Life is an online virtual world that allows users to create and experience others created content such as locations, buildings, and clothing.

In general, we discussed the many ways certain people use SecondLife. Some as a ways of communicating with others, sharing content, getting feed back from people, or as a means of experiencing new things. However, I believe that there are some limitations in terms of the program itself.

For many in our class, one of the main points of confusion was the difficulty curve in learning the program. Not only are the controls unusual, but they are not standard to many web schemes. Along with this issue is the the performance and demand that the program takes from computers. Being almost a decade old does not stop it from bringing new and powerful computers to a grinding slow halt.

In many ways, I appreciate the ideas and thoughts SecondLife tries to achieve, but I believe that there are newer technologies that achieve the same.

Metaplace: the evolved second life.

Well, in our discussions of second life, I remembered about a particular development that may be interesting to those interested about virtual worlds. It is Metaplace which functions as an evolution of the concepts and ideas that are presented in second life.

What it does is that it turns your internet browser, and a typical website, and transforms those into a virtual world. So instead of having a program to access a virtual world, anyone with the proper browser can access the virtual world simply by putting in the web address like a typical website.

Just in terms of achieving its promise I could see Metaplace recreating the Internet in terms of the way we experience it. Instead of viewing the internet as pages we would be able to experience every web address as an entirely different world and experience. Each person would be able to create their own second life for anyone to access.

Thoughts?

Some Important Social Networks for PR professionals

This week we spoke about some important social networks that PR professionals may be interested in.

These sites would be ones that allow for professionals to connect with each other. While we know that such sites as twitter, facebook, and linkedin are useful for Pr professionals really allow for the PR community to speak with each other and share ideas.

I believe the most interesting one was Ning networks PROpenMic and Society for word of mouth (created by the writers of Citizen Marketeres). These networks exist solely for the PR communicty to interact with one another, and I believe that in general these types of social media networks can aid the rest of their audiences. Reporters can contact, communicate, and establish relationships with PR professionals.

The same can apply for Linkedin which is a place for many professionals to post their profiles and who they work for. This network allows you to examine profiles and communicate with professional individuals that normally you may not have access to.

In particular, here are some of the benefits of being on these medias.
-establish credibility

-use recommendation tool

-start networking through free access to : immediate connections, 2^nd/3^rd degree contacts

-join relevant interest groups

The more we are connected the better that we'll be able to express ideas and really find and connect to the expertise out there.