Show me your friends...

Show me your friends and I will tell you what type of person you are...

The above link is the article I chose. Dr. Sonja Utz presents information that shows us the easiest way to judge a person is not to look at their personal social media profile, but to look into the information that they do not have control over, such as: their friends information, the amount of friends they have, and other influences that affect perceived "social attractiveness".

I definitely agree with this article. Why would you try and get to know a person based upon a profile which (usually) can be edited and monitored by the user? With respect to public relations, users of social media understand this and manipulate their social media profiles (as the article discusses) to portray a certain image. Looking away from the "extraversion" of the user and into the "extraversion" of the users friends, to which the user does not have direct control over, easily says more about the user.

I personally censor certain pictures, posts, and other information on my social media profiles to allow a certain image portrayed to others. I assume that if I apply for a job somewhere and my employer sees a majority of users in my friend list with pictures of them doing other inappropriate things, it's an easy crack into the true "Joe Calderone" (...not that my friends are inappropriate in anyway!).

Awesome Lectures

Just randomly came across a video on Digg (awesome site that users vote the content onto the main page), which eventually led me to the TED lectures. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and focuses on prominent leaders in each industry.

"TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize."

There's countless really awesome videos on here and I wasted a few hours on this site already, but here's some of my favorite lectures I've come across so far:







I highly recommend browsing the site and watching lectures in areas you're interested in or what you find interesting, as these are very informative AND entertaining.

"Over Twittering"

The article I chose is from the OJR's parent company "Knight Digital Media Center", which was linked on the OJR website. It's titled "Don't 'over Twitter' and other social media tips for news organizations".

Steve Safran, a media strategist, breaks the article into four main points for news organizations trying to deal with using the micro-blogging site. Mainly the article discusses Twitter, but it also gives general advice for other ways to use social media outlets to a news organization's advantage.

This article is an essential read not only for news organization's but anyone who is in the business of communicating any information to any sort of audience. The tactics Safran describes can be used by any sort of business and be completely relevant.

I disagree somewhat about the "spheres of influence" with Twitter though. Although re-tweet brings a message from one user and expands the audience, the original user will only re-tweet a message they deem worthy. Basic information wouldn't be re-tweeted or expanded to others not following the original poster.

Something I strongly agree with is the "aggregate, aggregate, aggregate" statement that Sefron obviously emphasizes quite a bit. All of the social media tools out right now are extremely helpful and many people subscribe to more than one outlet, but to have to go in and check each page/program separately is quite obnoxious and downright inefficient. It is essential for news organizations, businesses, or anyone trying to communicate with the public to have a one-stop-shop for all of their information without having to separately log-in to a specific service. With push notifications on cellphones now, it makes it extremely easy to get the audience such information, without the audience putting an effort toward looking for the information.

The Uninformed Tweet

New York Times Blogger Mocks Michael C. Hall's Cap Without Knowing He Had Cancer

This article relates to exactly what we talked about in class on Tuesday. The NYT writer had tweeted during the Golden Globes about Dexter star's attire; more specifically a stocking cap hiding the cancer-caused balding. Obviously he had no idea of the cancer, but the lack of information has caused him to catch grief. As we stated about publishing information so quickly, he could have avoided this by not using twitter as a place to think outloud but a place for inquiry. He is a professional and in this instance, he exhibits a very unprofessional "publishing" of (mis)information.

Screen shot

Here's my iGoogle page, caught a little bit of my volume screen in there too... whoops.

"Blog Maverick"

Looking ahead at some of the assignments for class, I noticed that we have to subscribe to a blog and follow it for a while and then analyze it. I chose to subscribe to Mark Cuban's blog, something which I've read before and find perfect for this assignment. I've come to find I agree with much of his opinions and analysis; he doesn't cut any corners, is a savvy business man, and really doesn't care what people think about him. He measures his own success, why care what other people (who mostly are less successful) think about him? He IS a PR person's nightmare, as many people only know of him as the crazy owner of the Dallas Mavericks who often gets fined for his on court antics, and also uses practically EVERY outlet to express his views and opinions. I'd hate to try and contain this guy, but at the same time that's exactly what makes him interesting to me.

Next blog will be a reactive post to the "information overload" reading.