Review of articles in New York Times on Social Media

Social Media Blog: November 27, 2010

The New York Times: Business Day. Wyatt, E. & Vega, T. (11/27/10). Stage set for showdown on online privacy. p. B1, B6.

Two reporters, Wyatt and Vega, give various views on pros and cons of online privacy discussions. Two federal agencies, the Federal Trade commission and the Commerce Department, are preparing reports. In addition, Congressional as well as White House Obama administrators are considering national and international repercussions. Consumer groups are advocating for more privacy in the form of “do not track” which is similar to “do not call” for phones while marketers are eagerly tracking any information for their purposes. This article lays out the points of each group, which have their own agendas and the question of more regulation from the governmental factions who may be at odds or not with each other and not even communicating with the policy that seems to have been in place of letting online companies police themselves. There will surely be more on all of these perspectives immanently. Consumer protection, business interests, security issues, illegal activities, and moral issues are at stake in these issues and all need to be considered.

The New York Times: Business: Small Business. Dahl, D. (11/18.10). A business creator sees big returns from social media. p. B10.

Dahl interviewed Eric Lefkofsky, a 40-year old entrepreneur from Chicago, who has started several Internet businesses, StarBelly, InnerWorkings, Echo Global Logistics, MediaBank, and most recently Groupon. His estimated wealth is $750 million according to Dahl’s research in Forbes and he has invested personal funds of $100 million along with a partner, Keywell, in an investment fund, Lightbank, which focuses on social media capabilities, which technology companies develop in the early stages. Encouraging social experience seems to be the principal ingredient in the example given of Groupon in which a business offers a coupon that the customer tales advantage of and passes it on to their friends thereby creating a social network. Groupon then takes a percentage of the coupon offer. In the interview, Lefkofsky only sees the social aspects growing in the next ten or so years in travel, job opportunities, and as he says any business that wants additional customers. There is access through FaceBook and Twitter to new contacts to promote, to service, and to hear back from customers. Lefkofsky suggests that any business that wants a management tool help with connections and targeting their customers to try one of his new investments, SproutSocial, to learn more about the social advantages of the web and to monitor their brand. It seems to me that one has to become more familiar with the new language as well as the ways to connect to your target group beyond friends.

New York Times: Business. Helft, M. (11/16/10). Facebook offers new messaging system. p. B1, B5.

Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zukerberg, 26, has announced a new service called Facebook Messages which he views as a natural for those who in their teens were used to instant chats and texting as opposed to e-mail users who it infers are of another generation and have used Yahoo, Google, AOL, and MSN for their communication system. Helft reports that this is a “bold move” (p. B1) even for the widest used Web site that would allow their already 500 million American customers to more readily sort personal messages into a “social-in-box” (p. B5) from others on mobile phones or any Web devices. This new system attempts to have one place for messages whether they are chats, emails, or texts. A draw back that is pointed out is the privacy issue and how much private information one wants to share for example with clients, doctors, or service connections. The article ends with the statement by Mr. Zuckerberg that it has taken 15 months and 15 engineers to get to this launch of Messages on Facebook.

New York Times International: Kershner, I. (11-16-10). A blogger’s irreverence infuriates West Bank Muslims.

The 20-year old son of a barber shop owner in the West Bank town of Qalqilya has apparently been bolgging blasphemous comments on Facebook under the Internet name of God Almighty and more. The Palestinian youth is a computer science graduate who has angered his community and raised questions of cultural issues and Internet usage. The Palestinian Authorities are investigating the case.

New York Times: Business Day: Miller, C. C. (11-12-10). Following Twitter, Right to its office. (p.B1, B6).

Start-ups want to be in the building or in close proximity to Twitter headquarters in the SoMa (South of Market) area of San Francisco’s Silicon Valley. Mark Muro, a Brookings Institute researcher on clusters of innovators and business is referenced as a source for the efficacy of being near others in ones field. The physical closeness may foster interaction among creators as well as investors. This reporter states that Twitter now has 300 employees and occupies 62,000 sq. feet of office space, which it will outgrow in several months. The real estate prices are naturally going up and are up to $32 from $29 dollars a square foot.

New York Times: Business. Kopytoff, V. (11-3-10). Facebook’s initial crew is moving on, Ready for another start-up. p. B1, B5.

Although Facebook is only six years old and has not yet gone public, according to Kopytoff, many of the original employees are moving on to start their own Internet companies. It is a good read to see what and to also not the ages in the mid twenties of those mentioned. Also of note is that the shares of stock are very liquid and some have cashed in to move on.

New York Times: Sunday Business. Miller, C. C. (10-31-10). Why Twitter’s C.E.O. demoted himself. p. B1, B4.

One of the co-founders of Twitter, Evan Williams, 38-years old, surprised all by handing the chief executive position to Dick Costelo who was the chief executive officer and noted for his business savy and detail oriented. Mr. Evans wanted to do what he is best at, product strategy, i.e. redesigning the Web site and planning ahead for Twitter’s future, according to Miller who interviewed him. Twitter’s early history is recounted as a “side project” of a podcasting service called Odeo, which Mr. Williams was a co-founder (p. B4). Williams, Dorsey, and Biz Stone came up with Twitter as a one way following and posting that was public but one could not be followed back. By 2008 there were apparent problems among the founders which are alluded to in the article although all are still on board and may have had something to do with it’s rapid growth from 71.3 million registered users to 5 million in 2009. Miller reports that now Twitter has matured form it’s informal beginnings and is now referred to by the founders as “an information network, not a social tool, and see it as an essential way for people to communicate and get information in real time” (p. B4). This lengthy article goes into Mr.Williams personal history in Nebraska as not fitting in and dropping out of college as he was creative, had his own ideas, and didn’t fit in. More information on his personal difficulties with colleagues and lack of business acumen led through the creation of Blogger, which was sold to Google. All of this history leads to the three goals, which Williams stated for Twitter as, “to change the world, to build a business and to have fun” (p. B4).

November 18, 2010:

Social Media: November 18, 2010

Tonight on his TV program, Charlie Rose interviewed one of the founders of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. He described Wikipedia as a non-profit, humanitarian site. I learned that the word, wiki, is a generic tern and he has no control over that. When asked about Wikileaks, he said that it was separate although it had been related and the paper work disconnecting them is not yet complete, but he has nothing to do with it. He did say he is for access to information, but care should be taken if it is harmful to others. He seems like a very reasonable man who described himself as a dinosaur as he communicated with e-mails as he travels so much. He did say that younger people don’t use it as much and prefer Facebook. He said they like to keep up with and connect with friends and chat. I was prompted to look him up and found that his mother and grandmother were educators and ran a small progressive private school which encouraged self exploration at one’s own pace and he enjoyed reading the encyclopedia. His original attempt at an information service was called Newpedia, which he commented was not fun, too structured, and therefore unsuccessful. Wales did start a PhD in economics which he did not complete as he developed a more social information service for information. To read more see: http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/06/online_personal_2.html

I also interviewed my daughters about their blog: FIRESTONESISTERS.COM http://firestonesisters.com/ as they were in NYC on their way back to LA from Mallorca. They have a travel and healthy life style blog for primarily people from 20 to 40. They will write a piece for me to post in their own words about their focus. As I asked questions they clearly said that you have to be precise, to the point and clear in your reason for starting a blog. What do you want people to know about you or what you are representing. They feel it has been a way for them to define themselves, like branding, so they have their voice strong and out there ..they had over 7,000 hits a few days ago.. before they sign on for a possible TV program. I hadn’t thought about it in that way and now see that you have control of what you post and present and can use this as a vehicle to reach the public. This is more than selling products and with a following one can promote their causes and interests. Other people have to want that information and be interested in following. One daughter felt it might not be appropriate for a therapist to advertise their services on a blog and it seemed to present a public picture and people want privacy in that area, she felt. They hired a design person to help do their website and connect the link to Facebook which has gotten them people that would not have known or had access to necessarily. Their high school and college friends can now find them and know what they are doing. They have girl friends as well as male friends who read their posts. One mentioned that Twitter was not of interest particularly. More on that later....

At the recent, this past weekend, Summit Expressive Therapies Conference in New York, which lasted four full days and took place in four locations, social media was mentioned in the ethics panel discussion. The music therapist on the panel brought up social media as an area of major concern that needed to be clarified and updated constantly in today’s world. Ethical guidelines for research and publication are definitely being investigated and hotly studied particularly in relation to the individual expressive arts therapies.

I just ordered and received from www.BlackstoneAudio.com CDs by Nicholas Carr called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. He presented at talk recently at the New York Academy of Sciences, which was too costly for me to go. This is a good alternative and I will report on what he says. I am reading his new book, Does It Matter: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage (2004), Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Company.

November 6th: Prezi and VoiceThread

Social Media Journal: November 6, 2010

I have been working on Voice Thread and Prezi all day, and it is a beautiful Saturday!!

I will include my thoughts on Voice Thread, which will be in my groups final presentation in December in some form, but I thought some might want this info beforehand. These is more in an earlier Blogs as well as I have investigated it many times now to let it sink in and think about how it might be useful in research.

More on VoiceThread http://voicethread.com

VoiceThread is an incredible tool that offers a place for communicating, collaborating, and conversing on line, Web 2.0, that can be especially valuable to educators. By offering audio and video along with text, photos, or document presentations like PowerPoint, the interactive discussion can be much more lively and interesting than straight documents. Products for teachers, K-12 and Higher Education, are available and teachers can upload their materials and open a discussion that has the feel of students being present in the classroom due to audio components and additionally because photographs, avitars, or symbolic representations of participants can be seem around a central screen. It is a way of increasing the social presence and interaction engendering the feeling of being known and part of the group. Students can observe images, documents, stories, poems, or lessons visually, auditorially, or through text and participate with their own media or annotations on the central screen. Universities are using VoiceThread for lectures and on-line courses as location and time zone are not an issue as participants can check in and out at their convenience or on the professor’s schedule. I can’t help but think that this could have been useful in our own program as one of the advantages reported its that it helps create a sense of belonging to a community when students are in different cities and countries and collaboration is wanted but often a challenge. Learning can be fostered by this proactive means of responding that gives everyone a chance to speak and be heard and receive comments from the professor as well as others in the group. To engender connection group pictures or personally chosen symbols appear when one make a comment and both are embedded around the central space of the image or text. Participants can make their comments and be heard in their own voices. Choices for responding are several: through their spoken voice on a mic or through the telephone, by texting, by adding their own videos, or adding an audio file. This tool allows comments to be gathered in one space and shared by all selected to participate. This can be a secured site or in other instances and at the creator’s discretion the discussion can be opened to the public.

Other products are available for businesses and professionals for a fee, which allow much more space for creating imaginative presentations and discussions. The term “asynchronous” was used on the site as meaning that participants can work on the site at any time. Free versions require registration and signing in and then you can experiment in a limited way with browsing others products and creating simple ones of your own using your voice. The usefulness of this for our purposes in tour Lesley program would be in an additional way of making a discussion more alive as multimedia could be employed. Actually hearing each other’s voices could add a great deal to feeling tone and interest of members participating. Elluminate has many problems particularly with following with many distractions and having back and for conversations between participants. Also, there is not enough time ever to have all voices included in the discussion. This could be a way of responding that was much more real and could be in addition to written responses on threads. Both are useful.

As far as my own research, which uses interviews, which are considered confidential, this tool is not appropriate. Possibly if I were doing a blog that was open to women artists who had recovered from major illness and wanted to talk about their experiences and perhaps share images with others, Voice Thread would be a good way to do this as people could choose to participate and even do so under another name. Another possibility would be to start a discussion on various art works and have a collaborative discussion. There is a large group of disabled artists who can not get out to galleries and museums and this could be a way of including them in an on line community.

Further information suggested that similar tools would be: Animoto, Jing, Voki, or Wikispaces.

It was also noted by Google that VoiceThread was one of the top 100 tools and would soon be ADA compliant. I believe they had done this now and have done work for the hearing impaired in Washington, DC.

Prezi.com

The idea of Prezi is a good one. To enliven PowerPoint presentations would be a real plus as they are very boring and text exhausting to sit through. I had hoped for more in my attempts to manipulate the canvas, but found it very unresponsive and difficult, in not impossible to get what I wanted in colors, fonts, and timing. Perhaps it is just slow or tools are not able to perform adequately. I am used to a Mac, which is what all the designers and creatives in NYC and probably elsewhere use, and I would bet that this program was not designed either for or by Mac people. There is much more available that is more user friendly on Apple. I could be wrong, but as an artist, this does not do enough for me and I couldn’t get it to follow the paths and do a slideshow or animate except with me doing something each time. So, here is a simple one that I don’t find all that interesting, so will explore further for final assignments. Any comments would be welcome. All of the images are ones that I have personally taken, except this one of Deep Space, see info below.

http://prezi.com/ehzwmp3evn5j/edit/#28_4012770

This is an image in the Prezi that I took of a photo exhibited at The Rubin Museum of Art here in New York. See info..