Misusing the social media- TV series should come with a warning sign- do not try this at home

Just finished watching House M.D. season 6 episode 2 that got me thinking on the misuse of social media. I do understand that it is hip to write social media and virtual gaming to the script. Presumably the production dinosaurs believe that as long as the characters in the show use internet forums and try out VR gaming it helps to attract new viewers and to show that the producers are on top of the current social trends.
However as long as there is an incredible bunch of viewers with the mentality that everything on screen is pure gospel the scenes showing that proper medical advice comes from the internet forums instead of doctors should be used cautiously. The situation kind of reminded me of the incident where a shrink consulted her new age doctor friend telling her to send all the patients with the real illness to seek proper medical care.

Regarding House MD- probably a banner declining any legal responsibility for medical advice from the show at the end of every episode shouldn’t hurt.

Own It – Use the Power of Social Media

To celebrate its 150th anniversary, YWCA released a massive campaign in the USA called OWN IT. Rolling from the White House to the Puerto Rican huts the campaign was aimed at ordinary women to make them realize the challenges they are facing every day - to wake them up and to strive them to start transforming the society they live in. The centerpiece for the campaign was an online hub that was used to co-ordinate online actions in Youtube, blogs, Facebook, MSN and Twitter with the real-life events at the UN, Washington DC and local communities all across the USA bringing change to the society.

Building up a Presence

I usually never stop at the self-aid corner at the bookstore but I needed a gift for my customer and by some odd mistake all HR related internal communication guidebooks were piled at the same shelf with the do-it-yourself handbooks and one of them caught my eye.
4-hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris proved to be a very good reading material. Although I do not condone all his time management tips and leaving aside an exemplary case of Me 2.0 the book has some very good new- and social media related suggestions (in fact most of the third chapter A- is for automation) that prove very useful. Since some of those services are not that familiar in Estonia I will share with you a few local ones I’ve suggested to my customers:

• Make sure you and your company have a respectful e-mail address. sexykitty@hot.ee can steam up your private life but not your business - well at least not the business you’d tell your grandma about. As long as you are a student you can use university e-mail and when you want to start a business I suggest you read through the next paragraph on how to obtain your own e-mail.
• Get your own internet domain. A private domain is a foundation of your company’s e-life and it’s easier to achieve than you think. You do not need a private server for your own domain – just fill in an e-formula and get a virtual server that provides you with more than a hundred personal e-mail accounts, a space for your web page, blog and much more.
• Get yourself a fixed landline number. Though everybody has a cell phone business call from and to landline prefixed number adds credibility. If you do not have a landline or actually live in another country, you have two options: register with Skype-in or join a House mobile plan that provides you with two phone numbers- with the cell phone and fixed phone number prefix.
• You do not need a permanent office. There are number of companies that offer post address forwarding services and for business meetings and conferences you can use business lounges at the hotels or business centers.
• If you need a secretary to answer calls for you but there are not that many of them, you can either employ your grandma or outsource for virtual office.

If you have additional questions or need further assistance on setting up your presence do not hesitate to make an appointment.

Out-game Marketing

For years, every Christmas I have been concerned with finding the best present for my partner. A few years back “Santa” got unambiguously guided to the computer store and directed toward the special offer on a USB-gamepad with a computer game attached to it – or so I thought. Never before had Santa’s bag been raided so keenly at the store exit and to my big disappointment I was advised that it was not the gamepad but the attached GTA III game that had to be there and he was really after. A few days after Christmas the game ended up on my laptop as my partner was still busy with GTA Vice City and I wanted to know what the big fuss was all about. And that was my introduction to the world of computer games.
Thus Ilya Vedrashko's thesis on advertising and merchandising in computer games from MIT was a really interesting article that got me thinking on Grant Theft Auto games that at first glance seem to be full of advertising but there are actually no real brands present at the GTA fictional universe. On the contrary there are some GTA “fake brands” present in the real world.
I would call the marketing of those fictional brands the back-merchandising. The fabulous web sites of in-game top brands such as Cluckin’ Bell – the proud sponsor of Beat the Cock challenge, the web page and hotline of counselor Darius Fontaine, and a working hotline for Crimson Executive Wife Removal (to be used at your own discretion) all serve as the appetizers for the GTA fictional universe. Thus in-game and real life merchandising works both ways.
In fact, Rockstar Games believed in it so much that GTA San Andreas was first advertised through the introduction of a new religion- Epsilon program.

A Must for All New Media Students

During the academic writing class today I came across one of my course mates blog posts So what are we learning here? Oh yeah, Social Media! that I believe every IMKE student should take a good look at, then take a look at the mirror and look back at the post again. At least I found a couple of things familiar and had a really good laugh ;)

Is 2+2 Four or as We Choose to Decide

When I was little there was a cartoon on TV, where a little donkey was teased by fellow animals for his ability to count to ten, as other animals were not so good with numbers and opinion leaders among them made others think that counting was not important. But as the children’s programs of that era had to be educational, the cartoon ends with the donkey’s ability to count saving them all, when the raft they all boarded was built only for ten. When everybody else argued and tried to find a constructive group solution, the little donkey became the affirmed leader who took the headcount and called the rest of the animals on the raft to order. Of course that cartoon was from Soviet times, when critical thinking ruled and children were simply told that ten is ten (comes after 9 and is followed by 11). However today the animals on the raft might not have been so lucky because the donkey would have taken the math course with social constructivism, where each student is right- the one that says that after nine comes seven and the one that says that ten is followed by thirteen and the final decision would have been found on the number based on the class consensus, irrelevant to the empirical facts .
Luckily it does not yet occur in most of our math classes but we have come awfully close to it in other classes, where we are encouraged to think that everybody is right and the community’s decision on it is supreme.
Each time we give up our individuality for the sake of the group we endanger ourselves to group think more common to the religious sects than to free academic thinking.
This post is based on the book by Irving Janis and Leon Mann: Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice, and Commitment.

Dan Mayton from Lewis-Clark State College has produced an educational slideshow that sums up the theory on group think.

My Thoughts on Blogosphere

Joseph Goebbels claimed nearly a century ago that it is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion, to attract followers and to keep them in line but today it seems as if it is the privilege of every computer-literate individual. The publishing of one’s opinion has never before been as simple as it is today as even a monkey can do it and I believe that at least a few monkeys ought to have a blog somewhere in the cyber-jungle called the blogosphere.

According to Technorati approximately 184 million Internet users have started a blog and 77 % of active Internet users follow blogs. Bloggers vary from professional marketing writers to independent journalists and from academic opinion leaders to narcissists and their blogs vary alike. There are blogs for every theme and every area from everyday life to rocket science and from politics to porn. The majority of people blog from the comfort of their homes while many use various mobile devices from netbooks to smartphones. For example, I follow a number of general blogs of friends to keep track of their activities and thematic blogs on ICT, human resources, marketing and religion in order to stay atop of my career. Even though, I do not have a personal blog, I manage blogs for the European YWCA and contribute regularly through the European Youth Forum's blog-based working environment.
In my opinion, the impact of blogosphere today can be compared in many ways to the role of radio at the beginning of the twentieth century: they both can be considered the novelty media of their time, as they cover a vast scope of interests, their main usage boost comes from war and people’s urge to hear news about the course of it, as they both bring fresher and more accurate news more instantly and with less interference from censorship than the media channels dominant in their era and also in the beginning they both were led by independent enthusiasts doing it for the sake of their medium, being later discovered by the corporations and taken to the masses.

As a social medium, the blog carries many unique characteristics that can be successfully used by various interest groups and stakeholders for their own ends. Irrelevantly, the blog viewers tend to correspond to the message similar to P2P relations, as the origin of the message is not questioned, while the news media gets a more filtered approach. The bloggers, compared to journalists, are considered as one among us vs them and the merchandising via blogs is far more tolerated and successful than merchandising in e.g. a soap opera . That has led to a phenomena called Me 2.0 - mainly web and new media based successful self-merchandising, with strong emphasis placed on a personal blog, trackbacks in right places and comments to and from the right audience. As can be seen for example from the success stories of Cece Lee Simmons and Petra Epp Petrone.

That said, I still prefer to use blogs as an HR and training management tool rather than public medium, as it provides me the unique ability to hold minutes or discussions on given topics and to keep track of events and opinions me and my co-workers, with embedded videos, audio files and feedbacks and post study materials and to hold discussions with the trainees. However, if the events and occasions should demand a news medium, a blog would be the new medium of choice.

To conclude: I believe that the blogosphere is a miniature but growing image of our society, with the scent of wonderland and Byronian hero mindset where each and everyone can create a small private world that reflects life through their eyes. But the secret here lies in getting the others to mind – the question is whether there is a reflection at all if nobody sees it?

Bed + Book, a Really Bad Combination!

Yesterday evening I tried to read about Wikinomics. I woke about 7 in the morning, wondering was it the book or just a really bad dream!

Dear Wanderer,

The good book says that there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the Sun. Today the time has come for me to begin my blog about my studies and research on social media and IT management.
Hopefully, you will find here some of my ideas, my reflections on other people’s thoughts I have come across and found useful, and last but not least everything else that makes my academic life worth a while.
I bid you welcome and I promise to do my best not to kill you with yet another boring read.

Welcome

Welcome! I hope you all will enjoy blogging and this course!