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Social Media and Revolution
I just read an interesting article about social media and the effects that it has had in world politics and, specifically, revolution. This has been most recently demonstrated in the fall of dictatorial leadership in both Tunisia and Egypt.
Social media has reached its point of critical mass, allowing users to raise awareness, get attention and even cause revolution. It could be said that social media is revolutionizing revolution.
According to Fast Company’s expert blogger Kaihad Krippendorff, in his article ‘Social Media Does More Than Support Revolutions’, social media does far more than help us ‘connect’ or ‘organize.’ He says there are four fundamental ways social media is changing society: Speed, Syndication, Integrity and Transparency. Let’s take a further look:
Speed: One of the biggest impacts of social media is the speed at which it can be effective. By increasing the speed that we are able to share, spread and send messages there is a greater impact felt. But that is only part of the puzzle.
Syndication: Easy syndication of a message is made possible through the tools of social media, like Facebook and Twitter. There is great ease in getting a broad message out, and this allows for momentum to build behind the message.
Integrity: Through social media, unlike other forms of communication, a message maintains its integrity and meaning. There are fewer communication errors (providing the initial message is correct). This means that messages can provide more details and therefore carry more meaning.
Transparency: Social media provides somewhat of a veil for people to stand behind when sharing or creating messages. This allows for greater expression because there is a sense of being anonymous. Users tend to feel safe and often share more information than they might normally.
These four fundamental ways social media is changing society are refreshingly evident in the cases of both Tunisia and Egypt. With far reaching power, social media has proven that it can do a lot more than inform us of what someone ate for lunch or how bad the customer service was at the local grocer.
What other fundamental changes has social media made to society?
Taylor
Tags: change, collaboration, facebook, revolution, Social Media, society, Twitter
Spilling Your Own Beans
If you took in the big game yesterday you may have noticed that some of the commercials had already created buzz online. Volkswagen’s ads scheduled for release on Super Bowl Sunday were leaked 5 days earlier on YouTube, purposefully.
One day after the Wednesday February 2nd release, the commercials had gone viral – with “The Force” receiving more than one million hits. As I write this post, early Monday morning, the commercial is sitting at 15.5 million hits!
The strategy: by releasing the videos early, Volkswagen was able to engage audiences before the bombardment of other beer, cola or car commercials scheduled to hit the big screen during the game. The timing of the release was perfect. Volkswagen jumped the gun, and stayed one step ahead of the competition.
Pre-released or not, these ads were well received and have been touted some of the most memorable ads of Super Bowl XLV. Thus, showing us, once again – the power of video online. Check them out: “The Force” and “Black Beetle”.
Taylor
Tags: commerical, Super Bowl ad, video, viral video, Volkswagen, youtube
The Future of TV is Online
Canadians are now spending more time on the internet than they are watching TV. More people are now watching TV online or accessing content through channels like Netflix. And I, myself, can often be caught watching TV AND online – at the same time. For me, it just makes sense. I can do two things at once – watch some mindless TV and get my email, Facebook and surf time in.
Companies like Google, Apple and Yahoo have already started to cater to the shift of TV moving online with various partnerships and production of interactive TVs. But before those products hit the shelf, I’ve noticed shows working to bolster their online presence by involving the audience not just through the tube (with a one-way dialogue), but online.
Many news and information shows now flash Facebook and Twitter icons at the end of the show asking you to connect with them online through those channels. Entertainment Tonight, ‘the most watched entertainment news program in the world’, holds daily polls that send TV viewers online (www.etonline.com) to answer, which are revealed at the end of the show. The Biggest Loser, with season highs of 11M viewers, asks viewers to vote online at the end of each season for who they think should win the show.
Huge audiences lend themselves well to involvement and engagement, so why not capitalize on the success online as well? Last weekend the Golden Globes did just that. Watched by 14.6M people, the red carpet awards show shared real-time social media conversations on their website. www.goldenglobes.org prominently featured streamed chat taking place on both Facebook and Twitter.
Until the interactive TVs hit the markets, and gain momentum, I see the marriage of TV and the internet becoming increasingly important and necessary. This trend will force TV programming to find creative ways to involve their audience online. What do you think?
Taylor
Tags: facebook, Golden Globes, interactive TV, internet, Social Media, television, Twitter
Does Popularity equal Influence?
Bad publicity now means less publicity, on Google
Last week the New York Times uncovered a story about an online vendor who has managed to leverage his bad customer service reputation into a top ranking on Google’s search engine.
The business owner was quoted saying “I’ve exploited this opportunity because it works. No matter where they post their negative comments, it helps my return on investment. So I decided, why not use that negativity to my advantage?” This strategy appears to have worked. The more furious the online chatter, the higher the site ranked in Google search, resulting in greater awareness of the brand and an increase in sales.
Google blogged saying “that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results. And after quickly putting together a team Google is satisfied that they have developed a solution and it is already live.
Google outlined some obvious ways of solving the issue including blocking the offender, using sentiment analysis and placing user reviews next to search results, therefore exposing the negativity towards them. Instead they have created a new algorithm that detects extremely poor user experience and have incorporated it into their search ranking as an initial solution.
In this particular case, incorporating sentiment analysis in search ranking results is the right thing: shady business no longer profits from bad customer experience. But is sentiment analysis always a good thing?
There are reasons why we might not want Google to determine good sentiment vs bad for us in its web ranking. For example, if we wanted to look up something political and there was negative sentiment surrounding a particular leader, it may prove very difficult to learn more about a political situation. Sentiment analysis may also filter out bad reviews that are often very useful in doing research when making a purchase. The internet has always been a great resource for finding both good and bad reviews and information.
Although it seems as if Google has squashed the idea that any publicity is good publicity, there are sure to be more complex search discrepancies coming our way. Sentiment analysis has not been, and most likely will never be, completely mastered. The intricacies and nuances in language are difficult enough to comprehend face-to-face, let alone trying to develop an algorithm to decipher and make sense of it all (think: sarcasm). So, for now, we should continue to use our own intuition when considering sentiment analysis in search and maybe even dig a little further if we can’t find what we are looking for. After all, we can’t rely on Google to do everything for us.
Taylor
Tags: algorithm, google, ranking, search, search results, sentiment analysis
