Blog #2 Jour 4460: Obama & Social Media

Social media has slowly crept into many if not all aspects of life. Today you can scan a barcode with your smart phone and get coupons or fashion tips. Starbucks offers free drinks on Foursquare. A great portion of companies have a link on their websites where a reader can share on Facebook, tweet the information to twitter or post it to Linkedin. However, one place I really didn’t expect social media to play a direct role is the presidential election.

During President Obama’s State of the Union Address tweets went out containing quotes from his speech. On Youtube there is an ad that appears before videos that describes a virtual chat that the president will have via Youtube. During this chat he will answer questions from Americans. People had until January 26^th to submit and vote on questions. President Obama will conduct the online interview on January 30^th.

I think that this approach is very smart. If the rest of the country, especially the youth, are using social media to connect and stay up to date on events why not use that? It could also bring about votes for the president.

Through his use of social media it shows me that he is not afraid of change and can adapt to use it to his benefit. Plus, a president on Twitter is pretty cool to me.

In some ways I feel an online campaign is better than a “traditional” one. Simply because it can pull more people into politics and actually help them understand what’s going on.

Although, since not everyone uses social media and it’s still older Americans who go out and vote, it wouldn’t be wise to run a campaign completely on social media. People still want to see that perfect grin Obama has. But, maybe one day campaigns will be run on social media. And, maybe one day the president will deliver speeches using holograms. The last statement could just be the wish of someone who thought the coolest part of Star Wars was the holograms. It would still be pretty cool though if Obama was coming out of your phone or computer though. I could settle for being able to vote online though.

However, I feel that social media can become overwhelming. It seems like every company, organization and institution is trying to flood your timelines and newsfeeds. And a new application for smart phones seems to come out more often than the sun. Learning how to use it can be frustrating. Especially on Twitter when you almost have to learn a new language to understand it.

I think social media is only just beginning to grow. I don’t know how it’s going to get bigger and more technical, but it will because, to me, it’s our generation’s media. The only time I really see someone my age pick up an actual newspaper is when they need to read it for a class or they’re at work and can’t use their phone or the Internet to look at the news. My Twitter timeline keeps me up to date on local and national news and trends.

Blog #1 Jour 4470: No Ethics. No Go.

I understand that today almost everything is faster. Cars drive faster, trends come and go faster and children grow up faster. This is also a time were “sex sells.” Even though this may be the case, not every product needs to have a sexual connection to it. Take for example the Burger King advertisement for the “BK Super Seven Incher.” If I were to just have seen the name I wouldn’t be offended because it’s just the length of a sandwich, like the five-dollar foot-long from Subway. However, I’m pretty sure that Burger King executives could have found a better way to market the sandwich rather than have a woman with her mouth wide open with a sandwich representing the male anatomy.

Now, I wouldn’t have as big a problem with the ad if adults were the only was to see it. However, this is unrealistic. And help the parent in line that gets asked why the adult males are laughing at the ad.

At my on-campus job we have to go through a workshop EVERY semester where we sit through a lecture about how others may not share your same humor. So be careful of what you say because someone else may find it offensive.

This is just one example of the ethical decisions that organizations should make when deciding what to run in the media. Burger King is seen as a family fast-food restaurant, and should take into account all of its customers.

Organizations should also be careful of who they do business with. For example, in the case study my group did in class a non-profit organization, called New Chances, was going to build a new building and needed electrical work done. The town it was located in was small and, with the exception of one company, all the electrical organizations were too small to handle the amount of work the non-profit needed. A family member of a board member of New Chances ran the company that was the exception. Another board member suggested a policy stating New Chances shouldn’t conduct business with board family members. But, New Chances was already getting all of its office supplies and building maintenance from board family members.

My group’s question was should New Chances pass the policy and cut all existing ties or should they continue using the companies tied to board members?

If New Chances lets one of the smaller companies take the job the electrical work might not be done right. Resulting in more money and time being spent trying to fix their mistake when the large family run company could have done it right the first time. But, if New Chances does go with the company run by the board member’s family it could look as if the organization only does business with board members’ families, and could potentially sever ties with other companies.

We decided that New Chances should allow all companies to place a bid for the job, and the company with the best proposition would get the job. Even if the company belonged to a board chairman’s family member. As for the already established relationships, they would be analyzed to see if those relationships are benefitting the company. And, all family ties will have to be fully disclosed.

If a company can do the job right the first time and give you a reasonable price it would be stupid to go with a company who doesn’t have the skills or experience just because someone might look at the decision with skepticism. And there are plenty of CEO’s all over the world who groom their sons and daughters to take over their businesses.

Now, I’m not exactly sure what it is about ships and creating headlines, but that industry needs some workshops taking place about preventing and rectifying problems. BP had the oil spill in 2010, and this year a cruise ship sank off the coast of Italy.

BP just messed up all around. Especially when it came to the timing of their commercials with everyday people promising that they’re going to stay until everything is cleaned up.

As soon as their headquarters got word of what happened they should have been owned up to the problem and explained step-by-step what they were doing to rectify the issue. But, they were too scared to clean their wound with alcohol and ended up getting infected with a horrible response from Americans.

Costa Crociere SpA, the Italian cruise ship, is doing a better job handling its issue than BP handled its. While, the squabble between the ships’ captain and the CEO needs to be cleaned up. Even if the captain was the one steering, he was still hired by the company.

Simply put, I think that if an organization puts thought and time into how to handle issues or the response of the public it could save it time and a headache later.

Italian Cruise Ship Crash

BP Timeline

Blog #1 Jour 4460: The Grapevine is Dead. The Timeline Lives.

Etta James, and R&B singer, died today from a battle with leukemia. I did not find out about her death from a music channel on TV or the radio. I found out about it through a CNN story shared on Facebook. While I was at work I overheard two young women talking about her death and how they read about it on Twitter. I think this is proof of how people, especially college age students, use social media to get their news. Even if the story did originate with CNN more people probably saw the story on their newsfeed or timeline.

Even though her death was what people saw they had to go to the website to read the story so that they could get a cause of death. I think that this is what makes social media great. If you want to find out about something you don’t have to comb through a physical newspaper or news website. Just look on your trending topics on twitter to see what’s grabbing people’s attention. And that’s usually how I find out about news.