Tweet little birdie TWEET!

How has Twitter been used beyond socializing?

Twitter has been used for many things aside from socializing. Businesses use it to announce sales, organizations use it to promote events, and news outlets use it to notify the public of important and breaking news. It is great to use twitter for all of these things because everyone knows a good businesses become good via word of mouth. Since people are more in tuned with social media now a days, word of mouth is now word of tweets. Twitter is used as customer support for companies, customers can provide feedback and the business can interact with their customers and make them feel important. If you have questions they respond and that’s very helpful.  Things on twitter spread very quickly and information is distributed to many people in one tweet, one re-tweet and one response to a tweet. 

In what ways can Twitter be useful as a journalistic, political and/or organizational tool?  Name and specify these reasons why

Twitter is useful as a journalistic way you will not be able to write an essay with fluff and stuff. You are only able to have a short and sweet way of writing. This provides your followers important, timely, concise news and views. The 140 character limit is Twitters greatest asset, as much as a tiny population of people may not like it, it allows everyone to report things quickly and readers do not stray away from the post because it is not long and tiring. We are in an instant gratification generation, and it is important to get information as wuick as possible.  Even though you’re not able to write much you can still get your point across and still get your points across so it is a very useful way to use in a journalistic way.

You can also use the micro blogging in a political way. The more interactive a political figure is with the public, the better his reputation. If he is personable and persuasive that is all that matters in politics. Figures can use Twitter for political campaigns if they wanted to can communicate with people and keep everyone updated with events, fundraisers and any other activities. Twitter can be used to discuss political issues such as the economy, immigration, womens-rights, healthcare, ect. Some posts about these things can be informative, while others can be misleading. You just have to know what sources are credible and the least bias of them all. Very few political leaders have taken advantage of the technology like Twitter. They are either to stubborn to use it or refuse to spend time to learn how to use it. If only they knew that in many articles about Twitter provide results that the account actually helps increase popularity vote within society revolving around public figures and politics.

What topics/subjects did you choose to follow on Twitter and why?

Perry's Ice Cream: All semester I have been working on a project about Perry's Ice Cream  My group and I for COM 401 have been studying their marketing strategies and we found that their social media sites are actually a great way for them to keep their consumer base up to date with their latest events and news. The biggest thing they need to work on is advertising outside of the web. I thought that maybe I could follow them for this site to learn from their posts and how they post newsworthy, important information in concise messages.

Gap Inc: I work at the Gap in the McKinley Mall and I love my job. The people I work with are fantastic, the management is great and the overall company is so giving. Gap is very into social issues and they are always trying to help people in the U.S. and around the globe. We do a lot of community service and we have a lot of fund raisers for all different organizations. I wanted to follow them for the class to not only keep up on their sales the days I am not working, but also to learn from their customer interaction and their global outreach programs.

Gliding Stars of western New York: Recently I have been volunteering for the Gliding Stars WNY chapter. I followed this organization for this class just so I could keep them in mind when learning about Twitter. I created a Facebook page and the Twitter account for the organization and I want to use what I learned in this class so I can help the organization become successful in the generation of web 2.0. The use of this social media site will help Gliding Stars stay in touch with their members, to send updates on skating practices, and to announce events.

What topic did you choose to tweet about on Twitter and why?

The topic I chose to tweet about was shopping and/or spending and saving money. I am a shopaholic and I love finding good deals and new types of items to buy. All of my posts relate to things I want to buy or things I have bought.

How has this experience using Twitter differentiated from blogging?  From any social media?

My experience using Twitter is different than blogging because I am able to be short and sweet. Blogging is extremely time consuming and I feel like I always run out off things to say. Twitter helps me to narrow my thoughts and make sure everything is concise and informative. Twitter also allows instant interaction which is better than with a blog that you spend a lot more time writing and having very little input from others and not a lot of social interaction. A blog is more like a diary, that no one sees and Twitter is like the short little things that you write inside a bathroom stall and everyone sees. Twitter is great for organizations to interact with consumer base, as opposed to a regular blog that most people tend to steer away from interacting with.

 

Good vs Bad

Erin Lackie COM 336
Twitter Project

 WEBSITES I THINK ARE WELL DESIGNED:

1.) www.Facebook.com: I use Facebook the most because it allows me the ability to keep up with friends and family I do not have time to see as much as I used to. It allows me to see how they are doing and them to see how I am doing. I think that Facebook has become more users friendly over the past few years. They have made improvements on photo sharing, video sharing, as well as interacting within posts and comments. The only thing that needs to be changed is the new news feed that shows the most popular post verses most recent posts. I know you can change this too most recent while navigating via a PC or Mac, but not on a mobile device.

2.) www.Google.com I use Google as my one and only search engine. I also use it for YouTube, blogger, and G mail. I search for images and news on Google as well. I like that you can filter searches to narrow down to what you really want to find. I think, in general, Google is very basic and easy to operate. I would like if Google maybe had apps instead of links at the top to navigate to these different branches of Google. Aside from that, I believe Google is extremely well developed and navigation is a breeze.

 3.) www.yahoo.com : I always use yahoo for my email. I check my email everyday online. That way I can see sales and everything because I am addicted to shopping. I think yahoo is very easy to navigate. Aesthetic wise, it is very busy. The homepage to Google has A LOT going on. They have so many different branches it may be confusing to others, but I have been using yahoo since I can remember and I think it is easy navigate.

4.) www.netflix.com: Navigation is very user friendly. Design wise, it is well designed. It is interactive. These are all the things I look for in a well designed website.

5.) www.gap.com : Gap's website is focused on all their brands and all of their ad campaigns for the season. Aesthetically, the website is flawless. The colors always coordinate, the sales are bright and pop off the screen and the images added make it appealing. The navigation is great and there are forums for each item to rate it and discuss the product. This is a great way to interact with your consumer base and for your customers to tell you what they like and dislike. 

6.) www.msn.com: I am always attracted to MSN's home page. The layout of the site is very appealing and the content matter in the website is very unique, timely and/or important. I keep MSN as my homepage to quickly navigate through news and see the hot topics of the day.

7.) www.ESPN.com: This site is extremly interactive. The score charts at the top keep me up to date on scores, time left in the game, and the teams that have already won their game for the day. Fantasy teams is extremely popular. It is easy to do, navigation is pretty easy and it is interesting to be able to interact with people over the internet via real life games.

8.) www,twitter.com: Twitter keeps all post in chronological order. This makes it easy to read and to pickup from where I left off. Twitters posts are limited to all messages are concise and get straight to the point.

9.) www.YouTube.com: Navigation is easy and it is a Google operated program. I think Google is a great site and YouTube definitely fits well with the aesthetic of its parent site and the design is perfect for  a video sharing site. It is easy to upload a video, interact with other videos and share these videos as well.

10.) www.pogo.com: Pogo is an extremly interactive game site. You get to play games against others as opposed to computers and you can even chat with them while you play,. 

WEBSITES I THINK NEED SOME WORK

 1.) www.buffalostate.edu ‘ Since we go here, I think it is not a surprise that I use this site a lot. My biggest pet peeve about our school website is navigation. Having to click mybuffstate then students and then finally getting into links to navigate elsewhere is just inconvenient. A few branches of the parent website that are not easy to use would be the E. H. Butler Library website. They redesigned the website, but I have no idea to fins what I am looking for on there. It took me about an hour of clicking on different things to find things I needed for a research project. Another branch of the Buffalo State website is banner. When registering for class or searching for classes you have to constantly refresh or it will not conduct the search.

2.) http://q-c-p-solutions.com:  This is my moms website for her new business. I have no idea who she paid to design this, but I have explained to her that it is the worst design ever. The font sucks, the colors suck, the background sucks, the content sucks and there is no navigation through the site at all. It looks very armature and unprofessional.

 3.) www.buffalo.wikispot.org: The navigation on this site is horrendous. The aesthetic is terrible. The fonts are not good and the content for the wikis are either does not exist or not informative enough.

 4.) www.pinterist.com: Their mobile app is better than their actually website.The website is a little over whelming when you are brought to your home screen with everyone's pins. Maybe if there were a way you could pick and choose whose pins you want to see in your feed. 

5.) www.justfab.com: The aesthetic of the website is not that great. There is a lot going on and it gets confusing when you start to shop for the shoes. The filters used to refine searches actually make the search more difficult.

6.) Google+: I have no idea how to use it. This is not a user friendly social media site. Someone please teach me how to get people in my circle!

7.) bing.com: There is just way too much going on. Bing is overwhelming. The homepage is fine, but anything after that is just too much information all at once. the fonts, backgrounds, and advertisements distract me from finding the actually content I am searching for.

8.) blackboard/angel: Navigation sucks. I like that you can change the layout and templates so it is more personal, but navigation sucks and it is hard to interact with one another. Discussion forums are terrible and the messaging feature is too. Outdated technology.

9.) AOL.com: This is outdated as well. The design is not that great.

10.) tumblr.com: Tumblr is pretty much an online diary. Also, you can re-blog things people blog. Most of the time it is just photos or quotes. Tumblr gets boring, the most fun I have had with it is changing my background and layout.

Communications and Facebook

I think it is important for Communications Majors to learn how to use social media because some of us will be involved in marketing and advertising in our near future. I think it will give us another perspective to bring to the table in our professional life. It also doesn't hurt to get a little creative with other aspects of life either! Not only will knowing how to create groups and events help us pass this class, it will help get us noticed in the blue collar world. As for me, I want to stick to event planning and wedding planning which I will be using social media all the time to market for my business and be successful in the generation of web 2.0

Thoughtful and creative posts matter when it comes to Facebook because it will catch someone's eye. It will help create business for the client or company you work for and it will get you noticed by others too! I think it is really important to create something eye popping. It could be for a campaign, an advertisement, a meeting, or an event.

We should be seeing this symbol in every restaurant or small business.It should be used on business card and websites. This symbol stands for a lot more than "Facebook". It stands for social networking, event pages, friends, members, status updates, photo sharing, marketing, advertising, news feed, etc. This can and will help businesses grow. I think this project was definitely interesting and it pointed out a lot of key things that companies and organizations should do when trying to promote their business via social media. 

The three organizations I chose are:

1. Hyde Park Steakhouse Buffalo
2. Queen City Professional Services, Inc
3. McKay's South Buffalo

I chose Hyde Park because I recently went there for dinner, and I actually found really great priced meals on the menu. Not many people I know have been there because it is "too expensive", but I think if they had a Facebook presence they would bring in more business. Every day if specials were posted and more and more people like the page, more and more people will be reached. I personally think the food is absolutely delicious! I used a special that the steakhouse has as an event on Facebook. This helped market and prote their reasonably priced deals.

Next, I have Queen City Professional Services, my mom actually just started this business. She asked me to help her make a Facebook presence because she wants more clients and she wants to be able to connect with her colleagues via Facebook as well. I am not completely sure what exactly she is doing with this company, because she is still in the process of setting goals and objectives for herself, but she wants to work on it with me. I did create a free consultation as an event to help her get clients. She does everything from individual to corporate insurance and  a free consultation will bring more clients to get to know her and her practices before deciding. It makes it more personable but still professional.

Last, I chose McKay's in south Buffalo. I am from south Buffalo and I grew up shopping at this place. Mostly for school uniforms and St. Patrick's Day attire. They carry more than just those things, but they are rarely busy. The store is only known by south Buffalonian's and they should reach out to other places in western New York.  I think this will help their business flourish. They had an instore only deal that anyone could get 30% off all Carhartt items. This will draw business because McKay's is a local, small business and they carry items and products that the general population in the area can use on a regular basis.

Communicating with Creativity

I had a great experience with this project. My group was extremely fun to work with and everyone had a different way to express how they communicate. I chose to communicate through my artwork, Greg chose to do it through media and literature, Aaron communicates through writing, and Calvin does it through photography. I think that all four concepts worked well together. All of our videos individually showed our personalities and still communicate the topic of communications extremely well without words. All of our videos as a group flowed smoothly and we all came together to make sure our concept was portrayed perfectly. Each one of us had our own individual struggles, but once we got into working together and piecing the whole video together, we did a great job. 

My biggest struggle personally was converting my files from windows to work properly on the Mac. It was really difficult because I started my project in Windows Movie Maker and it was finished, it would not open in iMovie because the file was saved as wmmv. So, since my video is a stop motion, I ended up loading all 430 photos onto my dropbox account, and downloaded it onto the Mac I was working on. After they downloaded, I made them into 3 separate slideshows in iPhoto, then I was able to put each slide show into iMovie and start working on editing. Unfortunately, my original computer did not allow me to create a new event, so I was not able to start working right away. Finally, I moved over to another computer and put all the slideshows together. Once they were together I had to blend each clip so it was not visible that it is not only one clip. After, I added my music, and that took forever. I wanted the music to start and end at a specific spot so that it was not awkward when I added it to the group. I ended up clipping the last instrumentals on the song and pasting in in at the point I wanted the lyrics to end. All in all I think I created a wonderful masterpiece. 

As a group, I don't feel like we struggled much together. We all were extremely open to ideas and we all are good a certain things so we each used that to our advantage when putting the group video together in iMovie. Calvin definitely was a great asset to our team because he was a little more familiar with the editing than the rest of us. Aaron's video was awesome, it was really well thought out and he was great at picking music for our group video. Greg brought a lot of fun and he did a great job learning how to work with iMovie and even taught me some things. When working together, we each did a different thing when it came to editing. We split up to duties of cropping, adding music, adding effects and adding transitions. I worked with the transitions and I think that we actually worked really well together when picking them out.

I think we all had trouble when uploading all of our videos. A lot of us had issues uploading to DropBox. I know I had issues with Vimeo, mostly because it took way too much time. Video takes forever to upload compared to YouTube, and it also is not as easy as YouTube to navigate.The easiest video sharing site we used, and the only one I am really familiar with is YouTube. I think that YouTube is definitely more advanced and well known so it made it a lot easier and hassle free. Vimeo is really weird to me; I personally do not like the design of the website nor do I care for the feed that pops up when I log in, when the videos are not relative to me. I logged in today to check out my video again, and my feed was full of cats...I do not even like cats. I guess for Vimeo that top videos are picked by the staff, as with YouTube the top videos are rated by people all around the world. Vimeo is almost ad free, so that is nice. Personally, ads really do not bother me, but sometimes it is nice to be without a million advertisements in your face all at once.I just think I like to stick to what I know and I am more comfortable with it.

Using video as a communication tool instead of writing and photographs is different. You can see the emotions of people, hear sounds and words they are saying, actually communicate more personally. Having instantaneous interaction via video communication is great because you can always be close to people no matter how far away they are. Videos help people with the lack of face to face interaction between people now a days. Photographs are only a millisecond moment in your life and videos can be much longer than that, You can capture more than one moment, you can capture many. Video as a communication tool is also a creative concept. I personally, am all about creative communication. 


I think that the public nature of my video allowed the subject matter to stand out. The fact that I used art work to communicate the message of my life and how I communicate creatively in my own daily life. My video was straight forward, fast paced, and understandable. The public nature was perfect for my topic of creative communication. I think that each video from my group members allowed the subject matter to stand out do to the public nature of their videos as well. Aaron used his journalistic writing and reporting process to convey the message of journalistic communication. Greg used religious literature and movies to display that he is influenced by visual and literary communication. Calvin used photographs that he has taken and video of him taking photographs with all different cameras to tell us about him as a photographer and that he communicates via photography. All of the public nature of each video explains the subject matter of different forms of communication that relate to ourselves.