Life’s all about moments of impact, and how they change our lives forever. But what if one day you could no longer remember any of them?
:(
(Source: friskyvisions, via twiinklex)
Leighton Meester before Gossip Girl.
(Source: whenhumphreymetwaldorf, via twiinklex)
(via jennathecat)
Media Literacy 12 (Mass Media Freedom and Ethics)
Guidelines for the social website Formspring
Formspring (formally known by its full URL www.formspring.me) is a popular social question-and-answer networking website that enables its users to set up a profile page, follow other users and ask other users directly or anonymously. The questions and their given responses are then published on the user’s profile page. Generally, helps people find out more about each other. Responses can range from straightforward to surprising, and can lead to understanding and learning more about other people.
Unfortunately, due to its anonymity features, Formspring has garnered some controversy, especially among teenagers, for the perception that it opened the door for harassment and bullying. Some of those users feel they can use Formspring’s platform to belittle, intimidate and even threaten others, which have led to some serious fights and suicide.
It is with this cause that the guidelines below are outlined to avoid further insinuations of the said acts and provide the site a more meaningful way of acting its purposes.
· Formspring should uphold the privacy of its users and never publicly reveal anonymous information of its users. Users should hold control of the privacy setting of its own profile information and of the extent and nature of interaction he wants to have with others.
· Formspring users should have the option to allow or disallow anonymous questions.
· Being a social website that features on question-and-answer, there are possible questions and answers that might offend users. But what is offensive content? Freedom of speech exists expressly to allow the dissemination of material that will offend. Clearly, what is offensive to one person maybe quite satisfactory to another (Baran, 2010).With the different perception of what is offensive and what is not, users should be able to report to the site those users whom have sent offending questions or responses to them.
· In relation to this, Formspring should maintain the confidentiality of the identity of the users who report other users asking and answering questions unpleasantly.
· Users should also be able to block anonymously (meaning the blocked user is not aware of the act) those users who are sending offensive content from further asking questions, and also be able to unblock them when reconciliation have come their way. :)
· Blocking users should have a basis, and therefore a user must be able to send the offending message, as evidence, to the administrator of the site. In turn, Formspring should examine the “evidence” thoroughly before allowing a user to block another.
· And due to the site’s anonymity features, that reporting and blocking features could not range, administrators/developers of Formspring should have detection tools for finding “problematic content” that might cause online bullying. This detecting tool should use natural language recognition to identify questionable or harassing content in ways that go beyond user reporting and simple word filters.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formspring
http://mashable.com/2011/03/10/formspring-bullying/
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/formspring
Media Literacy 13 (Global Mass Media)
South Africa vs. South Korea
Official Country Name:
Republic of Korea
Region (Map name):
East & South Asia
Population:
47,904,370
Language(s):
Korean, English
Literacy rate:
98.0%
Area:
98,480 sq km
GDP:
457,219 (US$ millions)
Number of Daily Newspapers:
116
Newspaper Consumption (minutes per day):
35
Total Newspaper Ad Receipts:
3,639,291 (Won millions)
As % of All Ad Expenditures:
48.10
Magazine Consumption (minutes per day):
10
Number of Television Stations:
121
Number of Television Sets:
15,900,000
Television Sets per 1,000:
331.9
Television Consumption (minutes per day):
174
Number of Cable Subscribers:
8,391,020
Cable Subscribers per 1,000:
177.4
Number of Radio Stations:
209
Number of Radio Receivers:
47,500,000
Radio Receivers per 1,000:
991.6
Radio Consumption (minutes per day):
61
Number of Individuals with Computers:
11,255,000
Computers per 1,000:
234.9
Number of Individuals with Internet Access:
19,040,000
Internet Access per 1,000:
397.5
Internet Consumption (minutes per day):
42
Official Country Name:
Republic of South Africa
Region (Map name):
Africa
Population:
43,586,097
Language(s):
Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu
Literacy rate:
81.8%
Area:
1,219,912 sq km
GDP:
125,887 (US$ millions)
Number of Daily Newspapers:
16
Circulation per 1,000:
40
Number of Nondaily Newspapers:
101
Total Newspaper Ad Receipts:
2,240 (Rand millions)
As % of All Ad Expenditures:
28.40
Number of Television Stations:
556
Number of Television Sets:
5,200,000
Television Sets per 1,000:
119.3
Number of Satellite Subscribers:
390,000
Satellite Subscribers per 1,000:
8.9
Number of Radio Stations:
362
Number of Radio Receivers:
13,750,000
Radio Receivers per 1,000:
315.5
Number of Individuals with Computers:
2,700,000
Computers per 1,000:
61.9
Number of Individuals with Internet Access:
2,400,000
Internet Access per 1,000:
55.1
South Africa vs. South Korea
South Africa
Today’s South African journalists now operate in a country where they are free to criticize the government, scrutinize its actions, and even make fun of the country’s political leaders—without the prospect of prison and hefty fines hanging over their heads. South Africa has emerged from being a journalistic pariah to one of the freest and most democratic countries in the world. The experience has been dizzying for the media, the public, and the new government. The public seems to have become more accommodating to the idea that journalists have a duty to be responsible, without betraying their values, training, and commitment to being the purveyors of information and news, to a public that needs to be informed, educated, and entertained.
The future looks very bright for the South African media. A new constitution protects a Bill of Rights and also guarantees freedom of expression and of the media. Although the Mbeki government has been unhappy about how it has sometimes been treated by the media and how the president has been caricatured, there has been no attempt to censor or punish the media or to pass laws to regulate the media or to prevent them from doing their job of making the government accountable for its actions. The South African media are emerging from their days of battling and suffering under apartheid laws to become true defenders of media freedom in a democratic society.
South Korea
The Korean press and other media industries have been one major beneficiary of Korea’s rapid industrialization and liberalization in politics. The domestic market with a highly literate population has expanded and diversified extensively, thus providing a rich base of news sources and economic support for the media. There is not any direct and formal control of the press, nor is there any censorship or physical threat against the journalists. The free press of Korea now enters an era to grow and prosper as one of responsible and accountable institutions.
As a social system of the Korean culture, the press cannot be expected to be entirely independent and free from the general mores, norms, customs, and traditional values inherited from Korea’s time-honored history. Yet the press as a modern institution has to deal with some antiquated legacies that do not fit well with modern sensibilities and universal standards. Chonji and ethical laxity are but one example. Owners of major media complexes are desired to be more attentive to the societal call for editorial independence and integrity in the newsroom. They are desired to be known as ones with certain philosophies of journalism as much as they are as business executives. Well-intentioned media critics look to the US press dynasties of the Graham family’s Washington Post or the Ochs family’s New York Times as models Korea lacks. Korea as a member of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is becoming a global player and its press could afford to break its cocoon and be more global in its outlooks and coverage.
The Seoul metropolitan area has too many redundant general-interest newspapers competing for the same audience without offering different fare. Almost one half of the ten national dailies do not seem to show any sensible reason for existence. It is time for the government to take their hands off the publicly run media: KBS, MBC, Korea Daily News, Yonhap News Agency, and Yonhap Television News. Korea’s democracy is vibrant enough to do away this antiquated practice of state-run media. With freedom, competition bloomed, but too many local dailies compete for nothing but their own owners’ dubious objectives, thus breeding corruption of journalism. Failing papers need to fail for the good of the rest.
In early 2000s, the government of President Kim Dae-jung initiated a needless confrontation with the nation’s major news media groups. Jailing the owners of the top three national dailies only brought shame to Korea in the form of an induction onto the IPI Watch List. Though a genuinely civilian government, his administration resorted to a variety of shady practices to indirectly control the press while he himself had been a free-press champion as an opposition politician during the previous military rules. The Korean press is strong enough not to be capriciously controlled by such harassment. As an institution, the press has survived the harsh military rules of the previous era. Now, under civilian rule, the press learns to cope with the whim of rule of law, its twists and bents.
Sources:
You’ll forgive me but I’m professionally curious. I’m paid to be interesting. I’m indebted to mystery.
And perhaps you have thought that because I use simple words, I am an idiot savant who does not understand bigger ones, but I’ve experienced such limerance from a simple dulcet daliance…
Media Literacy 10 (Internet)
Historical Research: Friendster
With the advent of internet, social networking sites become the focal point of attention of a myriad of people around the world. Diverse entities are being connected through their communal areas of interest, relationships, mutual ideas, values and many more. Means of communication among individuals become faster and easier. It serves as the latest arena of finding new friends, gaining information and a sort of entertainment to a lot of people.
Social networking sites are web based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bound system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).
Social networking sites are frequently researched in terms of their impact on people’s privacy, ways of communicating and managing relationships with others. Social networking sites do more than enable socializing; they are impression management tools which allow us to manage the way others perceive us. The photos user’s post, the personal data they share and what they emphasize through updates and blogs are all elements that paint an image of how a person is aiming to portray themselves to others. Users craft their identity and guide perceptions by deliberately revealing particular information and presenting it in a particular way. Users provide certain information about themselves in order to guide how others perceive them. The photos, thoughts, events, and personal data people choose to share and not share with others is important as it helps us understand how a person is portraying themselves and their lives to others (Harrison & Thomas, 2009).
Jonathan Abrams is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Founders Den, and co-owner of the San Francisco nightclub Slide. Previously, Jonathan was the founder & CEO of the pioneering social networking service Friendster, the online event service Socializr, and the social bookmarking startup HotLinks.
Jonathan was born in a frozen land north of America, and began his career as a software engineer at companies such as Netscape and Nortel. Jonathan holds an Honors B.Sc. in Computer Science from McMaster University, which he received after flunking out of engineering school.
Jonathan is a member of the advisory board of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, a top-rated mentor at The Founder Institute, a mentor in Steve Blank’s LeanLaunchPad entrepreneurship classes at Stanford and Berkeley/Columbia, an investor in the business that launched Venture Hacks and AngelList, and has been extensively involved in the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial community for over ten years, including past roles such as co-chair of the SDForum Venture Finance SIG, moderator of the SVASE CTO Forum, and a judge for the Stanford Entrepreneur’s Challenge business plan contest, the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition, the Stanford-Berkeley Innovators’ Challenge, the Intel Challenge, and Start-Up Chile.
History of Friendster
Friendster was founded by computer programmer Jonathan Abrams in 2002 before the creation, launch and adoption of MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004), and others.The name Friendster is a portmanteau of “friend” and Napster. Napster at the time was a controversial peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that was launched in 1999; by 2000, “Napster” was practically a household word, thanks to several high-profile lawsuits filed against it that year. The old Friendster site was founded in Mountain View, California by Jonathan Abrams in 2002 and was privately owned. Friendster is based on the Circle of Friends (social network) technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon. Friendster was considered the top online social network service until around April 2004 when it was overtaken by MySpace in terms of page views, according to Nielsen NetRatings.
Friendster.com went live in 2002 and was quickly adopted by three million users within the first few months. Publications including Time, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, US Weekly, and Spin wrote about Friendster’s success and the founder appeared on magazine covers and late-night talk shows. Friendster’s rapid success inspired a generation of niche social networking websites including Dogster and Elfster.
Friendster had also received competition from all-in-one sites such as Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo! 360, and Facebook. Google offered $30,000,000 to buy out Friendster in 2003, but the offer was turned down. Friendster was then funded by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital in October 2003 with a reported valuation of $53 million. Friendster’s decision to stay private instead of selling to Google in 2003 is considered one of the biggest blunders of Silicon Valley, the Associated Press claims. In April 2004, John Abrams was removed as CEO and Tim Koogle took over as interim CEO. Koogle previously served as President and CEO at Yahoo!. Koogle was later replaced by Scott Sassa in June 2004. Sassa left in May 2005 and was replaced by Taek Kwon. Taek Kwon was then succeeded by Kent Lindstrom, following a recapitalization by Kleiner and Benchmark that valued Friendster at less than one-twentieth its 2003 valuation.
As of 2008 Friendster had a membership base of more than 115 million registered users and continued to grow in Asia. According to Alexa, the site has suffered an exponential decline in traffic in America since 2009. From a peak 40 ranking it reached 800 in November 2010. Most people have since attributed this decline to the rise of Facebook, a rival social networking site. In August 2008, Friendster hired ex-Google executive Richard Kimber as the CEO. Kimber focused on Friendster’s expansion in Asia.
On December 9, 2009, it was announced that Friendster was acquired for $26.4 million US by MOL Global, one of Asia’s biggest Internet companies. MOL Global is funded by one of Malaysia’s successful businessmen, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, Chairman and Chief Executive of Berjaya Corporation Berhad.
In June 2011, the company repositioned itself into a social gaming site and discontinued user social network accounts. But Friendster accounts will not be deleted and users can still log in using their existing e-mail login and password. They also stated that contact list (or friendlist) will be preserved along with user’s basic information. Friendster said that in the new and improved website, the focus will be on pure “entertainment and fun”, and aims not to compete with, but rather to complement Facebook.
Financial history
The company was originally founded in 2002 with a $12 million investment by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Benchmark Capital, and private investors.
In 2003, Friendster management received a $30 million buyout offer from Google, which they declined.
Friendster received another $3 million in funding in February 2006 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Benchmark Capital. In August 2006, Friendster also received $10 million in funding in a round led by DAG Ventures, and Friendster announced in August 2008 that it had raised an additional $20 million in funding in a round led by IDG Ventures. Prior to its acquisition by MOL Global, Friendster was backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, IDG Ventures, and individual investors.
Friendster still enjoys great popularity, but of a more regional nature (it has translation capability into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and other languages), but its glory days have long passed and lessons have been learnt, however in 2006 it was awarded a patent for its “Web of Friends” facility, allowing users to visualise their friends as nodes in a web.
Friendster still has its loyal following, and lots of people find themselves creating an account on the site just to add to their network of networks, but it’s no longer a real player in the industry.
In November 2009, Friendster announced a global partnership with MOL AccessPortal Berhad (MOL), a leading payments provider leveraging a network of over 600,000 physical and virtual payment channels worldwide, to power the Friendster Wallet and a payments platform enabling micro-spending for over 115 million registered users on Friendster. The Friendster Wallet was designed to support a variety of payment methods including pre-paid cards, mobile payments, online payments and credit card payments.
Friendster also partners in with content partners such as game developers and publishers which provides monetization solutions on the Friendster platform leveraging on MOL’s payment channels and Friendster’s large userbase.
Development of Friendster through the years…
Friendster has been an open site since August 2006 when it first began allowing widgets and content to be embedded in user profile pages through its developer program.Roughly 39 percent of Friendster’s users have widgets on their profile.
Friendster gives software developer’s access to APIs that utilize content and data within the Friendster network to build and deploy customizable applications on and off Friendster. Friendster’s Developer Program is an open, non-proprietary platform with an open revenue model.
Friendster was the first social network to support both the OpenSocial and the Facebook Platform.
In December 2009, Friendster relaunched its website with a new interface.
Friendster, a leading online community site with more than 27.5 million users, has seen significant business gains as a result of implementing Akamai’s global content delivery and high-availability managed storage services. Improved site performance, specifically faster page download times, translated into immediate business value for Friendster, measured by increased site usage and revenue.
Since implementing Akamai’s solution in March, Friendster, which ranks as one of the top 100 sites on the Internet*, has offloaded a significant percentage of its total traffic from origin servers, avoiding the need to buy additional costly infrastructure. With Akamai handling global content delivery using Akamai’s proprietary EdgePlatform™, Friendster has increased site usage and enabled more advertising to be consumed on the site. The result is an increase in revenue due to improved performance. Friendster will also use Akamai’s streaming solution to offer users the ability to add streaming audio and video to their online profiles.
The Story of Friendster Philippines
Friendster Philippines has been in the news a number of times. Despite their problems in the US, and shopping around for a buyer, it still seems to be making waves locally as The social network. According to some commentators, they shifted their user base to the Philippines and other places when the early US adopters left due to performance problems.
Unfortunately, the number of local users – 5 million has not translated into financial success for them. One early move was to go mobile with a SMS version in partnership with local mobile operators and the Entertainment Gateway Group, a content provider.
In early 2005, Friendster made the deal with pusit.com to put up Friendster Classifieds based on the Pusit platform. They then announced an ad product, but didn’t have a test product for months. It didn’t perform very well and was apparently pulled out.
The Friendster Mobs chat service was announced was available for a while and then added to the Friendster links without much fanfare.
Then the word spread that something was amiss. The original Friendster Philippines office closing down. Some of the pusit.com projects like Xackup and Eskwela moved to PiKitchen. So this seems to be – no more Friendster Philippines?
Then this article explained that Friendster Philippines was still running, “under the auspices of the Entertainment Gateway Group Co. (EGG) but report directly to Friendster’s key officials.” The local team head used to be with Pusit.com and he apparently took some people with him.
So where is Friendster Philippines going? Based on the article, is Friendster development now offshored to the Philippines? There were efforts to get official comment from either side but because of NDAs, nobody can get any statement from anyone.
Friendster’s Jonathan Abrams: Failure Is A Matter Of Perspective
Jonathan Abrams, the founder and former CEO of the social networking website Friendster, was asked by MBA students how to survive the torrential waters of entrepreneurship. His response: “I don’t know.”
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS —MBA students crowded into a Stanford Graduate School of Business classroom to listen to Jonathan Abrams, the founder and former CEO of the social networking website Friendster, answer the question of how to survive the torrential waters of entrepreneurship. His response: “I don’t know.”
In addition to Friendster, the self-described serial entrepreneur founded the social bookmarking website Hotlinks and the online event management service Socializr. However, his career in startups has been a roller coaster ride. Hotlinks went down in the dot-com crash in the early 2000s, and Friendster, which was left behind years ago by juggernaut social networking site Facebook, is now used as a business school case study of what not to do. Despite the ups and downs, Abrams doesn’t know exactly what compelled him to move forward.
“Most people don’t cross the fear chasm, and with good reason because most startups fail,” he explained. “But to an entrepreneur the ups and downs sound cool rather than scary.”
To Abrams, the life of an entrepreneur is not as glamorous as many seem to believe it is. The media often portray the startup as a get-rich-quick scheme when the reality is that most entrepreneurs don’t stay in business. The average new venture bellies up within five years, and the most successful bosses still earn 35% less in 10 years than they would if they were working for someone else, he said. Even when Abrams experienced the lowest valleys of his career, he said it helped to remember that “It’s not just you.”
Back in 2002, Abrams found himself wondering if his career had already peaked at age 29. He had been laid off as a software engineer at Netscape. His startup, Hotlinks, was not going well. Silicon Valley was dead due to the dot-com crash. With free time on his hands, he began to think about a new company that would change the way people viewed online interaction.
At the time, most people who interacted online used handles, like CompGuy254, instead of their real names. Instead, Abrams wanted to abolish the pseudonyms and make a website that would allow its users to connect to their friends and build an online social network. The network became known as Friendster.
“Half my friends loved it, and half my friends thought it was the stupidest thing they ever heard of,” he remembered.
At the time, Abrams had no idea how big Friendster would become. Venture capitalists invested in Friendster early on and raised millions to expand the social network. Publications like Entertainment Weekly and Vanity Fair deemed Abrams a “Breakout Star of 2003” and “The Social Pioneer.”
However, as with most startups, the ups didn’t last. The website experienced several performance issues, such as long loading times. Many of the investors wanted to partner with other companies instead of focusing on the basic problems of the website. Competition from other companies, even before Facebook came onto the scene, began to overwhelm. Eventually, Abrams lost control of his company and was replaced as CEO.
When looking over his own entrepreneurial rollercoaster ride during the talk organized by the student Entrepreneur Club, Abrams told the MBAs that it was probably smarter to not be an entrepreneur in the first place. His newest company, Socializr, is not growing as he hoped, and he is currently in the process of selling it. “Am I Charlie Brown? Always running for the football?” He chuckled.
In the end, he said, it’s how you perceive failure. Although Friendster is often called an “iconic failure,” it is still in business today, which is better than most startups. It has millions of users in Asia, and it inspired an entire industry of online communication.
As for the future, “You never know what can happen next,” Abrams said.
Site Transformation
In June 2011, Friendster shifted from social networking site to a social entertainment site which focus on gaming and entertainment. The accounts are unchanged and still existing. However, all the photos, messages, comments, testimonials, shoutouts, blogs, forums and groups that the users may have had in the past may no longer be part of their Friendster account. An exporting tool is provided to back up the information of the user account. This tool has an ability to export photos to Flickr and Multiply.
Deadline given to users to export their photos was extended to 27 June 2011. Photos which are not exported by the deadline have been removed and not retrievable. This has enraged many users who posted hate messages on the official support community http://getsatisfaction.com/friendster.
In 2 months after the new Friendster has relaunched, Friendster has attracted more than half a million new users and now includes over 40 premium games. Some of the result of the Frienster relaunch:
- Daily and Monthly Active Users have increased by 50 percent.
- More than 90 percent of new users came from Asia.
- There are 40 premium games and hundreds of free-games-and-applications with nearly half of the new users play between 1 to 5 games in a month. 30 percent of them spend more than 45 minutes a day. 10 percent of them have bought virtual credits in Friendster.
The reasons behind Jonathan Abrams losing control of Friendster:
A great explanation of what happened can be found in the excellent paper “Common Shareholder Vulnerability in Venture-Backed Startups”, by Jesse M. Fried, Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley, and Faculty Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy:
“Most academics studying venture-backed startups have failed to understand the frequency with which VCs end up in control of boards. VCs formally take a majority of the board seats in only about 25% of startups. In about 15% of startups, common shareholders maintain a majority of board seats through successive financings. In the remaining 60% or so neither common nor VCs end up with a majority of the seats; instead, the “swing votes” are held by so-called “independent directors” – industry experts agreed to by both the common stockholders and the VCs. However, these outside directors are usually acquaintances of and recommended by the VCs. Entrepreneurs rarely have sufficient contacts to fill these positions, and tend to acquiesce to the VCs’ recommendations. Most of these outside directors have – or can expect to have – long-term professional and business ties with the VCs, who are repeat players. Cooperative outside directors can expect to be recommended for other board seats, or even to be invited to join VC fund as a “venture partner.” Thus, the outside directors are not truly independent. Should a conflict between the VCs and other investors arise, they can be expected to side with the VCs. As a result, the percentage of start-up boards effectively controlled by VCs is closer to 80-90%.”
In the words of VentureHacks (an amazing resource for entrepreneurs, which I am an investor in), “Valuation is temporary, control is forever”.
Awards and recognitions
- In July 2006, Friendster was awarded Key Social Networking Technology Patent.
- In 2007, Friendster was selected by AlwaysOn Media as Top 100 Private Company Award Winner.
- In April 2008, Friendster became a Webware 100 winner.
- In 2009, the site was the subject of a satirical portrayal by The Onion News Network of the site’s discovery as an archaeological relic, untouched since 2005.
- In May 2010, Friendster was recognized as one of the “Hottest Silicon Valley Companies” by Lead411.
Sources:
http://www.pinoytechblog.com/archives/the-story-of-friendster-philippines
http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/featured_site3.html
http://www.quora.com/Friendster/What-were-the-reasons-behind-Jonathan-Abrams-losing-control-of-Friendster
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/friendster_11_10.html
Media Literacy 11 (AD/PR)
ADVERTISING AND PR TRENDS
There is nothing permanent except change. This must mean that the occurrence of constant change in our lives and throughout the universe is ancient wisdom. Change is here to stay; we should just learn how to deal with it. We continue everyday to evolve and improve taking advantage of new opportunities and learning from mistakes and setbacks.
In present time, computer technology had a big impact on our industry. The Internet changed the way we communicate and market. Employees come and go and clients have been gained and lost through mergers, acquisitions and changing economic times. The public relations and advertising business is going through a period of scrutiny and assessment.
Every year, we always see changes and new trends in advertising. And as we head into year 2012, we are likely to see more radical changes. So in this post, we provided two lists from different advertising-themed sites that predicted some of the biggest trends and possibilities for 2012.
- The first list is from Small Business Advertising Strategies.
Automated Marketing
In the past, marketing automation was restricted on email and email nurturing domain. But 2011 has witnessed the expansion of social customer relationship management. We are likely to see this trend continue even further in 2012.
Rather than being viewed as an early adoption tool we are likely to see more organizations use it as a mainstream solution for connecting their marketing operations from the top, through to online search engines and finally down to the sales and customer service level.
All Employees are Marketers
Social networks have become the optimum solution for aggregating and sharing interests, positive or negative. This has made product or service awareness, lighting fast. This will ultimately lead to businesses becoming increasingly focused on creating and managing perception of their products or services.
This trend began in 2010, when companies began paying attention to what their customers have to say about their needs and wants through social buzz.
In 2011, this trend expanded further when companies began to respond to customer comments on digital formats. In 2012, we are likely to see companies use this medium further by creating and sharing content through its employees and evangelistic customers, to help define products, brands and services from the grass root level upwards.
It’s About Know More About Who I know
The need to keep with your friends’ preferences has seen a continuous rise among users on social networking sites, like Facebook. This power will be fine tuned to harness and encourage users to follow their friend’s leads or recommendations.
Personal content recommendation through Facebook stores and involved e-commerce websites will be powered and filtered by symbols of preferences such as “like”, hashtags, and +1.
Likes and + are Concrete Metrics
The influences of “likes” will expand beyond the online text context, it will likely have a bigger impact on the dissemination of video content. Digital content providers will design and filter their content to users based on “likes” provided by users and their friends.
Since they are in a position to determine what users are most likely to watch, digital content providers will help narrow down what they are after, saving users time and energy. In the future, we are likely to see Facebook acquire or partner with digital content providers like Hulu or Buddytv to provide a “social TV” service.
Social Mobile and Local
The use of mobile devices to transact in certain markets, like travel, dinning, shopping, etc will likely see an increase. According to the results found by a recent study, one-third of American adults use smartphones and that figure is poised to rise in the coming years. At the moment, click-through rates are already higher on mobile platforms than they are on desktop computers.
Location based marketing through Foursquare and similar services will like see a higher penetration rate. It is projected that 50% of last minute holiday shopping, for the year 2015 will be done via mobile devices. Therefore, marketers will have to look for ways to use this medium as the adoption of mobile devices becomes increasingly pervasive.
Long Live Group Discounts
Consumers have become rather price sensitive in the recent past, due to a recessive economy and dwindling incomes experienced by many consumers. This has led to the proliferation of local deal companies like Living Social, Groupon, Zulily, etc, which are likely to see an even greater following in 2012.
This rising trend has even garnered the attention of major online retails websites like Amazon.com, recognizing the value this type of services have to offer to their consumers. Daily deal offers will become increasingly local. Intelligent players employing the use of mobile markets and geo-based offers will likely become the category winners.
Social Networks as Search Engines
The use of social networks as a source of paid traffic will see a trickle over effect in the referral of organic search traffic. In the past year, small and business technology firms began using social networking more often in marketing their products.
In 2012, we are likely to see this trend become more dominant. For companies interested in preserving or improving their ranking on SERPs, social marketing services will no longer be an option in 2012.
- Small Business Advertising Strategies gave us seven trends that are more likely to happen. Last but not the least was from Econsultancy Digital Marketers United, which on the other hand, listed five possible advertising trends for 2012.
Marketers need to get to grips with attribution
Throughout 2011, brands and marketers struggled to get their heads round cross-channel attribution and understanding what each channel brings to their overall marketing efforts.
This issue is showing no signs of disappearing over the next twelve months, especially as the number of available channels is continuing to grow.
As more channels make the attribution process even more complex, brands and marketers will need to start considering solutions that can help them keep track of where spend is being allocated, in line with the actual channel that a conversion can be attributed to.
Otherwise they are blindly designating budgets based on rough estimates, which is by no means effective. Expect the reality of a cross-channel attribution dashboard to come to fruition for CMO’s, so that they get a top-down view on how to allocate budgets.
Google will bring about even more new incentives and options for advertisers
While this may get an ‘obviously’ reaction, it’s still a crucial one to note.
After all, as costs-per-click continue to rise for Google’s ad networks, Google is at risk of driving incremental spend elsewhere.
For a long time, Google has been the main force to be reckoned with, but Facebook and the search alliance are both providing viable alternatives for advertisers when allocating their spend.
If it wants to continue capturing the lion’s share of new ad spend, Google has to continue innovating with its advertising products.
These innovations will include improvements to matching algorithms, which make more efficient use of ad inventory. Remember, quality score is an incentive mechanism, and one that Google can easily dial-up to drive behavior.
Deeper discounts for advertisers that do a better job of managing quality scores will result in a heightened focus on optimizing match types and negatives.
New ad formats and options will also play a role in increasing ad inventory for Google. There will be a vast amount of innovations in retail product listings, travel search, and local offers, creating high return opportunities for those first to take advantage.
Advertisers find themselves needing to make friends
Google “+1s” and Facebook “Talking about this” scores are just the beginning. In their quest to capture money from brands and improve ad relevance, Google and Facebook will begin to incorporate social likeability and sentiment measurements into ad rankings.
In response, advertisers will begin to invest heavily in promoting “+1’s” and “likes” to consumers via pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
Consumers will benefit as ads for more popular products and brands are presented more often. Suppliers of television or print media, on the other hand, will find themselves getting the short end of the stick as brand budgets are increasingly moved online.
Search outpaces apps for dominance in Mobile Marketing
While paid search already claims the largest share of mobile advertising spend, advertisers should expect this share to grow even more in 2012.
When it comes to mobile, tracking and analytics widely remains the largest issue for many advertisers.
Advertisers lose visibility as soon as a visitor clicks into an app marketplace or into an app, so tracking a click out from a mobile app using traditional analytics tools is difficult at best.
Rather than continuing to double-up on apps, advertisers will look to simplify their existing web experience for the mobile browser. HTML5 will play a role in this trend, making the power of application design available on mobile devices through a standard web browser.
As the mobile experience becomes more integrated into the website, advertisers will have improved visibility, allowing them to invest more in performance advertising and paid search.
Exchanges increase transparency, resulting in increased investment
Yahoo!’s recent requirement that advertisers have to have a seat on the exchange gave them better visibility into their customers’ media plans.
Expect more exchanges to follow suit this year. If requiring that individual advertisers have accounts proves too restrictive, exchanges may simply roll out separate pricing structures for advertisers vs. intermediaries through the use of API fees or pricing floors.
Customers will benefit from the improved visibility, receiving better insight in how much biddable media is costing them. DSPs and Trading Desks will be forced to respond with more transparent and standardized pricing.
Expect the percentage of media spend pricing models to emerge, increased investment, and a drive toward self-service platforms as advertisers become increasingly involved in the buying process.
The changes in the PR and media landscape distinctly reflect the changes in human behavior we’ve been observing and experiencing ourselves over the past few years – changes brought upon by new technologies. Think about how we consume information nowadays, as well as what we expect from the creators of this information in terms of presentation and access. Think about how you as content creators aim to share and spread this information in order to gain maximum exposure and engagement.
For us, the trends below are about understanding these changes in human behavior, the technologies that affect them, and the engagement you can create from giving your audience a sense of achievement, empowerment, authenticity, and fun. Hopefully our research will give you – the communicator, the PR pro, or the marketer – the tools, the motivation, and the knowledge to tackle the challenges head-on.
1. Digital First
We’re seeing a big shift happening – a shift that will most likely continue throughout next year. Companies and organizations are now, finally, giving digital marketing channels precedence over traditional, analog media. Of course an integrated marketing approach remains key, but digital comes first, both in strategy and in budget.
What this really reflects is a behavioral change that has been in the making for a number of years. A brand or organization’s audience is increasingly found online and is demanding the companies to be digital too. The consumption of media now happens through the web, through apps, through social media. It forces a structural change.
When it comes to PR pros and communicators, the focus will be to meet the needs of your online-savvy audience and influencers, needs that are actually quite similar to those of the Guardian’s audience. This means re-engineering your business, much like the media business has done. In other words, you must involve your stakeholders in your business. You must encourage your influencers to develop, share, and spread your story digitally.
2. Decentralize Social Media
Is social media decentralized at your company? Or is social media is controlled by a single department, or even just one person? Chances you would answer yes to the latter. We believe that social media will become increasingly decentralized, forming the holistic “honeycomb” pattern, where everyone is socially enabled, has access to a company’s social networks, and represents the company even on their private accounts.
What we’re seeing is that social media is becoming integrated in to the whole organization. Ownership is spread and social media becomes a tool for conversation, not just a marketing, PR, or client services channel. And why? Because it’s now about people, not logos. Every employee should be a brand ambassador.
But there are risks in socializing your enterprise. You must relinquish control of your brand story, trust non-marketers to represent your brand, and accept an inconsistent brand message. But according to Paul Holmes, “the more consistent a company’s message, the less authentic it sounds. […] Any consistency should be organic – a natural result of shared values and cultural cohesion, rather than imposed by the message police.”
For PR and communications people, it will be vital to empower every employee and enable them to be the different faces of the company, each with a similar, but not identical, understanding of the company’s values. This means that cultural values must be communicated internally.
This could require a fundamental organizational change. If the employee is not “good” at social media, or isn’t willing to be represent your brand in this landscape, you might have to rethink your hiring criteria.
3. I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends
We’ve all heard about user-generated content, and maybe even attempted to get some. However, what do we do with this material once we have it? Unfortunately, not much at the moment. But in 2012, crowd-generated digital storytelling will (finally) be fully embraced.
The trick is to find your crowd, to find the people that will help you tell your story digitally. These are your influencers, your colleagues, or your friends. They are the people nearest to you. Southwest Airlines is a strong believer in this. According to Brooke Thomas, emerging media coordinator, stories can be found everywhere, especially on Twitter: “Every tweet is essentially a story idea.”
In our personal lives, we are judged and defined by the company we keep, by the people that surround us. It’s the same for brands and companies. A brand is defined by its customers, its friends, and its influencers. Engaging with them and sharing the stories they tell about your brand ultimately reflects what kind of company you are or want to be – your influencers can add to your credibility. It is therefore essential that PR pros and communicators start building and interacting with their networks, both internally and externally.
The one thing to keep in mind with user-generated content is that authenticity is rewarded, while artificiality is, at best, ignored, if not condemned. If you come across something that one of your influencers did or created, on their own initiative, embrace it. It will lend more credibility and authenticity to your brand than anything coming from an official corporate campaign.
4. Customize This!
Personalized content will make the Internet more effective, as increasingly the needs of the individual are catered to, rather than a larger demographic or target group.
A clear example of this is in the news world. Last year, we discussed the emergence of applications like Zite, Flipboard, Pulse, and Trove. What these and other tools do is allow the news to find us. We don’t look for news anymore, because we automatically receive news about the specific subjects we’ve asked for from our networks and services.
The behavioral change we observe is that people are choosing their own content, on their own terms. We don’t like being pushed suggestions by people we don’t know or trust. We are more interested in what our friends say is newsworthy, not what a news editor says.
A similar pattern can be seen in the continued rise of social commerce. Recommendation services have been around for a while, like on Amazon.com, but recently social commerce has been developing most rapidly on Facebook. As Mark Zuckerberg puts it, “If I had to guess, Social Commerce is next to blow up.”
What does this mean for you, the PR pro, marketer, or communicator? Remember that the concept of personalized news or social commerce relies on people creating a trusted and engaged network around them – a network that will help them achieve their expectations. Communicators have to be keyed in to those networks.
Companies, too, can build networks and have influencers – both externally and internally. As stated before, the people in these networks need to be empowered to share your products, services, and stories with their own network, on their own terms.
5. Brand News World
We’ve seen companies and organizations take a clear step towards being digital first, towards embracing crowd-generated content, and towards empowering both their external and internal influencers. But on top of all that, companies and organizations will start thinking like journalists when creating and curating stories around their brand.
What is Brand Journalism then, and why do we need to distinguish it from content marketing? According to a panel discussion at this year’s SXSWi, brand journalism is described as:
•An editorial approach to brand building
•A nonfiction attempt at advertising
•Thinking more like publishers
•It’s all about real time marketing, brands acting as media in real time, as life happens
•It’s the responsibility of companies to help their customers succeed
The purpose is to tell stories, but this method of content marketing emphasizes a neutral tone, lending credibility and trust to the brand. This tone does not slant to favor your brand, nor is every piece promoting an aspect of your company directly. Stories could be about industry leaders, trends, or events too – anything that would be deemed newsworthy for your audience, in the editorial sense.
That’s the key to brand journalism – taking out the middleman by thinking like the middleman (in this case, the journalists).
We talked last year about companies and brands becoming media houses and we see that continuing next year – even going a step further by convincing media people to make the switch from journalism to PR.
As a communicator you need to start thinking of your content in terms of newsworthiness. Offer value, think of all audiences, not just journalists, and don’t always talk about yourself.
6. Online Goes Offline Goes Online Goes Offline
As we mentioned, placing more importance on your digital communication channels will be key in 2012. However, keep in mind that Digital First does not mean Digital Only. This year, more than ever before, it will be vital for companies to complement and leverage their digital channels with offline efforts.
This is because the line between people’s online profile and their real-life personalities will become increasingly blurred – you’re the same person when browsing Amazon as you are when walking through a department store.
For communicators and marketers, there are many opportunities offered by the free tools and services currently available, such as location-based services like FourSquare or Gowalla. Creativity is key, not money. Ensure that all clients and employees are aware of the digital channels, campaigns, and competitions you’re running.
7. Come Out And Play
The gamification of online experiences will start dominating all online activities this 2012. That’s a very bold statement, and despite most companies not even thinking of gamifying their communications, we’re noticing the increased importance of giving people a personal experience and, most importantly, giving them an opportunity to have fun.
It’s all about that most innate of human character traits – competitiveness – combined with getting motivated by gaining a sense of progress. Gamification caters to both these needs and instills a deep level of engagement in the participants.
As mentioned before, a little creativity (and perhaps the use of free services like FourSquare), could get you a long way. Communicators need to think of different ways to engage their audience on a personal experience level. The trick is to come up with a campaign or event whose main objective is to let your influencers have fun, while fulfilling a sense of progress towards a clear goal or reward.
It’s more than just rewarding air miles or bonus points for each purchase. Allow for other activities along the whole customer journey that would be rewarded with more points, gifts, or even intangible rewards like badges or titles for a certain level reached. It’s like playing a video game!
8. Life On The Go
We mentioned this last year, but at the speed things are developing within this field, we might have to mention every year. No PR and communication trends report would be complete without the inclusion of Mobile. In fact, we strongly believe that the future of online will be in mobile.
The reason is that we see three behavioral trends dominating our lives. It’s about convenience, context, and fun.
When we speak of convenience, we mean that mobile devices allow us to be connected to what we want 24 hours a day (for better or worse). We’re able to get things done faster and transform the way we do business and consume information.
In terms of context, the mobile allows for more efficient access to relevant information when needed. And as Marissa Mayer, Head of Mobile and Geolocation at Google says, “The mobile phone acts as a cursor to connect the digital and the physical.”
As a communicator or marketer, regardless of what type of business, you need to start thinking of mobile as an important channel for your brand, if you haven’t already. Perhaps start with mobile versions of your website or think of an app that can engage your customers even further.
9. In The Eye Of The Beholder
At this point, we thought it would be important to highlight two of the most exciting and innovative technologies and services available today.
Qwiki
When launched as an iPad app earlier this year, it shot up to number four on the App Store Chart, and when looked at as a content platform, that’s when things really get exciting. Qwiki creates interactive multimedia presentations of information. So, instead of reading a Wikipedia article about London, Qwiki creates a visual presentation, complete with narrative, about London, sourcing information from various sites, including Wikipedia itself.
The idea is to release Qwiki as a platform on which anyone can create Qwiki presentations about any subject. Imagine being able to present a multimedia news release in this format, or creating Qwiki profiles of your sales people, using information sources of your choice (i.e. not just Wikipedia). An app that is currently being made is a Qwiki-based alarm clock that wakes you up with the latest headlines, your appointments of the day, and the weather predictions for the next few hours.
Augmented Reality
When first introduced two years ago, it was perhaps a little ahead of its time or too reminiscent of virtual reality, the concept it supposedly replaced. But now, the real world application of augmented reality can clearly be seen. Again it connects the digital with the physical, again it emphasizes a fun personal experience, and again it can involve mobile.
While current usage would probably involve a hefty investment, the technology is rapidly advancing. Communicators willing to give it a try will quickly realize just how many possibilities technology like this offers.
10. Content Is King, But It’s The People’s Kingdom
Last year, we predicted that 2011 would see a shift from the B2B and B2C
narrative, to a B2P (business-to-people) mindset. We also said that we hoped we’d be talking about people-to-people instead. We believe that 2012 will see this concept become mainstream.
As mentioned, the quality of the brand is measured by the people who surround it. Or rather, the customers make the brand. Therefore, it becomes clear that companies need to let go of the brand as a self-centered media object, and embrace it as a dynamic collaboration between the company, community, and influencers.
This is because a customer is not just buying the products or services, but they are also buying the people. In the recent People issue of Think Quarterly (by Think with Google), the authors state: “Information is inseparable from the people who are creating, consuming, and sharing it. And the web is no longer anonymous – it’s built on real people and their connections, opinions, and ideas.” This is true for the information, content, and organization of your company.
It is vital then that companies maintain and nurture their network of influencers and customers, because people trust other people, not logos, brands, or corporations.
As communicators, this will be essential. This is what all the previous trends boil down to, this is what all the technologies, concepts, and strategies are based on. To create true engagement around your brand, you must first change your mindset and think in terms of people-to-people.
Sources:
http://smallbusinessadvertisingstrategies.com/advertising-trends-7-trends-in-advertising-for-2012/
http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8693-five-online-advertising-trends-to-expect-in-2012
http://blog.mynewsdesk.com/2011/11/29/pr-communication-and-marketing-trends-2012-part-1/
http://blog.mynewsdesk.com/2011/11/29/pr-communication-and-marketing-trends-2012-part-2/
February 20, 2012
Creative Output
Internship is a requirement for any four-year bachelor’s degree. And as one taking up Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Research, I need to fulfill that requirement. Luckily, I found an internship site that would help me not just a student or a researcher, but as person. I feel so blessed to be an intern of the Center for Research and Communication at University of Asia and the Pacific.
My training there was mostly in regards of the events and the CRC Databank. I was expectant, during the first days of my internship, that I’ll be doing some transcribing of the Round-Table-Discussion. But eventually I didn’t because there’s no RTD scheduled on the days that we stayed at CRC. So I was focused more on researching internet and newspapers articles that relate to the agenda of the center, and then update the Databank Catalogue.
I also helped on the certain events, particularly on sending invitations for the upcoming Round-Table-Discussions. There is also this painting exhibit I helped organized entitled “A Beautiful World”, with my boss Dr. Veronica E. Ramirez as one of the featured artist.
Generally, I learned and experienced a lot during my internship at CRC. I am also very thankful for all the privileges that my boss gave me/us that I/we don’t actually deserve of. I had a wonderful time on my internship.
February 17, 2012
When we arrived at the office, no one’s there except Miss Viera (the daughter of Dr. Bett). Miss Marie, Miss Rio and Miss Lily went to the wake of BMV’s mother and they’ll be back by lunch. Dr. bett will also be leaving this morning for a talk, so she asked us to take care of the office, the calls, and continue the search for the Peatenian Carvers working abroad. When I got to Miss Marie’s cubicle, I found that she got some “love” notes for me, and asked me to do some tasks while they’re gone. So I encoded the names and contact details of the prospect invitees for the OFW Summit and searched for those missing contact numbers.
In the afternoon, I followed-up the attendance of the attendance of the RTD participants. When I look at the list almost everyone had already given their feedback, some have confirmed, and some have regrets. I just wished I could attend the event itself to observe how RTDs are done. :)
This is the last day of our internship (well, not really, because we’ll be back on Monday for Dr. Bett’s evaluation). Thank God for the strength, wisdom, and guidance He gave me to finish the 200 hours of my internship. And for Dr. Bett, Miss Lily, Miss Marie, and Miss Rio for also guiding and helping us, and letting us experience the privileges that is beyond of what we deserve. :) Thanks a lot! :D
