Week 6 - Social Media

Social Media
Social media can be defined as a group of several online media which would share some or all of the characteristics such as participation, openness, conversation, community, connectedness. Social media is all about participation as it encourages contribution and feedback from those who is interested while being open to feedback and participation. Any barriers to accessing and making use of content is very rare. Therefore it encourage voting, comments and sharing information. Social media could also be considered as a two way conversation. Communities could be formed quickly as it allows effective communication, share common interests such as favourite movie and so on. Social media thrives due to its connectedness as it makes use of links to other sites, resources and people.


Media Sharing
Media sharing is about sharing audio, photos, videos, presentations and documents. The power of media sharing is arrived through files being embedded in applications for example embed video in a blog. You are able to share almost any digital media file in your media player library including files that you have downloaded from online stores. Depending on the media player you are using you may control what you share with others. Most media players lets you customize what you want to share for example you can choose not to share music with lyrics and so on.

Podcasting
In this the audio is being shared. Meaning this is a web based broadcasting medium for audio files. People can subscribe to receive podcasts from application such as iTunes, Juice or Doppler. The only requirement is that you need to have an internet connection and podcast software to download them to iTunes and so on. You are able to listen to them on computer or iPod or mp3 player.

Social Bookmarking

We also learnt about Social Bookmarking. This is somewhat similar to the book marks we make for our private usage. The difference being Social bookmarking is saving bookmarks to a public site which is made available to others. The more bookmarks a site may have will help it to become prominent. According to Dubois L (2010) Ten of the most popular social bookmarking sites based on inbound links and monthly visitors include Twitter, Digg,Yahoo! Buzz, Tweetmeme, StumbleUpon, Reddit,Technorati, Delicious, Google Bookmarks and Mixx.While there is more use by the individuals there is very little use by businesses as well. Using Social Book marking sites could help companies to save time and energy while also enabling you to keep ahead of the competitors.

Issac Marion

For example Issac Marion was able to gain recognition for his novels and was able to get movie deals with Summit Entertainment through the social bookmarking site StumbleUpon. To read further on this success story you may look at his website Nevertheless it should be noted that while there is benefits such as this there is a downside to using Social bookmarking as well. This is because sharing internal company information in public may become a threat at times.






Reference :

Dubois L (2010), How to use Social Book marking for Business, [Online], http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/09/how-to-use-social-bookmarking-for-business.html, [Accessed 25th February 2012]

Tagging

Tagging allows us to remind what each book marking is about meaning what information is in a particular bookmarking link. You can give a one word tag to enable you to remember or give you a hint as to what the book mark is about. The important thing about tagging in a social book marking site is that tagging can be done by the user while it also enables others to alter and input more tags. You are also able to put tagging into categories for example have one tag for Sports in which you can find all the links that relate to sports.

Mashup

We learnt about Mashups. It was noted that the term originated from the music industry.  While the music is made up of other songs already released it could be considered remix of digital data. It combines content and functionality from a various sources using the latest technologies such as RSS, AJAX & API.

The main characteristics of Mashups are combination, visualisation and aggregation. Meaning you can combine information from widget and services together. For example Mapping Mashups, Text and Video and Poem and Photo.

Social Networking

This is a web based service that allows individuals to construct a public or semi public profile within a bounded system and articulate and list. Social networking is not just about talking with others it also lets others to see what is happening. Information will flow through the system. 

What is interesting in Social Networking is that people would usually have few strong contacts and many weak contacts. Meaning you will have few of the contacts that you know too well but will have many contacts that are weak. meaning those who you know very little for example friends of friends and so on. Therefore the in social networking lies mainly on online social networking weak contacts.

It is driven by members. Therefore there needs to be Frequent activities. This is because if there is no activities among members it can gradually decline. The number of contacts can be beyond the realm of real world. Communication tends to be more of an informal nature. The down side is there is a lack of portability or connectivity between one application to another for example Facebook to Linkit.

Business use of Social Networking
Many businesses tend to use Social Networking to increase brand awareness among their customers. to increase the company profile, to share expertise and knowledge, to seek advice and help, to do market research, to gain publicity through low cost marketing, to source new contacts, build brand awareness while also obtain valuable customer feedback.

While Social Networking allows businesses to build a page on Facebook. The advantage for businesses is that they are able to advertise on Facebook. These advertisements only uses personal data and are categorised. Therefore information is filtered for those like to receive such information.

Week 5 - Collaborative tools

E-Activity 1

I conducted some background research on collaborative tools for E-Activity team report. I found that Zoho is a very useful collaborative tool that individuals as well as businesses can use. Zoho also offers a web based customer relationship management solution which includes project management app and also an online invoicing solution.

Please see the following video clip which gives a clear understanding of what Zoho is all about and what it has to offer. Please note that you may need to open my blog in Google Chrome to view this clip. However if you are unable to open this clip please click on this link: Zoho in plain English

                              


I also researched on Google docs. I found an interesting video clip on Google docs in plain English. This gives a clear understanding of what Google docs is all about and taught it might be good to link it here in my blog. Please note that you may need to open my blog in Google Chrome to view this clip. However if you are unable to open this clip please click on this link: Google Docs in Plain English

Our team worked together very well. I was happy with how things went. Everyone contributed equally and turned up for meetings as discussed.



Reference :

Digital Inspiration, [2 March 2010], Zoho in Plain English, [Online],
http://www.labnol.org/internet/zoho-software/12885/, [Accessed 18th February 2012]

You tube, uploaded by Google, [10 September 2007], Google Docs in Plain English, [Online], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA, [Accessed 18th February 2012]

Week 5 - My achievements so far

It is amazing how time can move so fast. It was like yesterday since we started semester B in university.  When I had to choose an optional subject for semester B I was really not sure which subject I wanted to do. I decided to do Business Web Innovation as an optional subject as I didn’t have much of a knowledge in that area. However I had the fear in the back of my mind what if I fail this unit because I am not very good with new technology. My thoughts were that it is worth trying to learn something new and  something that you lack in knowledge. Even though I am not sure yet, how well I will progress in this unit, the only thing I am sure about just now is that I am happy so far with the knowledge I have gained with the progress of each week and the achievements I have made till now.

At first I thought Business Web Innovation was all to do with creating or learning how to innovate a new web site. However as I progressed through each week I learned more on blogs, wiki, media sharing, social bookmarking, tagging, RSS and Newsfeeds. I didn’t know that there were so many things to learn about the web. I am so glad that I chose this subject irrespective of the outcome I may achieve at the end, because the knowledge I gain each week is priceless.

I like the teaching method combined with the lab activity. The lab activity gives me an opportunity to learn the practical side of the tasks involved and raise any doubts or seek help as and when necessary.

Week 5 - Business Use of Blogs

I researched on the web to find business use of blogs and found that there are many uses of blogs for a business. This includes external and internal blogs. 

Based on my research the external use of blogs for a business could be to position themselves as an expert on a particular area, monitor trends in the market, raise awareness on brands, enhance reputation of the company and credibility, broadcast news and information, promoting conference, seminar, exhibitions and other events, developing improved client relationships through actively engaging and interacting with customers, gain customer feedback, opinions and ideas and more importantly receive customer support while some companies make sure that they publish their views on certain issues of importance in order to develop a public face for the business.

I also managed to find the internal use of blogs for a business some of them are to improve team building, enhance internal communications and to share internal information easily and thereby enhance the culture.

An in-depth knowledge on the above information could be obtained  on the following link: http://www.betterbusinessblogging.com/business-uses-of-business-blogs/

Further I did some research to find some examples of business blogs. It appears that most of the businesses make use of blogs to promote their business and to interact with their customers as described above. Since I cannot list all of them, I have provided links to some of these business blogs that may be of interest. You can click on the links to find further information on these business blogs.

Those who like games and want to know more on play station please click here : Playstation Blog.

I also found that Politicians use blogs too. Interested please click this link: Whitehouse blog.

If you need to know latest models released by Blackberry, sneak-peaks and help on usage instructions that you never knew was made available to you. Then please click to see their blog : Blackberry blog. Further to this Blackberry have also included some video clips on you tube to assist their customers on various apps included in their phone. In order to provide an example of this I wanted to upload a video clip. However I didn't know how to upload a video clip into the blog. Therefore I searched on Google for help on how to upload you tube videos into a blog. Finally I managed to understand how to upload a video clip to a blog. I felt that it was a huge achievement from not knowing what a blog is to being able to upload video clips into my blog.

Please see the following video clip to see how Blackberry have used you tube to help their customers on how to use apps on their Blackberry phone. Please note that you may need to use Google Chrome for this to work.

Week 4 - My knowledge on Blogs

It is true that I didn’t know what a blog is until now. After learning about blogs in the class it was essential that I maintain a blog for an assessment in the module Business Web Innovation. We had to reflect on our knowledge and experience. In order to gain a better understanding about blogs, I did some background research in the internet.

It appears that blogs are similar to a personal diary except it is maintained online as personal Internet journals.  It allows the blogger to write his or her observations or experiences or keep a record of events on a regular basis which he/her can update on their own spare time. While some may use a blog for their own personnel use others will use it for a specific purpose for example to give tutorials, to give research information, to promote business and so on.

However the down side to a blog is, that it has become the centre of debate. This is because of the freedom that allows someone to write anything they want, leaves blogs vulnerable as complains on others become more common. However if you do not be careful about following the necessary ethics in place you could be subject to disciplinary action by someone for example your workplace.

Please click on the hyperlink below to read more on blogs.        

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-blogs.htm

Week 3 - Collaborative writing

This week we learnt about collaborative writing. While we learnt about wiki and explored the use of Wikispaces we also managed to create our own wiki account. We were put into groups by our group tutor. Our team comprised of 4 members. We created our first group wiki together and named it as busweb. This was yet another good experience for me. I gathered that working in a group wiki is a good way to improve our collaborative writing. My knowledge on technology is not so great. Nevertheless working with my team helped me to overcome this obstacle as my team members helped me in certain tasks. I look forward to working with my team.

E-activity 1
We were given three tasks to be completed as a group for e-activity 1.

Tasks 1 involved conducting background research and gather information on what collaborative tools are, their features, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of collaborative writing tools.

Task 2 involved exploring different collaborative writing tools such as wikispaces, google docs, zoho writer and so on. We were required to look at the features offered by each of these tools. Then compare and contract these tools taking into account the large and small medium sized organisations. Next to decide on a collaborative writing tool that we thought was best to be recommended for use by large and small sized organisations.

Task 3 Finally as a group we had to decide on a collaborative writing tool and to collate all the information we gathered through tasks 1 and 2 and produce a report with 1200 words. This was to be a group effort and everyone was required to participate equilly.