The Price of Facebook Privacy

So after reading this article in addition to many others I've read recently, I feel as if I should disable myself from Facebook over the next few weeks. All forms of social media are supposed to unite people with new means of connecting, but when the price of that contact is sacrificing my privacy, that's not what I wanted out of this experience.

I use Facebook like an addicted crack user gets high off their drugs. Whether I'm trying to do work on my computer and I just find myself going typing the Facebook URL or i'm on my cell phone checking peoples updates i'm HOOKED! 400 million have now become members to this Facebook CRACK as a means of social communication with people. Getting off this drug will be a very hard task to accomplish. Must we have to pay because this compromises our privacy?

Personally I cannot take the chance right now. Being two weeks away from a college graduate I have already started the process of applying to jobs. It is a known fact that when it comes down to picking one candidate over another they can check Facebook to "judge" you. I've heard that no matter how tight your privacy is, companies have found ways to check out your pictures and information. As the article states, "The only way to disappear from those topics pages is to delete personal data from Facebook." But how far does personal data go? In the end I think I either need to delete Facebook for awhile or literally take off the Facebook wall, photos, albums, videos... and the list goes on and on.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/technology/personaltech/13basics.html?ref=personaltech

Arlen Spector's Advertisement

According to the "New York Times"

In the main section of the ad, President Obama says: “Now, I want to say a few things about Arlen Specter. He came to fight for the working men and women of Pennsylvania. And Arlen Specter cast the deciding vote in favor of a Recovery Act that has helped pull us back from the brink. Because you know he’s going to fight for you regardless of what the politics are.”

To be honest I do not always keep up with my politics so for me to know about Arlen Specter that says ALOT!. From the history I know about Arlen I know that he is completely desperate right now! In this ad he features President Obama. This was when he addressed the Stimulus Bill and praised Arlen Specter for casting his deciding vote on the bill. But when majority - sixty two percent of America thinks that the Stimulus was a failure why would you use this in your Ad? I don't get it....

Here's the video coverage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs0cvwDLjow&feature=player_embedded

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/us/politics/12adboxa.html?ref=media

Lyrics Sites at Center of Fight Over Royalties

Lots of people like to use quotes from song lyrics for their everyday use whether in there blogs, social media or any other reason. I know that I am definitely one of those people that hears a song on the radio and fall in love with a certain line and when I get to a computer I search to find out the specific words. As stated in the article, lyrics can be often hard to find, so some people brought it upon themselves to start up their own sites. If these sites are routinely updated then they will grow which happened to Milun Tesovic.

Milun started up a lyrics site that did so well that he started receiving requests from advertisers to advertise on his site in which he would get paid for. In the year 2009 Milun pulled in 10 million in revenue and with this small business he now has an office in Vancouver with a small staff.

According to New York Times songwriters and music publishers are now trying to find out how they can pull in their share of profits from this. This is not an easy task for them to accomplish. There are tons of these sites out there meaning that one could collect from one site but another may publish the lyrics the next day. It also tells us that many of these sites operate from outside of the US which also adds to the difficulty. The conclusion that these publishers have come to is asking sites to publish lyrics from the outset. This then ensures that the publishers/songwriters will get there money and it also makes the sites much more credible!

More Americans Are Paying For Television?

What?
This goes against an earlier post I had written. With sites such as HULU and TV networks such as FOX and ABC that provide free viewings of their television shows, wouldn't you think that the number would go down? Without the excpetion that the gain can be explained in part by the nation’s gradual population growth, with the economy how it is I would have never guessed the number to rise.


Walking away from this for alittle and thinking about it again the enduring popularity of television in a fragmented media marketplace might be the opposite of what I posted earlier in the "Social Network Water Cooler Effect" blog. What if people blogging, tweeting or posting from Facebook doesn't just inform people about what they may have missed on television but actually made them want to watch the show next time.

Again with these three uses of media I've come to the conclusion that using these together can work in each direction. TV can cause you to use the social media networking from your computer or phone and vise-versa, being on your social networks from your computer or phone can cause you to turn on the TV to see what someone is writing about if it sparks your interest.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/more-americans-are-paying-for-television/?ref=media

Verizon & Google developingn an iPad Rival

Obviously prior to the iPad AT&T has teamed up with Apple to create the great products they do such as the iPhone. But now with the new creation of the Apple iPad, AT&T exclusively has another product that Verizon cannot touch or have any part in. So Verizon has made the smart decision to team up with the most popular search engine Google. THIS IS BRILLIANT! Or at least I think so. The company Google knows what people want, whats popular and what is recently getting attention on the Internet while Verizon being the largest cell phone carrier knows what people want in a cell phone, customer service and 3G service.

So what can be better then combinding the two? Nothing, except the fact that their behind in the process. For these two company's to succeed over Apple and AT&T they need to take this concept add originality and something brand new that it not offered with the iPad. Because just like the late bloomers to the iPhone, there was not one product that was comparable to it.

I can't wait to see what Verizon and Google bring to the table. The power that these two companies bring seperately can only bring great results when put together.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704250104575238680540806288.html?KEYWORDS=verizon+ipad

The Social Network Water Cooler Effect

The Social Network Water Cooler Effect: Three Reasons Why Facebook and Twitter Might Save Television:

I know that there are some people out there just like me that tweet about something outrageous or funny that happens on television. Whether it is a new episode of 24, Teixiera hitting 3 home runs against Boston or Kanye West bashing Taylor Swift at the VMAs news spreads via social networking the quickest.

For those of you who do not know what the Water Cooler Effect is; it comes

from people gathering around the water cooler discussing certain topics that are newsworthy current events or office gossip interesting enough to start off conversations around the water cooler, hence the water cooler effect. I agree that most people did think that television would diminish over the next century but the use of Internet social networking has kept it stable. I think that I can add the use of mobile phones in here as well contributing to the use of networking to carry news at close to instantly. As long as these three means keep each other intertwined I think that TV will last for another decade. If I had to pick the strongest media out of the three it would definitely be the internet, second to that would be mobile and lastly television.

So when people realize that they do not need to watch a whole 4-hour Yankee game and can get live Twitter updates from their phone on-the-go, or watch the highlights on the Internet where does that leave television? With that said, from an advertising point of view, what would you invest your money in? If it was me I would pick digital over television. Even though some television show ratings are still holding strong, people are also still learning and easing their way into the social media presence, so only time will tell.

http://www.gauravonomics.com/blog/the-social-network-water-cooler-effect-three-reasons-why-facebook-and-twitter-might-save-television/

Falling Sales for the Printed World

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/business/media/19drill.html?ref=media


As most of us could have guessed with the rise in new technology and our world trying to be "green" that the fall in paper "book" sales would go down. As this NY Times articles states "E-books accounted for just 1.3 percent of all book sales. But their sales skyrocketed 176.6 percent over the previous year." This rise in sales will only increase as this new technology grows.

One of the first devices to take over was the Barnes & Noble Nook. The nook is the first electronic book reader to be based on the Android platform. You can purchase and read books through the Nook instead of buying individual books and wasting the paper. One great feature of the nook is the "LendMe" feature where some books are licensed for sharing. In those cases, the purchaser is permitted to share a book once, with one other user, for up to two weeks. Users will be able to share purchased books with others who are using Barnes & Noble's reader application software for iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac, and Windows.

Another device that can not only decrease book sales but also has an impact on the advertising world. Less than 2 weeks ago the i-Pad was born. The iPad is a table computer which is smaller than a labtop and is a larger than an iTouch. It runs iPad-specific applications as well as those written for the iPhone and iPod touch, including e-book readers. The iPad uses WiFi or Wireless WAN to browse the Internet, load and stream media, and install software. I have had a chance to mess around on the i-Pad and for it's main features that it's made for it's awesome.