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.

New discoveries in Pandora

Pandora: In the middle of music



Pandora is an Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. The listeners start by entering a song or artist that they would like to hear and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. When a song comes on that you like or dislike you press the thumbs up or down to tell Pandora for future reference. Pandora is available on the Internet and also on all Smartphones including Blackberry's, iPhone's and Droids through an application. Pandora is an ad-supported website.

Unlike many ad-supported music websites, Pandora cannot play music on-demand which is why the records labels support them. According to Russ Crupnick in the article above (a senior industry analyst for entertainment at the NPD Group) online radio drives in a 41 percent increase in paid downloads. We then ask why a free internet radio music source such as Pandora brings up the revenue of paid music? Because Pandora introduces people to new music due to not playing music on-demand. Like I said earlier Pandora picks songs or artists that are like the one you initially picked. So this can lead you to new artists which you omay or may not like and then want to buy so you can listen to it on-demand.

People such as Tim Westergren, the company’s co-founder and chief strategy officer are hoping to drive music sales in other ways too. Such as the idea of when you hear a new artist that you like, you can pick the thumbs up and then later down the road recieve notifications of when the artist will be in town. In the future they hope that the record labels will let Pandora turn to On-Demand.

New advertising traffic reports

Billboard traffic reports

I don't think there are any drivers out there that can say they don't mind traffic. Traffic is one of the most irratating situations to be in. When you step out of your home you are traveling to go somewhere, so majority of the time if you hit traffic it makes you late to your destination. I can only speak for myself when I say that I never remember or have the time to check traffic updates before I leave to go somewhere. At times when I am already in traffic I will go to an AM news station in hopes to find out why I'm stuck in the situation and hopefully find out that it will clear up in the near furture, although that is rarely the case.

With new technology, some billboards are now digital. With this advancement in billboards companies such at Clear Channel can now use a single board for more then one advertisement therefore reeling in much more money for that single billboard location. With the ability to change an ad within seconds this billboard can also be used to send out crucial information to travelers. Clear Channel has come up with the idea to broadcast traffic information on the billboards to travelers. This program will start in Chicago and be tested for a 13-week run on 19 billboards around the Chicago area. These billboards will feature traffic reports and regulary updated lottery information.

This new advertising development is great idea for Clear Channel. Clear Channel already provides traffic reports through their radio stations, internet, television and navigation systems so integrating this information on the billboards is no big deal at all. It's something that other companies have not thought of yet and could potentially be a great way for people to dodge traffic before finding it themselves. Although there could be some downfalls, for example getting on a highway and hitting traffic before seeing the billboard. Or people thinking that reading this information off a billboard could be distracting and cause accidents. But with that being said in my opinion, I think it's only beneficial. If they see the traffic news while already in traffic they would have been there anyway. So at the end of the day I do think this is a great idea and will hopefully help people out!

Geo-Fencing is the new advertising stratedgy

Take a Step Closer for an Invitation to Shop


Do you think advertising has already gone to far? Whether your watching your favorite television show and it cuts out to have 10 minutes of commercials, or your in the car listening to some tunes only to have the song end and change to more tedious radio spots to pop-ups on your computer while your broswing different sites, advertisements are EVERYWHERE. Well as technology grows so do the ideas of different ways to advertise and it is drastically doing so. While there are new social media networks to advertise on the internet including Twitter, Facebook and Digg these sources of media are available as applications now on cell phones. This makes news, media and advertisements very conveinent for people to recieve on-the-go.


Many companies including NorthFace have had trouble bringing customers into their store recently with the economy. Advertising today has dramatically change. The usual TV, Radio and Magazine ads just don't cut it anymore. Now stores like NorthFace are trying new tactics in order to bring in customers. A new way of advertising that NorthFace is going to test out is Geo-Fencing. According to Wikipedia a Geo-fence is a virtual perimeter on a geographic area using a location-based service, so that when the geo-fencing device enters or exits the area a notification is generated. The notification can contain information about the location of the device and might be sent to a mobile telephone or an email account. When companies use geo-fencing through cell phones it basically sends people text messages or e-mails as soon as they get near a store. This text message/e-mail will send the person an advertisement, coupon or discount when there in the vacinity of the certain store.

Like I said earlier most phones now have the internet which means they also have e-mail. Most of the time when I recieve an e-mail it's spam, which I depise! Would these texts be just like it? Will I walk through NYC or downtown New Haven, CT and be in the vacinity of many stores and have my phone start blowing up with annoying messages? I'm sure if I walked passed a coffee shop and recieved a coupon for a free coffee I would walk in and get it and be happy, but I doubt it will be that worth it. Although this article states that you can opt in or out to this new advertising tactic but as much as I try to get rid of spam or put my name/number on the do not call list, it is never enough.

Slim and None

Being in the entertainment business and a loyal consumer of many fashion magazines including Vogue, inStyle and Allure to name a few, I see models in advertisements everyday. At work we have celebrities come into the studio on a regular basis who we then promote through our company to be “idols” for all of our viewers. The point I want to bring up is that whether you’re a model, celebrity or an everyday person, people look up to you and your image.

In today’s society our “idol’s” that we look up to in the entertainment industry may not be portraying the right image. Models in particular have the overwhelming pressure to be thin, paper thin. As Ms. Rocha addresses in the "A Model's Propects: Slim and None it is stereotypical that a model needs to thin and if your not you don't get hired. This has also applied to many A-List celebrities like the cover of the People Magazine photo "Pressure To Be Thin."

I think that the problem here is the that when you chose to model your going in knowing the consequences. When it comes to modeling if you're thin you win. These teenagers/women are too skinny and tend to have a whole set of unhealthy behaviors that go with it. This doesn't seem like it will end anytime soon even though models being too thin is advertised in the media negatively.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/fashion/16DIARY.html?ref=style

How to Reach Affluent African Americans

By not targeting this key segment, some marketers may be missing out
Feb 2, 2010

According to Mark Dolliver, many marketers have left a significant advertising demographic untapped: The Affluent African American, also referred to as the AAA. Dolliver’s article discusses how most luxury marketers are missing out on this lucrative and uncharted market “even though such households now deploy some $87 billion in purchasing power”. He also addresses how brands smart enough to go after AAAs have not done it well.
There are several reasons leading to the failure of certain AAA targeted marketing campaigns, some of these being: a failure to address contemporary civil concerns in utilizing out-dated messages and themes, failure to acknowledge the matured AAA consumer tastes, choosing the wrong media, and a lack of campaign sincerity and diligence.
To support this, the article uses an example of a recent Gucci campaign featuring the singer, Rihanna, in an attempt to tap into the AAA market. The article argues that although Rihanna is popular among the African American community, the choice is unfitting as if the brand used Brittany Spears for a campaign targeting affluent Caucasian Americans. I couldn’t agree more. Relating this to my life I ask, would my mother, who is 46, relate to a Gucci ad with Miley Cyrus or Nicole Kidman? To me, the answer is obvious considering my mother relatively unfamiliar with Cyrus.
In advertising, there are several important things to consider when targeting ANY demographic: is the message dated, or contemporary? Is the spokes person going to be relatable to the intended consumer? Is this chosen medium appropriate for the targeted demographic, and will they notice the absence of the message in more mainstream media? This article hits on all of these important concerns.
I believe that because so few luxury brands have been able to successfully address this lucrative consumer demographic, there is a huge amount of money to be made for a company that successfully reaches the AAA market. Considering the adversity this demographic has overcome, I am willing to guess that they ready and willing to celebrate and spend what they have worked so hard for. The first companies willing to initiate a partnership with such markets have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Long Tail Article

At first I was very overwhelmed when reading this article. As I went through it again and again I decided to break it up into pieces. I figured during this shot at it I would try to figure out each of Chris Anderson's rules. His first rule stats to make everything available, second rule cut the price in half and third rule, help me find it. From what I make of these rules he is trying to say that to create a thriving Long Tail business you need easy accessability, make prices affordable for everyone and spread the word on how to find these things.
Easy accessability comes faster now then ever with the use of our technology. Like Anderson said you cannot get certain documentaries at Blockbuster because they are not on high demand. But a company such as Netfix's isn't a store that only has a certain amount of space to hold a certain amount of movies. If a new company comes up with a way to have something all existing companies do not have it's a Long Tail business.
Most prices now-a-days are at LEAST doubled then what was spent to make them. Anderson's second rule says that prices should be cut in half and lowered more. He uses the example of iTunes; a single song costing (at the time of the article) $.99 cents. Anderson states "ask the labels and they'll tell you it's too low: Even though 99 cents per track works out to about the same price as a CD." Before iTunes, people would normally have to buy a whole CD just to get their couple of songs they really want to hear, but the labels would still make the full CD amount. Single songs are really worth 65 cents giving the label companies a whole profit of 34 cents PER SONG! This profit is nothing compared to the content thats on the Long Tail is all the older material that had made it's money back in the day when it was a hit, or songs that were cheap to make from the beginning.
"Great Long Tail businesses can then guide consumers further afield by following the contours of their likes and dislikes, easing their exploration of the unknown." What Anderson means by guiding are companies like Rhapsody that have a seperate box next to a product or song in this instance that has "similar likes" to what you are viewing at that point. This can lead to consumer to buy more things because the credited site they trust is telling them that this is another popular item if you like the one you are viewing. This is just one of many tatics to network your business' products, but also proves that this drives the demand down the Long Tail.
I have to agree with Chris Anderson. The secret to surviving a Long Tail business is answered in these three rules; make everything available, cut prices in half, and help me find it. It had never crossed my mind why and how Netflix's did so much better then Blockbuster until reading this article. I didn't realize why the local bookstore in my town closed 5 years ago until Anderson showed me that there's more to offer in online bookstores... The Long Tail is what the world has come too!