Social Media:Open Licensing

Find an indepth description of open licensing at http://opendefinition.org/guide/

    As stated on the website, open licensing is

"is a document that specifies what can and cannot be done with a work (whether sound, text, image or multimedia). It grants permissions and states restrictions. Broadly speaking, an open license is one which grants permission to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions.

...a piece of writing on a website made available under an open license would be free for anyone to:

• print out and share,
• publish on another website or in print,
• make alterations or additions,
• incorporate, in part or in whole, into another piece of writing,
• use as the basis for a work in another medium – such as an audio recording or a film,
• and do many other things …

Openly licensed works are hence free to be shared, improved and built upon!"


So why wouldn't you open license your work? Are controlled creative content a hinderance to the progression of creativity?

Social Media- Apps

http://www.psfk.com/2010/07/infographic-the-history-of-apps.html

http://socialtimes.com/social-media-marketing-apps_b24026

Search Engine Optimization

The following is a tutorial provided by Google to optimize the searchability of your website:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Yahoo offers a similar guideline for their search engine here:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html


  The New York Times published a story in Febuary of this year concerning a huge SEO no-no.
JC Penny had become the number one search result for hundreds of search terms like “Samsonite carry on luggage,” "skinny jeans,"home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture," the list goes on and on.

   After investigations of the strange search engine resulting, it was found that JC Penny had found a new niche to the online dark-side to market their company. Google sorts their results in accordance with many factors, one of those being the number of outside links that filter into any given site. It had been found that Penny had tagged 2,015 sites with a direct link to their site. The vast majority of their tagged websites were out of use, serving the sole purpose of boosting JC Penny's search ranking.

New York Times reported that tags were found off topic sites:
"The phrase “black dresses” and a Penney link were tacked to the bottom of a site called nuclear.engineeringaddict.com. “Evening dresses” appeared on a site called casino-focus.com. “Cocktail dresses” showed up on bulgariapropertyportal.com. ”Casual dresses” was on a site called elistofbanks.com. “Semi-formal dresses” was pasted, rather incongruously, on usclettermen.org. There are links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminum sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists — and the list goes on."          

Both Google and JC Penny found wrong in the actions taken and worked to take down the links. The immediate effects of the removal of the links highlight just how effective their scheme was.

"At 7 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for “Samsonite carry on luggage.”
Two hours later, it was at No. 71."


Read full story at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

Distance Communication Skills: Skype Secrets

     Recent research conducted by the Polytechnic Institute of New York University has discovered some major glitches in Skype's privacy settings that could potentially expose the location and movements of Skype's entire database which consists of a half-billion users world-wide.

  Hackers can steal IP addresses easily by making partial calls to any skype user. The call does not go through and the target would have no idea the call was ever recieved. Hackers can gain access to your personal files, downloads, movements and physical address. The differentail concern with this particular glitch is that ANY person can gain access to ANY Skype user, the hacker does not have to be a contact to make partial calls. Skype typically runs when a user's computer is in use, regardless of whether the user is using their program or not.

 A blog by social media savvy Karen A. Frenkel quotes Skype’s Chief Information Security Officer, saying: "We value the privacy of our users and are committed to making our products as secure as possible. Just as with typical internet communications software, Skype users who are connected may be able to determine each other’s IP address. Through research and development, we will continue to make advances in this area and improvements to our software."

I don't know about you, but I feel much better. Oh wait...

  Extremists like Keith Ross, a researcher looking into the problem at NYU, points out the potential for terrorist groups to take advantage of the glitch and track targets. Targets at risk could include goverment officials, or employees of target organizations.

Read more at http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/24/skype-security-flaw-potential-terrorist-threat-nyu-professor-says/

Viral Videos

   From the humble beginnings of the numa-numa dance and the star wars kid, viral videos have become somewhat of a phenomenon in online culture.


What constitutes a viral video?
http://socialtimes.com/what-makes-a-video-viral_b61409

   A million views on a video is, to be put simply, a lot. However, videos that hit one-million views only to level off are not the videos that are remembered. YouTube expert Kevin Nalty puts it; “a video I submit is “viral” if it gets more than 5 million views in a 3-7 day period". He uses President Obama’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner comedy routine as an example, which was viewed over 7.2 million times the first WEEK it was uploaded.

 Number of hits alone do not make a video viral, it is the excitement and frenzy feel it creates. If people are watching it and people are talking about it, then more people are naturally going to watch it and keep talking. The interest level of the video is the stimulant for how long the "buzz" surrounding it will last.

  The longevity of the cycle of talked about videos add to the notorious "viral" title. Do the vidoes create a lasting "spin-off", if you will? People still joke about Gingers, thanks in part to the angry ginger video, (something I, as a ginger, am specifically bitter towards..). It has stuck, making camp in popular culture

Locating social media

    In a world of little online privacy, it seems natural for location based social media to thrive. Users of sites such as Foursquare and Facebook's location options allow users to share their whereabouts and swap information and happenings in their area.

   A new mobile app that has become particularly interesting to me is TagWhat; an application that allows users to upload mobile photos of landmarks around their location, adding personal commentary to the image. Commentary can include personal stories, random facts, historical information, deals, tips, anything others may find interesting (or... not).
 
   Maps meet scrapbooking meets Facebook meets Groupon in TagWhat. The potential to share deals and helpful information based on your location could reshape social media. The application undoubtably has a long ways to go, but it's potential is exciting.

Blogger Natalie Giddings addresses the differences TagWhat offers in comparison to other social media outlets in her blog, saying:

  "What differentiates TagWhat from Foursquare (and what makes it more like Facebook), is the fact that it eschews the formers' game mechanics and focuses on the user interaction and community building aspects of the latter. The basic use of TagWhat is that it lets users turn a view of any location into an engrossing, educational experience, as users provide interesting stories and entertaining information about every single thing that can be captured by your camera - think a diner and its history is interesting enough? I Love this examples they give on their website. Try to point the device at the tables, perhaps a user has tagged the exact table where a famous actor used to sit during his lunch breaks. TagWhat makes the world more interesting."

Read more: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/augmented-reality-meets-location-based-social/#ixzz1a7bHNVet

Traditional views and Social Media

Traditional media outlets seem be strung out across a range of emotion towards social media. Our traditional friends may want to thumb through an AA 12-steps-to-acceptance pamphlet next time they go to CVS, because social media is here to stay.

one: Admit we are powerless over the rise of social media- our professional fields have changed

two: Power greater that ourselves lies within social media, that can be harnessed for good

three: Stop turning a blind eye social media, and come to terms with the changing times of all       media outlets.

four: Make a searching and fearless inventory of social media sites and their potential as it pertains to us.

five: Admit to ourselves and our professional counterparts our previous wrong in verbalizing scathing and offensive thoughts towards social media in a vain effort to change the unchangeable.

six: Ready ourselves to take the plunge into mixing tradition with the abyss of social media

seven: Hunbly remove all bitter emotions and prejudgment towards online networking

eight: list all opportunites we have lost in our stupor of close-mindedness

nine: make efforts to uptake all opportunites that were lost do to reasons described on the previous step.

ten: continue to make steps to remove the bitterness and hostility that has inevidably cemented up into a wall of disdain towards social media and its users

eleven: sought through research and trail to improve our outreach through understanding social media. We understand this will give us power to carry our messages to the masses

twelve: Having been awakened from our slumber of ill-mindedness, we try to carry our message of glad tidings to all media experts who are hiding from the truth.

Now that we've excepted that the rise of social media has finally caught up with traditional views of marketing and business; we can move past of fragile, scared state and be welcomed into the world of media relations.
Clearly,  now more than ever, social media is working to redefine business and politics. In Liberal Democrats' View: It Was Traditional Media That Did It by Mark Pack, liberal representative's social media sites were monitored during a British political debate. After the debate finished, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg's facebook following had risen percent, while his Twitter following rose 23 percent.
This information gave voice to the face that social media is not just for twenty-somethings posting pictures of themselves in the mirror anymore. Social Media is a real time representation of what is happening in our world. Twitter has supplied an opportunity for politicians to communicate their position with a mass audience.