Hot Topic: Adoption Redefining the Meaning of Social Work

Social media is redefining adoption by providing a means for wannabe parents to avoid agencies and wait lists. Going online is cheaper, faster and reaches a wider audience than using just print advertisements or word of mouth. Wannabe parents are uploading Youtube videos featuring a slew of photos, home tours and interviews. Some are also writing on blogs and personal web sites to give birth mothers a glimpse of their adoption journey. To help spread the word, prospective parents also are utilizing social networking sites like Twitter, Myspace and Facebook in the hope that their friends may know a potential birth mother. Social media is also used to surpass other potential couples within adoption agencies. Successful cases have been recorded on CNN and released through Youtube.

Social media is also helping same sex couples adopt children.

It seems the convenience of the web can be related to most everything. Adoption has taken a similar path as online dating. However, are the dangers associated with  online dating relevant to online parent hunting? Is adoption more dangerous by this means? Can social media be used to exploit and manipulate people in tough situations? Adoption is now. Could organ donation be next? There are websites that say yes . Social media is difficult to be controlled and can spiral out of control. It seems social media can provide threats to our safety and body in certain situations. Does the law effectively protect us if it can only be applied within country boundaries? The outreach of social media allows people to work outside of their home country's laws. 

On the note of adoption, surrogate mothers are now using social media to advertise their service. Here is a spoof video i thought was funny.

Social Media Midterm: Question 5

What kind of conversational patterns can you expect to encounter using social media as a PR professional? What will consumers of your content expect? How can you level these expectations?

Social media uses a broadcast conversational pattern because it is used by millions of readers. As populations of online communities grow, conversations take on a looser pattern. This means that although conversation is possible, large amounts of information released through social media causes people to talk at each other, but not necessarily to each other. When someone becomes famous on the web, their conversational patterns become looser because they can simply not interact intimately with thousands of people. Writers receive more information than they can return.

As a PR person, consumers of your content will expect depth in your social media conversations. This can be a difficult task if your audiences are large, because it can be time consuming to devote comments to one consumer.

To level consumer expectations, the PR professional needs to know its audience. The larger the audience, the harder communication can become. If you can break your audience up and be interactive with all of their needs, the consumer will be happy. This can be achieved by using different sorts of social media to reach different key audiences. Also research to understand the demographic and identify them based on your dialogue will also be key.

Social media involves a large community, but also is home to many sub communities. For example, by using hash tags in your tweets, you can target a specific audience, and relay tailored messages to interactive conversations. Quality is more important than quantity in this case.

Here is an image I find helpful to understand effective online conversations:

Social Media Midterm: Question 4

Who is Jamie Zawinski? How is the role he played & design principals he helped spread important to you?

Jamie Zawinski, commonly known as jwz, is a former American computer programmer/hacker turned nightclub owner. He can be credited for his significant contributions to the creation of free software projects Mozilla and XEmacs. Currently he actively blogs and is very popular. Zawinski’s contribution to the creation of Mozilla is important to me because I am writing this while on Mozilla Firefox right now.

Besides that, his role in social media and program design is important because his opinions of social media dilution. Zawinski emphasizes the idea that social media needs to be adaptable or it will be replaced. If applications are not flexible and open to changes, they will be replaced or loose users. This is important in terms of providing free software and applications. Personally, I enjoy free Internet software and social media sites. If a site is not free, chances are a will not use it or will torrent it.

If your application is not adaptable, it is not sustainable. As an active social media user, I want to work with social media that has staying power. Zawinski helped create the programming that is required for an application to have staying power. But most importantly, his work is allowing me to browse the Internet using Firefox very quickly.

Social Media Midterm: Question 3

McLuhan used a model with four elements surrounding the term MEDIUM. Touching on the four elements, describe how this model can help us in interpreting social media.

McLuhan believed in four elements surrounding the term medium. They include extension, reversal, retrieval and obsolesce. All four elements are relevant in interpreting social media.

The extension concept can be interpreted in terms of how social media acts as an extension of our social skills. Social media has extended our social skills to include communicating fearlessly to faceless audiences. For example, facebook acts as an extension of our social skills. We can socialize with mass amounts of more people we would not normally socialize with. Social media not only extends our abilities to socialize but also to the size of the audience we socialize with.

Social media is relevant to McLuhan’s reversal concept because we use it to do things that we also do in other ways. For example, I use social media to steam TV shows or videos, but still use television or DVDs to view similar or the same material. Although I watched a TV show on a social media site, I may buy a hard copy to keep at the DVD store.

Social media exemplifies McLuhan’s element of retrieval by exemplifying new technologies ability to stimulate various stimulus. Social media addresses virtually every stimulus except the need for physical human interaction. For example, social media allows options for visual, verbal and written stimulus. This combines what the telephone, video camera and letter addressed for many years. Social media appeals to must senses with the exception of touch. For now.

Social media has recreated many old technologies and eliminated the need for others. Technologies are becoming obsolete quicker. For example, newspaper companies provide all articles on their websites, removing the need to buy the paper. As news became a part of social media, even news websites are become less visited with the creation of RSS feeds. A person can now obtain all information they seek on one website. Social media speeds up the process of replacement technology. It is in competition with itself. Companies need to adapt or sink. Social media is replacing itself.

Social media is a revolution.

Social Media Midterm: Question 2

In Wikipedia: The Truth in Numbers the message seems to be: no longer do the victors write the history books, we do: you, me, and everyone else. How is social media (twitter, blogs) forwarding this idea? What gives someone authority to "write history" and why should we listen to them? Is there a hierarchy of authorities? ie. is what someone like Seth Godin says more important? What should be taken as canon?

Wikipedia is a strong example of how social media has redefined how history is recorded. Thousands of people come together to generate a shared version of what they believe has happened. Social media forwards this idea by providing several ways to communicate opinions of history. For example, youtube provides a visual history of happenings, where as facebook can provide photos and dialogue. The Internet provides everyone with the authority to write their version of history. But authority does not mean legitimacy.

Information becomes history as soon as it passes, so who is telling us the news is defining history. We use social media to stay up to date on what’s happening and to communicate what has happened. People prove their legitimacy by providing reliable information and popularity. For example, people trust Perez Hilton to tell them celebrity gossip, although his persona and popularity was largely built from his blog. Legitimacy is found by building online relationships and followings. There is truth in numbers. Social media is history. Like story telling, people gain insight through communication of the past, present and future. We should listen, because that is how history has always been built, except now we do not leave it to just the academic to write. As we enter an age where social media is a major tool of communication, history like most things is subject to review.

However in terms of the victor’s view of history, social media is not providing an unbiased version of history, as it is still geographically stratified. Poor people in third world areas probably do not get their say in history. Although history is collectively collected with the use of Wikipedia, it is not the whole truth as language barriers and poverty continue to leave people out of history. I wonder if history translated from language to language changes in meaning?

Who are the people without history?

Socail Media Midterm: Question 1

In Deirdre Breakenridge's article PR 2.0, Brian Cross discusses how changes in technology will change the function of PR practitioners. In what ways do you think public relations will change and what role will PR professional's play in these changes?

The article by Breakenridge, PR 2.0: A Communicators Manifesto, does not detail a recreation of the PR profession. Rather it is evidence of the various doors that social media opens for PR professionals.

Social media is another tool for PR professionals to build relationships with the public. Social media in theory could cut out the middleman of marketing and provide a direct link between the public and corporations. But as Brian Solis explains on his blog PR 2.0, "Consumers already get it; brands are still trying to figure it out". Relationships, be it online or in person, are sensitive. PR is a management tool that allows an organization to build a relationship with its target audience. Public relations practitioners need to know how to engage in online. The use of social media as a communication tool means that information is not tailored but rather free flowing, which can be dangerous to companies.

The public relations profession is evolving. As communication becomes interactive and free flowing with consumers and companies, public relations becomes a management skill to understand the community. PR professionals will be the people making sure voices get heard and communication airways are open. This is a new way to communicate old values and reinforce the legitimacy and importance of public relations. As companies will need to adapt to social media interaction or sink, PR professionals will be key into the evolution of company communications.

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Social App Review: The Hype Machine: What is all the Hype About?

There are thousands of music blogs on the web and searching through them can prove to be a time consuming task. Enter the Hype Machine.

(video interview with the people behind the Hype Machine)

The Hype Machine is a social networking website that tracks a variety of mp3 blogs. It was created by Anthony Volodkin while attending college in 2005. On the front page of the  website are mp3 links added from various blogs that allow you to listen to the song. The website has its own media player and means of downloading the music posted. The Hype Machine does not blog itself, but rather provides highlights of several blogs without navigating away from the page. Blogs are chosen for the site based on several criteria, which are listed on the webpage. Although the site does not post its own blogs, it does have a place for members to leave comments and suggestions. The Hype Machine is basically an Mp3 blog aggregator.

The Hype Machine's success can be credited to many of its features. The application provides a place for unknown bloggers and artists to gain a name and has a great RSS feed available. The website not only offers mp3s and links to great music blogs, but also Hype Machine merchandise, photos, videos, widgets, and links to other social media websites they post on. You can also follow the Hype Machine on Last.fm, Facebook and Twitter.

The Hype Machines biggest strength is also its weakness. The website basically provides a place for one stop shopping. For the average browser, the Hype Machine is a great mechanism to meet all your musical needs without having to navigate through music blogs for hours. The Hype Machines convenient service is its strongest selling point as a social media application.

However, music bloggers believe the Hype Machine's  convenience undermines the music blog experience. Music bloggers believe mp3 aggregators discourage the visiting of music blogs. Although the Hype Machine summarizes what is going on, it does not look at the editorial content of a music blog. Having the support of music blogs is important in the operation of the Hype Machine. It depends on these blogs for the updating of its own site. Although bloggers may be aggravated by the disruption aggregators cause, sites like the Hype Machine advertise the blog so it does not go unrecognized.




The Hype Machine is a great place to do some one stop shopping for good music but also provides a great network for music lovers. The staff attempts to promote visiting the music blogs, but some people value convenience over the music blog experience. The Hype Machine is evolving. The site enjoys better security, more blogs, merchandise, RSS feeds and social networking tools it never had in the beginning. The application is seemingly growing in popularity. As we head into a new decade, the Hype Machine will be there to provide us with the newest music from the best blogs.
 

More information about the Hype Machine

The infinite world of social media

I am very new to many social media tools, but with the help of the Humber PR certificate program, I am slowly finding my way. I will be blogging for assignments here, but also discussing my Humber experience.

You can also check me out on: Twitter, Ning, Wiggio, Google, and facebook for now.