Danielle's Blog Spot

I have recently discovered Veoh.com.  During this past week’s discussion in class we were talking about pass along media.  Well, I figured a lot of people would be talking about YouTube as an amazing source of online videos.  They didn’t disappoint me.  A lot of talk about YouTube.  An article I read earlier this week mentioned that there are more places than just YouTube to check out videos.  I did a Google search to see what else is out there. I was amazed by the amount of places to check out online videos.  As much as I use Google, I wasn’t aware that Google has a site just for videos.  There’s also MSN Videos and the highly advertised Hulu. 

The one that caught my eye was Veoh.com.  A viewer can watch the  movies and TV show episodes that are provided or they can search for funny clips, commercials, popular videos just as they can on YouTube. However, Veoh has a cleaner looking website. Veoh.com is a lot more organized than YouTube.  Provided shows and movies are categorized and put into subcategories.   A viewer can still search for videos as they did with YouTube.  A feature that I really like and may switch me from being a faithful YouTube user is the searches on the side of a video.  When a video is playing, a viewer can still search through all of the other search results without the current video stopping or disappearing.  On YouTube a viewer can scroll through and view related search videos on a little scroll bar beside the video, but no more than that without losing the video.  So this new tool on Veoh is the main swayer in my decision for where I search online videos at.

Check out Veoh at www.veoh.com

I will admit, I’m not a big blogger.  I have this blog because of my class and I am (at least I hope I am) doing what is requested of me by my professor as a blogger.  I will blog on my personal MySpace account just about what’s going on with me and my life and things that are currently aggervating me.  It’s more like an online venting place for me.  However, the more I have to use the Internet for class and search blogs, the more I realize, a person can’t just say whatever they want to in a blog and have it be protected by the laws of free speech.  What do I mean?

Blogger Perez Hilton has been making headlines as a bad blogger.  Back in 2006, X17 sued Perez Hilton for $7.6 million for copyright infringment.  X17 accused Hilton of using 51 of their photos without permission, payment, or credit.  Hilton has his own website PerezHilton.com which is described as a “Celebrity gossip, juicy celebrity rumors, and Hollywood gossip blog.”  In the past few weeks Perez Hilton was assaulted by the band Black Eyed Peas manager after a confrontation occured where musician Will.i.am. asked Hilton not to write about his band on the celebrity blog website.  Perez Hilton has also caused a loud uproar with the recent Michael Jackson tragedy.  As news broke of Michael Jackson’s hear attack, Perez went on his blog and accused Jackson of faking a heart attack to get out of his 50 date London tour.  Now that the world knows the truth, people are calling for a Perez Hilton boycot.  Stuff like this poses the question, what kind of rights do bloggers really have?

According to the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) they have created the Legal Guide for Bloggers http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal

The EFF is also working to help bloggers been seen as journalists (and journalist can be bloggers), working towards helping get bloggers free speach (in other words people can’t sue a blogger with threats of copyright, liable, or other such claims), working to give bloggers free political speech, bloggers have the right to stay anonymous, and bloggers have freedom from liability for hosting speech the same way other web hosts do.

Go to http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers for more info

This is part 2 of my text messaging as new media (touching on blogs and online videos and social networking).

The past 24 hours has been a worldwind of coverage about the death of The King of Pop Michael Jackson.  This historic event in entertainment history is right up there with the unexpected death of Elvis Presley.  My mom ha mentioned that everyone will remember where they were when they heard that Michael Jackson died as they did when Elvis died.  This brings me to text messages as a way of delivering news.  There are news applications for phones where a user can subscribe to be sent current up to date news headlines.  How did I hear about it?  Through a text message.  A coworker received a text message from a friend, which was an unconfirmed account.  A woman in my checkout line received a text message alert and I thought she was going to burst out in tears as she shouted, “Michael Jackson’s dead!” My last blog referred to text messaging as the new word of mouth advertisement and it’s not failing me yet.  The new word of mouth is more like word of text.  I myself received several texts from friends trying to get ahold of me to tell me the news.

Due to this tragic passing, we’ve seen a career reserected by emerging media.  As Fox News has been reporting Michael Jackson has been the top search over the past 24 hours and there was a blackout on Twitter due to a communications jam of everyone posting Twitter posts over the incident.  Fifteen of the top bestsellers in music on Amazon.com are Michael Jackson albums (all of which just entered the top 100 in the past day).  The top 12 bestsellers in music and TV are Michael Jackson videos, concerts, and movies.  Eleven of the top 20 mp3s on Amazon are Michael Jackson songs and albums. Almost all of the celebrity updates on MySpace has been celebrities expressing their saddeness and condolences.  YouTube has devoted the top section of their homepage to Michael Jackson videos.  One celebrity with an insightful blog to the demons haunting Jackson was written by ex wife and friend Lisa Marie Presley.  I’ll share an excert (full credit given to the lovely Ms. Presley of course):

“Years ago Michael and I were having a deep conversation about life in general.  I can’t recall the exact subject matter but he may have been questioning me about the circumstances of my Fathers Death. At some point he paused, he stared at me very intensely and he stated with an almost calm certainty, “I am afraid that I am going to end up like him, the way he did.” I promptly tried to deter him from the idea, at which point he just shrugged his shoulders and nodded almost matter of fact as if to let me know, he knew what he knew and that was kind of that… As I sit here overwhelmed with sadness, reflection and confusion at what was my biggest failure to date, watching on the news almost play by play The exact Scenario I saw happen on August 16th, 1977 happening again right now with Michael (A sight I never wanted to see again) just as he predicted, I am truly, truly gutted.” – LMP 2009

To a man who made millions, spent more than he made, and was desperate for a career revival, it seems as if he’s found one in death through emerging media.

To read LMP’s full MJ blog go to http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=42291868&blogID=497035326

This is the first in my 2 part blog about texting.

Texting has become the new word of mouth advertising.  It’s technologically savvy and trendy.  Once the world started texting there is no signs of it ever stopping.  Texting keeps people in touch with one another.  Sometimes it’s inappropriate to answer your phone or have your phone ring, so you simply text.  Even if you have a small question, people find it easier to text than pick up the phone and dial the number to ask.  Not only is texting being blamed to help students cheat on tests with ease, but texting is being blammed for failed box office numbers.

Movies are bombing, yet the casts and plot and originality are not being blammed for it.  In this day in age, movies are not going to be as successful if there is no originality to it.  Think about all the remakes lately: Hairspray, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Amityville Horror, and the upcoming remakes of Alice in  Wonderland, Nightmare on Elm Street, and a big screen adaptation of Stephen King’s IT.  Movies are becoming remakes of movies that were big at one point in time. 

An article written in 2003 says that it’s Hollywood execs that are blaming the text message movement for their poor box office numbers.  Before text messages, word of mouth opinions about movies moved more slowly.  People couldn’t send out a mass text directly from the movie to give details about the movie, the plot, the ending, or whether or not they liked it.  To give a personal glimps into what I’m talking about, I was out with my boyfriend when we both received a text message from our friend telling us the “end” to Terminator Salvation.  What a crappy thing to do! I was really looking forward to seeing that movie and I felt like it had been ruined.  What was the point in going if I already knew what was going to happen?  I decided that maybe my friend was lying to me about the ending (I hoped the end wasn’t as he told me it was) and being a loyal Terminator fan (I sat through the 3rd one without leaving midway through, I think that’s pretty loyal) I went anyways.  I loved it and my friend lied to me about the ending.  If I hadn’t been such a fan of the Terminator series or a Christian Bale fan I may have skipped the movie altogether just because of a text.  Now I don’t think Hollywood execs can blame text messages for such bombs as Gigli or Terminator 3, they were just bad movies to begin with.

What worries the Hollywood Execs is that they know that word of mouth advertising is always popular and people respect the opinions of their friends.  Texting is instantenous and it’s uncontrollable.  It use to take a while for bad word of mouth to trickle out so a movie’s opening weekend would still produce a good deal of money.  Now, an opening day can spell out disaster for a movie that was less than stellar to begin with.

Read More at  http://blogcritics.org/video/article/hollywood-execs-blame-texting-for-summer/

First I want to apologize for my absence on my blogs.  I haven’t wanted to post some half-wit blogs that I couldn’t gather my thoughts to.  I’ve also been in the midst of conducting an experiment on my own.  A lot of lessons in class have dealt with search engines.  I have conducted an experiment with Google and Bing.com.

In my experiment I’ve taken some time away from the blog and concentrated on class work for both of my classes Emerging Media and Advanced Public Relations.  Both classes require a lot of research on the Internet.  I’ve used two search engines to find what I need for both classes.  This is what I’ve found:

I almost always go to Google first.  It is a subconscious habit.  Google has been around for so long and I’ve used it for so long for everything that I’ve realized that it’s now just a force of habit.  I have to consciously make myself go to Bing.com.  I’ve also noticed that I never add the “.com” when talking about Google, yet with Bing it almost needs the “.com” or people have no idea what I’m talking about.  I tend to use Google as a verb, “I’m going to Google it.” You can’t really say, “I’m going to Bing it.”

I like the fun layout to Bing.com because it makes it more entertaining for me.  Since I’m constantly on a search engine looking for something it’s a lot nicer to be greeted with a fun or beautiful image as I search.  All of the white space on Google starts to hurt my eyes after awhile.  Google is a very clean easy to navigate search engine.  They have clearly marked sponsored ads.  Bing.com also has very well marked sponsored ads.  There are some features of Bing.com that I find to be helpful such as their related searches tool and search history tool.  It makes searching very convinient.  My search results are also broken down into subcategories which makes it easier to find exactly what I want.  Sometimes in researching for class projects I’ve found that there will be something I’m searching for on Google that I can’t find, but can find easily with Bing.com.  Overall, I know I will never stop using Google, but I can see myself using Bing.com a lot more and cutting into the time I spent on Google.  I will probably switch to using Bing.com when looking for something very specific, while I will probably stick to Google to find quick answers for everyday use.

There have been others to conduct their own experiments with Google and Bing.com.  You can check out their results at:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/02/search-smackdown-bing-vs-google/

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Bing-vs-Google-So-It-Begins-112836.shtml

http://www.thepicky.com/internet/bing-vs-google-top-comparison/

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/bing-vs-google-a-study/

This week in class we’ve discussed websites.  What makes a good website, how it needs to be easy to navigate, and that a creative design is key.  I went to my trusty Google search engine and I came across www.Time.com which is Time Magazine’s website.  On their site, they named the best websites of 2008.  Of these websites the following few are listed: iliketotallyloveit.com, yahooanswers.com, askmen.com, concreteloop.com, popsugar.com, ratemyprofessors.com, picnik.com, urbandictionary.com, hulu.com, and freerice.com.

Then I came across a website that I could not pass up, Web Pages That Suck. “Web design is an art. Great web design occurs when design and content are seamless and you don’t notice its greatness. With great web design, it’s easy to find the information you need. The content makes you want to return again and again and, most importantly, great design gives credibility to the company/organization. Like every year since 1996, I hoped that this year would be the year when we’d only have 10-15 sites that were truly awful. Dream on. I suspect I had 130+ candidates for the top ten. I haven’t seen so much crap since the guys at Evergreen Plumbing opened my septic tank and let me look inside. Once again, I had to create multiple lists to cover all the suckiness. Unlike previous years, we’re starting in ascending order. The Worst Web Site of 2008 is…” (www.webpagesthatsuck.com).  The list includes such horribly designed sites as: Havenworks, FabricLand, Yvette’s, Toto/Washlet, 5safepoints.com, and toyjoy.com.  I really wonder who designed a lot of those websites and why they thought it was a good idea.  I didn’t even bother going to them because just the sample image given on the website was enough to detour me.  These are the websites that all website designers should look at as the examples of what not to do! However, they do make for a good laugh!

Check Out Time’s Full List of the 50 Best Websites

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1809858_1809957,00.html

Check Out the WORST websites of 2008 (There’s a Lot of Categories to Choose From so Have Fun and Learn what NOT to do!)

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/worst-web-sites-of-2008.html

This week’s lesson had a lot that I could voice an opinion on.  A huge subject on which I have a lot to say is kids and technology.  Kids are truly growing up “wired”.  I’m only 24, but a lot has changed from even when  I was growing up.  It seems like kids were more creative in the 80’s and early 90’s.  For example, I started taking dance lessons when I was two.  I took everything!  Ballet, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Twirling, Tap, Pom-Pom, and I danced competitively and did competitive strut marching.  That took up a large part of my time.  When I was at home, I was either practicing my new dance routines, playing with Barbies and dolls, jumping rope, exploring my back yard, playing on the swings, riding bikes, rollerbladding, skateboarding.  Television was something minimal on my own account.  We had several TVs in the house, but I enjoyed other things.  When SEGA came out, we got one, but only my brother really played it.   Later on when I was like 11 maybe, we got the internet.  Our time spent on AOL was kept to a minimum.  My brother was one that grew up playing video games.  He had every game console that ever came out.  If he bought a game and didn’t like it, he’d trade it in for another one.  He has devoted thousands of hours to gaming.  Maybe is a good time to mention that he chose not to go to college, he has a limited social life, and at 21 just now decided he wanted to go to a career/vocational school.  Is this a future that plagues all little gamers?

I think it’s a shame to see children growing up without childhoods.  All of these kids out there don’t see sunlight because they’re inside attatched to their computers, TVs, and game consoles.  There are also a few exceptions.  The kids out there who are like 13 years old and have more expensive and interesting cell phones than I have at 24.  These kids are all about material and designer items and worship celebrities and refuse to act like kids because the celebrites they see in magazines, online, on TV, and in movies don’t act like little kids.  That’s because they’re not little kids.  A lot of the time, I blame the parents.  I also like to blame parents when technology comes back to haunt them.  There are shows called, “To Catch a Predator” for a reason.  MySpace has a policy, or use to have one, where if you were under the age of 18, you couldn’t have a profile.  Of course young teens lied about their age and got profiles on these networking sites and it was just an easier outlet for predators to track their young prey.  When young teen girls post pictures of themselves dressed like a stripper and posing like one on their profile, how do the parents not know?  If parents took control over how much their kids were on the internet and what sites they were on, would it help?  It may help some to preserve what little bit of a childhood they have left.  It may hurt advertisers though who depend on young teens getting onto these types of sites to market to.   Any thoughts?

Of course with technology being so integrated into teen’s lives, it’s hard to monitor.  Several kids find their friendships being kept online. 

Here’s an interesting article from CBS about teens being “wired”.  It’s 3 years old so everything has gotten even more advanced since then (keep that in mind)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/09/gentech/main1698246.shtml

I just read my weekly lesson for my Emerging Media class when I saw some statistics that were interesting.  For example, 75 % of the population is connected to the Internet. Out of this 91% of people have email.  I think a great deal of people lie about having email.  Why would I make such an accusation?  Let me explain…

I work for a retail company.  When a customer comes to check out at the register it is mandatory that each associate asks every customer for the phone number and email address before we continue with the transaction.  We have been assured by the company president that the phone numbers are for marketing for our company only.  They take the area code and first three digits of the number to figure out what areas our customers are coming from to shop at our store, that way they know where abouts to send our new product catalogs to.  No phone numbers are stored or shared or sold to other companies.  Our company also jumped on the band wagon of sending out email newsletters.  These newsletters update our customers on items that have been marked down to clearance, sales we have going on, what’s on sale, how long the sale is, and they were going to try to start sending out coupons through email.  It is our job to collect a minimum of 30% of our customers email addresses a day.  Most people don’t care to give out their phone numbers, but no one wants to give out their email address.  Not only do they not want to share their email addresses, but a lot of them are just rude about it.  Some will even stop me in the middle of the question to provide a firm, “No”, “I don’t have email”, “I don’t believe in email”, “I only have a work email address”, “I don’t believe that’s any of your business”.  It’s not as if I’m asking because I personally want to know and I believe I can become email buddies with these people.  I ask because it’s my job to ask.  Our manager gets in trouble if we don’t meet our numbers and if she gets yelled at, we get yelled at.  I’m just trying to save a lot of yelling from happening.  In order to collect more emails, they company even tried to do contests in which to enter, customers entry was their email address and it proved unsuccessful.  One day, I asked a customer about it.  In no way was I rude about it, I was just trying to understand where the customers were coming from.  The woman responded that she received enough junk email and she didn’t want anymore, there was no guarantee on our part that her email address wouldn’t be sold to other companies, and all the sale information and possible coupons were not worth the headache.  She then said that a lot of people feel that way.

With so many people feeling like companies sending them emails is infringing and intruding into their lives, what is the next frontieer for online personal marketing?  Feel free to leave comments with ideas!

This week in my Emerging Media class, a lot of class mates talked about Twitter.  I have to admit, I do not have a Twitter account.  When I asked a few friends about Twitter and what it was I don’t think I was too impressed.  Apparently, the idea behind Twitter is that a person has 140 characters to tell others who “follow” them what they are up to in their day.  This is 2009 and from what I’ve gained about Twitter is that they’ve been around since 2006.  For something that is now so trendy, why did it take so long to gain millions of users?  More importantly, why Twitter?

I’m relieved not to feel so alone with not having a Twitter account.  A lot of friends and co-workers of mine have discussed the popularity in Twitter.  The over all verdict is that it sounds like online stalking to a point. We are now in the age where we can upload and tell people whom we may not even know every step we take, but we have to do it in 140 characters or less.  There was once a point where people had to chose if MySpace or Facebook reigned supreme as a social networking site.  People are either loyal to one or the other or they may have both, but find themselves using one more than the other.  MySpace has a massive amount of advertising ability.  I’ve always personally thought that MySpace was great for casual keeping in touch with friends from school or people that you’ve met along your path in life.  Facebook seemed more formal and a little boring, but a good place to keep in touch with friends at different colleges because when I first signed up for Facebook, you had to have a college email address.  However, Twitter has become so popular, it’s become a better place to organize events than Facebook.  MySpace is still huge,  especially for advertisers, as you can’t even log on to MySpace without being subjected to an ad.  So we will break down the top 3 social networks into categories:

• MySpace: Informal, Casual, Great for Advertisers, Great for Entertainment
• Facebook: Formal, More Business/Education, Lacks the Advertising MySpace Generates, Great for Networking
• Twitter: Formal and Informal, Casual/Business/Education, Great for Event Coordinators, Good for Entertainment and Networking

Overall, I believe Twitter is overrated for the same reason MySpace was once viewed as overrated.  It’s not a new concept, but just a new site in our social networking world.  In a year or two with the way technology keeps advancing, Twitter is going to be replaced with another networking site.  Another site will be formed and we will have more pop culture lingo in addition to: “Myspacing”, “Blogging”, “Texting”, “Facebooking”, “Twittering”.

Check Out

 http://ineedec.info/whats-so-special-about-twitter/

Lanea and Me

What can I say about little ol’ me?  My name is Danielle, as you might have noticed.  I’m 24 years old and I live in Charleston, West Virginia.  I have a BA in Communications from Wingate University.  I am currently a graduate student about to graduate in Decemeber 2009 with my Masters in IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications).   I currently work in retail, but am hoping to change that quick, fast and in a hurry.  I have a tendancy to be overly opinionated, but I’m also open to what other’s have to say.  If you get me on a subject I’m passionate about I can talk your ear off.  This blog was created for my emerging media class, so almost all of what I will say will revolve around that.  Enjoy the down to Earth, crazy, not so studious side of me while you can =)

I love spending time with my friends and my boyfriend, Nate.  I am a huge animal lover as I am the proud owner of 2 cats (Jagger and Cooper), a dog (Ruthie), and a chinchilla (Coco Chanel Margeria… she’s fancy).  In my spare time I like playing pool and darts, creating art, listening to music, watching movies, playing games, reading, the occasional shopping session, and playing with my nephews.  Since music and movies are a huge passion of mine, here are some of my favorites.

Favorite Bands:  A Perfect Circle, Kings of Leon,  Nine Inch Nails, Alice Cooper,  The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi,  Nirvana, Aerosmith, The Cranberries, Alanis Morrisette, The Beatles, David Bowie,  Buckcherry, Jack Johnson, The Deftones, Bush, CCR, The Doors, Elton John, Elvis, Duran Duran, The Eagles, New Found Glory, Evanescence, Godsmack, Flight of the Conchords,  Heart, The Guess Who, Hole,  Guns N Roses, Jimi Hendrix, The Mama’s and Papa’s, Limp Bizkit, Blondie, Lisa Marie Presley, Madonna, Mindless Self Indulgence, The Offspring, Pepper, Pink, Pink Floyd, Rage Against the Machine, Rob Zombie, Tool, U2 (a VERY wide variety).

Favorite Movies: Forrest Gump, Halloween, House of 1,ooo Corpses, Devil’s Rejects, My Best Friend’s Girl, Dirty Dancing, Arthur, I Love You to Death, Better Off Dead, Waiting, Excess Baggage, Moonstruck, Heathers, Empire Records, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Princess Bride, Overboard, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candle, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Clerks, Clerks II, Mallrats, The Wizard of Oz, Little Miss Sunshine, Pulp Fiction, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, Spaceballs, Uncle Buck, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Of Human Bondage, What’ Eating Gilber Grape, I Am Sam, Ghosts of Girlfriend’s Past, Bride Wars, Marley and Me, Steel Magnolias, Top Gun, and sooo many more.