Social Media Webinar

This noon I joined a webinar for social media named “10 keys to social media success: Social Media for results” which was conducted by Social Media Marketing University. It was a good webinar and I did get some useful information from it.

In this 45-minute webinar, three big questions are talked—first, how social media is impacting today’s business; second, leveraging web2.0 for business success; third, 10 keys to social media marketing success. There is no doubt that social media can play a really important role on business’ success and web2.0 provides a broader way for social media.

One interesting thing I noticed in this webinar is that the speaker talked about “the big four social media outlets” which are Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And he explained previously they talked about “the big three” which did not include YouTube. But nowadays they noticed that YouTube is really a important social media platform which they could not ignore. I quite agree with this decision since YouTube has been the second large search engine on web. And recently I did a research on how Starbucks use social media to boost its success. I found that Starbucks pay quite attention to its YouTube channel.

The ten keys for social media success are: Leverage LinkedIn Groups to become a thought leader; Use blog comment sections to foster relationships; Integrate video into social media marketing mix; Leverage mobile to drive business; Use Facebook groups to find best customers; Integrate search engine optimization into social strategy; Create high performance PPC campaigns; Tie-in email marketing with social presence; Use strategic PR to increase visibility; Localize your presence.

I was happy to find that much of the strategies mentioned in this webinar are also covered in our social media class which means these strategies will really have a big influence on the business’  success of social media.

Commercialization in Weibo

This time I want to talk about the advertisements and commercials in the first page of weibo account. In the front page of every user’s account, there is always a flash column which usually contains three to five advertisements for merchandise or activities. Since I never see these kinds of ads or commercials on Twitter, I believe weibo is operated more commercialized than Twitter. And the following I will make some description of the content of ads by using yesterday’s ads as examples.

The first advertisement is for a hot topic on weibo at that time—UEFA Champions League, Milan Football Club VS. F.C. Barcelona (Figure 1). This advertisement is to invite users talking about this game. By clicking the advertisement, users are leaded to a specific page which includes the introduction of this hot topic and tweets written by other users and marked by hash tag.

Figure 1

Yesterday’s second advertisement is for hint fiction competition (Figure 2). In the first half year of this year, weibo organized a hint/macro fiction competition which achieved great success. So in the second half year, it is organizing it again. In this competition, users need to create a story in 140 words according to the limit number of words by weibo. All the weibo users can vote for their favorite stories during a certain period of time. At the end, the authors of first 100 novels will get rewards from weibo.

Figure 2

The third advertisement is about Beijing government offices create weibo accounts for publishing news (Figure 3). From my point of view, there is really a big development for Chinese government using social media to contact with individuals. The forth one is also for a hot topic—Golden Horse Awards of Movies in Taiwan (Figure 4). Weibo invites users getting involved talking about it and guessing which movies will win awards. The fifth advertisement is about a new weibo badge available now.

 Figure 3

Figure 4

Coincidentally, all these five ads were not for commercial. They were all for activities in weibo. However, in some other days, there are commercial ads for particular products or brands. Weibo does go further in the commercialization way.

Reaction for privacy in social media

This week’s topic on social media privacy is also my interest. For personal, I’m kind of concern of privacy in social media a lot. No matter on Facebook or Twitter, or other social media, I try to not release too much personal information and pay attention to my “good image”. I do this just because I feel unsafe when I use social media. I don’t know who is watching it and who will watch it in the future. So I want to try my best to keep it seeming good. However, I got more ideas about why we really really need more attention to our privacy in social media and re-concern what information we should never ever put onto our social media website.

The first reason we need to pay attention to privacy is that the information we put onto social media may release our individual privacy and affect our personal security. Our birthday day, home address, and some other information may be used to open account illegally. And the timely location we pointed on Foursquare or other social media may reveal where we are and cause troubles. The location information is more important if you are in bank dealing with money or in a hotel when you are on business trip. Be careful with this.

Another reason is that some “bad” personal information we post online may cause troubles on our jobs. For example, an indelicate photo in which we are drunk or some dirty words we complain. This is the reason why some people suggest we need at least two Facebook accounts—one for our friends and family; the other for business. Never link them and set up certain limit to which people can see it to hide the “bad image” away from public view.

Actually a few days ago, I saw one post about personal privacy from Chinese microblog. This post said he/she totally understand the happy feelings of parents being mom and dad. But he/she suggested not put babies’ information such as name, time of birth, date of birth, weight, or photos onto blog or microblog. This information might be used by human traders. Anyway, this tells the idea that personal privacy should be concerned by everyone.

WEIBO POPUPS

I know I have already written a lot about the Chinese version twitter—Weibo, and it seems that I just focused on describing some detailed designs of Weibo and did not paid much attention to the compare and contrast of Weibo and Twitter. It is quite random and not systematic or academic. I know, but I cannot stop myself. Every time I see a tiny different thing on Weibo from Twitter or some smart design or some changes or improvement, I want to talk about it.

So this time, I’m going to talk about some activities or topics conducted by the Weibo company (SINA) which are showed on every user’s first page when they log onto their accounts. After changing users’ interfaces forcedly, Weibo started a new way to diffuse its everyday topics—as you log onto your Weibo account, the first thing you will see is a popup including the today’s hot topic which invites you to join this topic by clicking the button on the right bottom. And the topics are managed similar as Twitter—just putting the topic name between two # symbals. Just like what is shown in Figure 1.

If you choose you want to join, the button will lead you to the certain page, and if you cancel, there will be another popup showing in the screen which ask you whether you are sure to not receive this message the whole day (Figure 2). If you choose receive it later, then you will get this popup again later that day with other hot topics. Without dealing with these popups, you can do nothing with your weibo.

It might be a good way to enforce users paying attention to every day hot topics and get people involved. However, I do not like it. it makes me feel uncomfortable everyday morning I log on and the first thing I have to do is to click two buttons which is meaningless for my life. I think weibo should find out other ways to diffuse their products expect forcing their users.

Reaction for Twitter Revolution

The article “When & How to “Talk Business” on Twitter” in the book Twitter Revolution really gives good idea about how companies should use social media to increase their business success and inspires me thinking about how to maximize the impact of social media in brands.

This article mentioned three “early-adopter large corporations” as examples of doing a great job on Twitter marketing their company, products, or services. They are @Zappos, @ComcastCares and @JetBlue. Actually this is my third time of these two weeks seeing Comcast as one good example of using social media to improve their customer service quality and increase their customer satisfaction. I have seen several comments praising @ComcastCares about their fast responses and high quality services to solve problems.

The one this article highlights is @Zappos. Zappos is a retail company and one of the best marketing strategies it uses on Twitter is holding contests. This article mentioned one tweet form @Zappos which I think is a really good one holding contests—“Okay, contest is ON! The first person who tweets @Zappos with their favorite brand of shoe sold on Zappos.com gets a pair FREE!”

Just as I mentioned in my another blog, nowadays the most important part for doing social media well is not about how many people retweet your post, it is about how many people getting involved into your topic. How to make people being engaged is what social media person should think about.

Don't touch my interface

Nowadays there is one thing happening on Weibo which I really want to talk about—Weibo is updating its client interface. It is not a big deal if a social medium just provides its clients a new system interface or platform appearance as another choice. The problem is that Weibo tries to increase its speed of diffusion of the new interface, so it changes every client’s interface forcedly without the agreement from that client which means your interface will change by itself at some time without your click of some button. What’s more, the interface can never be changed back to the older one once it is forcedly changed to the newer one by Weibo system.

This is really a bad experience for users who have really been familiar with the older interface and don’t like to use the new one. Just image this: one day morning, you wake up and log onto your Weibo account and suddenly find that your familiar interface has disappeared forever and you have to use the one which is unfamiliar for you and does not work well without choices. That is what I went through this morning.

I don’t understand why Weibo tries to finish this update in such hurry time. Actually before it started to change users’ interfaces forcedly, Weibo invited a certain amount of users to experience this new interface and it got a quite bad score on customer experience. Somehow, Weibo still decide to spread this unwelcome interface. What’s more, since few users choose to update their interfaces to the new one because of the bad customer experience, Weibo do it without users’ permit.

I do not want to talk about whether Weibo has the right to change users’ interface without a permit. I just want to say the way it spread its new interface has caused so much complain from its users. According to this reason, this update is not a successful one, as least from my point of view.

PR & Wikipedia

I read a research article written by DiStaso and Messner named “Forced Transparency: Corporate Image on Wikipedia and What it Means for Public Relations” which is about what PR practitioners should do since any one can edit and change the content of their companies on Wikipedia. This article analyzed the framing of 10 Fortune 500 companies on Wikipedia between 2006 and 2010. There are really some helpful tips for PR persons about dealing with Wikipedia.

Nowadays, since social media have been more and more important for increasing companies’ success, public relations persons need to regard social media as an important tool to conducting two-way communication with their customers, monitoring market environment, and enhancing issues managements.

Since the collaboratively edited information on social media circumvents traditional media gatekeepers, public relations persons get more challenges— they need to pay more attention to the “forced transparency” about their companies on Wikipedia and make the monitoring of Wikipedia in their social media plans. As DiStaso and Messner said, “Simply knowing about what content is on a company page will provide public relations practitioners with an understanding of what the general public knows about their organization.”

Besides monitoring the content about their organizations on Wikipedia, DiStaso and Messner also give some advises about how to create and change the content about their companies on Wikipedia. As DiStaso and Messner suggest—“Monitoring Wikipedia articles and engaging in the discussions over how the article will be shaped should be a daily task for public relations practitioners”. 

Resource:

DiStaso, M. W. & Messner, M. (2010). Forced Transparency: Corporate image on Wikipedia and What It Means for Public Relations. Public Relations Journal, 4(2). 

Some pieces of thoughts on social media

During this week, I read several articles and blogs about how companies treat or respond to the messages toward their brands on social media and I got some ideas about the attitudes of some companies to social media.

One article’s name is “Brands respond to just 5 percent of Facebook wall posts” and it is posted on Oct. 18 2011. In this article, the author mentioned according to two recent study, most customer gripes on Twitter do not receive responses and brand s do not respond to 95 percent of questions posted their Facebook walls. Another article named “70% of Companies Ignore Customer Complaints on Twitter” which was posted on Oct.12 2011 also mentioned the same problem. From my point of view, companies may already know the important influence of social media on their brands, however they do not pay enough attention to their social media or they do not know how to use social media effectively to increase their growth.

A blog named “ How many tweets does it take to impress the CEO?” explains that CEOs of companies does not pay much attention to the number of one tweet being retweeted. What they concern is how much this tweet help to stimulates  conversations. We can know from this post that the number of how many people retweet your tweet is not that vital these days although it is also an important element for measuring. Engagement is the key. To get people talking about the topic and your brand is more impartment than just retweeting your tweet without thinking and involving.

And I also read a blog mentioned the three big companies do pay their attention to the social media to get their customers’ feedback and increase their brand success. This makes me think that maybe big companies have already noticed the importance of social media and this is really a good model for other brands and companies.

Resources: 

Brands respond to just 5 percent of Facebook wall posts

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/9800.aspx

70% of Companies Ignore Customer Complaints on Twitter

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-monitoring/70-of-companies-ignore-customer-complaints-on-twitter/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

How Many Tweets Dose It Take To Impress The CEO?

http://www.pr-squared.com/index.php/2011/10/how-many-tweets-does-it-take-to-impress-the-ceo#comment-53580

How Top Brands Measure Social Media Success

http://www.pr-squared.com/index.php/2011/10/how-top-brands-measure-social-media-success#comment-53575

Crisis Management

To be honest, crisis management is one of my most interested areas in Public Relations. When I was in my undergraduate, I took one PR fundamental class in my third year and I got to know some basic knowledge about crisis management from that class. It was at that time I became fantasied in this part and paid my attention to the information and news about it.

 

One incident happened in China at that time was about food healthy and this incident made me feel more about the importance of public relations, especially the crisis management for companies to save their enterprise images. On July 2008, a report revealed that a famous Chinese dairy company added melamine—a kind of industry raw material -- to the origin milk to make the mixed milk meeting the requirements of food examination. Additionally, with the developing of this event, many Chinese big and famous dairy companies were revealed having done the same thing for many years. The public didn’t believe these brands any more. At that moment, to rebuild the enterprise image is the first important thing. But I do not think the PR agencies did a good job for these brands because till now, the Chinese public still do not rebuild their trust to these dairy companies.

 

By chance, a few days ago, there was a guest in another class also talking about crisis management. He thinks that crisis management is such an important part in Public relations that he holds the opinion that the whole PR developing direction will be separated into two big orientations—social networking and crisis management. There is no doubt that future communication’s developing direction is to be faster, more transparent, more directly and to more people. In this kind of background, crisis management gets more challenges. PR companies and persons need to react more quickly and be more skilled.

Weibo & Twitter III

This time I want to talk about the activities Weibo conducts to inspire their users to use it more often. From my point of view, Weibo does quite a good job in its diffusion to Chinese netizens as well as famous foreigners who want to keep and improve their Chinese marketings. Meanwhile, Weibo invents several smart little things which are different from its origin—Twitter to keep its users’ passions on tweeting and encourage its customers to get involved into activities conducted by official Weibo.

The first smart invention I want to mention is Weibo badge. Weibo badge is a kind of award Weibo system giving to the accounts which meet different requirements set by the official system. Some of the requirements are about the number or content of your tweets. For example, you can get a certain badge if you tweet original tweets continually in seven days (Figure 1). And some of the requirements are more like a kind of advertisements for certain brands, companies and organizations. For example, you can get a corresponding badge if you link your Weibo account to your MSN account (Figure 2). There are also some badges for Weibo official activies. For example, you can get a certain badge if you share music in the Weibo Music Box (Figure 3). Till now, there has been 49 Weibo badges for users to collect (Figure 4).

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

You may have noticed this: for every Weibo badge, there are several attributes, like “remaining days for collecting this badge”, “the number of this badge issued”, “to which group this badge issued”, “the rarity level of this badge”, “valid date” and so on. It makes using Weibo like playing games. And you need to finish various game tasks.

There is no doubt that this is really a good way to inspire users to tweet more often and spend more time on Weibo since quite many people have the habit to gather badges. It may sound stupid that trying so hard to increase your number of tweets or retweets or comments just because you want to get a virtual award, but such many users like it and spend time on it. Figure 5 is a Weibo account which has collected such many badges.

Figure 5

Personal branding

One of several useful functions for social media such as Facebook and Twitter is to “position and brand yourself”. According the reading material of “Twitter Revolution: Chapter15—Chapter 16”, there are kinds of ways to manage your personal branding through social media successfully. For example, “Please don’t publish a new blog post, and tweet, a boring tweet like: here’s the link. Give your followers a compelling reason to click on your link and check out your blog”.

I quite agree with the idea by good managing and marketing yourself though social media, you could build a nice personal brand and get very well benefit. Such as the several accounts with the special stars on Weibo (I mentioned this in another blg post)—by tweets very often, they get themselves famous though social media. But I’m sure we will lose some kinds of privacy at the same time. With the development of our modern technology, we are losing our privacies little by little.

I can still remember one viewpoint from a guest for another class. He said it is impossible to keep our privacy well since we live in this modern society unless we throw way our cell phones and credit cards. It is kind of a joke but it is true.

I got the idea that Facebook has added a new function named “Timeline” from another blog. By using timeline, you can add your photos which you think are important in your lifetime to make a “life-line” on Facebook. This is a wonderful and also helpful invention. But also, it will reveal our privacies, again. Advertisers should love this invention since they can make their ads more personalized. But once you put your photos there, you anticipate others to see them, don’t you?

Topic Monitoring assignment

Last week I got an assignment to choose a topic and monitor different meida's reporters on this topic. Since it is relationed to the social media, I think I can share it here.

I’m an international student and football game is not as popular in the United States as in my home country—China. To open my eyes and experience different cultures, I started to pay attention to football games after I came here. As far as I know, Miami Dolphins is really a good football team and did quite well in the past football matches. However, in this season, it seems that there is something wrong with Dolphins— they didn’t do very well in the games. On Sep.25, as Miami Dolphins lost to Cleveland Browns by one point, Dolphins’ score was 0-3 at that moment in this football season. This score makes me feel quite interesting about how Dolphins will play in the future games and how PR persons working for Miami Dolphins will do to motivate fans and save the image of Dolphins. So from Sep.26 to Oct.9, during these two weeks, I focused on news and information on Miami Dolphins.

The story I want to mention is a story posted on Oct.3 2011 on the website of Miami Herald just after Miami Dolphins failed to San Diego Chargers 16-26 on Oct.2. The title of this story is “Miami Dolphins fall to 0-4 after losing to San Diego Chargers” and the subhead is “Chad Henne’s day ended early because of a shoulder injury, and at day’s end the Dolphins felt the sting of an 0-4 start to the season”. In this story, the reporter focused on the injury of Chad Henne and made his opinion on why Miami Dolphins lost again after interviewing several team members including Chad Henne.

All of the Miami Dolphins official website, official Facebook and official Twitter have the reports or tweets about the story.For example, in the Miami Dolphins official Twitter, there is one post —“The Dolphins fall to the Chargers 26-16” on Oct.2.There are also posts in Dolphins official Facebook about the story. What’s more, in facebook, there is also much information about how to get free tickets and other events.

Since Miami Dolphins did not do well in the past four games, I think the PR persons who work for Dolphins should focus on how to re-build the good image of Miami Dolphins and make their fans feel more confident for their future. Maybe feature stories of team members is one of the good choices. However, the most effective way to re-build good image is to win the next game.

Weibo & Twitter II

OK, this is my second post for the comparison between Twitter and the Chinese version twitter—Weibo. This time I want to talk about the verified system of these two social media.

I have mentioned before that I also concern about the reliability and accuracy of the information from social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. One of reasons is you do not know who is the person posting the information—as we all know, the anonymous internet generate the population who can speak out things they will never talk in the face to face conversations without any worry, including lies. This makes people using social media kind of difficult to figure out which is right and which is wrong. On Twitter, users always tend to retweet the posts which are breaking news. But sometimes these breaking news are not true.

But if we know who the person is posting the news, things can go differently. At least, we can give the account more credibility. I think this is one of the reasons that Twitter and Weibo start the verified system. Of course, there are other reasons—for example, to avoid other accounts pretend to be the right famous person or organization.

I notice that on Twitter, all the verified accounts have a blue check mark after their account names, no better the famous person or the organization. For example, the Figure 1 is Lady Gaga’s account (famous person) and Figure 2 is Time’s account (famous organization).

Figure 1

Figure 2

But for Weibo, there is a more detailed classify for person and organization. For famous person, there is a red “V” after his/her account which means has been verified. For organization, the “V” is blue. And there is a special red star for the person who is not famous in the real world but has written certain number of tweets on Weibo. This is a kind of encouragement for Weibo users to tweet often. The figure 3 is a famous person’s account. Figure 4 is an organization and Figure 5 is an example of the special red srar.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Who is a Journalist?

By reading the article “Who is A Journalist?” written by Erika Fry, I got the fact that three reporters were arrested along with other protestors by the New York Police in the Occupy Well Street protest. The reason for their being arrested is they did not have the press credential issued by the DCPI which is the only evidence used by the NYPD to identify who is or is not a journalist. What’s more, it took quite long time for the three reporters to be released since they did not have the credential to prove they are journalists.

For these three reporters, the reason why they don't have credentials is not they do not want to apply.It is because they do not meet the application requirements. "To get this credential, you must submit an application and six published clips that prove you have covered breaking or spot news in the past."

I think using the DCPI-issued credential as the only evidence to identify a journalist is kind of problematic, especially when many of the reporters cannot get the credentials. And the way NYPD dealing with the release process of the three reporters also has some problems. It took such long time to release the reporters just because of the credential problem, even after the police knew they were reporters. I think the NYPD can find out other ways to identify journalists besides the DCPI-issued credential. They need add other things as evidences to solve this problem.

From my point of view, both the NYPD and the online media need PR help. And maybe the NYPD need it more. I think the NYPD need to explain to the public why they needs the credential and let the public know they have make their efforts to upgrade the credential system to meet the developing social media, such as the reforms to the system in 2000. On the other side, the online media also need PR help to let the government office know they really need special concern—like special requirements of credential for the online media reporters.


Resource:
Who is a Journalist?
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/whos_a_journalist_1.php

Social Network Sites

According to Boyd and Ellison (2008), social network sites are “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.”

There is a figure showing the timeline of launch dates of several major social networking sites in Boyd and Ellison’s research paper “Social Networking Sites: Deinition, History, and Scholarship” (2008). And they mentioned the relaunch of QQ—a Chinese instant messaging service in 2006.

Actually before QQ set up its SNS, there was another famous Chinese SNS launched in Dec.2005—Xiaonei. And now its name has been changed to Renren. At the beginning, Xiaonei set high school and college students as its target audience. It tried to provide a platform for students to keep in touch even after their graduation. At that time, users can only use their real personal profile and school email address to set up an account. I can still remember clearly that I set up my Xiaonei account in the summer of year 2006 after I graduated from high school. And I have kept this account for 5 years. I think maybe it tried to replicate Classmates.com.

However, with the launch and development of Facebook, Xiaonei started to change its style closer to Facebook. It extended the scope of its target audiences and opened to all of netizens. And in 2009, its name was changed to Renren.  Now it is one of Chinese famous SNSs.

Resource:

Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2008). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.

Where Am I? I don’t Want to Tell You

In one of my classes this week, a professor asked us whether we use foursquare. And most of my classmates responded as they don’t use it or don’t like use it. Then the professor wandered why. Answers were like “I want to keep my private” or “It is weird to show where you are all the time”. I was not familiar with foursquare before that class, so I searched it though internet after that class and got the basic idea about what is foursquare and how does it work.

According to Wikipedia, foursquare is a location based social networking website based on hardware and mobile devices. “Users check-in at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by running the application and selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby.” Simply to say, it is a social networking website that allows you to show where you are timely.

Well, from my point of view, I don’t like use this kind of social networking tools which base on the technology of tracking locations. I’m not sure whether facebook and twitter have this kind of function, but I’m quite sure Renren and Weibo have the function to show your current location with your every tweet. But I never use it. The reason for my dislike may sound stupid. I really think it is noisy as well as useless to point out where you are with your tweet. If you really really want your friends know where you are, you can call them or text them. There is no need for you to show your location to everybody. I know it becomes more and more difficult for us to keep our private in this modern life, but I really want to try as much as I can… It seems I’m trying to give myself over-protection.:)

But I’m sure this kind of location-based social networking websites should be very useful for marketing and advertizing. For examples, supermarkets and department stores can send discount information and advertisements to people who point out their locations nearby.

Strengths and Weakness of Blogs in Public Relations

Michael Kent in his research paper “Critical analysis of blogging in public relations”(2008) argued that as PR researchers and PR persons, we should pay attention to how blogs can be used more effectively. He mentioned several advantages and disadvantages of PR blogs and concluded that PR blogs’ utility as public relations tool is currently limited and “Public relations professionals should not get trampled by the blogging stampede until scholars, researchers, and especially professionals actually understand them better”.

I truly agree with the strengths and weakness of PR blogs Kent mentioned in his research. Blogs can be a good tool for research, issue monitoring and environment canning. By checking what is discussed in recently PR blogs, we can infer the main topics in the PR area. And PR blogs are also excellent data gathering sites. By monitoring how individuals are interpreting and responding to organizational events and activities before such information reaches the mainstream media, public relations professionals can formulate better, and more effective responses. What’s more, PR blogs can be used as a persuasion tool to influence individuals and publics.

However, there is still weakness in PR blogs. First of all, there are quite a few organizational bloggers who are not adequately trained in public communication, or independently decide whether or not going public on an issue rather than consulting with organizational leaders. Actually this phenomenon also exists in other social media, such as twitter. In Weibo, there are lots of organizational accounts posting tweets which have quite bad influence on their corporate image. There is no doubt that this is the result of inadequate training of their Weibo account administrator. What’s more, the credibility of information from PR blogs is another big question. Actually, from my point of view, this is a problem for all social media.



resource:
Kent, M. L., 2008. Critical analysis of blogging in public relations. Public Relations Review, 34, 30-40. 

Weibo & Twitter I

Yesterday the presentation about macroblog was quite good and the class activity on TweetChat was funny. I do not use twitter very often and this was the first time I knew about TweetChat. But I often use Weibo—the Chinese version twitter and I’m quite sure there is a similar function in Weibo just like TweetChat. 

So this makes me wandering whether I can do a comparison between Twitter and Weibo, not that academic and serious, just from my using experiences. And I’m sure this comparison should be funny since Weibo is the copy of Twitter but also has some unique features which adapt to the requirements of Chinese users. I’m quite sure this comparison may take me several times and might be some kind of random. So I named this first post on the comparison “Weibo & Twitter I” since there should be the second one, the third one in the future.

OK, let’s back to the TweetChat. I checked my Weibo account after class and found there really is a function similar with TweetChat which named as WeiTopic. But there is not a particular website for this WeiTopic. We have to logon to the page from the Weibo homepage. The homepage of WeiTopic is like the picture below.

 

As you can see, there are lots of topics listed on the homepage and they have been classified into different types. Besides the topic you can see a small tag like “new” or ”hot” which identify it as a new topic or a hot topic. You can choose one topic as your favorite, click that topic and tweet on it. The topic tag will add to your tweet automatically. What’s more, you can create your own topic by just adding your topic name into the middle of “##”, such as “#My Favorite#”.

However, I also find a disadvantage in WeiTopic—I cannot find an easy way to search a topic since there is no search engine for WeiTopic like in TweetChat. As a result, there is no particular page for all the tweets on the particular topic like the discussion page showing all of our tweets on CPR590 in our class. So there might be an aspect Weibo need to inprove.

Credibility of News from Twitter

As you know, I have a Chinese version twitter-- weibo account and I use it very often to get the timely news which happens in China. And nowadays, I find that it is more and more difficult for me to distinguish whether the information which is disclosed from twitter is true or false. From my point of view, the credibility of information from weibo as well as other social media is a big problem which needs to be concerned carefully.

There are several reasons may cause the inaccuracy of information from weibo. First of all, the post person just wants to fake a breaking pseudo event and makes it spread widely so that his/her account could be famous. Besides, hackers may steal famous person's/organization's account and pretend ro be the famous person/organization himself/herself/itself to post fake news.

There is an example which happened in weibo last year. At that time, a Chinese famous actress broke her marriage and the reason for her divorce was a kind of mystery which most entertainment media wanted to know. Suddenly, a message was posted out from her ex-husband's weibo in which the man recognized the reason of their divorce was his betray and he claimed he had loved another actress. However, one day later, another message was posted from this weibo account and claimed the last post was wrote by a hacker who stole his account. Actually it is difficult to figure out whether the former message was sent by hacker or the ex-husband himself. Till now, we still don’t know the real reason for their divorce…

Another reason for the inaccuracy of information from weibo is that the post person himself/herself also don’t know the real condition. For example, the timeliness is very important for a reporter to post a message on weibo for breaking news. He may not get enough information to dig out the whole thing or check with different sources. Or he cannot write enough details with the 140 letters limit.

So, for us readers, we need to concern the information carefully before we retweet it.

Accuracy of Breaking News from Twitter

I just read an article wrote by Larry Atkins, a journalist and lawyer, taling about the accuracy of breaking news from twitter, facebook, and other social media. He argued from a view of journalist and mentioned that it is obvious that twitter has brought so much benefit to news consumers-- twitter allows consumers to follow the department of breaking news in real-time by a reporter on the scene. It also allows consumers feel more of a personal connection with the reporter.

But there is one big problem that consumers and media need to concern which is the accuracy of the breaking news from twitter as well as other social media since in breaking news stories, journalists have little time to check facts and verify sources. Atkins mentioned several big news from twitter which are proved not true later.

Actually canards also appear quite often in Chinese version twitter-- weibo. And they often spread quite fast. When so many people in weibo retweet one thing during a short period of time, it is difficult for you to distinguish it whether it is true or false. At most of time, you will regard it as true and retweet it to your friends and followers which makes more people see this fales news.

According to this problem, news consumers should be careful about relying on and trusting breaking news story reports. We need to verify the news through multiple sources before we retweet it to our followers.



resource:
Media and Consumers Must Be Careful in Relying on Twitter for Breaking News
by Larry Atkins
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-atkins/twitter-reporting-pitfalls_b_914873.html

Press Release, Die?

In Chapter 7 of PR2.0, Deirdre Breakenridge talks about the social media release. At the beginning of this chapter, Breakenridge mentions there are three main schools of thoughts about the future way of the traditional news release.

According to Tom Foremski, there should be a drastic change in the traditional news release. He even wrote an article named "Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!" to argue that we need break down the traditional release to set up a better communication tool. Well, on the opposite side, some others think the traditional news release still has the value to spread news. It is not the right to change. Of course, there are some people holding the ideas between these two opposite sides: yes, it is the time for traditional news release to change, but this change is not that drastic argued by Foremski. And I am one of them.

From my point of view, the development of internet, especially the growth of Web2.0, gives a big challenge to the traditional news release which makes them have to change. The traditional news release has to find ways to adapt to the developing of social media for their surviving. But these changes should be manipulated step by step. It is a mild transfer from 1.0 to 2.0, not a drastic one.

Actually my undergraduate dissertation is about the new strategies for newspapers to survive in this new media circumstance. I think I’m lucky to have the chance to watch this epochal change.

resource:
PR2.0 New media, New tools, New audiences  by Deirdre Breakenridge, Chapter 7

Social Meida-- A Powerful Tool

Well, for this week, I still want to talk about the phenomenon that social media make mediocre individuals more powerful than before. And this time, I want to give some examples which happened in China.

As you know, there is very strict gatekeeping for the dissemination of  information in China, especially for the traditional media such as broadcasting, TV program, newspaper, magazine, and so on. And for the social media, there are also kinds of prohibitions. Facebook, Twitter, Google and some other social medias are forbidden in China and we have our own version facebook, twitter and google. Thanks to these Chinese version social media, we individuals have more voice than before and have more power to make decisions for our society.

About four monthes ago, there was a colleage student named Yao Jiaxin who was famous for his criual murder after knocking down a woman by car. At the very beginning, the court tried to free him from death because of his family background. But individuals who use Chinese twitter and facebook sponsored an activity to let the government know most of Chinese netizens think he should die for his intentional murder. And at the end, Yao was announced to death by the court under the pressure from social media. That's a kind of victory of mediocre individuals by using social media.

There are lots of other examples that happen in China which show the big power that social media bring to the public. And it seems that the public has been more and more poewerful by social media. Thanks to social media. Thanks to the meida revolution.

Reactions to Introduction Part of PR2.0

By reading the introduction part and Chapter 7 of our textbook PR2.0, I get some ideas.

In the introduction part, the author described the structure of PR2.0 and raise the question: are you ready to be 2.0 ready? He mentioned several social media and argued that the new PR toolkit maps out the different stages of accepting technologies. they are early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

The early adopters are people who do not want to take risks. Potential adopters look to early adopters for advice and information about the innovation. Because early adopters are not so far ahead of the average individual in  innovativeness, they serve as a role model for many other members of a social system.

This makes me remember the time I used Weibo in China about two years ago. At that time, Weibo just started in China as a Chinese version of twitter because of the forbiddance of twitter by Chinese Government. I was in my forth year of undergraduate and at that time one of my roommates interned in SINA company which is one of the biggest internet media companies in China. She worked for the promotion of Weibo and recommended me to use it. So I become one of early adopters for Weibo. Just as the theory says, I watched my roommate for more information and also I was watched by others who had the intention to use Weibo.

How time flies! It has been two years and Weibo has become one of the most important social media in China. What's more, it has become the tool I use most.



resource:
PR2.0 New media, New tools, New audiences  by Deirdre Breakenridge

New Way to News

These days twitter has become one of my most important tools to get news. Actually the time I use twitter is much more than the one I use facebook. And it is a kind of weird that I do not like to write twitters but I like to watch what other people are talking about. And I like follow other people but do not like to be followed.

It is seemed that I'm wasting the vital function of twitter-- making mediocre individuals more powerful in the world. Anyway, I just want to hide myself after the screen and watch what is happening all around the world. I know there are some people just like me--do not write anything, just follow others. This should be an interesting research topic about whether some people do not like to use the social media's inportant function to empower themselves. I think I may try this topic if I have the chance.

Since twitter and facebook is forbidden in China, I also has a Chinese version twitter( named Weibo) and a Chinese version facebook( named Renren) account. I use them a lot. I check my Weibo at least 3 times a day even though I'm super busy on that day. And it is quite interesting that the people I follow in Weibo are quite different from the people I follow in twitter. I would like to follow news orgnizations in twitter to get news timely while in Weibo I much more like to follow individuals who have the same interests in movies, songs, and animations with me. Maybe the culture backgroud is the most  important reason for this phenomenon.

Anyway, thans to twitter, as well as Weibo.

Web2.0-- Empowering Individual Comsumers

As it is said in "Your Web, Your Way", Web2.0 is quite different from its first coming. All about the Web2.0 is to empower individual comsumers. With the Web2.0, we are not only comsumers but also creators. Besides sharing other people's information, we can work on our own information with creativity which can bring us big business as well as power.

Social meida provide us so many tools to deal with informations, such as YouTube, Blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. And these tools give us the opportunity to speak aloud to the whole world. So many persons have been known by the world just by using social media, such as Leila who makes public video diaries in YouTube, Megan Gill who uses Facebook to do social networking, Lee Kelley who writes a military blog, and so on. There is no doubt that the Web2.0 helps them increase their social influence.

Just like Lev Grossman said in the "You-- Yes, You-- Are TIME's Person of the year", Web2.0 will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. It is a revolution.

Of course, everything has two sides. The social media may also have some shortcomings. In "Enough About You" Brian Williams argued that the social media has developped a user-generated generation. They concerned themselves as the most important people in their lives and just pay attention to the informartion which they like. Brian Williams warned us if we pay too much attention to what we have already had, we may miss the next great challenge.



resources:
Your Web, Your Way
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570815,00.html
Enough About You
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570800,00.html
You--Yes, You-- Are TIME's Person of the Year
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570810,00.html
Power to the People
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570816-4,00.html

About Me

Now my new blog for public relations and social media is here. Actually this is my first time to write blogs so seriously and officially. But fortunately, I can start this blog by introducing myself.

I'm a second-year graduate student in School of Communication at University of Miami. And my major is communication studies. I come from China and this is my second year in the United States. Sometimes I have the strong feeling that it's so amazing I could be here studying for my master program. Just think about the long journey from China to US! It took me totally 26 hrs from Beijing to Miami in this summer break. 

OK, let's back to me. I took my undergraduate in Beijing, China. And my major for undergraduate is journalism. Although neither of my majors in undergraduate and graduate are public relations, I'm quite interested in this PR field. I took several PR courses in my undergraduate and graduate study. But unfortunately, I don't have any real work experience in the PR field. I would love to try if I have the chance in the future. And I have make PR agencies as one of my career choices after my graduation.

I'm sure that writing this PR blog will help me a lot and give me valuable experiences.