McLuhan's tetrad, at first, was hard for me to grasp. I'm slowly gaining understanding and I can confidently say I have a basic grasp of what he is trying to say. He wants people to go beyond what there is that is plainly visible, and get the more subtle ques and responses of people.
When McLuhan's tetrad is applied to something like the internet, we can say that it
1. Enhances speed data can get to one end to the other. No longer are we putting mail in envelopes, and giving them to the pony express which takes many days to reach its destination.
2. We can say that the internet can reverse how thorough we are with data. It's so easily accessible that we aren't really analyzing as much as we would when all we had were books and not wikipedia.
3. With easily accessible data, people are becoming (more so than normal) obsessed with information, like in the renaissance era, people were innovative and inventive. We can say we have always always like that, but right now technology and the need for information is booming, just like in that era.
4. The biggest thing the internet has taken away are borders. No longer do we have to travel across the sea to see somebody that's in Europe, we can use Skype and we can see and hear the individual, at the same time, it's also making physical interaction obsolete. There is a certain vibe you can pick up on from a person when you are physically standing in front of them that you can't pick up from a video stream.
Many of my earlier points can be applied to social media marketing. We see adds on social media websites that are making sunday add flyers in the newspaper become irrelevant. We are seeing this marketing virtually everywhere. Social media marketing tactics are strategically targeting people on websites like facebook and twitter to buy their products, no boundaries and instant access. Another thing I've noticed with twitter, that is greatly applied to the tetrad, is how twitter reverses the need to convey your thoughts in more than 140 characters. You can (I believe) put as much text, or maybe it's a 1000 characters, on a Facebook post. I believe we are seeing (or saw) social media evolution when the hop from Facebook to Twitter happened. Now a new social media website just came out called Path, instead of text, it's just pictures. Those are just some of my thoughts on the subject, and I was probably thinking a little too much about it.
links I used
http://www.horton.ednet.ns.ca/staff/scottbennett/media/index.html
http://www.digitallantern.net/mcluhan/course/fall96/tetrad.html
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Week 2
1 Companies need to have access to multiple social media websites, it's the only way to stay up to date and be relevant.
-All of the people in the interviews you provided us with are using at least Facebook, second most popular would be Twitter. They are both awesome social networking sites to have because you can reach out to the masses with them. Twitter for example, you can find a company similar to yours, go into that companies followers, and follow them. Usually people will follow back, it's that easy.
2 Before a company even starts out on social media websites, they need to know what they are trying to achieve.
-What are you going to create adds and videos for, if you don't know what your goal is? In one of the podcasts I listen to, one of the hosts were talking about how Sony advertises for the Playstation 3. He said that when it first came out, a PR person from Sony was speaking at some convention, I can't recall, but the PR person really wasn't sure how to promote this product. The PS3 does a lot of different things, Sony is just confused on how they should promote. Do we promote as a video game console? a computer alternative? a blu ray player? It does so many things that it's hard to draw the line on what job it should promote the PS3 for.
3 Posts and advertisements need to be relevant to what the company is currently striving for, example, adds about an older item are not as effective as adds about the newest up to date item. Management and media need to be in sync. Another example that I got from the pro wrestling interview, is that company probably does better on youtube because people want to watch videos of wrestling, not look at pictures on facebook(I'm aware you can watch videos) or read text about it on twitter.
4. Make sure you are using the most popular social networking site to it's full potential.
-For example, using myspace, a dead social networking site, to host your adds, is not as beneficial compared to showing them on facebook, which has 800 million+ users. If I recall, only one of the interviewees used myspace still, which some people do use that, bands in general are still a big player with Myspace right now.
5. Last but not least, always have good interactions with people you associate with online.
-About a month ago, a game company called N-Control, makes a microsoft xbox controller add on, that is intended for people with disabilities to use the controller, was using a company called Ocean Marketing for their PR. The owner of a well known gaming website called Penny-Arcade (they run convention called PAX Prime and PAX East) had ordered one of the products, and somehow it never got shipped to his house. Long story short, the PR guy from Ocean Marketing said some very unnecessary things and he ended up losing his chance to have any kind of promotional booth at any PAX events, it was also posted on the penny arcade website, which gets hundreds of thousands of hits a day, and before the day was over, big name gaming companies were talking about it. Here is a link to one of the articles covering it. Here it is
-All of the people in the interviews you provided us with are using at least Facebook, second most popular would be Twitter. They are both awesome social networking sites to have because you can reach out to the masses with them. Twitter for example, you can find a company similar to yours, go into that companies followers, and follow them. Usually people will follow back, it's that easy.
2 Before a company even starts out on social media websites, they need to know what they are trying to achieve.
-What are you going to create adds and videos for, if you don't know what your goal is? In one of the podcasts I listen to, one of the hosts were talking about how Sony advertises for the Playstation 3. He said that when it first came out, a PR person from Sony was speaking at some convention, I can't recall, but the PR person really wasn't sure how to promote this product. The PS3 does a lot of different things, Sony is just confused on how they should promote. Do we promote as a video game console? a computer alternative? a blu ray player? It does so many things that it's hard to draw the line on what job it should promote the PS3 for.
3 Posts and advertisements need to be relevant to what the company is currently striving for, example, adds about an older item are not as effective as adds about the newest up to date item. Management and media need to be in sync. Another example that I got from the pro wrestling interview, is that company probably does better on youtube because people want to watch videos of wrestling, not look at pictures on facebook(I'm aware you can watch videos) or read text about it on twitter.
4. Make sure you are using the most popular social networking site to it's full potential.
-For example, using myspace, a dead social networking site, to host your adds, is not as beneficial compared to showing them on facebook, which has 800 million+ users. If I recall, only one of the interviewees used myspace still, which some people do use that, bands in general are still a big player with Myspace right now.
5. Last but not least, always have good interactions with people you associate with online.
-About a month ago, a game company called N-Control, makes a microsoft xbox controller add on, that is intended for people with disabilities to use the controller, was using a company called Ocean Marketing for their PR. The owner of a well known gaming website called Penny-Arcade (they run convention called PAX Prime and PAX East) had ordered one of the products, and somehow it never got shipped to his house. Long story short, the PR guy from Ocean Marketing said some very unnecessary things and he ended up losing his chance to have any kind of promotional booth at any PAX events, it was also posted on the penny arcade website, which gets hundreds of thousands of hits a day, and before the day was over, big name gaming companies were talking about it. Here is a link to one of the articles covering it. Here it is
Monday, January 9, 2012
Week 1, Assignment 1. It Begins
I took this course not really knowing what to expect. The world is so connected with socially (via social networking, the internet, cell phones) that everybody knows what everybody is doing. It's kind of scary. I recently deleted my facebook because I was just wasting too much time on it. I was disappointed in myself. I still have google+ and twitter though, which I really only follow/are friends with people I actually know. That wasn't the case with Facebook.
Anyways, I'm going to be providing a couple of links, which I think are great, regarding social media and information on the subject.
a big one, right off the bat is mashable
this website sort of like yahoo, but for more tech savvy people (in my opinion) It has all your general news topics and needs.
another good one is off of yahoo news
some people criticize yahoo news. I've used it for years and it tends to have content that's relevant to the moment. Any news website will have this trend though really, I just prefer yahoo.
Some examples of companies using social media for advertising, one that pops in my head right away is Youtube. Adds all the time before you start to actually see your video. Hulu does this too. I remember when Youtube first became a website, it wasn't like that. Just adds on social networking in general are examples, twitter has promoted accounts to follow, Facebook has promoted companies in their add bar. The only social networking site that I haven't seen any corporate promotion on is google+. They will get there soon enough, though.
Obviously, these are very effective tactics. You have some 800 million users on Facebook, seeing these adds, giving add revenue to whomever.
Another tactic that's pretty sneaky and very effective, are the adsense cookies that you get from browsing sites like zappos or tigerdirect or anything. You'll leave that site and start seeing sidebar adds for things that are relevant to your interests. Very, very effective, almost unethical in my opinion.
Anyways, I'm going to be providing a couple of links, which I think are great, regarding social media and information on the subject.
a big one, right off the bat is mashable
this website sort of like yahoo, but for more tech savvy people (in my opinion) It has all your general news topics and needs.
another good one is off of yahoo news
some people criticize yahoo news. I've used it for years and it tends to have content that's relevant to the moment. Any news website will have this trend though really, I just prefer yahoo.
Some examples of companies using social media for advertising, one that pops in my head right away is Youtube. Adds all the time before you start to actually see your video. Hulu does this too. I remember when Youtube first became a website, it wasn't like that. Just adds on social networking in general are examples, twitter has promoted accounts to follow, Facebook has promoted companies in their add bar. The only social networking site that I haven't seen any corporate promotion on is google+. They will get there soon enough, though.
Obviously, these are very effective tactics. You have some 800 million users on Facebook, seeing these adds, giving add revenue to whomever.
Another tactic that's pretty sneaky and very effective, are the adsense cookies that you get from browsing sites like zappos or tigerdirect or anything. You'll leave that site and start seeing sidebar adds for things that are relevant to your interests. Very, very effective, almost unethical in my opinion.
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