Social Media Project

Group Company Report

My group and I chose General Electric (GE) as company to investigate their use of social media.

Our group company report can be found here: http://ism3004.wikispaces.com/General+Electric 

Reflection on the project and what I have learned

Graphic 1: Social Media Examples

First, I was a little bit skeptical about the group project, as we did not have any influence on the groups. I have often gained bad experiences with respect to group work in this kind of format, as not an unessential number of people tend to free ride in some way. However, I have to admit that I was positively surprised by my group which turned out to be highly motivated and which wanted to finish the project as soon as possible. Apart from one group member who did not respond to our message at all and did not participate, everyone participated well and did a good job. Moreover, I thought that the way of communicating with my group members might not be convenient and easy. However, I have to admit again, that it turned out to be easier than expected as e-mail and especially the discussion board helped a lot to communicate and organize the work. Furthermore, it was not only a good way for sharing and collecting ideas, but also for giving immediate feedback.

The project itself was interesting as I did not know all these social media platforms before. I got to know many new ways of using the Social Media for advertisement and promotion purposes. I was surprised about the large number of Social Media channels being used by General Electric. However, sometimes it was hard to investigate if the company itself is responsible for the content on some of the websites (e.g. Flickr and Instagram) or if people unrelated to GE are responsible for it. One could just have an educated guess about it.

All in all, I learned many new ways of using the internet, especially the Social Media, for marketing. I got a good overview of social media channels being available and I got a feeling of how a company might or should promote itself on these platforms. Moreover, I enjoyed the group work and I learned how to use the discussion board to organize and manage the project effectively and efficiently. Finally, I learned how to use or set up a wiki as I have never done that before.

Graphic 1 by Nina Maria Scherl.

Week 13: Clear

Hunt versus Hike -

The differences in Facebook’s & Google’s ad models

 

Have you ever heard of hunter and gather? Probably yes.

But have you also heard of the hunt versus the hike? No, it does not have to do with any leisure activity or hobby. It is about the different ways users or costumers are using websites. Moreover this difference has a great influence on the ad models and in turn on the revenue models of Facebook and Google.

 

Graphic 1&2: Hunt vs. Hike

  

People using search engines like Google are on a hunt.

A hunt is described as “a task-oriented search to collect information that will drive a specific action”. Users want to get specific information to learn something, they want to get questions answered, they are searching for a solution to a problem or are just looking for something they want to buy. Google and other search engines makes use of the fact that the hunt might overlap with ads. So if you are for example searching for a trip to Europe, Google will show advertisements of travel-related companies like hotels, rental cars, travel providers, or if you want to look for a nice dress, Google will show advertisement of online shops offering dresses and other clothes. The advertisement is kind of targeted to the search terms you use. Hence, you are on a hunt and Google provides potential prey.

 

A hike refers to the activity when you have a vague or rough idea what you will encounter. However, you are not looking for something specific but you rather want to have a look around or explore. Facebook is one website which offers a great opportunity and possibility to go on a hike. You just click on a news feed of a friend, which brings you to photos of a recent party, on which people are tagged. You click on the tag of a nice guy you met and explore his Facebook profile. Then you see his favorite music artists and you click on the group page of a singer. This page is linked to a music festival you explore. As you think your close friend might be interested you share this public event with her and so forth. When being on a hike you kind of walk from one thing to the next without a specific planned route.

 

Google’s revenue model is based on the concept that it charges text advertisers if and only if customers click on their advertisements. Without any clicks, the firm advertises for free. Hence, with respect to ROI (return on investment) it is very efficient. Google users tend to click on advertisement ca 2% of the time.

Facebook also tried to leverage on offering space for online advertisement. It charges companies CPM, so each time when the advertisement was shown to a customer, Facebook charged the advertisers, and the payment rate was calculated per 1000 impressions. However, Facebook achieved only a click-through rate of 0.04% and it pulled its banner ads in in early 2010.

Graphic 1 by Florian Prischl on Wikimedia.org:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hiking_boots_on_sand.jpg

Graphic 2 by Fantagu on Wikimedia.org:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Modern_Hunting_Rifle.jpg

Extra Credit: Avatar

My Own Avatar

My Avatar

I chose for the first website called “doppelme” as I had not heard of any of these websites before doing the extra credit assignment.

The website was really simple and I could start creating my own avatar right away. However, I found out quickly, that not all options are available to people being unregistered. As I wanted to choose from the full range of options I decided to quickly register on the websites which was really easy and convenient. However, afterwards I figured out that I can still not access all items and options as some of them had to be purchased. Nevertheless, the variety being offered for free was OK and I was sure to find some good options.

So for creating my avatar, I first had to choose my gender and skin color. Next I had to decide on eye-color, hair color and hair style and finally on cloth. I appreciated that I could try out different styles and options, before deciding on the final one. However, I have to criticize that none of the hair styles could satisfy me completely. 

Finally, I had created my first avatar and I have to admit that it was so easy that everyone could have done it. The only drawback; the (free) options are limited and the avatar does not look exactly as oneself. Nevertheless, I would recommend the program as it is easy to use and very convenient.

Extra Credit: Smarterer

 Smarterer

My Smarterer Score

 

Before doing the extra assignment I have never heard of Smarterer before. When I clicked on the link and the Smarteter.com website opened, I first had a look at it and read the information being provided. Then I decided to choose “PowerPoint” as my topic of interest as I already had to do many presentations in PowerPoint and as I feel confident to work with this program. The first test questions turned out to be not too hard but a little bit tricky, especially when facing the pressure of time. Afterwards I decided to register to take the PowerPoint text and to see my real score. It was fun answering the questions, and getting rewards and badges motivated me even more to go on. Moreover, it was interesting to see my relative score compared to others. After answering questions about PowerPoint I went on answering questions about Facebook. I think I might test my knowledge in PowerPoint, Facebook and other topics further in the future.

Have a look at my profile: http://www.smarterer.com/NinaScherl

Badge Container Code:

<div style='height:600px; width: 160px'><noscript><a href="http://smarterer.com/NinaScherl/powerpoint" ><img src="/NinaScherl/powerpoint.png" width="120" alt="" height="80" class="home_badge" title="" /></a><a href="http://smarterer.com/NinaScherl/facebook" ><img src="/NinaScherl/facebook.png" width="120" alt="" height="80" class="home_badge" title="" /></a></noscript><script type='text/javascript'src='http://www.smarterer.com/js/ifloader.js?badges=42455,42472&username=NinaScherl&layout=1'></script></div>

Week 12: Clear

Domain Name Service

Have you ever wondered about how it works that when you type in a name or link of a website into the search field of your internet browser, the website you wanted to look at, turns up?

The answer to this question is with the help of Domain name service or shortly called DNS. The DNS is a database that looks up the host and domain names that are entered and returns the actual IP address. You can think of it like a huge collection of phone books being called nameservers which are able to find e-mail servers and web-servers.

Graphic 1: Illustration of how DNS functions

 

Let’s look at an example to get the real underlying sense and procedure.

Imagine you want to surf on www.google.com. First of all you type this address into the search field of your browser. The DNS resolver helps your computer to find this website address, as your computer alone is not able to find it. The DNS resolver looks into the DNS (the “phonebooks”) listing host/domain name combinations, to find the matching IP address. However, it alone is not able to find the IP address, so it contacts root nameserver. These root nameservers cannot provide the IP address, but they are a good starting place for searching, as they will point to a .com nameserver, because of the “.com” ending. These .com nameserver won’t know the right IP-address itself, but will point at a google.com nameserver. Finally, the google.com nameserver knows the IP address and can respond to the query of the DNS resolver. Then the DNS resolver receives the IP address from the google.com nameserver and will provide that information to your computer.  As soon as your computer knows the IP address it will be able to communicate directly with www.google.com and you are able to serve on www.google.com.

Whenever you have visited one website your computer stores that information, so the IP-addresses, in a storage called “cache”. The cache makes it possible to speed up your searches if you search for websites you have already been to. You can think of it as bookmarks in the telephone books. You know where to look for the information much faster. So the whole procedure explained above just takes place if you visit a website for the first time.

Original graphic by Everaldo Coelho on Wikimedia.org:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Computer_n_screen.svg

Original graphic by George Shuklin on Wikimedia.org:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Server-tower.svg

Original graphic by GNOME icon artists on Wikimedia.org:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gnome-network-server.svg

Modified by Nina Maria Scherl.