Week 4 - Audio and Video

One of the ways to realize the importance (or not) of anything is to imagine life without it. It's a great technique to get rid of the stuff we accumulate in our closets but don't need. It's just as effective a strategy to revisit and appreciate the invaluable richness in our lives owing to sound and vision - Audio and Video. Helen Keller may concur.

Integrating audio and video messaging into organizational effectiveness strategies has been made incredibly easy and cost-effective, even free. There is a variety of mechanisms to create and share such communication pieces. Software such as Audacity/ Sound Studio/ iMovie / Adobe Premier (Source: textbook, pages 213, 215, 245, 246) and platforms such as iTunes, YouTube, Brightcove, Google Video (Source: textbook, pages 220, 519) respectively allow creation and sharing of audio and video content. And good business sense coupled with a careful understanding of the target audience will allow 'placing' this content so that it can be found easily. The breadcrumbs trail has to be laid, guiding people to the content. Just as videos can be 'hidden' by assigning cryptic titles and tags (Source: JCMC), the opposite is also true; clever and appropriate use of tags can help bring people to the content.

Individuals (comedians, artists, professors, etc.) are using these media and strategies to promote their ideas and products. We have one such example in our very own midst - if it hadn't been for Adriano's recent post, I might not have come across the very engaging trailer of Club Scene. And I admit that on various occasions I have 'youtubed' a comedian or artist whose show I'm contemplating watching, and it serves to either save me some precious (and very non-virtual) $$ or made me an eager audience.

There are also many such stories where businesses and organizations have used 'rich media' most effectively. An excellent example (also cited in our textbook, page 251), is of the uber-successful "Will it blend" video. The video itself has the key components of successful communication:

• focus on the key message (it is only about their product, the blender, and how well it does its job, addressing this very directly)
• effective communication through execution (using shock value, the surprise element, and humour/ entertainment to retain attention till the end... and it answers the 'will it blend' question too!)
  

What is also fascinating to note is that the company is further utilizing the social media power with things like building a 'fan club'! I have to admit this is one of the most effective viral videos I have seen, and I had encountered it earlier. However, for reasons that everyone in this course will understand, I am referencing another one that I like, one about the cat-herders:



Yes, I chose to mention this as it involves cats. Because the internet is made of cats. And according to Stephanie Bryant, "cat videos are just how people start doing videos online." (Source: Textbook, expert insight on vlogging, pg 247)
p.s. I think I just reconfirmed the phenomenon about creating exclusivity through references to inside jokes. (Source: JCMC)

So, clever use of audio-video content creation and sharing through social media can work, and it can work extremely well. There is a note of caution. And that relates to the double-edged sword of viral videos. Damaging videos can spread just as fast, as one company discovered. So the key to remember, I think, is not letting the excitement of taking advantage of the opportunity stand in the way of sound business decisions. It pays to hear and look carefully before one leaps.

Week 3 - Virtual Worlds and Gaming

My ex-colleague's 10-year old son had a "second life". He paid money to set up his virtual apartment with virtual furniture. His apartment got broken into, and the furniture was stolen. As far as I understood, none of the agreement types indicated in one of our readings applied to protect against this situation, or offered any corrective or punitive recourse. I didn't pursue the story further to learn whether any virtual private detective services were offered or acquired, or simply more furniture was purchased. It is likely that the poor (pun not intended) father had to come up with more money regardless. The son's virtual life (I would imagine) felt quite real to the father.

According to Virtual Economy, "[i]n the first quarter of 2009, the virtual world of Second Life saw $120 million USD exchanged through user-to-user transactions, with a record monthly $45 million USD in transactions in March." In the virtual gaming world, "U.S. revenues exceed[ed] $1 billion in 2006." (Source: Textbook, pg 326) Following the money, not only are companies - such as IBM, Coldwell Banker, Dell, Armani, Ben & Jerry's, BMW, CISCO, Coca-Cola, and Domino's Pizza - doing business in the virtual world, there are specialized firms helping them in this expansion. And as in the non-virtual life (I'll revisit later why I didn't say "real"), the Virtual Economy article notes that people are influenced by social interactions to buy things. This environment offers many opportunities for businesses and individuals. Somewhat akin to what happened when online stores hit the tipping point, for businesses there are now more places to sell more stuff to more / same / different people. And for individuals, new opportunities arose to earn a living in virtual worlds.

"[W]hether you are in the physical world or the virtual world, people look for the core fundamentals of government, law, and order." (Source: First Monday) The growing economic activity in virtual worlds has also generated money disputes, offering scenarios for law and order to be restored. This is apparent in the opening up of another market for the legal community: virtual law. And in the fact that governments across the world are looking at whether, where and how they need to intervene. Virtual businesses are being held accountable in China. There was a class action lawsuit filed against a leading MMOSG's creator - a privately held American Internet company. And Government of Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner is informing people about privacy in virtual worlds.

So the virtual world is as real as it gets (which is why I hesitate to say 'real' and 'virtual' as if they were mutually exclusive.) The life and activities undertaken in a virtual world affects people, relationships, safety, livelihood, money... every part of our non-virtual life. Nick Yee thinks that behaviours that participants adopt in virtual communities carry over into the non-virtual part of our world. (Source: Textbook, pg 331) It is important to recognize and understand the distinct behaviour that people exhibit in virtual worlds, just as it is business-critical to understand where consumers' and people's online activity exhibits somewhat different patterns from that off-line.

Hence, any business contemplating expanding (or entering) into the virtual worlds would need to undertake similar planning as when going into, for instance, another country with different laws, culture, and social / consumer behaviour than the one(s) to which they are accustomed. The key is understanding the unique characteristics of this new "land", devising a business strategy suited to it, and offering value that makes sense to this somewhat unique group of land-dwellers. In other words, everything they would do as part of sound business practice in the real world.

Week 2 - Social Networking: something old, something new, something borrowed...

Social networks are not new. 'People have used the idea of "social network" loosely for over a century to connote complex sets of relationships between members of social systems at all scales, from interpersonal to international.' (Source: Wikipedia) In his book "The Tipping Point", Malcolm Gladwell takes many examples from history, covering a variety of social phenomena, to identify the human interaction characteristics that can cause ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes to become what he calls "social epidemics". Essentially, these epidemics relied on social networks to spread, and one central factor was the role of a few, influential people in propagating the message or idea. His book was published prior to the social networking sites becoming big in the mainstream (primarily in the 2000's per this JCMC article). So what, then, is new?

I would argue that it's the rate and magnitude of change, facilitated by the speed with which the message/ idea spreads through social networks online. One of the cases in Gladwell's book is of Paul Revere who in 1775 rode throughout the night to warn communities surrounding Boston of a potential attack, thereby enabling the local militia to be prepared and ward off the offence when it came. He would have saved a lot of time and reached an exponentially higher number of people, were tools like Twitter or Facebook available to him. By all accounts, it appears Mr. Revere would have had a fair number of 'followers' and 'friends'.

By using a wide variety of examples, Gladwell tries to uncover the anatomy and lifecycle of a social epidemic, with the objective that if this is a reliable, tested formula and predictable pattern, then positive, rapid social change (or "social epidemic") can be intentionally created. This is an important message for any organization at any time, but especially so now that there are powerful tools available that can accelerate the impact. There are many success stories, where organizations - public or private - have utilized the collective social capital to their advantage, a situation made possible through social media's immense reach in "enabling conversations." From Wikipedia to Kiva, the possibilities are endless.

However, big gains come with big risks. Embracing social change of this nature and scope takes courage. For instance, when GM invited site visitors to create Chevy Tahoe ads and publish on the GM site, many critical ads were created. GM retained those ads, and their company's credibility. And as a result of this decision (taken in consultation with Campbell-Ewald, the company handling Chevy's advertising since 1914), "for three weeks running, Chevyapprentice.com funneled more people to the Chevy site than either Google or Yahoo did. Once there, many requested info or left a cookie trail to dealers' sites." (Source: Wired.com) As one of Campbell-Ewald's top execs, Ed Dilworth, said, "You can either stay in the bunker, or you can jump out there and try to participate, [a]nd to not participate is criminal."

Such risk-taking is not limited to the entrepreneurial world; for instance, the US intelligence community has adopted social media. Its transformation - both technologically and philosophically - is worth studying (see Intellipedia's story or this article in ITWorld).

These are but a few instances. Examples abound on how to leverage social media technologies for organizational communication and effectiveness. The possibilities are only limited by one's creativity and the level of acceptable risk. What is needed, then, is to ask and answer this basic question: which conversation(s) does one want to enable?

Week 1 - Meet Social Media

I loved the line in our text book: social media is about enabling conversation (page 4). Web 2.0 technologies allow and support previously passive internet users to become active, real-time contributors to and participants of the web content. And this seemingly, deceptively simple change is altering the way we engage and interact with the world. This article about Canadian CIOs' testing of social networking begins with one such example. Another example is experiencing career simulations on the Ontario Public Service's Second Life presence. And if the virtual world is not the thing for some, there's always couchsurfing which claims to have enabled over 1.7 million successful surf or host experiences. If something is changing our world so significantly, it is at least worth understanding, if not utilizing to its maximum potential. That's one key reason in my opinion why social media is important.

Different social media skills are like tools in a craftsperson's box... it is critical to intimately understand the best and specific use(s) of each tool in order for the craftsperson to excel in their work. I'd like to learn about the various social media skills and their optimal uses, both current and emerging.

In the field of public policy, the relationship between the government and the governed (individuals, organizations, etc.) is being redefined and refined, and social media can play an integral role in facilitating this process. The increasing use of social media by politicians (e.g. David Miller on Twitter) as well as governments (e.g. the various uses listed on this US government site) is a great indicator of this critical potential of social media. I am deeply interested in this potential.