Strategically Communicating

As if there were not enough ways to keep connected using social media and the internet, there is yet a new way to keep in contact with friends: Facebook Video Chat.

This new addition, to the most popular social networking site, launched on Monday and will allow Facebook users to video chat with their friends individually or in a group with several people at a time. Other services this video chat offer include pausing or muting the video (if you don’t wish for the person you are chatting with to overhear you) and the ability to leave video chats open for long durations so people can see even when they are not chatting – a little creepy if you ask me.

Perhaps your friend is not currently signed into their Facebook account? This new program allows friends to leave private video messages for one another.

As social networking continues to grow and progress, will there ever be a limit to how far they will go? At some point the ability for others to reach into your private life may borderline unhealthy.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/a-new-service-for-video-chatting-on-facebook/?ref=technology

JP Morgan’s new Digital Growth and Media fund will invest in social media networks, its first investment being Twitter. It is reported that they will invest over one billion dollars into Twitter, following the lead of other investment firms such as Goldman Sachs who recently invested over a billion dollars into Facebook.

Investments by the fund are also expected to extend to other sectors of social media,  companies like gaming giant Zynga and social coupon companies like Groupon and Living Social are also being researched as possible forms of investment. JPMorgan plans to invest in companies with established business models and steady revenue before they go public in widely anticipated stock sales.

As Twitter becomes more commercial, they introduced their first advertisements on the website las April, the companies advertisement revenue could reach $150 million from brands like Coca-Cola and Nike by the end of this year.

With the vast growth of these social networking sites, it seems an obvious idea to invest money to areas of the internet that produce the most traffic.

According to a study by emarketer, a whopping 47.6 percent of the U.S. population will be on Facebook by 2013. Google is determined to strengthen its “social” search feature in preparation for this huge shift. This news comes as PR people are increasingly looking to social media as part of strategy, and this study only reaffirms that social media is going to allow contact with almost half of America in just a couple of years.

Read the full report here

Social Media has already asserted itself as the new dominant tool of communications occupations. Being that the idea of using social media sites for business is relatively new, the public relations professional is now faced with the challenge of figuring out how to correctly use the tool. Here is a great study that investigates exactly how professionals in our field are using social media; or in some cases, not using it: http://www.prsa.org/SearchResults/view/6D-030304/0/Examining_How_Public_Relations_Practitioners_Actua

In summary of the article, it seems that PRSA is trying to push practitioners to target their strategic publics via blogs and social networking sites more consistently. The findings of the study showed that younger public relations professionals are more likely to utilize online social media. This is not surprising because most journalism schools are now teaching their students how to effectively communicate and use the new social media tools to their advantage.

This week I stumbled upon an article that initially I completely wrote off due to the number 160 in title. I figured, if I need 160 tips on anything there is no way I can become an expert on the subject matter in this lifetime. However, after beginning to read through it I discovered that most of the tips I knew, I just didn’t know I knew them. That being said, this blog is a great resource as a whole but this particular article is a great resource for reassuring yourself that you truly do know more than you think you know going into this big scary professional world of ours.

http://proprtips.com/

We talk about the power of social media in class a lot. Without social media, the riots in Egypt would not have been captured for the world to see. It’s an amazing and powerful tool that can connect and help people. I read on Mashable that a filmmaker named Jigar Mehta  is going to create a documentary of the  riots in Egypt ending in Mubarak stepping down with social media footage. He is starting a project to collect all the videos that people took during the 18 day revolution. He has a few different ideas of what to do with the footage: he may make the narrative involve a timeline, place the viewer at a specific location to observe what is going on, or create a customized video depending on what the user wants to experience. Those are just a few of his ideas. He is still brainstorming ways to portray the social media in a documentary film. I would love to see this documentary. Here is the full article if you want to read it.

http://mashable.com/2011/02/25/18daysinegypt/#

During a recent trip south, while flying Alaska Airlines, I was more than happy to hear that their airline was now offering free WiFi for its travelers. Internet in the air has been available for quite some time, however, it was always dramatically over priced and very slow. Expecting the latter to still be true, I connected to the free WiFi Alaska Airlines was offering and was rather pleased with the speed and ability to connect to all of my social media, e-mail and favorite websites while I flew.

The gravity towards free WiFi Internet while flying will impact a large number of travelers who can accomplish so much more with their downtime 10,000 feet above ground. In the two hours that I was in the air, I finished a portion of my assignments for the following day – not too shabby!