Will Change.org work?

Last week our assignment in class was to create a social media plan for an organization of our choice. I choose University of Oregon’s Dance Marathon because it is an organization I am personally involved in. It is a student organization with a lot of potential but could use some help. While putting together my social media plan I came across a social network I had never heard of. It’s called Change.org. It is like Facebook for people who care about different “causes” or non-profits. You set up a personal account and can pick different causes that you support, such as fighting global warming or funding public education. You can also support different non-profits that are registered to Change.org. The site is cool in that it connects you to people that care about what you care about all around the country.  The other really cool feature I liked, was that if a non-profit registers with Change.org they can pay $200 annually to have a page created for them where people can donate money directly to the non-profit. On your personal profile then, you can keep track of how much money you have raised.

I thought it was an interesting new way to connect people. I believe it would work best for an active public because it does require that you have a willingness to act on your passion, by setting up an account and such. What I am unsure about is if it will catch on like other social networks. It has a lot of potential, but from my attempts to work with my personal account on it, it has been difficult to use. Also, I wonder how many non-profits will see the value in paying $200 annually for the service. It would be rewarding if they were going to be bringing in much more than that annually from the site. But what if a better and free social network were to allow them to do the same thing. It will be an interesting social network to continue to follow.  

Mmmm del.icio.us

After becoming a SMUG student today, I am already being exposed to a lot of great information and resources. I think my favorite things are these great short video explanations by Common Craft. They find really easy ways to explain different things, including social media items. 

 

I also realized today, that although I have been checking my Google reader daily, the new medium that I have been sharing most often with friends is del.icio.us. Several of my friends are taking Info Hell, or other research heavy courses, and they have all found del.icio.us incredibly helpful. I only wish I knew about it when I was taking Info Hell! For an entertaining and informative explanation of del.icio.us, please watch Common Craft’s short video! 

Happy to now be a SMUG student

Our public relations course has some what wrapped up its focus on social media this week, but I am struggling to want to leave. I spoke with my teacher about other courses to take to continue learning about all this new technology. Unfortunately, nothing is really offered by the journalism school that would be similar. I talked to my friend Molly, who is a sports business major, about how I was disappointed about this because of all of the neat things we were learning about. She commented about how it was frustrating that there was nothing even similar offered in the business school. Luckily, I have found a solution to my problem, and hopefully my friend Molly will be joining me soon! Lee Aase, who I have been following with my Google reader, has created the Social Media University, Global (SMUG). SMUG Headquarters Aase has created this public university to help those interested in lifelong learning, dive deeper into social media. There is a full curriculum that Aase is constantly updating, seeing that SMUG was just founded in January. Each lesson also comes with a homework assignment, very similar to what we have been doing in our public relations class. Luckily, because of the public relations course I could easily get through the pre-requisites and am now getting ready to start the rest of the work.I hope more students will check SMUG out and hopefully become students. It would also be great if teachers helped Aase out and were guest professors. Until then, I will continue working away at understanding social media. 

Blog Spam

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from my mom reminding me to call the National Do Not Call Registry and register my cellphone number. It got me thinking about a discussion we had in class about etiquette when it comes to deleting spam on blogs. It seems as though no one wants spam on their blogs, but no one knows what the right way to handle it. I personally really do not like spam and believe it is appropriate to delete it. No one really enjoys spam, that’s why we have things like the Do Not Call Registry and spam blockers for e-mail accounts. Wouldn’t it be great if in a few years there was a Do Not Post Registry? Imagine, you could register your blog so that if a spammer decided to post something you could take action against them. You could report and add people to the potential spammers list as well. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to worry so much about the proper etiquette when it comes to what to do with spam. Just imagine, a world without spam. And remember to register your cellphone on the Do Not Call Registry! 

3.0 in 1.14.53

As I mentioned in my introduction to this blog I have been captivated the past few weeks by Thomas L. Friedman’s book The World is Flat 3.0. After playing around with podcasts in class last week, I decided to check out free podcasts on iTunes. I found some fun ones, but was thrilled when I found a video of a presentation by Mr. Friedman at MIT. In it he gives a summary of his book. It is a crash course in a 3.0 world in 1.14.53.If I could, I would make everyone of my friends read the book, but since most don’t have time, I hope I can get them to at least watch this. I also feel strongly that all students should watch it for his messages about the future that we are entering into. As someone going into an industry that, in many ways, is already international, corporate PR, it is scary to realize how much competition there is out there over these jobs. I feel that many people in my graduating class are naiive to how internet has changed the world. They understand how things have changed to make things easier for them, but not how it has also brought the rest of the world to their next job interview as well.If you are a student and haven’t gotten the picture about why you need to pay attention to social media and what is going on with the internet, you need to watch this video. If you care about your future job and think that the only people you will be competing against is the PR students in your classes or other PR students at colleges, you need to watch this video. We, as seniors need to be aware of what we are looking forward to in the “real world.”

Understanding something not so Really Simple: RSS

Every Sunday night I make my usual call home to check in with my parents and it has been fun getting to explain to them about all the new technology I am learning about. This past Sunday my Mom stumped me. She is quickly becoming a saavy Internet user, mostly with her ability to find great deals on eBay and CraigsList. She happened to ask me what that “RSS-thing” on so many sites was. I quickly responded, “Oh, it stands for Really Simple Syndication. You can use it to beam out your blog or news content.” She paused and then asked, “Well who does it beam to and how do I use it?” My mind drew a blank and sent me scrambling back to my class notes to try to find an answer. What I had was enough to somewhat satisfy my mom, but not me. I kept thinking about what if that had been in an interview?

I decided to search the web to try to find a good explanation that would help me understand what RSS is in actually “really simple” terms. I stumbled upon Stephanie Qullao’s blog post titled “How to explain RSS the Oprah way.“ It was incredibly helpful in enriching my understanding and I would like to share her thoughts. So this post is dedicated to my Mom, who is also an Oprah fan.   

 Stephanie explains that in “Oprah Talk” people can remember the purpose of RSS by remembering it as “Ready for Some Stories.” Basically it is the easy and time saving way to keep track of the latest headlines from your favorite sites and blogs in one spot. Instead of clicking through to each of your different sites that you want to check, you get one list on your RSS reader (which you can download for free from many different places) that you can look through to see what interests you.  If you would like to read a particular headline, all you have to do is click on it and it will pull the whole story for you. So you use your RSS reader when you get online and are “Ready for Some Stories.”