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Hi class,

I was reading an article that i found very interesting, because it points out that there are a lot more purposes for social media than I thought it had.
When you look at the title of this post you can imagine what the article was all about. So the article is about whether you can predict if you are going to be sick with the use of social media. The answer is, you can. With the use of Twitter you can predict if you’re going to be sick in the next week. This was the outcome of a study from the university of Rochester that analyzed 4.4 million GPS-tagged tweets from 600,000 users in New York City over the course of one month in 2010. The researchers used an algorithm to ignore tweets by healthy who claimed to be sick, for example of a popular song what had nothing to do with being really ill. The programmed the algorithm in a way that it was able with nearly 90% if people where ill and almost 8 days in advance. The algorithm analyses symptoms that certain illnesses have and determines if these people will be sick. Below is a video about the spread of flu in New York city second-by-second over one day that is monitored by the program. This gives a good example how you can monitor where these people are getting sick, and how it influences the other areas.

I found this really interesting because it really points out that you can predict if you are going to be sick or that an epidemic is coming in the coming weeks. This information can be used by the health sector to look whether people are going to be sick and if they need more medicine. I think that if there is a program what does this all the time and publishes its data continually, it can really help people to stay healthy and help doctors to better understand the situation. This study was done in New York City what is one of the biggest cities in the world. It is important to notice that deceases can spread more easily when there are a lot of people. It can be doubted whether this information from Twitter can work for smaller cities or villages, but that can be researched in the future. New York City does also have a lot op people that tweet and this is a reason why you can predict whether an epidemic is upcoming in Twitter in New York City. This could not be possible when there weren’t many people that were active on Twitter. So this method about whether people are going to be sick can be used in big cities where a lot of people use Twitter, but is not usable in big cities where Twitter is not actively used.
What do you think? Can this be a useful tool for the health sector or is this something that can only be used in big urban cities like New York?

Share your thoughts,

Tim Ellens

reference: http://wearesocialpeople.com/how-twitter-can-tell-you-when-you-are-going-to-get-sick, 2012

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Hi class,

I came across an article which I found very interesting. The article discusses top brands who do not interact with their fans/followers on Facebook. It discusses the top-50 brands on social media according to Interbrand. Out of the 50 Top brands on social media, 27 of them do not respond to fans who comment on posts, or allow customers to write messages to the company. That is more than half of the top 50 brands and I found this number very surprising, because the main goal for social media should be to interact with your customer. Among these 27 companies are Disney, McDonald’s and Sony who only allow posts that are created by the companies themselves. Another interesting fact that is in the article is that Apple still does not have a Facebook page. Apple has a fan-created page which attracts almost 8 million fans, but Apple still does not think that they should use Facebook. Many of those top 50 companies are posting sales, coupons and other promotions but these conversations are mostly in a one-way direction. The companies are stuck in the old promotional habit and are not interacting with the customers. Social media is perfect to interact with the customer so i found it weird why these big companies are not interacting with them.
The writer gives two theories why these companies are not willing to interact with customers. The first theory is that more than a third of all the posts that were collected could damage the company. But only 8% of these posts were real complaints, the others were just spam. Companies do not want to lose the control about what’s said about their company and do not allow people to post messages on Facebook to prevent it. The other theory is that companies do not know how to create a good conversation with their customers. The average content of these top-50 brands is 71% promotional and only 5% of the posts were created to start a conversation with the customer. This is only a small percentage of the total posts. So these companies are not actively seeking for interaction with their customers although they belong to the top-50 brands on social media.
Some of these top-50 brands are doing really well and there are three general ways for a company to start interaction with the customer. These ways are:’using nostalgia, product discussion and finding common causes’. The article discusses an example of Coca-Cola who uses nostalgia in their posts about the 130 year history of the company. This encourages fans to comment on the post about how they remember Coca-Cola from when they were young. Fans also want to discuss products that interests them and the articles also says that when a company does something where other people have the same cause for (like giving money to a charity), it will get a lot of interaction (http://socialmediatoday.com/adam-chapman/925366/most-top-brands-facebook-still-don-t-talk-their-fans, 2012).
I found it very odd that these top companies are still not interacting with customers on social media. You can really make a good plan on how to post and how to interact with customers when you look at the theories about how to start a good conversation on social media with customers. I think it is very important for companies to stay in touch with the customers and to keep them interested. Otherwise the amount of fans of a company’s Facebook page will decrease and it will be less of an asset for your company.

I hope you also liked the article and found it just as interesting as me.
Please share your thoughts,

Tim Ellens

Reference:
http://socialmediatoday.com/adam-chapman/925366/most-top-brands-facebook-still-don-t-talk-their-fans, 2012

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I found an article a few days ago about how twitter content is used by companies and brands and how it should be used. Every company can send random content on twitter about their products or news about their company. This article written by Morgan J. Arnold tells some facts about what to post on twitter and what works, and what doesn’t.
The first thing the study of this article discusses is whether a Photo tweet or a text tweet produces the most retweets and the most reach. The outcome of this question is that photo’s outperform text tweets by 91%. So it might be more useful for companies and brands to use more images, but only 2.3% of the tweets that were in this study were Photo tweets. So companies and brands don’t use these type of tweets that often even though they have more engagement with the followers. The article also gives a reason for this. Most companies and brands use twitter as a customer service platform where they don’t use photos. They use twitter as a text platform to answer short questions from followers and customers of their products. But the photos on twitter can be a significant opportunity to increase their engagement with the twitter users though photos (http://socialmediatoday.com/morgan-…, 2012).

The study where this article is based on also goes further into detail about what kind of content works in tweets. It begins with the fact that every brand and every company has a different target audience so the perfect type of content depends on the process for each brand or company. But the study tracked the tweet content of the 100 most engaged brands on Twitter. In this way this study tried to find a pattern what might be used more broadly. What the study found was kind of similar to what they found for Facebook. The content what works the best is the content where brands and companies ask for a retweet, or on Facebook for a like. There are fewer options to ask for a retweet than to ask for a like on Facebook. The study found that tweets with the text ‘Retweet’ in the tweet works the best to get a retweet an more engagement with twitter users. If a brand uses a ‘#’ in their tweet it gave them a 35% lift in the engagement on twitter. But the study did not made it clear whether this was the result of increased searchability or that the increase was caused by pernouncing the subject of the tweet with a hash tag. Tweets with a special offer for a product or a coupon performed worse than average. I found this very interesting, because this statement says that people are not following the companies or brands to get a discount or coupon, but to stay informed about the company and to say in touch with the brands (http://socialmediatoday.com/morgan-…, 2012).

I found these results very interesting and thought that you might want to read this article.
You can find the whole text of this article here.

I hope you found this article just as interesting as me.
Share your thoughts,

Tim

Reference
http://socialmediatoday.com/morgan-j-arnold/890546/optimizing-twitter-engagement-tweet-content-works, 2012

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Dear Classmates,

My home assignment explores the topic ‘’peer production and open source’’. I will give you a short summary of the findings in my home assignment and a comparison of Linux and YouTube.

The articles for this week were about peer production and open source and the main questions that came forward from the articles is: Why do people contribute to open source software and peer production without getting a real compensation and what is the reason why developers do not take advantage of the public codes? After reading the articles and searching the web the answers came forward.

The reason why peer production and open source software can exist is because people voluntarily contribute to these programs. Developers who have a high level of expertise about programming computer codes are able to contribute to open source software. The main reasons why they do this are to learn something about programming, enjoyment, establishing a reputation and to make a better software program for themselves. This reputation in the programming community can be the first step towards a career at a big software company. These developers can adjust the public codes of open source software and are trying to make them better. They put their knowledge in the codes (Osterhol and Rota, 2007). Peer production works in a similar way. But peer production does not need the expertise that is required for open source software. Everyone in the world with an internet connection can easily access and share knowledge on the peer production programs. Peer production is easier to understand than open source software, and this is one of the reasons why peer productions has more users on average. The reasons why people contribute to peer production software are almost similar to the reasons why people contribute to open source software. A reason why people don’t take advantage of the public codes is the legal concept ‘copyleft ‘, or the informal rules from the open source communities (Zhang and Zhu, 2011).

As examples I chose YouTube and Linux. YouTube is a peer production platform where people share videos. It has a huge amount of users who watch more than four billion videos every day. People contribute to this platform, because they enjoy making the videos and sharing it with others and to build a reputation. Some people became very famous because of YouTube. Users are watching videos on YouTube because they don’t want commercials and see something immediately that they like (http://www.jeffbullas.com…, 2012). Linux on the other hand is an open source software. It is an operating system for computers which source code is released for the public. Developers from all around the world can adjust the code or make new tools for it. It is popular among developers, because you can adjust the operating system you use to your wishes. Linux also tends to be faster and more secure than other operating systems (http://smallbusiness.chron.com…., 2012). As you compare YouTube and Linux you can see that YouTube has a lot more users and is easier to use. Linux is hard to understand. Linux is more customizable than YouTube. You can earn money directly from YouTube when your videos are very popular and you can earn money indirectly from Linux with offering service as a third party. I think YouTube will do better in the future than Linux because of these reasons.

I hope you understand a lot more about peer production and open source software after this week.

See you in class on Friday,

Tim Ellens

Literature

Osterloh, M., and Rota, S. (2007) Open source software development – Just another case of collective invention. Research Policy 26 157-171

Zhang, M. and Zhu, F. (2011) Group size and incentives to contribute: A natural experiment at Chinese Wikipedia. American Economic Review 101(4) 1601-1615

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/05/23/35-mind-numbing-youtube-facts-figures-and-statistics-infographic/, 2012

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/strengths-weaknesses-linuxbased-systems-26633.html, 2012

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Recently I found a video about a new technology Google is working on. It’s a pair of glasses which can put on your own pair of glasses or just put them on your head without any. This project is still in the testing phase and is likely to come to the market late 2013. Project Glass (the name of the Google project) is a futuristic pair of glasses which projects an image directly on your retina. It replaces your smartphone and can be controlled directly by your voice or the movement of your head. These Google glasses can project anything what your smartphone can do. So every text message, incoming phone call or a reply or message from your Facebook page. You can easily reply by speaking to the glasses. So you don’t have to grab your phone or search for it and you can instantly reply. The business and social media perspective of these Google glasses is very promising. People can check in at companies very easily and search for nearby restaurants by telling the glasses to look for it. The Google glasses will automatically create a route towards the nearest restaurant or wherever you want to go to. On the other hand people can instantly share what they see this makes it more attractive to do so. A negative thing for companies is that Google announced that Project Glass will not have any advertisement in it so customers won’t be annoyed by constant spam(http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/27/google-glass-future/, 2012). People can still make advertisement for companies by the use of word-of-mouth advertisement. They can access the companies Facebook page or tweet about the company directly using the Google glasses. As mentioned in this weeks article, word-of-mouth advertisement has a bigger long-term effect then traditional advertisement (Tursov et all., 2009). So big companies might want to look into this technology how to use it properly for a business perspective.

Some people are very skeptical about the Google glasses because of the way they look. They look very futuristic and not fashionable at all. But it might be able to style the glasses is the future and further on in the future they will be smaller so they won’t be noticable. The picture below this paragraph shows the Google glasses with and without regular glasses. What do you think about the look of the glasses?

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/27/google-glass-future/ ,2012

In the first line of this blog I was talking about a video I saw which showed how Project Glass will work when it is finished. Personally I think it is really cool an has a lot of capabilities. It will be easier to connect with other people and provide you additional services in the cities you don’t know like GPS maps in your eye. Other businesses besides Google can really make some profit out of this project if they are using the power of the word-of mouth through social media. On the consumer side it will be the very next thing when it comes to future technology. So I think there will be a lot of people wanting to try this product out. I will post the video of the Project Glass video below this paragraph. It is really cool so check it out. If you find it interesing you might also want to read this article. It is very interesting and tells you a little bit more about this product and services it can provide in the future using the social media.

Now you know what the Google Glasses are capable of, do you want to buy them? And do you also think this product will have a big influence on the social media usage in the future?
Share your thoughts,
Tim

http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/27/google-glass-future/, 17-09-12
Trusov M., Bucklin R. E., Pauwels K. (2009) Journal of Marketing, Vol:73 Issue:5 pp.90-102

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In the class from Wednesday Miss Li talked about Foursquare where you can check in at company’s so your friends can see where you are. I’m a former Foursquare user myself and I was wondering if Foursquare really was that important to company’s since it’s not so popular in the Netherlands. After searching the web I came across this article about Foursquare being used at independent restaurants and restaurant chains.

There are two big social media community’s which are being used by restaurants in the U.S.. The first one is Yelp. This is a site where you can write a review about a restaurant and rate it with starts.It was the most popular site for restaurants to attract customers untill recently. Nowadays Foursquare is the most popular site being used by independent and chain restaurants. Restaurants are using Foursquare to promote their restaurant and give customers a nice discount if they check in. For example, a free cup of coffee or a discount at your drink or meal. The picture on the right shows a discount for a free cup of coffee or thee with a purchase of $5 if you check in. This kind of promotion is very popular in the U.S. but not in The Netherlands. I wondered why this could be. Because if my favorite restaurant would use Foursquare for discounts to attract attention I would definitely use it. All my friends on Foursquare would know there is a promotion at that restaurant where I went and will probably go there themselves. So this sounds like an idea that could possibly be used in Holland as well. I was searching for restaurants in my city (Zoetermeer) but there are no restaurants using Foursquare or Yelp actively yet. 

What are your thoughts about this kind of social media by checking in and getting a discount. And will this work for Holland as well as in the U.S.? 

The link of the article is below this line. I thought it was a little bit too long to post it. So check it out.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2012/08/02/foursquare-trumps-yelp-in-the-restaurant-sector-report

Tim