Don’t ‘social media’ ’n drive!

30

October

2013

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Currently in The Netherlands there is a new law that makes using your mobile phone when you’re driving in any way illegal. Before this law the only thing that was illegal was calling someone not handsfree when you’re driving a car. This because before the main thing you did with your phone was calling and because of it is dangerous it is forbidden. Now the main thing people do with their smartphone is using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp etcetera. These activities can be really dangerous in the traffic.

social-media-en-verkeer

This is the advertisement of the campaign which literally means ‘Social media and traffic don’t go together’.

Everywhere in The Netherlands are signs placed next to the highway that when you want do go on social media you have to do that on a parking place next to the highway. Also advertisements of this campaign are shown on Dutch television. The ministry of infrastructure and an organisation called ‘Veilig Verkeer Nederland’ which means safe traffic Holland started this campaign. Also the big telecom providers support the message and place banners on their website.

From October 2013 also cyclists in The Netherlands will be alerted for the dangers they risk when they use their smartphone while cycling. Researchers concluded that 49% of the cyclists in The Netherlands sometimes read a text-message while cycling and 35% sometimes sends a text-message. The organisation called TeamAlert wants to get attention for this through school projects and also through social media itself. Today there is no fine for cyclists using social media of using their smartphone, but I assume that there will be one in the future.

http://webwereld.nl/mobility/79300-politie-controleert-extra-op-smartphone-gebruik-in-de-auto

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Homework assignment week 6: ‘Diffusion and social influence’

9

October

2013

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On this weeks topic ‘diffusion and social influence’ I came up with two examples in relation to this topic. The first is Coca-Cola with their ‘Share A Coke’ campaign. I expect that everybody knows it but with this campaign you can press a tag on your can of bottle of coke of find one with a name in the supermarket. Coca-Cola archived very much extra presence on their Facebook page though the campaign. Big strength is that people like personalising things and specially unexpected products like a can/bottle of Coke, which created a big buzz on the social media. But there were very little chances to really make your own tag because there were only a few teams traveling though the country with these machines.

 

The other example is the ‘Must See Map’, which is the possibility for a traveller to send invitations to Facebook-friends to share their recommendations for a specific location with you on a map. Strength is that these recommendations are very reliable for the user. But this campaign didn’t get that much attention compared with Coca-Cola. With this concept KLM lets you simply understand the principles of social influence.

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The new way of dating

3

October

2013

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Internet dating used to be a dusty phenomenon but there is a new app in town. A small team in Los Angeles came up with an idea for a simple trendy datingapp, which is called ‘Tinder’. The app is launched in September 2012 in Google Play and in the App Store and became a big success. The app finds out who likes you nearby your GPS location and connects you with them if you are also interested in them. By using Facebook profiles, Tinder gathers the users’ Facebook-friends and his interests (the pages the user likes on Facebook) and match potential candidates to them. The matches are made based on geographical location, number of mutual friends and amount of common interests.  Once two users “like” each other, they are able to chat within the app. It gives users control over who they want to connect with so that they are not constantly bombarded with messages or approached by people they don’t want to match with. Tinder is anonymous in that it does not post your activity within the app on Facebook or reveal your matches and interactions.

Its co-founder, Justin Mateen, doesn’t want to describe Tinder as a dating app. He says his company’s vision was “just to help introduce you to new people.”

“All we’re doing is facilitating an introduction between two people,” says Mateen. “What they choose to do with that relationship is entirely up to them.”

Mateen thinks Tinder is popular because it’s less artificial than other websites, which rely on carefully constructed profiles.

“Tinder really just emulates the way the real world works,” says Mateen. “When you go into a coffee shop, the first thing that you notice about someone is their physical appearance. You’re either drawn to them, or you’re not. If you are drawn to them, you engage in conversation, you look for commonalities, which help establish trust, so things such as mutual friends, mutual interests are good starting points for that.”

So this app is another way to connect people different from the common social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etcetera. Still unclear is the future of this app, Tinder may be popular at this moment but will it be as stable as for instance Twitter and Facebook or will it be a short-term trend. Those are questions that can’t be answered at this time but sure is that Tinder and similar apps made a revolution in Internet dating.

For the ones who want to know more, here is a video where Tinder is discussed.

Qoutes from:

http://www.dw.de/is-gps-dating-app-tinder-becoming-another-sex-satnav-for-casual-lovers/a-17130692

 

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Make a better world through social media

15

September

2013

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Social media isn’t used only by commercial companies to create more revenue or by individual users. Also non-profit organisations that want to raise awareness on several topics use social media. They generally try to make a good campaign that has the potential to go viral. A campaign going viral means that the campaign makes use of a kind of snowball-effect where in the end millions of people have seen or heard about the message. The goal of these organisations is to put pressure on a group other organisations of governments. For instance to operate more social responsible of make more environmental friendly legislation.

10 September last, there is a video about a renewable phone launched. The Dutch D. Hakkers made a concept of a phone in which you can renew out dated parts. Normally when a phone has become slow, out dated, broken or has any other lack the phone is thrown away. This causes lots of unnecessary electronic waste, because most of the parts in the device aren’t useless yet but still are thrown away with the rest of the phone. Because electronic waste is the fastest growing kind of waste, D. Hakkers tries to raise awareness for his concept. He does this through a YouTube video and an very simple clear website where he stimulates people to share his concept video. Within two days the video had over 5 million views and at the moment of writing this (5 days after launch) the views are over 10 million just on YouTube. The goal of this campaign is to make people exited about this concept and let the video go viral through their excitement. As a result D. Hakkers hopes that phone builders are kind of pressured by the will of millions of customers to make such a product. By all this he wants reduce the growth of electronic waste. This whole phenomenon of people putting pressure on big organisations is called crowdspeaking.

This example tells us that social media is very multifunctional and that there are other interest groups in social media than the obvious companies who place advertisements increase profit. Also it states that it isn’t always necessary to pay lots of money for advertisements when you make a creative interesting campaign that appeals to many people. So to all to all the companies out there who want to grow itself or want to raise awareness for certain topics through social media, be creative!

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