The downsides of social media: cyberbullying

31

October

2013

No ratings yet.

The rise of social media has many advantages. Nowadays it just takes a couple of clicks to share anything with your friends, create events, know what your friends are doing, etc. However, social media use has some disadvantages. A major disadvantage is cyberbullying. Because of the fact that it’s very easy to contact a person on a social network platform, it creates a lot of potential cyberbullying, and it happens a lot more than you would expect. Just a few findings of a study on cyberbullying:

– Nearly 43% of kids have been bullied online. 1 in 4 has had it happen more than once.
– 70% of students report seeing frequent bullying online.
– 81% of young people think bullying online is easier to get away with than bullying in person.
– 90% of teens who have seen social-media bullying say they have ignored it. 84% have seen other tell cyber bullies to stop.
– Girls are about twice as likely as boys to be victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying.
– Bullying victims are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider committing suicide.

The last fact is something that we, unfortunately, experience more and more these days. In October 2012 15 year old Amanda Todd from Canada killed herself after repeatedly being bullied online. She uploaded a nine-minute video to YouTube describing years of bullying that she said drove her to drugs and alcohol, all told with a set of handwritten note cards.

In 2013 there were 2 more suicides caused by cyberbullying. 14 year old, Hannah Smith was found hanged. Her father said she had been sent abusive messages on social networking site, Ask.fm. Just a month ago, a 12 year old girl jumped to her death from an abandoned cement factory tower in Florida. She was picked on for months by as many as 15 girls through online message boards and texts.

The big question now is: Is it possible to stop cyberbullying and how should we do that?

Sources:

http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-cyber-bullying
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/24364361
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/15/cyberbullying-parents-internet-guide/2988651/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/15/florida-bullying-arrest-lakeland-suicide/2986079/

Please rate this

Crowdfunding: My free implants

31

October

2013

No ratings yet.

When doing  my homework assignment about niche social networks in week 5, I found an interesting online networking site. It’s called myfreeimplants.com. Basically, this is a website which makes it possible for women to get free implants because of contributors wants to help these women to get those implants. This is a good example of crowdfunding. The only thing that the women need to do is register on the website, create their own profile, choose their goal, set their limit and make friends. Contributors can chat with the women and when they think that a particular women needs financial help, they can just donate money to these women to make their dreams come true. In exchange they receive photo’s, video’s  and messages. Surgeons can also register themselves on the website. The clinic gets paid directly from the website, without fees, forms or delay. I was actually quite surprised that according to this website, they have almost 9 million page views per month.

Source: http://myfreeimplants.com/how-it-works

Please rate this

Niche social network sites (homework assignment)

3

October

2013

No ratings yet.

The subject of my homework assignment is ‘niche social network sites’. These are SNS’s in a particular niche. For instance, there are websites where you can make a profile for your cat or dog (Catster, Dogster). I tried to find some interesting niche networks which few of us have ever heard of.

The first one is called REMcloud. It works pretty much the same as Twitter, but instead of telling the world what you are doing, you tell the world what your dream was about. You can connect with people who had similar dreams as yours and there’s a section in which you can see the global dream trends.

The second niche network I found was by far the most interesting I found. This website is called Line for Heaven. Basically, it is just what the name suggests. Once you are registered, you make a profile, tell the rest of the world why you are worthy to go to heaven and then you’ll be put on a line for heaven. You can climb up in the line by collecting ‘karma points’. These points can be earned in several ways: blessing other people, ‘spreading karma’ by inviting friends, donating, confessing your sins, support a social cause, etc. It’s pretty funny how some of these examples work. For instance, you will earn 5 immediate ‘karma points’ if you cleanse your ‘soul’. The only thing you have to do is writing both your confessions and why you should be forgiven and then you get 5 points immediately. Then your peers will judge whether you should be forgiven or not. Once you have enough forgives, you will earn another 25 ‘karma points’. Your ‘karma points’ represent your worthiness. Every Sunday at 7PM it is ‘Judgment Day’. The first in Line for Heaven (considered as most worthy person that week) will become an ‘Angel’, inducted into Heaven, and One Degree from God. Furthermore, users who have acquired the most ‘karma points’ on a daily basis are allowed to touch Heaven. Line for Heaven also has a feature that allows you to rapidly browse through profiles with ‘God’s Eye View’. Last but not least you can meet and talk with like-minded people through the ‘Soul to Soul’ messaging feature. 

Check these sites out yourself, it’s fun!

http://www.remcloud.com/
http://lineforheaven.com/

Please rate this

The Rush to Crush

16

September

2013

No ratings yet.

There’s quite a big chance that next time you travel by metro, a high educated man in a fancy suit will enter the metro, sit down, grabs his fancy new smartphone and start playing Candy Crush. And there’s even a chance that when he’s out of lives, he rather pays 0.99 cents than waiting 30 minutes for a new life. Nowadays, this situation has become normal in the entire world. How is it possible that millions of people, no matter what education or job they have, are addicted to crushing candy’s?

Image

I did a little research on the success of Candy Crush for my case write up last week and found some very interesting results. In March 2013, Candy Crush surpassed Farmville 2 as most popular game on Facebook. Mobile monetization firm ThinkGaming estimates Candy Crush to have over 7.5 million daily unique users. Data site AppData even estimates Candy Crush to have over 15 million daily unique users. Whatever the exact number is, it is clear that Candy Crush is a huge success. Developer King has a daily revenue of $850,000 out of Candy Crush. Recently King even stopped advertising on Candy Crush, because they’re already making so much money with just the game itself.

Now back to the key question: Why is Candy Crush so popular? During my research, I found three factors that makes this game such an immense success. The first factor is simplicity. The game must be easy to learn, and it shouldn’t take too much time. King works with a timeframe. Each level is designed to take a maximum of three minutes.

Secondly, there must be a good concept. Riccardo Zacconi, co-founder and chief executive of King, has set up a factory-like production line with multiple small teams working on a game for a maximum of three months. After those three months, the game will be released on their website. King uses its website to test the game. If the game fails, then only three months work is wasted. If a game turns out to be a big hit, they proceed with working on that game and release it on Facebook. King has currently over 200 games running on their website, but only 8 were released for Facebook. “When we develop a game for Facebook and mobile we know that game is very likely to be a success as it was a success on King.com,” says Mr Zacconni. Furthermore, King handles the freemium model. The game is free to play, but there are options to buy in-game advantages and lives. Although there’s a small percentage of people who are actually spending money on Candy Crush, it is enough to get a very high daily revenue because of the big amount of daily active users.

The last factor that made Candy Crush a success is by far the most important factor: Facebook. When the game wasn’t released for Facebook, Candy Crush probably didn’t even have 10,000 daily active users. After the release for Facebook on April 12, 2012 Candy Crush grew to the most popular game on Facebook within a year. King doesn’t have to do any advertising on Facebook, because their users will do that for them by asking their friends to give them lives or to get access to a new episode. Without Facebook, none of you would know Candy Crush now.

I didn’t have time to invest any more time in my research, so I didn’t really do research on the psychological aspect of Candy Crush. I’m wondering, what makes people play games like Candy Crush. Is it because ‘everyone seems to play it nowadays, so I have to play it as well’? Or is it just to kill time when you’re on your way home? Or maybe is it because people just like to see that they had a better score than most of their friends? I’d like to hear your opinions about why this game is such a success. 

Sources:

http://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/2/candy-crush-saga/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/candy-crush-saga-studio-behind-game-with-over-44m-monthly-users-promises-more-hits-8755414.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-success-as-gamers-get-a-crush-on-candy-8604756.html
http://www.startupitalia.eu/blog/article/strategia-vincente-riccardo-zacconi-mr-kingcom
http://www.appdata.com/

Please rate this