Hello fellow students,

Recently Brazilian newspapers span together to Block Google’s news service, Google News.
Google News collects news from all websites and then puts an link on its own “Google News” site. If you want to read the article you will get directed to the site where the article was originally made so they do not have their own reporters searching for the next big thing.
Many news stations approve this way of linking through Google because it increases the traffic on their sites, but the Brazilian journalistic industry does not see the advantages.
The Brazilian stations say that “Google should not benefi commercially from the content it uses and is not prepared to discuss a model of remuneration for this material”. Google replied that they should not have to pay for a service that other parties benefit from.

I think that the Brazilian newspapers should be happy with the increased traffic they get through Google, certainly in this time where a lot of news stations have difficulty to keep their readers through traditional media because everybody reads online. It is true that Google benefits commercially because they provide an extra free service through which they can make profits with advertising. This could be seen as “wrong” but it’s a business model that they have always used.

For now it’s only the Brazilian news stations who blocked Google News with this argument and I wonder which country will follow next.

Do you guys think it’s fair what Google is doing? Or should the Brazilian stations stop with their boycott and be glad that they have more reader?

Jad

I was shocked last night after watching Ross Kemp’s episode of Extreme World: Congo. Congo has civil war going on since 2003 and the whole world is ignoring it. The reason? Mobile Phones, Laptops and other electronic devices we use daily.

While this subject is not directly connected to social media I think it’s still important to know that the devices from which social media was born and exists are made from minerals which Ross Kemp calls blood minerals.

Congo has a lot of rare minerals, the most important being gold and coltan. Coltan (or correctly named Columbite-tantalite) is the metal ore from which the element tantalum is extracted which is used primarily for the production of capacitors.   And these capacitors are used in electronic goods, like your anti-lock braking systems in your car, your laptop, mobile phone, video game consoles, video cameras and digital cameras. Notably is that 80%(!) of the world’s coltan comes from Congo

The mines where these minerals are mined are run by militia and rebel groups who use the mining to fund their rebellion. During their rebellion these people have killed over 5 million people and the raping of women and children has become something normal in Congo. The rebels treat the mine workers as slaves. The men are threaten with the killing of their families and the women are threaten with the rape of them and their children if they don’t work in the mines.

The minerals are mined and then sold to the world biggest electronic corporations. Because 80% of the world coltan is from congo almost every electronic device you can imagine has minerals from the blood mines in congo in it. Probably even the laptop I’m typing this blog with…

In the youtube video I added is explained how the rebels use rape as their main tool to intimidate people, and how the ore is used and transported out of Congo to the rest of the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF-sJgcoY20

Maybe the “normal” person didn’t know about this, I didn’t at least. But the international companies who provide us with electronics must have known this. I can’t help to think how this is still happening?

Sources:

http://realitytvarmchair.blogspot.nl/2011/03/ross-kemps-extreme-world-genocide-in.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF-sJgcoY20

Dear Classmates,

As most of you already know, last Friday was the infamous Project X party in Haren. A 15 year old girl made a birthday event on Facebook and forgot to make it a private message. The whole world could see there was a party and thousands of people said they would come. Eventually 2000 party people came to the unprepared small village and it ended in an all-out riot. Traditional media made many articles and reports of the event and the main question was, how could this happen?

Traditional media blamed social media for all this because the invite happened on Facebook and the attention grew through Twitter. However on the Dutch talk show ‘De Wereld Draait Door’ last night I saw an interesting discussion. Internet expert Danny Mekic did some research about this Project X event and came with some interesting conclusions.

He pointed out that the attention through Twitter only happened the day before and on the day of the event and except for the invitation, there was almost no chatter about it on Facebook. Mekic blamed the traditional media for the attention that this event got, because the first article found in newspapers about this event was from 4 days before the event. The mayor of Haren did not know how to handle this event, and came up with some strange idea’s to keep the people away. He first said that there was no party, and then he said that they arranged a football field for the party (so apparently there was a party?). He then removed the street name signs to disorientate the people who came to the village, so that they could not find the party that was not there in the first place but then it was, on a football field. This very unclear reporting al happened through the traditional media at talk shows and the news. The only moments when people were talking about it on Twitter were the moments after the mayor said something on TV.

Mekic tries to explain that it is not the social media who was to blame but the key-figures of this event, like the mayor. By talking on TV and giving interviews in newspapers he asked for a lot of unnecessary attention. And by saying  he would try to disorientate the people he only made it worse because he then made it exciting to go there and find the place.

The riots that happened were a very sad event. The damage to village was about 1 million euro’s and an elderly man of 80 years old got abused. It seems that Facebook and Twitter are the scapegoats for this event but weren’t they only the communication channels, like a telephone or message in a bottle? People only talked about in on Twitter when the traditional media paid attention to it. So who is to blame? Facebook, Twitter, or the people who paid so much attention to it like the mayor or the traditional media?

Jad Ouarssani,

References:

http://dewerelddraaitdoor.vara.nl/media/186625

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detail/3320182/2012/09/21/Project-X-Haren-mondt-uit-in-chaos-het-is-een-slagveld.dhtml

Hello dear classmates,

Friday I will elaborate about social media and social advertising. Although this is a relatively new form of advertising, it has only been going on for a few years, there are a lot of companies who succeeded and failed ad it.

The first article tries to empirically proof that word of mouth advertising trough social media is an effective marketing way. They use social networks for this research. They found that word of mouth advertising had a long term effect on acquiring new customers.

In the second article the authors try to predict the stock market by looking at the public sentiment. The public sentiment was a very difficult thing to measure but with the arrival of micro blogs like Twitter this became easy. With tools that deduct emotions from tweets they were able to read the public sentiment and fairly predict what the stock price would be in three days.

The third article is about calculating the return on investment of social media. The problem with calculating ROI is that it is based on monetary value. This is difficult to do with social media. There is a clear cash outflow but no clear inflow. Top managers do not like that and it is not favorable accounting wise. The authors mention companies which successfully calculated there ROI. This article also gives managers a simple and clear framework about good social marketing strategy. In a simple manner they explain what your current strategy is, what it should be, and if you are already doing it good, how you can keep it that way. This article also introduces the 4c´s. I think you could call this the `social media marketing mix´ which focuses on connections, creation, consumption and control. It focuses on relationships with consumers and when properly used it will create the most participation from consumers which in the long term creates the most ROI.

The last article tries to encourage managers to allocate their resources to social media by taking away uncertainties. An important term used in this article is social ROI. It means that the return should not be seen as monetary value but as a social value. Social ROI could improve the authenticity, transparency and trustworthiness of a company which in the long term could provide for monetary benefits. This article gives a useful framework which distinguishes social media in four platforms depended on Information Depth and Half-life of information. It is important for managers to know what their marketing objective is so they can choose the right platform.

As examples I will use two cases which make a clear point about how social marketing and advertising can make your image and how it can break your image, in just 24 hours. Almost every company who had negative publicity through social media tried to control the damage. I thought why? Information moves fast through the social media medium, and there always is a new ‘hot’ thing. I you have bad publicity as a company, shouldn’t you just ignore it? I found it that people these days get the news fast, but they also forget fast.

I hope you all have a good night rest,