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Everyone has someone in their surroundings who makes sarcastic comments or maybe you are someone who uses this ‘humorous way’ to express yourself. Sarcasm does not only exist in the offline world, it also expands to the online world. In extreme forms it is even used on social media for threats, for example on Twitter. For all police units around the world these forms of threats takes a lot of time. Sarcasm makes it hard to distinguish humor and threats. That’s why the US Secret Service decided to seek for software that can discriminate humor and threats on Twitter. According to US Secret Service this software needs to analyse social media data so it can detect threats for national security, or at least narrow their search. Reactions on this intend are mainly, (how ironic), sarcastic.. An example of a sarcastic reaction can be seen in the figure below.

Next to these sarcastic reactions there are some serious concerns about the freedom of expression. Ginger McCall, who is an associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says that the move could restrict people’s ability to freely express themselves. People will think twice before they express themselves online and this takes away the impulsivity of this medium.

Besides, there are also critics about the software itself. Peter Eckersley, who works as a technology projects director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that computers cannot detect underlying attitudes. In his opinion conversations are too complex for a computer. Not only Peter Eckersley thinks that this project infeasible, also language and other software experts share his opinion.

Do you think a sarcasm detector restricts the freedom of speech and would you think twice before posting? Besides, do you think it is achievable for a computer to accurately analyse these underlying intentions of a conversation?

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The economic crisis seems far from over and every year more cuts are made. An example of these cuts in the Netherlands are within the National Police Department. According to Magda Berndsen, a member of the Dutch parliament, we are speaking about 600 million dollar. These cuts raised concerns about the safety in the Netherlands, because substantial work could not be done. Meanwhile the Dutch police force is very busy with maintaining their image on social media, which takes a lot of time and money. Focusing on your social media image seems irrelevant with all these cuts, but are these investments somehow useful concerning our safety?

According to 80% of the police departments social media has helped them in solving crimes. So the investments in social media seem to be successful. Nowadays there are many social media platforms and ways to present yourself or your company on platforms. However, are all attempts successful? Besides, what are the boundaries?

One attempt that actually was successful comes from England’s West Midlands Police. Only 12 minutes after a Facebook post from the police department, a missing man was located and returned to the police station. This quick response would not be possible without social media. However, not every attempt is successful. An example from an unsuccessful attempt comes from the New York Police Department. Around April 2014 the police department posted this tweet

The aim of this post was to encourage people to share ‘cozy’ pictures with the members of the New York Police Department. Unfortunately this did not work out the way they had in mind. The hashtag #MyNYPD did became a trending topic, but with slightly different pictures.

As you could imagine this was not good promotion for the police department. Even if their tweet would have the effect they had in mind, it still would not contribute to solving crimes or other objectives from the police department. What is your opinion about the use of social media by police departments? Do you think they should limit their posts to posts that are relevant for pursuing their objectives, especially with this financial circumstances? Secondly, do you think this could prevent these situations of bad promotion? (more…)

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The mobile marketing industry is one of the fastest growing industries. In 2012 the invested mobile advertisement budget was $2.3 billion and it is expected to increase to $11 billion in 2016. The question is if these investments are effectively devoted. Not according to Gupta (2013). As you might have read, he thinks “app-vertising” is the future, and the investments should go to designing mobile applications instead of mobile web advertisement.

However, there seem to be multiple difficulties in designing mobile applications. First of all, an average mobile device has 40 apps, but only 15 of them are used. Besides the low usage rate of the applications, there is an incredibly large application market. In 2015 the Appstore consisted of 1.5 million applications and the Google Playstore consisted of 1.6 million applications. These large numbers of applications makes it hard to differentiate your app from all the others. Thus application design seems to require a lot of creativity.

Research has shown that consumer acceptance is the key to successful mobile advertising. Merisavo et al. (2007) identified five possible components that may lead to consumer acceptance. Namely: utility/usability, context, control, sacrifice and trust. Usability was defined as usefulness, relevance, monetary incentives, entertainment and informational value. Context was closely linked to utility and was defined to the extent to which contextual information was used, as an example using your location. Control was defined in how much control the consumer thinks to have about the advertisements. Sacrifice could be seen as the annoyance caused by the advertisements. Finally trust was defined in how the consumer thinks their privacy was protected. The results made it clear that utility/usability and contextual information are the strongest and most important drivers for consumer acceptance.

A great mobile web alternative that uses utility and contextual information is mobile search advertising. As an example, Google Adwords. As an company it is possible to register your company for the Google Adwords Remarketing strategy. For example you use Google to look for another bicycle and you visit a Google Advertisement.The next time you come to another website that is connected to the Google Display Network you will see an advertisement for that previously visited website. A successful story of Google Adwords Remarketing Strategy comes from Yankee Candle Company. The Yankee Candle Company increased his conversion rate by 600% through remarketing with Google Adwords and at the same time their cost per conversion was cut in half.

An example that illustrates “app-vertising” is not always the solution, is the application from McDonalds. Although this application added convenience and special offers, it received the lowest rating of all restaurant applications. This illustrates that although you use the right strategies, success in the application market is not guaranteed. So in my opinion companies should not invest all their money in application design and shift their focus to improving their mobile web advertisement strategies. Do you think “app-vertising” is the future or should companies improve their mobile web advertisements?

References

Gupta, S. 2013. For mobile devices, think apps, not ads. Harvard Business Review 91(3) 71-75

Gray, B. 2015. The Best and Worst Rated Retail Apps. ARC Report. Retrieved, September 13, 2015,       from http://arc.applause.com/2015/08/11/state-of-us-retail-apps/

Hoffman, D. L., and Fodor, M. 2010. Can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing? MIT     Sloan Management Review 52(1) 41-49.

Merisavo, M., Kajalo, S., Karjaluoto, H., Virtanen, V., Salmenkivi, S., Raulas, M., & Leppäniemi,                              M.  (2007). An Empirical Study of the Drivers of Consumer Acceptance of Mobile         Advertising. Journal Of Interactive Advertising, 7(2), 1.

Statista. (2015, July). Number of apps available in leading app stores as of July 2015. Retrieved,            September 13, 2015, from http://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps        –              available-in-leading-app-stores/

Wordsteam. (2012, August). 25 Fast Facts About Adwords. Retrieved September 14, 2015, from                 http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/08/13/google-adwords-facts

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Getting Marc Jacobs products without any money seems like a dream. This dream came true in February 2014, when Marc Jacobs opened the Daisy Marc Jacobs Tweet Shop in Manhattan. Unlike regular stores, this store does not accept money, instead you pay with tweets. When you tweet with #MJDaisyChain you get credits which can be traded for Marc Jacobs products such as necklaces and perfumes. Tweets with pictures will give you more credits and the person with the best picture of the day even gets a Marc Jacobs handbag! This pop-up store was only open for three days, one of the reasons social media exploded with #MJDaisyChain.

Another example of social media as currency is Pay with a Tweet, a site that says they are the manager between company and customer. As a company you can register your company for a Pay with a Tweet campaign. When you are a customer and click on the Pay with a Tweet button you are paying your product with a positive tweet about the company.

Social currency is not limited to Twitter, liking or sharing on Facebook can also provide you with products. You might wonder what the value is of a tweet or a like. There is no simple answer to that question. However, analytic research shows that a like on Facebook has a bigger value than a tweet. One reason for this difference in value is, that on Facebook you have friends and on Twitter you have followers. You have met most of your friends on Facebook in real life, but you have never met many of your followers. You will probably take advice more quickly from someone you know in person than someone you have never met before.

Both Marc Jacobs pop-up store and the Pay with a Tweet website seem to have advantages for customer and company, but does this win-win situation seem too good to be true? In my opinion the credibility of all reviews in social media will drop, because you do not know when people are rewarded for their reviews. What do you think the consequences are when social currency increases and do you think it is fair that the value of likes and tweets is different?

Sources:

http://www.frankwatching.com/archive/2014/04/01/social-media-als-betaalmiddel-marketingtool-of-ethisch-dilemma/

http://mashable.com/2014/02/06/marc-jacobs-tweet-store/

http://www.paywithatweet.com/