Is Instagram the new beauty standard?

28

September

2019

5/5 (3)

Do you also catch yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram whenever you have got some time to spare? Believe me, you are not alone. But have you ever wondered how all these images of other people’s bodies may affect how you view your own body? No matter whether these pictures are your friend’s holiday picture, influencers’ gym selfie, or a celebrity’s beach photoshoot. You may think by yourself: “I wish I looked like her”.

Nowadays, the usage of social media is gradually growing and has already infiltrated into our daily lives. Instagram creates the illusion of perfection which is perceived by many as the beauty standards. In contrary to these beauty standards, our normal non-perfect lives seem somehow abnormal. As a result, some people may resort to drastic measures, or even eating disorders as their dissatisfaction with their body grows to try to achieve these unattainable goals as “beauty standards” (Dakanalis et al. 2014).

As we are scrolling through Instagram or posting pictures of ourselves, negative thoughts about our own body may arise (Holland & Tiggermann, 2016). A harsh comment by someone may result in dissatisfaction with our own body as many of us tend to interpret our social standing through comments or social comparison (Toma et al. 2008). A nice example is a video I encountered a few years ago by Cassey Ho, a social media fitness entrepreneur. Please watch the video below.

This video reflected how the comments by others on social media may affect how we feel about our own body. It made me start wondering how much of what we see are real on Instagram. Nowadays, there are numerous apps for altering your face and body as well as beauty filters to cover your imperfections (Fallon, 2014). Many of the pictures we see online are altered to enhance their features before it goes online. Even if I do not want to admit it, I will often find myself comparing to these influencers as well. I believe many followers of these Insta-celebrities do as well and what these followers think, actually becomes the new beauty standard.

This is just how trends work; they are going in and out like a fast fashion. Back in the day, flat chest and slim waist were in and now curvy body, thick lips and big booty are in. What is next? What do you think about the current beauty standard that is defined by altered pictures as the result of the current technology? Are you able to catch up with the current trend or will you rather alter yourself just to fit in? Let me know in the comments below!

Sources:

Dakanalis, A., Clerici, M., Caslini, M., Favagrossa, L., Prunas, A., Volpato, C., & Zanetti, M. A. (2014). Internalization of sociocultural standards of beauty and disordered eating behaviours: the role of body surveillance, shame and social anxiety. Journal of Psychopathology, 20, 33-37.

Ho, C. (2015) The “Perfect” Body [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsL7W-GHhJA

Holland, G., & Tiggemann, M. (2016). A systematic review of the impact of the use of social networking sites on body image and disordered eating outcomes. Body image, 17, 100-110.

Fallon, K. (2014). Streams of the self: The Instagram feed as narrative autobiography. In Proceedings of the interactive narratives, new media & social engagement international conference (Vol. 101, pp. 54-60).

Toma, C. L., Hancock, J. T., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Separating fact from fiction: An examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(8), 1023-1036.

4.5/5 (8) 50k views and counting, how to get MASSIVE views!!!

9

October

2017

Hello fellow BIM students,

Some of you might have noticed that certain posts are getting massive amounts of views.

all time high

The first thing that pops into your mind might be that these guys are actively sharing their content on social media. This is unlikely though because getting this many unique views on one post in one day (see images below) is really really hard to accomplish through that method.

13k views one day

The next possibility you might think about is that they are hiring a group of people through some view boosting website like the one below.

viewbotwebsite

However, we are all students, meaning that we have low budgets and would rather spend our money on partying, Netflix/Spotify subscriptions and other more rewarding activities. So I don’t consider this option viable in our situation.

So how do the top posts get their crazy amount of views? Did they press F5 non-stop for a couple of weeks in order to reach the top?

f5 broken

There must be some sort of secret method to their success. In this post, I would like to share my easy method with you guys to help boost YOUR view count up to 5k, 10k or even 50k! Let’s go!

Step 1: Decide the post that you want to boost!

This is obviously a very basic step, in order to get views on a post, you need to have posted at least some content. In this example, I use a very basic article I wrote about IBM’s supercomputer Watson (check it out: http://bit.ly/2y71SxK).

IBM watson article 2

Step 2: Download the Opera browser and open the blog post in multiple tabs!

Viewbotting on 5 tabs

Step 3: This is where the magic comes in, download the Super Auto Refresh extension for Opera!

Super Auto Refresh extension Opera

Step 4: Start the Extension and make it run on all tabs at a speed of 30 seconds!

Super refresher extension Opera browser

Why do I give you guys the advice to run it on 5/6 tabs max at a speed of 30 seconds? Because I encountered many many errors on the first days using this method running it at faster speeds. These error messages, see below, cause not only me but every other user trying to access the website to experience problems.

Internal Server Error

Service Unavailable

So if you don’t want a group of angry students chasing you because they couldn’t upload their blog posts please take this advice.

IS blog troubles

Step 5: Get some spare laptops, plug them into their chargers and don’t touch them for a couple of days/weeks!

This will help you feel like a real hacker and boosts the feeling that you can join Anonymous because you know your computer stuff.

3 laptops setup

Step 6: Watch your article reach some magic milestones! You are finally reaching the top of the list!
1000 views mark

2000 views mark

9999 views

20000 views

30k views

WAIT FOR IT…. 50k VIEWS WOAH!

50k views

Step 7: Sit back and relax, you did some really awesome hacking and can now enjoy your success for the rest of your life! You will always be remembered as that BIM student that knew how to reach the top!

all time high

As much as I enjoyed abusing the view count system behind https://digitalstrategy.rsm.nl// I would like to give some quick advice to the website admin. As soon as I realized that F5 views were counted as unique views although they came from the same IP-Address I started to look for ways to maximize my view count. I think that this in no way reflects the quality of my blog post and can actually destroy the intention of this web page. So to prevent things like this happening in the future please try to cap the number of views per IP-address or find some other way to achieve this.

Thanks for reading guys and enjoy your road to success!

How to survive the attention war?

2

October

2017

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„Technology has turned human distraction into its metric of profit.“ (The Economist, 2017)

According to the article, big entertainment companies such as Disney, Facebook (Instagram) and Google (YouTube) are fighting for our limited time and attention, using different well-known methods as recommendation algorithms, digital rankings and an ever-growing amount of choices. Worldwide, the usage of social media increased by 21% in the last year, reaching almost 2.8bn people (Hootsuite, 2017). For many of us, a life without social media is not possible or at least not imaginable.

This TED talk highlights the experience of the computer scientist Dr. Cal Newport who had never had a social media account and who invalidates the standard arguments speaking against quitting social media. Before doing so, he states “I think that I’m actually better off, I think I’m happier, I think I find more sustainability in my life, and I think I’ve been more successful professionally because I don’t use social media”.

So how does he tackle the three most common objections to social media?

Objection: Social media is one of the fundamental technologies of the 21. Century, to reject social media would be an act of extreme bloodism.

Here, the speaker highlights that social media is not a fundamental technology, it leverages some key technologies. Due to the public usage of attention engineering, he categorizes social media as an unsavory source of entertainment with a high addiction potential through which companies such as Facebook try to maximize their advertising profits.

Objection: “I can’t quit social media because it is vital to my success in the 21^st-century If I do not have a well-cultivated social media brand, people won’t know who I am, people won’t be able to find me (…), and I will effectively disappear from the economy.”

The speaker states that the market values the ability to produce rare and valuable things and dismisses activities that are easy to replicate and only provide a small amount of value. Consequently, he underlines that the market will reward deep, concentrated work required to build and apply real skills need to produce or create things.

Objection: Social media is harmless, fun, interesting to try, I don’t use it that much, I’m a first adopter, and I might miss out something if I don’t use it.

Finally, Newport emphasizes that social media leads to several, well-documented and significant harms such as the permanent reduction of concentration abilities, increasing psychological damages (e.g., feelings of loneliness, isolation, and depression) and further anxiety-related disorders.

In consequence, he indicates that quitting social media leads to more productivity caused by a higher concentration.

Personally, I agree with his three explanations made above and support the general movement to decrease our usage of social media technologies. Nevertheless, he fails to mention which alternative methods he uses to stay for example in contact with his international friends and connections. Similar to my previous blog post, I think that the usage of any kind of technology (including social media) depends on the individual estimation of personal cost and benefit. Personally, the aspect of cost which he mentions in his third point was not that clear to me before. Moreover, I’m determined that concentration is one of our most important assets and we should be aware how and where we employ it. But what do you think about that? How would you evaluate the cost and the benefits of your personal social media usage?

tl;dr: The success and profit of social media platforms heavily depend on its user’s attention, resulting in the construction of addictive attraction schemes on the platform. Despite the common perception, an (apparently even better) life without social media is possible resulting in a more concentrated, productive and happier lifestyle. Overall this post calls attention to a more conscious use of social media and being aware of its costs.

Sources

Hootsuite. (2017). New Research Reveals Global Social Media Use Increased by 21 Percent in 2016. Retrieved 2 October 2017, from https://hootsuite.com/de/newsroom/press-releases/digital-in-2017-report

The Economist. (2017). The battle for consumers’ attention. Retrieved 2 October 2017, from https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21716460-forget-long-tail-battle-consumers-attention

Cutting the TV cord: Streaming live sports

20

September

2017

Live sports: the last bastion of traditional pay-television

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Tens of millions watched the recent Mayweather vs. McGregor fight on pirate streams. According to VFT Solutions, which monitors live streams in social media, over 7000 live streams were being watched in social media platforms by roughly 100 million viewers. (Granados, 2017)

Tens of millions watched the recent Mayweather vs. McGregor fight on pirate streams

How many of you do still pay for cable TV to watch live sports? In the first quarter of this year a record number of people cancelled their pay TV subscriptions and the number continues to slip at the fastest pace ever (Gallagher & Elder, 2017). The number of losses would have been greater, if it wasn’t for sports programming. Over the last few years, people have been talking about the inevitable disruption of the television industry and the threat of new streaming models, like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video. Telecom companies have seen their revenues switch from pay TV to their broadband Internet services. In the past, a large share of revenue was generated by traditional TV subscription, whereas now steaming video services have become more profitable. This shift in consumer preferences summarises the TV industry disruption.

According to a research by CouponCabin.com 43 percent of cable TV subscribers say that the only reason they still pay for TV subscriptions is for watching live sports (Nooney, sd). Live sports is a major factor keeping people tethered to their cable TV plans and is often referred to as “the last bastion of traditional pay-television.” (Ryan, 2017)

Cutting the TV cord

To give a few examples of live sports migrating to digital platforms, Amazon has been negotiating with some of the U.S.’s biggest sports leagues to acquire the rights to stream sport games. It reportedly paid $50 million to the NFL to stream 10 Thursday night NFL games (DiPietro, 2017). Soccer club AC Milan signed a partnership with live streaming app Sportle, a sports start-up that is changing the way people watch sports. Tech giants are pouring money into acquiring content rights. YouTube secured a deal to broadcast the UEFA Champions League in the UK. This year, Facebook signed multiple deals to broadcast Major League Soccer matches, MLB games and World Surf League events. Meanwhile, Twitter is streaming the WNBA games and exclusive MLB program (Tran, 2017). You might be asking yourself what Netflix is doing. According to the critics, Netflix will not be joining anytime soon. Netflix stays close to its long-term mission saying that they are not a generic “video” company that streams all types of video, such as sports. They want to stay a movie and TV series entertainment network (DiPietro, 2017).

Social media platforms consider live sports as a key catalyst to drive user engagement, growth and eventually revenues. One of the biggest goals for 2017 is to create a social experience around live sports. In February Facebook announced a new app for set-top boxes, including Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and the Samsung Smart TV. This app enables you to watch Facebook videos on a big screen, which is immensely important for watching live sports. (Forbes, 2017) Summarising, live streaming is one of the biggest social media trends in general, but it reaches it peaks around major sports events.

Resources

DiPietro, F., 2017. Amazon and Twitter Are Streaming Sports. Will Netflix Follow?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/22/amazon-and-twitter-are-streaming-sports-will-netfl.aspx

Forbes, 2017. Why Facebook Is Focusing On Live Sports. [Online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/02/23/why-facebook-is-focusing-on-live-sports/#546a27c82dc6

Gallagher, K. & Elder, R., 2017. Pay-TV subscribers continue to slip. [Online]
Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/pay-tv-subscribers-continue-to-slip-2017-5?international=true&r=US&IR=T

Granados, N., 2017. Tens Of Millions Watched Mayweather Beat McGregor On Pirate Streams. [Online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2017/08/28/tens-of-millions-watched-mayweather-beat-mcgregor-on-illegal-streams/#7b4bca5179a3

Nooney, C., sd The Future of Sports Streaming In a Cord-Cutting Age. [Online]
Available at: https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/06/future-sports-streaming-cord-cutting-age/

Ryan, K. J., 2017. 5 Industries Ripe for Disruption in 2017. [Online]
Available at: https://www.inc.com/kevin-j-ryan/industries-ripe-for-disruption-in-2017.html

Tran, K., 2017. Facebook is becoming a go-to platform for live streaming sports. [Online]
Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-becoming-go-to-platform-live-streaming-sports-2017-6?international=true&r=US&IR=T

The Success of Youtuber Books

21

October

2015

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When you are subscribed to many American or English youtubers, then you know you can find them on every social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and SnapChat. But what is also remarkable, is that some of them published their own books. And this number is growing.

Starting in 2014, a few Youtubers published books about their life or other things that they thought would be interesting. For example, The Pointless Book by Alfie Deyes, which already got a second version in March of 2015, and Girl Online by Zoe Sugg. (Buzzfeed, 2015) Today, almost every bigger Youtuber released a book, many of them were really successful, with recordbreaking sales. Girl Online became the fastest-selling book from a debut author. (The Guardian, 2015)

The success of these books is obviously because of the popularity of the authors. Youtubers have many followers on Youtube and other social media. I highly doubt they would be this successful without their social media. As obviously, they use their social media to promote their books, for free. With this they reach millions of potential buyers, so for them it is an easy way to earn some extra money. For example, Zoe Sugg has over 3.8 million followers at Twitter and this is no exception, many Youtubers have a number of followers like this. And it does not stop there as many other Youtubers will tweet about it as well, which will give the books even more positive attention.

If you are interested in the numbers of sales, here are some examples of debut week sales of Youtuber books. (Superfame.com)

Zoe Sugg – Girl Online : 78109 copies
Alfie Deyes – The Pointless Book : 15330 copies, The Pointless Book 2: 11939
Tanya Burr – Love, Tanya : 15117 copies
Joe Sugg – Username: Evie : 13745 copies
Marcus Butler – Hello Life! : 6551 copies

Do you follow many Youtubers and have you ever bought a book of them?

References:
http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/oct/14/video-killed-the-book-star-the-rise-of-the-youtuber-author
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tonkagal101/the-ultimate-guide-to-the-youtuber-book-releases-87na#.suppDdLpR8
http://www.vice.com/read/how-are-youtubers-going-to-change-the-publishing-industry-042 http://superfame.com/post/joe-sugg-username-evie-book-sales-charts/

Pewdiepie

12

October

2015

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I guess you’ve all heard of the YouTube celebrity Felix Kjellberg A.K.A. Pewdiepie. If not, he is the most subscribed YouTuber with an astounding 40 million subscribers, mostly playing ‘indie’ or unpopular videogames while live commentating the event. In 2015, his annual income is estimated to be 4 million dollars a year and his net worth is estimated around 16 million dollars. And he’s only 25 years old! (Net Worth 2015)
Where does all this money come from?

First, let me freshen up your memory by explaining the phenomenon called ‘Social Commerce’. “Simply defined, social commerce is the fusion of social media with e-commerce or basically the concept of word-of-mouth applied to e-commerce.” (Marsden 2010)
So, in the case of Pewdiepie’s channel there are some signs of social commerce. For example, every month Pewds gets a package containing several collector items which are all related by theme, like ‘Villains’. He unboxes the items on screen and comments on them. At the end of the video he advises people to also buy these ‘Loot Crates’. The video below is one of the examples of this word-of-mouth on his channel.

Another important way companies gain a lot of awareness is when Pewdiepie plays their game. Then, the so-called Oprah effect comes into force. The Oprah effect is the effect that an appearance on a famous show can have on a small business. (Investopedia 2015) Because Pewdiepie nearly has 10 billion views, a recommendation can have a significant influence on the game developers.

Not a lot of people know that Pewdiepie actually is signed under Maker Studios, a company owned by Walt Disney, which produces videos for channels on YouTube. (Maker Studios 2015) The funny thing is, Pewdiepie says in his videos that he never gets paid to promote the videogames he plays. (YouTube 2015)

Is he telling the truth? Or is he lying and exploiting all of his subscribers? That making money is his main motive?
What do you guys think?

References:
– Investopedia (2015) Oprah Effect http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oprah-effect.asp
– Maker Studios (2015) Makers http://www.makerstudios.com/makers
– Marsden, P. (2010) Social Commerce: Monetizing Social Media, Hamburg: Syzygy.
– Net Worth (2015) Pewdiepie http://www.the-net-worth.com/2015/05/pewdiepie/
– YouTube (2015) Pewdiepie https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie/

“Relaxing” post!

1

November

2013

No ratings yet.

In the end of our course I am not going to make your brain boil, some fun! I would like to use advice of majority professionals in SMM: to make a message or post interesting, it should be relatively short and include some graphics. Here we go!

Some facts about Social Media:

Only on Twitter it is possible to build map of users connections. Why? TO understand who to get to a person, using the shortest way
Only on Facebook it is possible to set an online shop with associated payment system and feature of direct video conversation with customers
Only on Google+ you may create events, where may be up to 10 participants and unlimited audience
Only on Twitter it is possible to get feedback from a lecturer online via translation of tweets with an event hashtag on a big TV or screen
Only on Facebook it is possible to have up to 6 people video chat
Only on Vkontakte you may find the largest (free) collection of music and videos. Search is possible through entering not just titles, singer names or whatever… but also preference search – “Show similar” and recommendations search
Only on YouTube you may create personal TV-channel, which broadcasts your performance online and then save it on a server
Only 5% of companies are satisfied with the quality of employees’ work on social media

Thank all of you, guys! I had a lot of fun and got some interesting aspects of business presence in Social Media and Networks. As I’m going to set my business this or next year, I’ll use a lot of it!

Ting Li! Thank you, of course! It is a good course and not easy to keep up with fast changing environment, however, you do. Thank you, again!

Google’s Disavow Link Tool

1

November

2012

No ratings yet.

Almost every week there is news from or about Google. This month, Google launched a disavow link tool. It is a new tool webmasters can use to fight spam or to clean up after a bad SEO campaign. A SEO campaign stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’. In short, it is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s natural or un-paid search results. Disavowing is the same as disclaiming, so you deny that the links is there.

The tool comes with a warning. (Quote:) Google’s head of webspam team, Matt Cutts, said that most webmasters will not have a use for the tool. For instance, if you run a Mom & Pop shop and do your own SEO, you may not need it, especially if you religiously follow Google’s webmaster guidelines. However, if you are a small business that hired an SEO firm to manage your search engine optimization and found out later that the SEO company used questionable tactics that you weren’t aware of and didn’t approve, then the Disavow Link Tool might be very important to you. (end quote)

It is important to remove bad inbound links to your website, before you use this tool. If you would like to know how it works, check the following site: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-link-tool-15848.html

Most sites won’t have to use the tool, because they don’t have the wrong links. The primary purpose of this tool is to help clean up if you have hired a bad Search Engine Optimization or made mistakes in your own link-building. First contact the sites you know that are bad-linking. You should first ask them to delete the bad links from their site. By doing so, you are protecting your site’s image, because people will no longer find spam links and jump to conclusions about your website or business. If this doesn’t work, and you’re not able to get the bad backlinks down, you could/should use the Disavow Links tool.

In the following video, a man called Matt, explains the tool in a few minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA

Sources:
http://socialmediatoday.com/carolinemelberg/919986/google-s-new-disavow-link-tool
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-link-tool-15848.html
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=nl&siteUrl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA

Successful Marketing Campaigns on Social Media

7

September

2012

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During class today we discussed about successful social media marketing campaigns like Starbucks, IKEA and Target Corp. By curiosity I started searching on the web looking for more social media campaign examples. There are a lot of awesome ideas about how to use social media for your company!

One of my favourite I want to share with you guys is from Dunkin’ Donuts.

I also found a funny commercial from Evian. This was a remarkable campaign, because most companies first air a commercial on TV and then post it later on the internet. Evian unleashed a funny viral video campaign online and it packed out really good! Their online campaign gained a huge amount of positive reactions on youtube. Now (or not anymore, because it’s ‘old’) you can see the commercial on TV.

Seeing this, it looks like online campaigns have more or less (or even more!) the same effect than TV. And considering the fact that maybe the costs of using the internet is lower, do you think companies are going to use online campaigns instead of TV? Or will broadcasting on TV be just as attractive in the future? I hope the first one, than I can watch my programs without any disturbances of commercials!!

Ps. In my reaction I promised to post the commercial about dangers of chatting I referred to. Click here to see the youtube video! It’s a dutch commercial, so I hope the internationals among us understand the message of the video :-).

The Success of Youtuber Books

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Google’s Disavow Link Tool

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