Hey you fans out there (if I actually have any) I've decided to move.....again. I kinda think that posterous is so not flexible enough and it's templates suck big time...thus i will be moving to wordpress....here's the URL to my new blog - http://newmediageek.wordpress.com
Hey people, sorry for the long wait (if any of you are actually waiting at all) as I have not actually have the time or rather the inspiration to write a blog post.
That saying, I was actually inspired after hearing news of my favorite team Manchester United beating Manchester City in the charity shield in which I realized that there were some similarities between Premier League Clubs and Social Media, here’s how.
You can never buy loyalty
Manchester City might have gotten a whole squad of superstars and finally won the FA Cup plus qualified for the champion’s league last season, but how about the loyalty of their players?
For those of you who followed soccer news closely, it’s evident that most of the players there not because they find value in the club itself but rather the loads of cash they could make by being a player of Manchester City.
Issues such as player outburst due to lack of first team opportunities,differences in wages coupled with disciplinary problems are greatly hindering the team's progress, what's worse is that some players are even expressing their unhappiness at the club to the media. #CarlosTeves #MarioBalotelli #Robinho
And instead of focusing on building up the team and formulating a winning strategy, coaches and managers have to spend more time in pacifying the inflated egos of the players and negotiating their salaries demands.
On the other side of Manchester, United has some of the most loyal footballers in the history of English Football, through imparting the importance of a good team spirit and inculcating a winning mentality in every player.
You have got players willing to put away personal differences and look at the bigger picture #WaynneRooney, #LuisNani, players who has loyally stuck with the club through thick and thin for more than a decade #RyanGiggs #PaulScholes #Gary Neville and players who still loves and support the club despite past differences #DavidBeckham
Similarly in Social Media, you can never buy the loyalty of fans. It is true that you can now buy fans to increase your Twitter/Facebook fan base and also use attractive prizes as carrots to attract more fans.
But will your community be really engaged? chances are,you might have a million fans but maybe only a handful of them are actually taking notice of the activities that are happening in your community.
To earn the loyalty of your fans, you must put in concise efforts into conversations and content to engage your fans and prove that your brand is worth following and there’s value on what your brand is doing on social media.Invest in people that are genuinely loyal to your brand, i.e. those who love your products, these people are the best brand ambassadors because they believe in your brand.
You need time to build success
Far too often we have seen clubs trying to buy their way to success come and go, just look at the likes of Newcastle United, Blackburn Rovers and Leeds United.
Any of these clubs ring a bell to you? Have you remembered that they were once title contenders and look at where they are at now, Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers barely survived relegation last season and as for Leeds united, can anyone tell me if they still exist?
Chelsea and Manchester City may currently still be the elite clubs in England but we can already see cracks and signs of downfall in these clubs.
For Chelsea,every season if the club fail to win the title,the manager will be asked to leave the club despite his past track record #JoseMourinho #CarloAncholetti
This season, even with a new manager and Roman Ambromavich’s millions, they don’t seem to be able to attract any big names during the whole of the summer.
As for Manchester City,in three seasons since the takeover from the Abu Dabai Group,they have spent more than SGD$860 Million to assemble a world class squad, but as mentioned earlier money won't buy you loyalty, it definatly won't buy success, as it is many of their star players are already unhappy and baltently crying out for other clubs to come get them. #CarlosTevez #MarioBalotelli
Manchester United for one did not gain success overnight, it took Alex Ferguson 3 years before he won his first team honour(the FA Cup) and 6 years before he eventually won his first league title and since after they have never been out of the top three since the Inception of the premier league.
Similarly in Social Media,it takes time to really see results, do not give up on social media just because you don't see visible results #ROIs #KPIs,like building a successful football team, building a successful social media presence takes alot of patience and sometimes abit of luck. #EricCantona
What happens when there are budget issues?
In social media, when you have inculcated a sense of belonging and provided value for your community, there is no need to worry when there’s no more budget to run ads or campaigns.
Chances are, fans will still stay on your community and it will still continue to grow organically through word of mouth from your brand ambassadors or simply the people who believes in your brand.
On the other hand, if your fans are only attracted to the prizes you give out, do you think they will stay on the page and listen to your senseless conversation starters if they found out that it’s not rewarding anymore to stay on your page, moreover you would be unable to grow the page without the budget to run ads.
Do you think for an instance the overpaid spoilt brats at Manchester city will continue to stay at the club if they have found out due to budget cuts that their salaries are going to be greatly reduced?
And what happens when Roman Ambromavich or the Abu Dabai Group decides to pull out their millions from Chelsea and Manchester City respectively?I bet there's even a possiblity that they might even be relegated if that day comes.
But if the same were to happen to Manchester United, will the club be able to sustain itself? just look at recent years when Manchester United faced financial difficulties,did they crumbed and fall?
The answer is No,although they might not be able to compete with other elite clubs in the transfer market, they still had a strong team nucleus and a efficient system where talented young players are given the chance to rise up through the ranks.
Although United had broken the transfer record to bring in some star players. #AndyCole #WaynneRooney,the real underlying factor of their success is their continued policy to invest and bring in young players. From #DavidBeckham #RyanGiggs #PaulSchols to #DannyWelbeck #TomCleverly #Rafeal #Fabio
With such a system this has allowed Manchester United to remained as one the top teams in the world despite their financial difficulties.
If their wages were reduced, they probably won't be smiling as much.
In the past general elections, the only forms of media used were the mainstream platforms such as television, radio and magazines, problem is, these platforms were essentially controlled by the ruling government; The ruling party the People’s Action Party (PAP) had for many years managed to utilize it wisely towards their own advantage, using it to garner votes for themselves and belittling the other opposition parties in the process.
Opposition parties would hardly have any voice in the mainstream media which reaches out to the masses; therefore for many years there was hardly any contest at all.
However in the last couple of years with the prevalence of social media, the political landscape had finally started to open up, not only did it allow opposition parties to establish their own digital presence it also became a platform for many other singaporeasn to present their opinions and views on general affairs and other national matters.
If you had been observing the happenings on social media in regards to the general election 2011, you would see an influx of anti-PAP sentiments all over the various platforms such as Facbook,Twitter as well as YouTube, the added viral ability of social media just made these sentiments spread even more exponentially, and thanks to PAP’s decision to unconventionally field a relatively inexperienced and undeserving Tin Pei Ling, it gave the netizens so much more to talk about and arguably slamming the quality of PAP’s new candidates.
In the process of broadcasting their own views and opinions, some average Singaporeans have also managed gain a substantial following, the following are some personalities that have tapped on the power of social media and made themselves pseudo celebrities and we could see them as some of the biggest influencers for change in Singapore’s political landscape.
Mr. Brown
The man behind the Mr. Brown Show, a popular podcast that been around since 2005; the show is famous for its creative and sarcastic takes on government policies and other national matters.
Using alternative media such as podcasting and blogging, Mr. Brown gave Singaporeans an alternate and hilarious view on some government policies that has been implemented over the years, although the views on his podcasts are usually neutral, it has opened up the minds of many people and got people to think more deeply into government policies and other national issues.
The Fake PM Lee
Taking on an alternate personality of the PM Lee, this twitter personality calls himself The Fake PM Lee.
What he does is simply tweet like as if he is the PM of Singapore but often in a satirical manner, probing on issues such as the minister’s inflated salaries, current affairs and also portraying a rather comical approach to politics, addressing MM Lee as “Dad” and SM Goh as “Uncle Goh”
After a thousand tweets and less than a year on twitter he already has already won over 12K of followers on his twitter account, you might say it's not exactly a huge following, but considering the relatively low number of twitter users in Singapore, 12k is a rather huge following.
Nicole SeahAt a tender age of 24 years, she has certainly shown maturity beyond her age and with a strong sense of justice coupled with her charismatic approach, she has certainly created a huge buzz in Singapore’s political arena over the last few weeks.
Nicole Seah Speaking to a reporter from CNN
This young lady is also someone who understands the intricacies of social media platforms, and being in the PR and Marketing industry herself, she has certainly leveraged on her industrial experiences to great advantage during this general elections.In less than 5 days of her Facebook page being setup, she already has well over 16K of fans on her page and the numbers are increasing as we speak.
The use of social media in politics is not new in other parts of the world; we have seen how Barack Obama has won his presidential campaign mainly because of social media and also how twitter has influenced the general elections in Iran; with an increasing number of people reading news via social media and RSS feeds rather than mainstream media such as newspapers and television, things are certainly taking a turn in Singapore’s political landscape.
Can we finally see a more openly contested general elections in 2011 and finally see the end of PAP’s hegemony in Singapore politics?
Come 7th of May 2011, we will see if the entire buzz on the internet is merely just a spectacular hoo ha or would we finally get to see a change? My advice to all you voters out there, don’t just go for the safe choice, Vote wisely!
I’m sure many of you have spent hours of your time indulging on this senseless yet addictive game, it doesn’t exactly have the a great storyline nor does it have fantastic graphics, in fact its success probably hinges on its simplicity and its probably something that any good game developer is capable of creating if they had this concept.
Nevertheless Angry Birds still managed to become hugely popular, if you look under the top paid apps category on your iPhone/iPod touch, you would have seen that Angry birds is perpetually in the top 3 position, and it had stayed that way for more than a year, and it was recently announced that Angry Birds has reached the 50 million mark in terms of downloads.No one would have thought this simple concept of pitting birds against pigs over a bunch of stolen eggs would have spawned such a resounding response.Riding on this wave; Rovio had decided produce different versions of the game like the recently released “Angry Birds Seasons” and Angry Birds Halloween” , recently they even released an in-app purchase called “ Mighty Eagle” which to me is really a lame attempt by the creators to earn some easy cash. (This simple addition cost USD$0.99, same price as the game itself)This game got so popular that some fans decided to do a video on it, this was supposed to be a peace treaty signing session between the birds and the pigs.And if it’s not enough dominating the virtual world of mobile applications, Angry Birds is coming to you physically; already available for purchase are plush toys, iPhone covers and Tee-Shirts, and all these started from an iPhone application.
Below is an angry bird plush toy that has found it's way to my office.
So what do we need to do to become famous nowadays? Must we be born with natural god given musical abilities or must we be born in well to do family? Judging from what we see on YouTube nowadays, probably none of the above.
Log into YouTube these days and you will see that some of the most viewed videos are actually amateur homemade videos, but the fact remains, these amateur videos are what’s really getting the attention of YouTube viewers all over the world today. Taking a look at the top YouTube videos of 2010 from YouTube Rewind the top 3 videos of 2010 are actually works of amateur videographers and producers, but the question remains how did they get there?
#3 Greyson Chance Singing Paparazzi
Greyson chance might be very talented, but the person responsible for taking his video isn’t, or at least not a talented videographer, but by recording this video and posting it online, the viral ability of YouTube and other social networking sites was able to propelled Greyson to instant stardom and thanks to this video, we could have discovered someone who might just dethrone Justin Bieber!!!
#2 Glitter Puke - Key of Awe$ome
If you do not a great voice like Greyson Chance, there is still hope for you, what you need is a passion to become a pop star and some creativity. You could choose a MTV you really like and try create an interesting parody out of it, for starters try to choose one that does not involve a great deal of effort on special effects and one that is mostly shot indoors, thereafter it all depends on the viewer's receptiveness of your video This parody of Tik Tok by Ke$ha had spawned over a 100 million views to become the 2nd most viewed video of 2010.
#1 BED INTRUDER SONG!!!
And last but certainly not least, here’s the number one video of 2010, the nature of this video just proves you don’t need any God given singing ability to become a chart topper. Using a news report footage, the Gregory brothers made use of auto tune technology to make a song out of it, the rest is history, not only did this video became the number one video on YouTube, it also topped several billboard charts. The reason of it success was simple, by leveraging on elements of controversy and humour and enhancing it with technology, the video managed to achieve instant viral success.
It's been a while since there was any activity on New Media Geek, ever since posting up “saving our social environment” I had been going through a creativity drought, coupled with a lack of drive.
Since this is a new year, I will try to start writing again, and this time perhaps on a regular basis, but before diving back into things in regards to the digital social sphere I want to talk about how New Media Geek actually started.
After getting my degree, I was ready to move on from my previous job as an IT Executive to something else, then the realities of life hit me, the job market was just picking up and finding an ideal job was really tough, in total I sent over a 100 resumes and after a few months, I got only 3 interviews, in which none of it I was selected for.
Then came a period in which I was feeling really lost and depressed about my life, but thank God for good friends and I would like to mention my good friend Mr Sashi Zoso for giving me a great motivational speech at one of the lowest point of my life, in which one of his suggestions was to set up a blog and just talk about the technology and social media.
Thereafter, New Media Geek was born, I started to realise I actually had a thing for writing, and during the period I was out of a job for several months, I had pretty much came out with the best articles I had ever written.
The best part it, New Media Geek was one of the deciding factors in which I had gotten my current job as a New Media Executive.
Although 2010 did not really end with a good note for me in which many crazy things happened to me during the end of the year, some of the things are falling really sick on my birthday, having a big argument with my dad over some trivial issue during Christmas day, and the biggest bombshell was blowing my chances with a girl I really like. Other than the disastrous conclusion of 2010, the one thing that was a highlight of 2010 was the birth of New Media Geek.
Therefore, 2011 will be the year in which New Media Geek will be bought to greater heights, to any of you reading this blog, keep watching this space as more great stuff will be coming your way in 2011.
I'm sure many of us have come to a point wherby we have near to a thousand friends on Facebook and have the following concerns.
1) You would like to post certain information/photos and you would not want an important group of people to find out, e.g your parents, your employers and maybe even friends you don't want to offend.
2) You are the sort who likes to share videos and other links but you are afraid you might appear irritating but at the same time there are friends who appreciates the stuff you share.
3) You would want to be able to share your views freely but you are only comfortable doing it with a certain group of friends on your Facbook list.
4) You want to delete certain people off your friend list, but you are afraid of certain social repercussion when they find out.
Meet Facebook groups - the solution to all the above problems, now with a few clicks you would be able to create a custom group and decide who you want to be in the group,this new group would be like a network of its own, in it you can do the normal stuff you usually do on Facebook, but now only with friends that are added to the specific group you have created, i.e the people that you truely trust!
You can now create different groups for your different group of friends, and the best thing is you can share freely with an assurance that the information is kept within your trusted friends.
Thanks to this new function, even with your parent's on Facebook, you can freely post your promiscious photos without them finding out and limiting it to only your trusted friends, and fret not if you want to complain about your boss, you too can create a group with trusted colleagues and complain all you want.
A successfully depiction of the New York's advertising industry in the 60s has not only made AMC's Mad Men one of the most popular show in the world, they have also taken the advertising industry by storm.
To continually fuel it's popularity,most of the characters from Mad Men like Don Draper, Peter Campbell, Roger Sterling and many more have in fact started to embrace social media,some of them have even added me on Facebook and Twitter.
Messages that were posted on their social media profile would usually transgress deeper the show's storyline, depicting the other less crucial scenes that did not find itself on the show, an example would be one by Trudy Campbell, when she posted " is at Bonwit's with Mother trying to find a maternity outfit that is slightly flattering." This was poster after the show had revealed that Trudy was pregnant with Peter Campbell's child
In this age of internet advancement, one hour a week is no longer enough keep ardent the fans enticed to the show; and more and more shows are tapping onto new media to further engage the fan and in the process win more viewer-ships.
The recently concluded Heroes had also utilized digital media to further expound on the popularity of the show, on their official site,the producers released a weekly comic series that goes hand in hand with the main storyline; the advantage of using such methods would enable them to portray scenes that they were unable show on TV, and it being a comic,they were also given the liberty to be more adventurous in terms of special effects and also the places that they want to portray the scene in.
Is it even possible to archive your entire life journey in one single place ? if you had asked me this question 10 years ago, I probably would have laughed it off, however with the rise of new and social media technologies, sites such as Facebook has made it entirely possible.
Even before a baby boy was born, his parent's have set up a social networking profile for him, using it to share the different stages of his childhood; from the day they found out about the pregnancy till the birth of the baby, his parent's could record every important moment with the posting of pictures/videos and the updating of statuses.Family and friends could also be part of the social experience by joining in to give their comments, moreover the social experience does not just stop at childhood, when he grows older, he would probably be managing his own social profile by continuing to archive his various life experiences, and eventually many years later till in his final days, he could look back and reminisce on every memorable moment of his life.There you have it, an entire life journey from its inception to its passing, the most amazing thing; being able to capture and encapsulated everything under one single profile.
Inspired by a movement called Save Social Energy I've decided to write a blog entry on issues I've observed on social media over the years, and even though I've been guilty of committing some of it myself, I see the need to voice out my opinions on what I think are some of the most common misuses of social media nowadays
1) Telling the entire world what you are doing every moment of the day.
Yes we know you are enthusiastic and you see yourself as an active participant on social media, but you do not have to let everyone know what you are doing all the time, post like "I'm having lunch now" and "I just woke up" "I'm going to sleep" so on and so forth are like so passé, and at the end of the day you will have like probably 20 over post on your social networking profile and none of it makes any sense to anyone, unless of course you have a spouse or family member who wants to monitor your every moment of the day but that aside, I doubt anyone else with a right frame of mind would want to see 20 over post a day from you plainly updating what you are doing.
2) A page full of updates from 3rd party apps
Status like "I have just revived my withered crops" and "I've just slayed the master dragon" are totally flooding our newsfeeds everyday, I know that these games can be really fun but nobody and I mean nobody gives a rats ass about your achievements on these games, and FYI if you are playing these games, there are actually options for choosing not to post it on your newsfeeds
3) Bitching about others on social media
I know sometimes you would like to vent out your frustrations on a certain individual that pissed you off and thus you start bitching about him/her, but as you know the world is a much smaller place with social media, and although that particular person you are bitching about is not on your friend's list, you will never know which one of your 300 or so friends might be close friends with the person you are bitching about.
Even in the past, walls have ears and gossips do spread, today with social media, your walls can easily be seen by 300 or more people on your friend's list and worst still it could spread even more exponentially, so try not to post anything that might offend anyone or worse still, a group of people, you might just end up getting into a whole load of trouble.
4) Publicly criticizing your partner on social media
In my point of view, this is probably the greatest misuse of social media, things like telling all your friends "my boyfriend don't understand me" or "this is the end of our relationship" after having an argument.
In this age where the social environment is a media-polluted mess we should do our best to embrace social media but at the same time making it a conducive environment for people all over to share and collaborate.
It is great that you have meaningful stuff to share like great music videos, great jokes or even interesting experiences but do take note that there is only so much media an individual can consume everyday, so let us all do our part and make our social world a better place; don't just share, share wisely.
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A profound passion for new media technologies has led to the creation of this blog, here are my rantings and opinionated views on today's social media trends and the latest technologies
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