Social Media: Cyber Police?

Social media has many purposes. It can disseminate newsworthy content and information at the press of a button or the tap of a screen. It can be a way to spread our networks across the globe and increase our image. Social can even be a way to start a new business and make yourself a successful entrepreneur.

But, there is one purpose that has not yet been tapped into yet with social media- surveillance of national security. The social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have come together to help "combat online propaganda for recruiting by Islamic militants." according to an article by Yahoo.com. The companies realize that the threats to our nations security are not just coming from the characteristic enemies. In this day of social media and technology, anyone can be a potential target for Isis.

The internet companies described their policies as straightforward and to the point: they ban certain types of content in accordance with their circumstances and they require a court order to remove or block anything.

This court order can be taken care of with one simple step. The social media outlets have always had this feature and it will come in handy sooner or later. The "report/spam" button on posts allows the audience or viewer to report the post as threatening, inappropriate, or vulgar.

I personally believe if we can be a force that stands for justice and freedom for all, then recognizing and doing something about cyber-terrorism can help us become a stronger nation and world. I am not saying we should put restrictions on social media, because that will only upset people and make them wish they they had not done anything to change it.

Measure What Matters Chapter 7

Chapter seven of the book, "Measure What Matters" deals with measuring the impact of events. In social media today, events have become "redefined" according to the book on page 107. 

"'Events' is a term that can now refer to an online fund-raiser or an in-person Twestival organized via Twitter."

As we always seem to point out, there are a multitude of ways that social media has enhanced the marketing world and industry as a whole. When we see how much the social media platform changes things that were capable before, but are easier and quicker now, it is changing the opinions of consumers to use social media and that it is more than just a way for teens to retweet their favorite memes. 

The best part of the chapter in my opinion was the 7 steps process. I like these steps the book lists for the reader because it provides order and strategy. The seven steps in the book to measure sponsorships and events are:

1. Define Your Objectives

2. Determine Your Measurable Criteria of Success

3. Decide Upon Your Benchmarks

4. Select a Measurement Tool 

5. Define Specific Metrics 

6. Choose a Measurement tool

7. Analyze Your Results and Use them to be more effective 

The last step was the one that caught my attention and Dr. Agozzino alluded to it in class last week. The measuring process is not over. The process is never over, because we must constantly be updating, remodeling and improving our content and tactics if we want to thrive. 

New Twitter Feature Gives Fire to Sports

Twitter, as everyone knows, is a place to find newsworthy content and real-time stories going on around the world. But, as every good company does, they have found a way to enhance themselves and critique their flaws to make their product or service even better. The news on Twitter, in my opinion, has always been hard to pinpoint. Either you found it on your timeline or you had to search for it yourself and make a decision on what you wanted to find.


Now, thanks to the innovation by the folks at Twitter, there is a much easier and efficient way to find your news and what is going on in the world. The feature, "moments" has been created to be much more user-friendly to Twitter users."What we're trying to do is get the content directly in-front of you without you having to make decisions," said Madhu Muthukumar, the project manager over seeing the new feature. When you enter the tab for "moments", it categorizes options so you know what you want to look at. The categories are: Today, Sports, News, Fun, Entertainment. When you get to whatever tab you want to look at, it is previewed with a video. I believe involving this media really catches the audience's attention and is a great hook for SEO. 


When I think about how this new feature of Twitter will change sports, I think of how we watch sports. I personally, watch sports live and on television because I am an avid sports fan and like watching the full game. In today's culture however, the way people watch sports is "highlight syndrome" or people only watching the highlights on ESPN or something. In "moments", the highlight's are given and in high quality, which is another overlooked detail. Also, when the highlight is seen, if the user finds an attraction to that post, they can favorite it, retweet it, or comment to it. In the video above, this feature gave wildfire to the MLB postseason and created a whole new animal in terms of fan engagement. The trending ability of Twitter really came into play this post season and how people followed Major League Baseball. 

Embracing the Tweet: Real-Time methods

Twitter is more than an app. Twitter has become a global phenomenon that has linked people, friends, and businesses to connections that wouldn't be possible without it. The reading in "Real-Time Marketing and PR" talked about "Embracing the Tweet" in chapter 10. The author talks about how Twitter is so easy to use and allows its users to search whatever they want, whenever they want. The more I thought about how true that statement was, I kept thinking of ways to better my fraternity's Twitter profile. My fraternity, Delta Sigma Phi is an organization just like a business or company with a Twitter page. Our social media was a little out of date until the beginning of the semester, when we had one of our brothers go through all of our channels and update some information. One of our brothers is in charge of the social media channels right now, but after reading this book, there are some valuable tips that I could implement into our profiles. Those changes could make our image more appealing and give us more followers. In this article, it talks about the positives and negatives of social media for Greek Life. Recruitment is a vital part of the social media aspect for Greek organizations because the millennial generation is starting to become known for it's attachment to social media, and the best way to get in touch and connect with those potential new members is through social media. David Meerman Scott talks about how Twitter can sometime make an organization/business's image look sleazy if the post seems to have too much hype. Twitter is more than an app. It is a useful tool that can help our businesses and improve our overall public relations with others around the globe.

Twitter chirping a different pitch with new managment

In the latest social media news, Twitter has parted ways with it's former CEO Dick Costolo. According to this forbes article, the social media powerhouse has said goodbye to it's chief communications officer, Gabriel Stricker as well. The changes are said to be part of a "shift" in communications strategy. Most people have been noticing the design change in Twitter and I wonder if this is why they are noticing differences. The departure was a mutual agreement as both Stricker and his former coworkers are both happy with the end result of their long tenure together. I am interested to see if Twitter changes anything drastically in the near future. Twitter is one the largest apps in the world now and with this new management coming in, some changes and design changes could be in store. As our generation is credited with the social media age, we are continuously spreading information across the web and the globe in general. This "shift" that Twitter is claiming will most likely be something that changes or improves their image to the public and how it is perceived is something I would really be interested to seeing. If this new Twitter is not as good of an idea as the people at Twitter think it will be, then the company could suffer. On the flip side of the coin, there is also the chance that the app reaches new heights and limits and opens a whole new target market.