Eco-Friendly Digital Marketing Internship

No it is not Halloween but this website is so darn spooky I had to bring it up on the blog. It is called Spokeo and it is online white pages. This website is a stalkers dream come true.  I am not kidding. Spookeo aggregates information from your social media websites. Everything you include on your social networking sites is recorded and aggregated by Spokeo such as phone numbers, email, descriptions, locations etc. Then the important stuff Spokeo finds to help locate/describe you is compiled into a Spokeo page under your name. Even the images of your parents House (and current house) along with a very detailed map are conveniently provided by Google (THANKS) and displayed to the stalker that  searches you courtesy of Spokeo.  So here is how it works. The stalker enters a persons name or email address to locate whom they please. So for example a stalker could pull a name of a famous person, or a random person from say… A student directory, a website, or even a Facebook page. Then all they have to do is simply type it in and if they have an idea of what state the person they are stalking is located in, it is game over. IT GETS CREEPIER THAN THAT.

I Searched my name “Sean Schwartz” and Clicked Michigan. In seconds I found my Mothers house address, along with the value of the house, a picture, a map to the house, address, phone number, siblings & parents (with similar information), relationship status, age, hobbies, social profiles ETC.  Needless to say I am glad I Googled my name but should you find yourself on this website and trust me you are, immediately go to www.spokeo.com/privacy and get yourself off there.

Social Networking on the internet has been around for a long time but in its earliest forms I remember MySpace was the place to go. It’s funny how things have changed so much, people join social networks to stay connected with their friends and family during all times of the day and just recently companies realized they can harness the power of social networking to connect on a personal level with their consumers, as if a giant rock fell from the sky and hit them on the head. Everywhere I go I see the Facebook logo in store windows. I was even driving on the road and to my surprise I saw a giant Facebook logo on in a gas station window. Marketing firms have been integrating social media into their services as a channel of communication and that is what it is. It all comes down to ‘Communication’ whether it is on a global scale fueling a revolution in Egypt or a company like Old Spice repositioning itself and connecting personally with its consumers. It is communication with a market segment of over 500 Million people and counting.

So where will it go from here and what will we see next? I hate to bring Google into this but we have to. Facebook has all of our personal information (demographics) and knows what we like (interests) but Google knows what we do on the internet, exactly what we do. I am sure that these places are selling our information to marketing firms as I write this, to be honest they kind of already offer some of it for free to the registered business accounts on their sites its called ‘insight’ and lets registered businesses know everything we do on their pages from the amount of time we spend on them to the items we click. I think as new technology continues to develop that social networking will become further integrated into our lives. Lets look at some examples. TV’s, Videogame consoles, and Smartphones have Facebook/Twitter apps now. I cannot wait until the day when I wake up and I can access my Facebook page from my refrigerator or better yet my toaster!!! People also start to think that since these websites are so popular that they will start charging money to register a simple user account. I doubt that would ever happen. Why would a website charge money to a consumer when it can charge money to the business trying to connect with that free user? It doesn’t make any sense, so it wont happen.  If you are wondering what else will happen on these websites just remember anything is possible because it is uncensored communication on a massive level… This is why I was not surprised at all when I found out Twitter was used to start and continue  a revolution in Egypt. Of course it was it is communication on a massive level between thousands of upset youthful Egyptians.

I recently read an article posted by Josh Rose on Mashable and it really got me thinking about how far we have come in relation to technology and even more specific, social media. Social media has truly brought so many people together in ways we couldn’t have dreamed of 20 years ago. For instance, who would have thought that we could actually see our loved ones simply by holding a cell phone (iPhone4), or talk to our friends and family in another country with a laptop, better yet, who even knew we would have laptops 10+ years ago? I don’t think most of us realize how influential social media and technology are these days.

A couple decades ago, the only way someone could keep in touch with family that lived far away was by phone or by mail. Now, we can keep in contact with those we don’t see in person often through Facebook, webcams and, most recently, with an iPhone. I can talk to my brother who lives in Florida by using my iChat application on my laptop. I can see him every day if I want, and it doesn’t take more than 5 seconds to say “Hey get on iChat,” and with a click of a button, there he is. I do think it is an overshot to say that grandparents are able to see their grand kids using the iPhone4 like the Apple iPhone4 commercial. My grandma wouldn’t know what an iPhone4 was if it hit her on the head, let alone be able to work it by herself.

Josh Rose mentions being able to keep in contact with his son every day, something that used to be hard for them because him and his son’s mom aren’t together anymore. This got me thinking about the perks of technology in relation to members of divorced families. Children who don’t get to see their immediate family members every day now have the opportunity via laptops and cell phones.

Children are learning how to use the various forms of technology at surprisingly young ages; I once saw a little girl who couldn’t have been older than 6 in the mall with a blinged-out cell phone talking away like it was no big deal. I was surprised but I think this will be the norm within the next few years. I do believe that the current generation and generations to come will continue to embrace the revolutionizing technology that presents itself every day.

(Photo cred: Google)

Ever wonder if your future employers check your Facebook to gain some insight on your personal life? A 2009 Harris Interactive Study surveyed employers using CareerBuilder.com and check out the shocking results: 45% of employers questioned use social networks to pre-screen job candidates; 35% of them chose to not hire a candidate based on what they found. In today’s world, one that revolves around social networking sites, employers are relying more and more on social networking sites for background information, but have no fear, there is a new program that can help you out!

One could probably assume that their Facebook is somewhat NSFW (maybe from the college years), but the new program, Socioclean, quickly rummages through your site and gives your the opportunity to delete whatever the program finds offensive or aggressive. If you give permission to run the program, Socioclean will scan your social profile (pictures, wall posts, comments and status updates) for 5,000 words and phrases that are racial, profane, drug-related or alcohol-related and display them in an organized fashion. Though the program won’t automatically delete the inappropriate information on your site itself, it will point out the specific words or phrases that should be deleted; you have the power to get rid of the information yourself.

I ran the program on my Facebook profile and received an alarming grade: F. The report actually said “Run for the hills! Requires immediate action!” After looking through the results one by one, I discovered that context is not taken into account. For instance, I wrote a post about a cocktail dress and the word “cocktail” was flagged for being alcohol/drug related. Also, the word “fire” is flagged because it is considered aggressive, so if a post references a bonfire, it is flagged as well. I think the program means well, but some of the words it flags are ridiculous.

This program is rather helpful to job seekers because it allows you to view the post and delete it immediately if you chose to do so. I’m not sure how the Facebook privacy factor works into this; my Facebook page is completely private, therefore, anyone who isn’t my friend can’t look at any of the information on my page. It’s a good idea to set your profile to private anyways, just to be safe. It is proven that employers actually do look at Facebook pages, so the best thing to do is to keep them PG!

(Photo taken from the previously cited Mashable.com article)

The Internet has pretty much taken over every facet of lives, we can do everything online now. Buy, shop, read, order food, and make reservations, just with the touch of our fingers.  This has all become a great convenience for everyone. But who would have thought that you would be able to get top end designer collections from Derek Lam on eBay. For all you fashion lovers out there it is true! Derek unveiled dresses at Fashion Week while simultaneously showing them off on eBay as well.  To make this new way of showing off the latest Spring Collections more interactive users of eBay were allowed to vote on there favorites, the top five dresses that had the greatest number of votes will made available (in May) for purchase at dereklam.ebay.com.

The dresses price ranges from $125-$295 which is significantly less than most of Lam’s pieces for his collections, but if offers fashion lovers the opportunity to own a Lam dress at a must more affordable price.

image provided by eBay.com

Ready-to-wear clothing from high end designers at affordable prices has been around before, but what is different about this collection is that the public is the one making the choice as to what items are manufactured and made available for purchase rather than a fashion editor and a store buyer. According to Derek, By letting the public choose allows fashion to be exciting and relevant in the moment, it also allows for him to connect with his audience and reach new customer directly.

On eBay each dress is shown on a model and then to view the dress from each angle there is a video that you can view to see how the clothing moves and wears on a live person verses just having still images of different angles of the dress.  This can help potential buyers see what the dress is really like and whether they will make the purchase for themselves. It is a great way to interact with your customers and make sure they are getting the products they like best.

The other day I came across a TV show on TLC called ‘Extreme Couponing’. These people would literally purchase between 4 to 8 full carts of groceries and leave spending about $50.00 dollars tops. I was shocked, the people watching it with me were shocked and the grocery store staff on TV was shocked! These extreme couponers kept their own large stockpiles of the goods they bought at their homes which required full size rooms. How did they do this?!

Some of the shopoholics went dumpster diving for Sunday news papers to gather coupons, others collected Sunday papers from peoples porches, but they all had one thing in common. They used the internet to print off coupons. This is a full time job, there average person cannot print off hundreds of coupons that will work together to bring a 1000 dollar bill down to 50 dollars, this takes hours. Thanks to Facebook (which seems to be a solution to everything these days) extreme couponer’s can ‘like’ their favorite brands and get an instant coupon. This is good for the brands too because they gather instant demographic information as well as potential instant wall feedback. Huge brands usually pay for this type of information but with Facebook’s pool of over 500 million registered users they may not longer have to. Facebook gives the brands valuable insight which is a very important factor in their marketing efforts. The users get a quick discount on their products.  This is one quick and reliable resource for extreme couponers to use in addition to the many they find from hours of scouring the web.

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Apple announced on Tuesday its new guidelines to App Store for publishers. Applications will be working the same for users, it is the rules for publishers where the changes have been made. There are many apps available that charge subscriptions fees; either weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannually, and annually; therefore these companies (who have created the apps) are consistently making money off of their content. Since creating the platforms (iPhone, iPad, and the iTouch) in which all the information is communicated on, Apple decided that it should be getting a piece of the funds being made by these companies, I mean after all these companies would have subscribers if is wasn’t for Apple…right? The new policy follows these guidelines, as long as users are purchasing the apps from the App Store, Apple will be taking the 30% cut of the purchases being made to the from subscription applications.

image provided by: zedomax.com

The publishers of the content driven apps are 100% free to make the subscription to their applications available on their own site, and this is where Apple cannot take a cut from the information.  However, according to Apples new app policy, unless a users sign up for the app on the publisher’s site, publishers cannot provide in-app links for customers sign up outside of the App Store. Therefore these companies would have to get users to go directly to their site to avoid losing some of their profits to Apple. Many of the people who currently run these apps are worried they won’t be able to survive, and are also unsure as what Apple will do in the future…who’s to say the won’t try taking a bigger cut from profits made by theses content driven subscription applications.  Has this

It is hard to figure out who do side with on this matter, to me it make sense that Apple would be taking a cut, because without having the technology created by them none of the companies would be able to be gaining profits. Although if you are thinking about it from the perspective of the app creators, who are building content for readers to have daily, weekly or monthly, publishers are the ones creating the content for readers to subscribe in the first place. Maybe you’ll think a little differently next time you are purchasing one of your apps for the App Store or directly from the publisher.

Facebook’s stronger integration with phones is a hot commodity these days. Two recent devices, the HTC’s Salsa and ChaCha, have launched, now equipped with a physical Facebook button. Facebook is also promising dozens more mobile phones will be similarly equipped throughout the year. Facebook has officially shot down the idea of an official “Facebook phone” but promise to help with a deeper integration with phone software.

Facebook’s own, Charles Wu, discusses the new changes in an official Facebook blog post. It appears that different providers will advertise the Facebook integration in different ways; Wu writes, “Some manufacturers will be highlighting Facebook as a part of their phones’ on-screen interfaces, and others will use our brand as an element of the device hardware itself.”

The new Facebook integration will allow users to access Facebook Chat on their phones without actually having to install a smartphone application. Wu also explains the deeper integration regarding your Facebook friends on your mobile phone, “When you make a phone call, the screen displays your friends’ status updates and photos, and even their birthdays.”

Phone software that is this integrated with Facebook is both good and bad. It’s great to have all your friends available at your fingertips, but, to me, Facebook is going somewhat overboard. So many people are addicted to the social networking site as it is, and it’s getting easier and easier to avoid face-to-face interaction with individuals. This integration does, however, allow people to be reached at pretty much any point and time, at least when they have access to their phone, and let’s be serious, that’s pretty much all the time these days. It’s going to be interesting to see how the integration plays out on the different phones. I’m anticipating the effect that the Facebook integration with the software on some phones will be somewhat overwhelming, while others will find the perfect balance.

So the ever-changing facebook has turned to a creative side by some of its users.  Since the social media site first launched in 2004 it has had more than a handle full of revamps made to the site. Which always seems to throw users for loop as to why the site keeps changing on them.  This most recent facebook change have left most facebook users upset once again, but other users have decided to take the most recent change as a creative outlet.  The new formatting allows users to see their profile picture and right next to are pictures that have been posted or tagged of that user. Which sparked some users to look at facebook as more of an artistic side.

images provided by: mashable.com

Another recent addition to the facebook addiction is the video profile, which is relatively new. This is for all those people who are consistently making tweaks to the profiles, editing the information that is being seen about them.  This can allow users pages and fan pages to be more interactive with their facebook friends. In order to make the change to your profile picture you need to get the new Facebook app, which allows you to replace your profile photo with a video. The only problem with this is that only people who have the plug-in to the app themselves will only be able to see the video. It’s a great new idea to create some edge to your facebook profile but at the moment it still does have some kinks.

If you’re walking around NYC and see a couple homeless men with cell phones, don’t be discouraged. A new Twitter campaign, Unheard in New York, aims to raise awareness about the trials and tribulations of the homeless in a large urban city. Four homeless men, Danny, Carlos, Derrick and Albert, were given a prepaid cell phone with unlimited texting and a Twitter account and were told to tweet about the things they do every day in NYC. It’s not like they’re walking around with iPhones though; the 4 of them are tweeting away on inexpensive, Samsung clam-shell phones.

BBH advertising agency responsible the campaign and Rosemary Melchior, Robert Weeks and Willy Wang are the interns behind it. The interns were challenged to “Do something good… Famously,” and this is what they came up with. The 4 homeless men were given the phones, paid for by BBH advertising agency, and also received some training on the basics of Twitter. Although Unheard in New York is not a fundraiser per say, it was created in hopes that people will be inspired to donate to the homeless as well as homeless shelters such as NYC Rescue Mission. It was the NYC Rescue Mission that helped select the four homeless men who were to take part in the campaign, as they have built a relationship with BBH ad agency.

These four homeless men serve as a pilot group; the agency wants to expand the Twitter accounts and voices of the homeless around NYC. The campaign end when the internship ends, however, the interns are hoping that their work will not go unnoticed. They are anticipating that another agency will pick up their strategy and continue to raise awareness about the homeless.

I actually started following them on Twitter and it’s very refreshing. They don’t complain about one thing; it’s all positive tweeting coming from each one. They tweet about job interviews, how their day is going and feedback to their followers. It’s great to see that their followers are actually trying to help them out and give them positive feedback as well. These 4 men seem to have a big heart and are grateful for what they do have in life, though it’s not much. I think this campaign should be expanded to different urban cities; if people are given insight about members of the homeless community, they could be more apt to helping out. If you’d like to follow them, their Twitter names are @putodanny, @awitness2011, @albert814 and @jessie550. You can also follow the campaign itself at @underheardinNY.

(Photo taken from Mashable article)