Eco-Friendly Digital Marketing Internship

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Katy Perry pulled out all the stops for her 2011 Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) Video. The video is jammed packed with 80s heartthrob’s, 90s teen pop sensations, Internet memes and Kenny G?

Brace faced frizzy haired Kathy Beth Terry, played by Katey Perry, wakes up to find herself next to a buff young male and a fuzzy memory of the night before. Perry used social media marketing to promote the music video’s main character Kathy Beth Terry, who’s Facebook fan page is packed with links of 80s and 90s teen heart throbs like Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT), viral videos created by Kathy Beth herself and video clips of the boy band Hanson.

Katy Perry – Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)

The music video features Kathy Beth Terry getting a makeover from the Friday queen herself Rebecca Black, Hanson playing in the backyard and a saxophone solo from Kenny G. Darren Criss (Blaine) and Kevin McHale (Artie) from “Glee” make an appearance along with other famous stars from the past and present.

Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) is a hilarious play on teen geek-to-chic movie’s. Who knew Rebecca Black was such a party animal. As a Katy Perry fan I give this music video is a must-see and I give it two thumbs up!

Entertainment & Stars: Katy Perry’s ‘Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)’ Features Rebecca Black as Hostess (VIDEO)

In high school and early years of college my Facebook addiction appeared to distract me from what many others thought I “should” be focusing on. As I got older my Facebook addiction led to a fascination with Twitter and other forms of social media. Suddenly I was studying social media and digital public relations strategies in school. Within three years my degree in public relations went from cool to awesome. I was taking innovative journalism classes tailored to social media strategies and search engine optimization and all things digital. Was this too good to be true? Can I really make a career out of this?

Photo: DirJournal.com

It turns out you can. And there is quite the demand for digital agencies and social media strategist as the digital revolution continues to grow according to The Detroit News article, Aging Nation, Technology Give Rise to Five Hot Jobs. There is real value in social and digital and more and more people are recognizing that. The job market is fierce and there is good news for college students. According to The Detroit News Article. “By 2018 a million new jobs expected to be created.”  I don’t know if fate or luck or destiny brought me to my current internship in the digital marketing field, but the future is looking nice for me and for the digital agency.

The Detroit News: Aging Nation, Technology Give Rise to Five Hot Jobs

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.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now about the app store that Apple has launched for Macs. It allows you to run your favorites iPhone apps right on your desktop. They have managed to take the brilliant “I always have something to entertain me” mentality of the iPhone, and put it where you want it most, on your computer, where most of us spend our days. Now I personally came up with idea months ago while sitting in my room wishing I could play Angry Birds on my Mac, but I guess that’s beside the point. With the new App store for the Mac you can now spend your free time playing Sudoku, or tweeting about this and that, or even planning your week’s outfits using the Dress Assistant App.

Now, apart from the frivolities offered by the numerous apps available, there is also excitement amongst social media enthusiasts everywhere. This new Apple creation offers the next significant advancement of the social media agenda. They now, or soon will, take all your favorite sites and social media pages, and make them stationary on your desktop. Once there they will come alive and turn your computer into a living organism; constantly updating and breathing all of the social media you love. It will become a friend, that tells you everything you want to know when you want to know it. You will not be able to live without it.

This preposition, from a marketing standpoint, offers advertisers an ideal scenario. Consider this:  You are sitting at your computer at work, it has been a long day, and you have settled into the work/surf-the-web part of your day. You have your work computer set up with all of your favorite pages, in app form, scattered across your desktop. Needing a break, you decide to sit back and watch all of these pages deliver to you any and all information you want to know. You relax as you find comfort in the latest funny tweet from Steve Martin , or a reassuring Facebook post from your mother, and you are once again at peace.

Now, as an advertiser, this presents you with an opportunity to create content for these apps and have them delivered to a curious, and captive audience at all times of the day, and at locations, (like at work for example) that you normally couldn’t reach them. Also, the Mac Apps offer another benefit; they offer the customizability, and specificity of iPhone apps without the limitations that the small phone has. I know, for me personally, I hate the ads on my phone for two reasons: first, they always show up at the most inopportune times, and second, they take up half of my screen. It is for these reasons, along with the fact that the screen is too small to do much meaningful web browsing, that I refuse to follow any of the links in the ads. This shouldn’t be nearly as much of a problem with the Mac Apps, just as long as they don’t make me sit through 20 second, full page, ads for a weight loss drug while I’m waiting for Angry Birds to load.

The Mac App store is truly a genius idea that will, like the apps on the iPhone, change the way we interact with the world, and the way the world interacts with us. It’s still in it’s infancy but I know that it will expand rapidly, and I’m excited to see where it goes from here.

As we fully enter the holiday season, most of us are busy thinking about our annual festivities: attending parties, decorating the Christmas tree, wrapping presents, surviving family gatherings, etc. The last thing that crosses most of our minds is worrying about our personal relationships during the “most wonderful time of the year.”  But, according to graphic designers David McCandless and Lee Byron, going into the holiday season may be a time where we should be worried about our relationships after all.  The two conducted research that focused on understanding the times of year people (mainly Facebook users) were presumably going to break up.

McCandless and Byron searched over 10,000 Facebook status updates that contained terms related to breaking up, and they found some interesting results.   For example, the fewest splits seemed to happen on Christmas Day, but the weeks leading up to Christmas were one of two strongest peaks that happen every year.  Spring was another time for relationships to fizzle out, as some people may have kept the spring-cleaning going from their closets and into their love life.

Photo Credit: bestweekever.tv

Using social media marketing, McCandless and Byron also looked at the reasons why people on Facebook break up and the means by which they end their relationships. As for why, “Non-Approval” (from parents and friends) seemed to be the least popular reason for breaking up, “Distance,” “Cheating,” and “Lost Interest” filled out the middle, and “Other/Complicated” was the most common reason for Facebook users to go their separate ways.

McCandless and Byron listed the ways in which users went about calling it quits, and split the category into two parts: “Those born before 1975” and “Those born after 1984.”  With the first group, the most common way of breaking up was “In Person” at 74% with “Phone” at 16%, “Email” at 4% and “Facebook” at 4% trailing behind and “Instant Messaging” rounding out the bottom at 3%.  With the second group, breaking up “In Person” was still the most popular at 47% with “Phone” following closely behind at 30%, and “Email” at 4% and “Facebook” at 5%.  What differentiates these two groups the most (aside from more people in the second group using the phone to take care of business) is that 14% of those born after 1984 find “Instant Messaging” their significant other a perfectly acceptable way of kicking them to the curb. Ouch.

What can we learn from all of this?  Well, for whatever the reason (and no matter what season), Facebook break ups are bound to happen.   Chances are, those who have the decency (and courage) to pick up the phone to say goodbye probably had more of a meaningful relationship than those willing to throw in the towel with a text.  Call me old-fashioned, but I’d rather hear someone’s voice than be over a text saying, “We r over!  C U l8r!”

For more on this topic, check out the Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Break-Ups: ‘Tis the Season”

After Facebook created the Friendship Pages option that allows users to see every interaction two people have had together on the site it was hard to imagine that the site would be able to create another way to track what your friends are doing but Facebook has done it again. This time the site has created a feature that allows users to see what topics their friends are talking about and then combines them onto your News Feed.

Facebook says that ‘the feature looks for certain phrases in the text of feed stories and combines them into one story if it finds matches. It’s currently being tested with a very small percentage of people.”

The feature works by creating a post on a users News Feed that shows which friends mentioned the same topic, links to that topics Facebook page, and then shows the continued conversation.

Photo Credit: Mashable

So what does this mean for Facebook? Is it something people are going to be interested in or does it just add more to the creepiness factor of knowing everything your friends are doing, saying, thinking, etc.?

Check out “Facebook ‘Mentions’ Feature Shows What Friends Are Talking About”

If you’re like me you probably check your Twitter almost every time you log onto the Internet. So it is no surprise that yesterday morning as I was waiting for class to begin I visited Twitter. What was a surprise was the fact that I could not view anyone’s tweets without a confusing popup showing up on my screen and my Twitter began auto-retweeting a user I had never heard of. I was at first confused but then news came out that someone had hacked Twitter and was causing all of these problems.

Two people are attempting to take credit of the social media sites security flaw. Pierce Delphin, a 17 year old from Australia, and Masato Kinugawa, a Japanese developer, are the two to blame. Delphin says he released the flaw by tweeting a code that caused the pop-ups to appear on users screens. Delphin states that he did it just “to see if it could be done [and that he] had no idea it was going to take off how it did.” Delphin hopes he can avoid getting punishment but exposing a security flaw could get him into trouble.

It seems that Delphin was not alone in creating the security flaw. Japanese developer Madato Kinugawa is also being blamed for the Twitter flaw. It is believed that Delphin created the code and Kinugawa modified it. Kinugawa used the modification to not only expose Twitter’s security flaw but to also make his tweets colored.

Within hours of the security flaws discovery Twitter had patched the problem. But this brings questions to all Twitter users. How safe is Twitter and how can they ensure that their page has enough security so this does not happen again?

Although the code affected thousands of Twitter users, it did not affect Twitter use on mobile applications, so users with smart phones were free to tweet away.

Photo Source – TechXter