What can I say? This growing world of connectivity in every aspect of its word has created a vast increase in the leak of information available to us as an individual. We cannot begin to understand how much data is uploaded everyday into the web in order for us as users to be able to read, share and review the different qualitative and quantitive values that we have been able to get our hooks on, being able to learn and develop ourselves intellectually and physically as you can get everything you want to know on it.

Twitter is one of the forms of information sharing that many web users and companies have learned to use in order to send out their information quickly and received short and quickly in a one in all method of different sources. With Twitter it has given people the opportunity to bulk up information from a bunch of different social figures, newspapers, intellectuals, gamers, athletes, chefs etc. there is a vast amount of information that has been given by the network, where you just have to be following the group in order to be informed by them. It is a package of a vast variety of different websites and groups that you can just follow and you will receive all the information you would want in one online software.

All these microblogging and social networking websites are all based on a double-edged sword basis. These companies and websites have created the amazing opportunity of unbiased and immense amount of different information for everything you want. You can become and expert on almost anything and be constantly updated everyday about everything that happens around the world. You get various amounts of information of different bias opinions for different types of news in order to get yourself the most unbiased conclusion for yourself, it enables the elimination of censorship on almost all types of information. There will always be some sort of filtering, but in short, the amount ultimately given to you is drastically reduced, given that you are researching from various sources; twitter makes it much easier as well to follow these kinds of information.

The downside of these inadequate factors is the abusive privacy invasion in our new world era. There is so much hacking produced through the web, that if your good enough, you can access almost anyone on the web. Also social behavior between people through social networking and online communication has hindered a vast majority of the population of how to communicate themselves properly in real life. The quantity of people hiding behind their screens not even communicating face to face is unimaginable and it scares me to know that so many of us do not even have the courage anymore to talk to people in that manner.

Twitter just like Facebook, Flickr, Youtube or any other social network, has helped us communicate globally our ideas and made it easier for people to share information, and expose themselves to the rest of world. The point where you have to be able to draw the line is the abuse of these networks and control yourself to use the web and these contents of information to your benefit and not give up your life on the web with them or abusing other users through the web. Consideration and moderation has to be the core ideologies, do not overdo the monsters.


Christopher Tombrink

Twitter http://twitter.com/
that growing social network of 1 liners on user's lives (whether you want to know or not!!) With celebrities such as Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher having an extremely public life online with their twitter diatribe between each other or Lilly Allen tweeting that shes giving up touring (thank goodness i hear you say!)Britney Spears twittering about her child being sick (i mean do we really need to know all this!) and is it really them tweeting? With the explosion of social media so too the explosion of weird and wonderful social media jobs. Britney Spears tweeter anybody? !!
Though of course there should be some kind of rule book or social etiquete to follow as i have learned, the new friend that tweets to you 20 times a day is more often than not going to seriously annoy rather than be a pleasurable experience.! A tweet a day people! than if a twitter convo. starts great but please don't keep tweeting all day and all night especially when you have nothing to say! (you know who you are mr joke a minite!!) Though its so very easy to unfollow somebody just as it is easy to follow them.
Once you get used to the limit of 140 charecters within your tweet you realise that life becomes faster, shorter, sweeter. I have been keeping upto date on all things election via Twitter and gauging what others think about anything at all really.

Janine Chave :)

Welcome to the Twitter world

Maybe is just me, but what is happening nowadays is something really strange for me.
We are living in really weird age of the time, an age where real life and social-communication networks are mixing together; always more people subscribe day by day in different social network as facebook or microblog as Twitter, and what is really happening is that people start a new life on the web, creating a profile and starting making friends and interacting with them, sharing discussions and communicate all day long, asking questions and even working.

My general opinion about this all world of social networks and interactive communication is a double face opinion; on one side I found it as an incredible opportunity and on the other side I just see it as a threat.

People in all the world is getting near to eachothers and more social active thanks to web communication, they are receiving and sending informations all the time, gaining knowledge and more social responsible. On the other hand, that I think is more important, they are creating their virtual reality, forgetting about the real life, and so you start seeing young generation all day in front of computer chatting and surfing the web, spending hours watching a screen and forgetting about the real world out of their home’s wall, where they really learn about life, and they interact face to face with people.

What i’m saing is that people sholud really think carefully about the social network use; is a big weapon if there is a smart and responsible mind behind.
The problem is not about Facebook, Twitter or other blog but just of the people’s use, people have to become more aware about the web communication, I ll continue looking at it as an incredible opportunity for a prosperous future of the human beings.

Gregorio Marangon

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE IN TWITTER:

My first impression of Twitter is that its really easy to use, when you are subscribing you’re followed step by step by the introduction program , which explain perfectly what you can do on this platform: how to follow the arguments in which you’re interested (dived in different categories), how to find your friends.
When you twitter account is active, you are on your profile and you can choose to follow someone or something.
If I had understand the way it works its more or less like this: when you send a message (Tweet), the notification of your Tweet is sent to your followers page. The followers who received the tweet have two options: they can answer to your message or they can share it with their followers (Retweet)
You have a settings page, where you can change the settings of your tweets, profile, template ecc.. there is also a tool for use twitter on your mobile!

Lorenzo,

Analysis of MIT YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/MIT#p/a

A faculty committee of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) proposed in 2000 to launch a program called “Open Course Ware” (OCW); the idea was to publish online MIT teaching materials and course content, and make it widely available to everyone for free.

With the help of some benefit foundation, MIT started its OCW program which had a big success: just in the following four years since the launch of the operation, the OCW materials have been accessed by 35 millions individuals from more than 220 different countries.

There are also more than 100 mirror site, locally hosted version of the OCW site, settled in low-bandwidth areas, especially in South Africa, were people have problems to found money for instruction.

The channel contains simulation, animation and videos of classroom lessons, in total there are 1800 different courses available. Other organization have worked for translate courses in other language, including Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese and Thai.

This open sharing initiative became an example and a model for other research institute, today there are more than 250 universities around the world who are doing their personal open course ware.

In the left column of the page we can find information about the website and the project itself. I think that it’s a very important social initiative, that’s going to have a big impact on the world of information and knowledge, empowering minds of thousands of people.

Lorenzo Rosso

Logic Pro is a program used by music programmers, musicians, technicians, any person in the music industry that needs to produce, record, master or just mess around to create the beautiful nature of this art that surrounds us everyday.

In order to better understand the topic here you need to understand why this program exists and why this is being written. I recently started myself learning how to use Logic Pro and tried to understand how to use the program, fortunately for me I sort of figured out the program in its basics, but I wanted to know more, so I went on a hunt to find out the secrets and undiscovered natures of this software. E.g.

In an almost failed attempt to find something, five minutes before going to sleep a friend hooks me up on Facebook with a guy from youtube, who had been doing these tutorials for over 3 years now. The man’s gateway name is ‘sflogicninja’, an absolute genius, probably not the best logic music composer but he knows exactly how to explain in a step by step story mode how to use the program, from simply using the loops and samples you are given with the program to designing and creating your own music, through phasers, mastering, producing, cutting, editing, tapping, mixing, everything you need as a musician will be on your Logic Pro.

His website http://www.youtube.com/user/SFLogicNinja#p/f/92/Ze01PixFc0I very simple, made through youtube but is very well organized, you just pop into uploads and look for what you need, you’ll definitely find it in there and if not he has his favorites where he mainly suggests about other tutorials that other users have been creating recommended by him.



I strongly recommend any user of this program or anyone that is interested to learn it, to settle in and listen to some of the things he has to say to us, because it really will improve the amount of effort you have to try yourself to use the program, saving you time in the future so you can directly get into squeezing the juice out of it from the beginning.

The web 2.0 has given us so much in these past few years, I recommend for any user of the internet to take advantage of it. You can pretty much get professional help for free if you look for it right, it is just a matter of trial and error with different users showcasing their ideas, and then taking the best out of each. This gives you variety and you will quickly learn that you are learning how to do things at least twice as fast compared to if you were to do it by yourself; use the beauty of this amazing development in our continuous growth as a society as it will maintain you in front of everything you wish to be of, as this hard and crazy world continues to grow.


Christopher Tombrink

Analysis of a YOUTUBE channel


Personal Channel : www.youtube.com/user/cveitch

The Channel that I choose to analyze is a personal Youtube channel created by Cveitch, real name Charles Torres Veitch, a young independent guy from U.K.

The main porpuse of his channel is to awake people minds and give explanations about what is really happening in our world, all the things that medias and television don’t wanna you to know and reporting, with his camera, real actions on the streets; actions like trying to interact with Police, in order to create a better realtionship between people and force Police ( something that nowadays is missing ), explaining how they should be always protecting the people and not the company or corporation interests.

What Charles is doing is something really actual and really interesting, we are in a era where people is beacoming more conscious about the world and wants to know what’s really going on outside our home’s walls.

Looking into his profile we discover that his channel has 2.268.978 total views, since 2006 when the channel was created, and has 15.582 subscribers. Maybe is not so much people but the difficulties of undertstanding of the topics and also the poeple ignorance make his channel really hard to follow and to get know to the people.

Videos are update almost everyday, 143 amateur videos involving him and action around U.K., subscribers are really actives in responding, asking questions and sending feedbacks-comments to Charles that is answering properly to almost any comments, creating a solid and good relationships with them, creating real group discussions on every topic.My personal opinion is that Charles is doing a really good job with the channel, he is creating something similar to Citizen Journalism, but real news, not the filtered ones of the tv.

Nowadays Web Communication is offering incredible opportunities to speak to the world and spread your opinions to anyone; in time like these, I see, still far away, a possibility of freedom of speech.

Gregorio Marangon

Today am going to be writing about that great British institution the BBC and their fabulous youtube channel (BBCWorldwide)

http://www.youtube.com/user/bbcworldwide?blend=3&ob=4

The channel itself has been customized with the BBC corporate colours. Their profile is nicely informative giving you figures rangeing from how many people have viewed their channel, when they joined, when they last signed in, as well as the number of current subscribers.

It offers links for further info about them too

http://www.youtube.com/group/BBCWorldwideFAQs

as well as links to popular and/or long running programs on the BBC such as Top Gear

http://www.youtube.com/topgear

">

and Eastenders

http://www.youtube.com/EastEnders

which both have their own channel on youtube.

You can catch clips of some of the tv greats that have grown up with in the UK, old and current. They word it on their channel 'the best of british TV' well I couldn't agree more. This is what I have been paying my TV licence for all these years! Offering such personnal favourites as Top Gear, Doctor Who (old.... even before my time - exterminate, exterminate!!
...and new) The great documentary and plant and wild life expert David Attenborough




mesmorizing documentaries, shot amazingly, & informative too. Also the collection of some of the best celebrity interviews from well respected host Parkinson (or Parkie to his friends) who has been interviewing people since well before I was born. One of his all time classics was the early 1970's-1980's interview with mohammed Ali (1 of the many interviews he has had with him over the years) …

Another favourite of mine from the BBC has to be the Catherine Tate show hope you enjoy as much as me :D ...........

Janine Chave ;D

One of the most exciting movies of recent times didn’t limit their marketing to traditional channels and created through Facebook a big part of their success. They made simple and fun apps in order for the anyone to have fun on them. Of course you won’t let your child play around with hangover games, but that is because they are not the target.

Through its quick plunge into this method they have reached a massive audience quickly and effectively, pretty much no costs, and the apps and page layout are simple but has a quick catch and grasp to it.

At the moment Facebook is at a constant switcheroo between first and second place of being the most used webpage in the world www.facebook.com.

It doesn’t matter who the competition for the top is although Google is the unerring competitor, but it is not a social network, so google won’t really be stealing anything from Facebook as they are in different market segments on the web

Brand awareness, Brand Identity, loyalty, strength and the proper image can be created for your company to lead you straight to the top. The Hangover launched its Facebook page concurrently with their movie as it was released to the public in June 2009. This helped the movie by a vast amount to create more noise and awareness of its existence and its reason for the movie to be watched.

Fun little applications can be used on their webpage to identify yourself more with the characters of the movie and the movie itself. The first one being the 'Photo App' http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/thehangover?v=app_101134924306&ref=ts

This gets your picture taken the way it was done in the movie as well, you can also showcase your hangover pictures people have taken of you to share your experiences with other people. Just check out the application yourself and have fun playing with it.

The other application that this webpage offers is another that shares wall updates for you to use of the hangover movie 'My Hangover' http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/thehangover?v=app_76719182310&ref=ts

The page has almost three million fans who are engaged in continuous messaging and sharing of experiences, and the experience of the hangover has continued in all people taking part in the webpages walls, continuous sharing of experiences and images and the movie lives even months after its release and hopefully for longer to come.

Christopher Tombrink

EATALY
Eataly is a food chain with a big enogastronomic market, specialized in typical and quality product.
Founded few years ago by Oscar Farinetti the company had a big success in Italy in a short time,
so he decided to expand his activity abroad, infact Eataly opened in Tokyo and New York.

Eataly’s face book page is very active and important:
They have more than 7000 fans, and a lot of this users are active on the page: they follow the posts and leave comments.
The page is everyday updated: you can see the special chef menu for the dinner, which is different everyday
The company use the face book page to made advertising: on the wall you can find posts and comments about Eataly leaved by famous people.
Eataly use fb to invite fans to the special events that are organized
There is a RSS/Blog page where you can find pictures and videos of past events and also Eataly's social activity in collaboration with foundation to promote public good.

Lorenzo Rosso

Richard Branson


Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British industrialist , best known for his Virgin brand of over 360 companies.
He is the 261st richest person in the world according to Forbes' 2009 with an estimated net worth of approximately £1.5 billion (US$2.5 billion).

With 50,000 fans, He is for sure a celebrity on the net and his updates,more than 30 during one day, have more than 200 comments each.
His updates are about Business, Music, Record, Humanitarian Activities and Initiatives, World record attempts, Television and all the aspects that his industries made. There are the videos and conferences, the events, the notes.
Everyday He makes more and more fans and interact conversations and feedbacks with them, this how is creating relations with potential or actual costumers increasing their loyalty.

Of course behind all this, there is the dark side of the thing. The Page, probably managed by someone else, or just another Virgin Office task, and the porpuse of it is an all world of promotion and advertising, for himself and for his brands.

Anyway, Richard is doing the right thing to do in these days, Facebook and the others social networks are becoming a real way of using the web for making advertising and marketing.

Nowadays for example, an artist can just create a profile and pubblish his pieces of works on his Facebook Page, adds some friends and people that share the same interests, connect himself to the world, and maybe creating a new business or
receveing a job offert.

Facebook with a wise use can be usefull and profitable.

Marangon Gregorio

Facebook that great monster of the 20th century. Not heard of it? Where have you been man? mars?!
A great social commmunication platform and a great way of creating the personality that you want surrounding your brand to better help the sucess of that brands image.
I wanted to look at some brands that have utilised FB to its full potential.There are so many out there that i decided to focus on products that i actually like myself. Easy-peasy you might think but i didnt want to look at just the brands i liked and have done with it i also wanted to show you brands that others have liked too.
A particular favourite of mine from the UK is Marmite. Which has some 400 fan pages.
The love party has some 272,297 fans (so am not the only one after all!) who post onto the wall all manner of marmite related recipes and tips. With its sister page the Marmite hate Party containing some 12,481 fans which means all consummers can get involved, lover's and hater's!
Also the MARMITE page which has some 5,934 fans which contains such life changing questions as 'Why was Marmite invented?' which got some 83 reactional answers on their wall.
Most play with the slogan (archaic & very well known in UK to say the least!) 'you either love it or hate it!' Though many pages encouraged you to know about new and emerging Marmite products becoming available such as Marmite cereal bars being trialed at the moment which has a fan base of over 5,056 fans. A really great way to test the waters of a new product launch off the back of an already successful brand in the form of a product line extention.
Another brand i love which is familiar to any UK based person is Heinz baked beans
which when you look at it is not the huge success that the Marmite pages are far from it! It just didnt have the right kind of buzz surrounding it with little being said and only negative brand personality ( or just a good test to see how hated your product is in the market or how much that slogan can be true?). With just over 300 fans it seemed a bit of a disappointment. It had a nasty vibe to its list of fan pages too with 1 fan page declaring a forceful message of 'it has to be heinz' (or else!!) and the other (somewhat negative) pages available such as 'Branston how ever much you try you will never be better than Heinz' (branston having launched tinned beans as part of their range) an obvious competitor and with a staggering 4 fans the numbers speak for themselves. Don't slate your competitors its not cool and intelligent consumers can see right through it!

JAhneen Chave :)

Blogging isn’t just for individuals and that’s a known fact. Some of the most popular blogs are commercial blogs that utilize their reach to promote their products and business. Blogging has emerged as one of the best marketing tool on the web. From the ease of creating to the convenience of interacting with possible customers and clients, blogging has given a new way for the marketers to do what they do – Promote! Today there are some hundred thousand blogs created everyday, most of them die and some succeed. However, today we are going to focus on the business aspect of blog and how we can actually use it to promote our services and business. If you know how to maximize marketing opportunities through your blog, it can be one of the best marketing tool you will be hiding in your tool box.


The Importance of Blogs in a Business.


You Have Your Lead on Hand

Your readers are your lead. I say that because you already have a loyal fan base that trust you and are willing to take and apply your suggestions, that is why they subscribed to your blogs. Each time you launch a new business or service, your blog can act as that medium to reach to your leads. And I can almost guarantee that if you have set yourself as a reputable person and have been active with your readers, at least 85% of your lead will turn into customers without a problem. However, it truly depends on what you are offering as well. If you are running a tech blog and are trying to sell cruise tickets, that might be a problem but other than that, you should be able to convert your readers into customers.

Blog Is Your Press

Using a good press release service can cost you hundreds and thousands of dollars. Why not use your blog as your press. How do you think most popular bloggers market their product when they launch a new e book or a plugin/software? They use their own blog to make it public and they do this because they know their blog has the most qualified leads for their products. Press release still might be a good idea, but having a blog certainly reduces the needs of it. Free advertising to the most qualified leads – now that’s marketing at its best and your blog helps you do that.



Helps You Increase Your Visibility

This is one of the most important reason as to why a blog can serve as the best marketing tool for your business. When you have a blog you are required to create content and update regularly with information. Quality content is usually linked by other bloggers. Think of a designer who launches a new theme and if it’s good it will be linked by most bloggers and will be the talk of town. This helps you gain better placement on search engines and increases your visibility. Also most of the times blogs are linked in a way such that popular ideas and products can go viral without any extra effort.



Gives Your Business a Life

If you go to a store and find two salesman – one is your friend and the other one a stranger. Who would you buy it from? Obviously your friend. The reason is simple – people like to buy products and services from people they know. If you regularly participate and interact with your readers, you will be able to develop a relationship with your readers. This gives your business life. When potential clients and customers deal with businesses they would like to know who is behind the product and or services they are buying from. If you are able to have a healthy relationship with your readers, it gives your business a face. When you promote your business, people know they are dealing with someone they know and might have been in touch personally via email and other forms of communication. This is a huge benefit.



Immediate Feedback

The other important feature of blog is that it allows you to receive instant feedback and reviews on your products or your business. This rapid, instant feedback will help you tweak and respond better to the market you are trying to target. Once again, remember your readers are your best lead. Their feedback is extremely important. With a blog you can get feedbacks within minutes after publishing a post on a recent product launch, you can adjust your campaign or make necessary changes as suggested by the crowd you are trying to promote your product to.

All in all you can see the vitality a blog can give to your upcoming or already running business, if you think you are successful now, create a blog and see what happens. I assure you, follow these steps correctly and you will be able to tweak your Business around to make it what it really wants to be and what you want it to be. New ways of communication are always crucial and have to be imminent occurrences because a vast percentage of your successful businesses today are out there, and if your not, your already at a disadvantage.


Christopher Tombrink

NAME: sportblog71.blogspot.com
LENGUAGE: Italian
The principal theme of the blog is sport, expecially soccer, which is very popular in Italy. In the central column we can find articles and pictures about soccer, cycling, motor biking ecc.. (with related links)
In the left column we can find:
• Links to friends blogs
• Transfer Market news
• Latest news by “corriere della sera” a very popular newspaper in Italy
• Personal information
• Archive page
The blog is well positioned in google (first page), which is also added like search engine for the blog.
The blog is also powered by technorati (external link).
The advertising side in powered by Google Ad sense, there is also one text link ads.
The tone is friendly and easy going, but also very precise about sports info. There aren’t personal comments or opinions about sports activity, just the latest news from sport world.
The Blog is not updated, the last update is two years ago.

Coca-Cola Conversations - http://www.coca-colaconversations.com/

Founded by Phil Mooney, historian / archivist for the Coca-Cola Company for the last 30 years, this blog is the classical example of a Corporate Blog; created in order to promote a two way communication with the costumers, receiving feedbacks from them, and incresing the Brand Image and Communication.
This Blog presents itself as a Personal Blog, with a real person behind, but is not; behind there is the Company; in this way the Coca-Cola Company is able to investigate the costumers needs and promotes its brand all over the world.

The Blog offers a big variety of feautures :

The Video Player where you can find all the advertisiments and the interview to actors and employees.

The Widgets offering mini web application that you can download and use on your personal applications as personal web-sites or My space.

The Topics where all the different post are organize in different section as Art, History, Pop Art, Sports, Food and Drink, C.C Community and C.C Around the world.

The Corporate Blogs are smart tools available that allow the Companies to investigate the market, understand the costumers and promote the Coca-Cola Brand in all the word; this Blog has thousands of visits daily, with hundreds of comments per day.
Blogging is a very important means of communication for the corporates or business either internally or externally.
Internally blogs becomes a substantial tool to enhance communication and culture within the corporation. People share their views about their work and experience which provides a learning to the other employees as well.

Externally, blogs become an eminent oppurtunity to communicate with their clients and adds to their marketing, branding and public relations purposes. Blogs proof to be an official platform where business can display official information like company news, new product launch etc. Blogs have proved to be a very beneficial tool for large number of start ups throughout the globe in various fields of businesses.


Marangon Gregorio

With the success of web 2.0 and the huge availability of information at our fingertips now more than ever the truth is out their, its accessable, you just have to find it.

I am going to show you some of the more interesting journalistic blogsites that i have stumbled across whilst cyber-traveling, it seems that anyone with a talent for writing can now be a journalist or cyber-journalist as we now know them as.

A really great female blogger who writes about woman and fashion for the daily mail newspaper in the UK. Is a certain Liz Jones. Though some what neurotic in her opinions you have to admit she writes really well.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/jonesblog/

In fact the daily mail know very well their target audience's and have a blog which fits that profile from sports blogs to the yummy mummy blog a great 1 for mums (first time or other)

The best Sports blog that i came across was
http://www.fatcyclist.com/
Which humanizes the very real perception of sports to those who were not born with a javelin in one hand and passing the batton to the european team in the other. It also won top weblog award in 2008.

I also love the writing genious of the lifehacker team
http://lifehacker.com/
Not sure if these guys count as journalists though i can't help but think isnt everyone a journalist when they enter into the realms of the Bloesphere?

Jahneen Chave :)

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick	-->	Google AdSense
Ofoto	-->	Flickr
Akamai	-->	BitTorrent
mp3.com	-->	Napster
Britannica Online	-->	Wikipedia
personal websites	-->	blogging
evite	-->	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	-->	search engine optimization
page views	-->	cost per click
screen scraping	-->	web services
publishing	-->	participation
content management systems	-->	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	-->	tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness	-->	syndication