Overcoming Language Barriers

Chris de Wolfe, the co-founder of My space announced their launching of a Korean language site. My space representatives believe that the popular hangout language website will be a success in South Korea. The site will include a "Minilog" which is a place were the youth of South Korea can share their feeling and thoughts.On of the representatives stated "The MySpace site will be primarily in Korean, though users can easily switch the interface to another language. Information written on the personal profile pages, however, won't be automatically translated". The facebook website is also breaking barriers by incorporating a facebook in spanish. I think that breaking language barriers is a great idea, this way social media becomes more global and everybody can be a part of it. However, I think that the communication between different languages will probably be very difficult, but the whole idea is to create communication and for everybody to be part of it. Social media outlets are so important today and it is crucial for them to exist in other cultures and languages.http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/15/south.korea.myspace.ap/index.html

Facebook News Feed on Wedding Ring

On monday we talked about the new Facebook news feed that was installed during 2007. Of course it's fun to see what your friends are writing among each other and know who's friends with who now. However, it is not fun when you buy an engagement ring and all your friends including your bride to be finds out about it. This is what happened to a guy who bought the engagement ring on overstock.com and a couple of hours later his buddies were calling him to congratulate him. I think this has gone to far on the part of Facebook, their is a privacy section on the website for a reason and I think that your personal purchases should be kept private as well. In class we learned that facebook did offer an apology and some of the news feed related to online purchases were removed. I think that this is just the beginning of other intrusions of privacy coming in our direction, with new technology and websites such as facebook their is more ground for marketers and advertising agencies to reach us and know more information about our private lives. Although I am a pr and advertising major and I want to know my costumer more at the same time I want to respect their personal life and I don't want them to feel intruded by our company or product. Facebook made a mistake and apologized, but this leads me to believe that their will be more upcoming surprising news feeds.

Baghdad Burning

I am currently taking a Gender and Globalization class here at St. Edward's. One of our textbooks for the class is based on the true story of an Iraqi woman who narrates her experience during the war. The name of the book is "Baghdad Burning", the interesting thing about this book and the reason why Im relating it to this class is that the book is based on the blogs she writes daily. At the beginning many people were suspicious of her blogs because she remains anonymous and her english is perfect. Her blog name is Riverbend and only her publisher knows her true identity. In her blogs she talks about the constant struggle she is currently living in her own country. She also talks about how americans and the world have a twisted notion of how Iraq really is. In her blog she says: I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night."
This book and Riverbend's blogs have taught me that your experiences can be shared with the whole world through the internet. This woman now has a book that is talked about in colleges around the nation and the information that she wants to share with us can help change a bit of the perception that people in america have of Iraq.
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Group Podcast

Our Postcast talks about the different type of podcasts that are available online. A podcast is a collection of digital media files which are distributed over the internet, often using syndication feeds, for playbacks on portable media players and computers. I think this is a great invention because you can listen to your favorite shows at your own time. Additionally, this enables you to keeps any commercials and fast forward to your favorite topics. Our duration of our Podcast is over 5 minutes, its very informative and it teaches the public about what a podcast is all about. With the addition of special sound effects we made this into a very interesting clip.

Blocking Youtube!

Pakistan has just been added to the list of countries that have blocked Youtube access. Some of these countries are Brazil, China, Iran, Morocco, Myanmar, Syria and Thailand. In Pakistan, there are people who are opposed to the banning of Youtube, and in the other hand "There are others who say that YouTube is full of videos... that are damaging to the character of children." I mean sure not all the videos on Youtube are great, but as we have learned these types of websites have become a form of social media in which people communicate. People's videos have created firecrakers and even new ideas for huge companies such as Apple.

All of the countries mentioned before have concluded that Youtube is immoral, embarrasing to well known figure, and in the case of Pakistan some videos offend Islam.

As a New Influencer and a fan of Youtube, I think that the internet and these websites are a form of self expression. Governmental policies against internet sites can't take over in this manner, this sites are a source of communication for the public, if somebody feels offended because of a particular video, than they should deal witht he specific person posting this kind of information. Nonetheless, the problem here is that the Pakistani government is depriving its people of free speech. I just know that if they would start banning internet sites in my country because of religious reasons...I would be very mad!

The New Influencers - Ch. 6

The section on Girl Power and AskPatty.com was the most interesting to me in this chapter. I had no idea that women buy more than half the new cars in the U.S. and influence 85 percent of the new auto and truck purchases. I started thinking and it kinda makes sense because when your a married man and your looking for a car you ultimately listen to your wifes and opinion and the kids sefety. Anyways, I think that this website was very innovating and smart, specially because its a site for women consumers. AskPatty.com is a place where women can log on and ask, comment, and give their liberated opinions on products they want to purchase or have purchase in the past. Additionally I think this changes the concept that many men have of women as bad drivers. The textbook says "AskPatty's blog celebrates women. Its articles not only offer advice but showcase the accomplishments of female drivers..."
Blogs like AskPatty not only establishes women as a powerful consumer, but it gives us a voice as well.

JuicyCampus.com...Back to Sixth Grade!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/18/juicy.website.ap/index.html

Oh my God!!! After reading this article I could only think REVENGE OF THE NERDS! I mean seriuosly are the people who came up with this website in sixth grade? I can't imagine who would take the time of day to create a website and start gossiping on other peoples business. I think we have enough scoop with celebrities such as Britney and ohhh Britney.
The article states that a student at Cornell University found on the juicycampus website a filthy passage about his sexual exploits. A transfer student had been humilated on the site with barely a week after arriving to the university. Supported by advertising and free to use by virtually anybody, JuicyCampus is a website destined and for the soul purpose of posting gossip. Some of the major threads include "campus hook-ups", "who's popular", "who's overweight","top ten freshman sluts" and even "the Jews ruin this school".
This shows you how technology and social networking can make you or break you. You can become popular by posting a funny video on youtube, and have your 5 minutes of fame. Or you can be talked about in a gossip website and have your reputation go down the drain. I still can't understand how people that you would expect to be intelligent and trying to learn something good in school would use their abilities in social networking to destroy other people. Freedom of Speech is a right in America, but everything has a limit and specially when you are using that right in order to harm other people.