Barack Book

Lawrence Lessig suggests that the social media world has made more information available and google can generate the hits on the information so fast. He further suggests that it make us behave out of control. This perception of out control will lead someone in the republican party to stand up and suggest policing the internet. They will try and argue and persuade the negative aspects of something they don't know and understand.

Last week, when we ere signing up for new social media sites - it felt like more of my information was out there. But the net must remain neutral. People must exercise caution when using the internet and we must all self-regulate. The internet has become a beautiful reservoir of information and I wouldn't want some knee jerk Senator form Alabama to try and regulate the net when they don't know what they are regulating. They want to bring attention to an issue that doesn't need that kind of attention.

iPad...coming to a virtual world near you

I am so excited for the iPad. I made the switch over to a Mac after the 1st semester of bschool when my pc became a freakshow and died. I love the Mac. Its a whole new computer experience with more ease, creativity, and horsepower. So, with the revelation of the iPad - I had to tune into Steve Jobs' keynote address. He talked about new more virtual experience ahead of us. As he showed how it would be like holding the internet in your hands while using on the iPad - It go so excited because I knew that browsing had changed.

Who knew that it could be the gateway to the virtual world. I immediately that thought what else can it do and are eagerly await my own iPad. I'm excited to see where the future past social media is in virtual worlds like second life.

Twitter...will you marry me?

I went to NYC with AU on a Marketing Trip to look at companies. The first night we met career consultant and author @lindseypollack who talked about how critical social media marketing has become in companies. She suggested we can use social media to reach out to companies for a job as well.

She gives an example. Students were going to visit the Good Morning America television set. She suggested that the students tweet about being there and mention @gma they'll most likely get a response. It was that moment I became obsessed with twitter. Being able to reach out to people who were once out of reach. Its so fun to get retweeted and and mention @MeeraManek

Now on the subject of Linkeden. I don't use it as much. I think I've completed 80% of my profile for awhile now. But, I'm to open to the experience because this is getting creative with the networking.

Who has better cell phone coverage...India?

With over 1.1 Billion people, in India it is survival of the fittest. And to survive, you need a mobile. Especially, the rural parts of India.

While I am Indian, I definitely am an American when I travel to India. I can tell you first hand that mobile phones are very much in the rural parts...they are everywhere. The rural parts of India are still very backwards relative to its big cities.

Donkeys are pulling wooden carts of crop. Water is collected at a community well. The power goes out at various times to conserve the limited energy. Roads are still mud and rock. India's rural community lives in antiquated times so when you see everyone with cells phones...you can't help but chuckle.

It's like they decided they couldn't embrace all technology so they would embrace the one that could help them make the most money. The first time I heard the term SMS (short message service) was in India. I couldn't believe how they much they had adopted mobile technology.

Even though parts of India are ass backwards, its refreshing to see technology being adopted this way in this country.

In contrast, the US is getting excited about such a technology that pinpoints your friend's exact location. While I get excited that I can find the closest CVS in walking distance to me, it makes me nervous to think that you can "cyberstalk" your friends.

I can just picture it now...wife checking where politician husband really is or ex-boyfriend sees that that you are at the local starbucks and walks in on you having an interview.

This is bad news. Social Media does bring out the stalker tendencies in all of us. Having the ability to actually stalk with the help of the Helio and of mobile social networking...um scary...the potential for damage is very scary.

Hope everyone has recovered from the cabin fever...

Apparently we are all dumb?

I'm surprised to see how many articles from various major news outlets have written about how dumb my generation is.

Who cares that 1/4 of 18-24 year olds drew a blank when they were asked about Dick Cheney. I'm sure they were blocking painful memories of their formidable years. We should all attempt to forget about him.

I take offense that we measure the quality of our generation based on these surveys. There are many questions that if asked, I'm sure we could answer and prove otherwise.

With technology taking over everything, we are forced to adapt to the trends. Otherwise we loose out. There are a lot of things that our generation understands about technology that makes us smarter than other generations.

We are in fact writing our history.

I do agree, that our brains are changing as a result of technology. It is much harder for me to read a text book or a series of cases. But, it's much easier for me to do the homework for this class because it involves the internet technology. Something I'm using a whole lot during the day. I do have to force myself to read but its totally refreshing when I do.

I do find it atrocious that this fact below might be true. Even after students come to Washington DC and walk through the American History museum they don't know this. Clearly we are skipping huge sections of our history book or class if this is true.

"Two thirds of high-school seniors in 2006 couldn't explain an old photo of a sign over a theater door reading COLORED ENTRANCE"

Blogging is a Contact Sport!

Hey Big Bad Corporation...your blog sucks! You think you know how to do everything but guess what you don't.

You're not on top of this social media stuff...this social media

hype and it's killing you.

All the traditional methods of marketing that you knew to work are being challenged by something crazy called Twitter.

You've never been one to talk to your customers.

Guess What?! Your customers are already talking about you.

Here are 3 Ways to Improve Your Corporate Blog:

1. You need to be Committed to your Blog.

The people that buy your product want to know that you are there behind your blog listening to their comments.

2. You are not Engaging.

Your blog is supposed to be having a conversation with the reader and it's not.

3. You sound like a Corporation.

Main Street hates Wall Street. People want to be talking to another person rather than a machine. You must personalize your brand.

Let me give you one more reason. I was Tweeting like crazy about the Grammys.

And, I found myself in tons of back channel conversations.

By the thousands, people were tweeting about the artists and performances at the #grammys. It was fun!

The point is that people are talking. And, they are talking about everything. Which means they are talking about you.

They are talking about your brand. And, they are talking about their experience with your brand.

If you want to keep up, you better start listening and start engaging.

Oh and you can follow me on Twitter @MeeraManek

Thanks.

Neighborhood Watching

Jeff Howe of Wired magazine examines whether crowdsourcing is evil. I’m just trying to understand what crowdsourcing is and how it is being used.

Crowdsourcing involves submitting work traditionally completed by an employee or contractor but instead is offered to a group of people or community. Utilizing Web 2.0 differently, business, organizations, authors, and journalists have been making crowdsourcing trendy.

Sure, it makes complete sense that the business can turn to this form of product creation especially in a social networking world where everyone is an expert. People are competing in this weak economy to find innovative ways to cut expenses in their cost structure and this is one way to do it. I’m a huge fan of twitter and I can see an underlying sense of crowdsourcing there where celebrities ask fans for opinions about their next venture or product.

I have a friend who runs an editing company (www.papercheck.com) and his editors are all over the nation. He doesn’t need anyone in his office. The editors just have to pass a grammar test and then they can choose which hours they work. They are connected through the Facebook and Twitter communities and have positive results. When I think of crowdsourcing, I think if my friends’s paper editing company.

Crowdsourcing is in its infancy and this use of web 2.0 should be given more time to develop before judging it as evil. The only real issue I have with crowdsourcing is it name. Can we call it something else? I'm always tempted to call is crowdscoring when I read crowdsourcing. Let’s call it something else.... perhaps neighborhood watching.

What's your Jersey Shore name?

We are growing into a freakish online culture where we need to know what our networks of friends are doing and saying at every moment all day long. You check your Facebook page as soon as the contact lenses are in and I'm sure you've all heard the term "Facebook stalker?!"

In order to stay on top of the social networking frenzy, Mark Zuckerberg posted a Facebook blog demonstrating that Facebook understands these social networks by coining the term "social graph." This term represents the understanding that connections already exist in the in world be them friends, companies, or interest groups and these connections can be mapped. Facebook hopes that social graphing allows the Facebook user to access those connections more easily and feel empowered by the ability to connect to connections perviously held as unapproachable.

While sites like Facebook continue to feed the hungry bear of social networking, they will be pressed to research, test, discover, and unearth what runs the social graphing machine.

I'll take this time to introduce them to Benjamin Waber, invader of privacy and MIT PhD student that studies the way groups interact socially called "reality mining." Waber and his team "track people people using location-aware devices like mobile phones or electronic badges." This data has been used to understand how communication and networking really function in the work place.

The next place Waber can naturally take his research is on-line and with Facebook.

Tracking and mapping us by following our cell phones is just a little frightening when it comes to the impact this has on our privacy. Waber tracked 100 MIT student using their cell phones and "deduced likely future meetings with impressive accuracy."

This just begs me to ask - how badly do we need to connect with each other? People following our every move and trying to determine how we interact just to improve forums like Facebook. I feel like we are already communicating at an intrusive level - I mean how many of us have unfortunately already had our high school reunions on Facebook.

Just knowing that the social networking phenomena is perceived as continuing to grow is going to demand a deeper understanding of social connections and the need to connect. I just worry about how much more our privacy needs to be poked and prodded in order to feed the half awake social networking giant.

It is going to be stupendous to see this idea of Web 2.0 and social networking evolve because just seeing it come this far has been freakishly cool. I just hope that it's direction and understanding does not involve grave intrusions of privacy only for the government to use it against us and handicap us of our own thinking like they have with everything else.

Very 1st Post

Greetings!

I'm a second year MBA student at American University and this is the very 1st post for a class in social networking. As my classmate says, this could be the beginning of fruitful discovery!


On my honor, all posts on this blog are my own.