Overwhelming tools

It is very easy to become overwhelmed with internet sources for PR. With all the the tools; blogging, LinkedIn, RSS feeds, Twitter, Digg, podcasts, etc., you can easily have a PR overload, which you can not keep track of.

I have learned thus far that it is best to stick to one thing and do that one thing well. The best companies that are online use minimulistic styles. Southwest, Whole Foods, and others use one tool, a blog. Fox news, Brittish Airways, and Apple use Twitter. These companies are successful online because they have kept up with these tools and used them to their benefit without becomming overwhelmed.

Web perceptions

New internet technology today is becoming more popular because it is easy to access and use. But many people's interpretation of blogs, Twitter, del.icio.us, Digg, and other sites is almost like a joke. Those who do not know the usefullness of these web tools often see them as nerdy, time consuming, and funny.

I recently told my sister about the many businesses using blogs and how useful they actually are. The first thing she said to me was "when I think of a blogger, I think of a nerdy man sitting alone blogging in his house all day". Once I began to explain more uses of blogs and stores that use them, such as Whole Foods, she decided that maybe her preception of bloggers is off.

It is hard to shake the mis-perceptions of internet-savvy users who blog, tweet, and bookmark. I recently read an interview article (http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/02/13/blogging-as-a-job-the-perceptions-of-others-convincing-those-you-love-that-you-can-be-a-problogger/) in which the author concludes that to change the "perception about blogging I think that this naturally happens over time as more and more people become familiar with blogging as a medium."

The more people begin to see their business', grocery stores', and friends' blogs, the more they will begin to accept these new web inventions. This will take time.

Blogger, or journalist?

Today journalism is much more than news papers and television media. Normal people have become a new source of news, gossip, product reports, and much more. Blogs serve as a vehicle for information sharing. Many help feed our knowledge of other people by showing real people's voices and points of view. We want to know what others think, what they are doing, and what they are buying.

Even blogs with important news, such as the whitehouse.gov blog, are topped with comments from real people. This gives us another perspective on the news. Now we can view the topic, and other's comments and opinions on the issues. It comforts us to hear what everyone else has to say. We no longer have few sources of biased media and skewed information, we have all American people as journalists.

The desire to know what others with many different viewpoints think and say should continue to influence us to follow less conventional media sources. Many online sources, including blogs, can be a good source of information and show us many views and opinions. This new media seems more honest and open. The change from completely government controlled journalism has made the move to our own hands; we can only hope for more.

Try it, its del.icio.us!

Someday I aspire to be one of the great del.icio.us users of the world. With the tips from the readings I think I just might be! These are a few of the most interesting parts:

Tags can be very helpful, but as seen since I have began using del.icio.us, they can be messy. One tip is to clean up your tags by using the ‘Settings’ section of your account. There is a page where you can delete tags, or change one tag into another. So if you have a few links tagged with the same or similar words this is where you can make that adjustment. This is helpful because many of the same tags can look messy and confusing.

The inbox is an interesting tool as well. Here you can subscribe users with similar tags, so that you can see what they have been tagging and follow their bookmarks. You can also subscribe to specific tags to get updates on when more bookmarks are tagged with those words. You can stalk other users by replacing the username in the url with theirs: http://del.icio.us/inbox/USERNAME. You are able to view their inbox and see who they are watching. This is both helpful, and a little creepy! But it can help you find more people to tag and more places to bookmark.

These tips make del.icio.us a little easier to understand, especially for those less computer savvy! Bottom line is, it takes time and devotion to figure out any new technology. Allthough it is very helpful, it is tricky and time consuming to completely understand.

Yes, I googled

Today's technological words are the subject of my interest this week. It is interesting that in the past decade we have invented numerous technological words such as, blog (and all of its uses, blogging, blogged, bloggers), google (and its uses, googled...), i-anything (iPod, iPhone, iTunes), and so many more. These words that we invent have become well known words and even daily used verbs. Even movies and TV are using these words. If we could go back in time, I would like to tell someone, "oh yeah, I just googled that today" and watch their response.

Wikipedia (which is also a new word with many uses), defines google as is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. When we use the word google, we don't think of what it really is. This is because it has become a word in our actual vocabulary; we don't need to think of its definition to use any tense of the word.

Our speech is being created and defined daily by the new technologies we receive. Language is added to in every decade and there is no doubt by the progress of our language today that we are the decade of technology. Microsoft Word must have a hard time keeping up with all the new words we are adding.

Blog improvements

After learning the basics of blogging from this class, I have worked on the SGA blog to improve its functionality. I used to write blog posts every week with very few viewers. Now I have subscribed to other University's SGA blogs, and have more viewers. I hope that by searching and subscribing to more blogs like our own I will have more views, comments, and followers.