Sunday, December 8, 2013

Blog # 4: Measuring your Twitter

Good day dear colleagues,

In this blog I want to share with you about the tools for measuring Twitter accounts.

In the class we learnt about TweetStats and about useful tool as Tweetdeck. Apart from them I would like to inform about tools related to Twitter such as Twitonomy, TweetReach and Commun.it.

 

Twitonomy: http://www.twitonomy.com/


The  Twitter-focused app, Twitonomy’s free version allows you to get a ton of detailed analytics about your Twitter accounts, with affordable premium options as well.

Twitonomy allows you to:

· Get detailed and visual analytics on anyone's tweets, retweets, replies, mentions, hashtags...
· Browse, search, filter and get insights on the people you follow and those who follow you
· Backup/export tweets, retweets, mentions and reports to Excel & PDF in just one click
· Monitor your interactions with other Twitter users: mentions, retweets, favorites...
· Get and export Search Analytics on any keywords, #hashtags, URL or @users
· Get insights on and download any user's retweeted & favorited tweets
· Browse, search, filter, sort and batch add/remove people to your lists
· Monitor tweets from your favorite users, lists and keyword searches
· Find out easily those you follow but don't follow you back
· Download your followers and following lists to Excel
· Get the list of the followers you don't follow back
· Track clicks on the links in your tweets
· Track your follower growth over time

TweetReach is a Twitter-focused app that does exactly what it sounds like: helps you “measure your Twitter campaigns so you can demonstrate real results.” Search for a hashtag, a brand name, or a URL and get in-depth social analytics around what the “reach” is for your search term-useful in identifying how far your links are spreading, or how many times your company has been mentioned and by whom.

      Commun.it http://commun.it/

This free app offers a great way to manage your Twitter community effectively and build growth over time by targeting influencers and potential customers. On the website of Commun.it you can find what kind of advantages it can give to its users:

· Identify valuable members

Commun.it categorizes people in 3 groups: Influencers, Supporters & Engaged Members. Judged by followers/following ratio, your engagement history, retweets & brand mentions.
· Prioritize your Twitter tasks
Quickly identify valuable people in your Twitter community that you were neglecting to engage because of all the noise in your stream.
· See who you should un/follow
Commun.it will suggest people for you to consider to follow and unfollow based on their influence, relevance, and engagement level.

Related useful recommendations how effectively to use the Commun.it:

10 Ways Strengthen Your Twitter Community with Commun.it: http://blog.commun.it/2013/06/twitter-crm-communit/

How To Increase Your Twitter Engagement with Commun.it and Buffer: http://blog.commun.it/2012/09/scheduling-your-engagements-in-commun-it-using-buffer/

Blog #3, EMAZE: Attractive Presentations

EMAZE: Attractive Presentations

Hello dear classmates,

in this blog I would like to share about my experience in preparation of presentation. On November 20 me, Oleg and Muhammed Emin presented our social media strategy for the Moldovian Ministry of Transportation. After receiving your evaluation I noticed that many of you liked and were amazed by our presentation, the only one small weakness was the lack of light on presentation itself. Actually, there wasn't any problem with the light of presentation. There was a mistake that we didn't switched off the lights in the classroom so the presentation will be shown more brighter.
Anyway, all we know how to use well-known the PowerPoint tool and some of us know about Prezi. However, in the web there is also comparatively new tool for presentations called Emaze, here its website http://www.emaze.com/. I prepared our presentation by using Emaze's template. 
The main advantages of an Emaze are: 1. ease in use, 2. creating in 2D and 3D formats like in our presentation. 3. storage online. 4. Emaze offers many attractive templates. 5. It allows group work and edit on presentation. 6. No need to carry and save the presentation on flash disks and so on.
Finally, if you wish to watch again our presentation you can see through this link: http://app.emaze.com/107367/sm

Thank you.

All the best,
Medgat

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Blog #5 Using WeChat in Chinese Government

More and more Chinese government agents are using WeChat as a tool to communicate with the public and provide public service. In September 2013, there are already more than 3000 governments agents open their account on WeChat, including the Supreme Court, the State Council, etc.

Compared with Weibo, WeChat provide a better way for interaction between individual and government. Besides public posts, it also provides a way for “one-to-one” communication, which cares more about privacy, accuracy and efficiency. Thus, it can provide all kinds of services that related to personal information in time, such as the process of visa application, the account of social security, etc. It can also get more information from the public, such as clues for the police. Besides, it can combine payment system to provide services such as collecting water fee, traffic fine, etc. These services are not appropriate to be provided on Twitter or Weibo, but can work well on WeChat.  

One of the most successful examples of Chinese government agent using WeChat is Guangzhou Police Department. If you follow it, you can not only get the latest police reminders in words, pictures and audio, but can also deal with some real problems by WeChat. For example, if you have a small traffic accident (no people injured), you can just take pictures of the scene, send them to the WeChat account of Guangzhou Police Department, make an appointment to deal with this accident, and then you can leave without waiting for the police to come. With this service, Guangzhoug Police improve their speed to deal with small traffic accidents from 60 minutes to less than 25 minutes, which effectively solve the problem of accident caused traffic jam.  

With such potential to development, WeChat is now contained into the evaluation system of Chinese government online performance. It is an important step of Chinese government, and we are looking forward to its development.

Blog #4 WeChat – the Next Generation of Social Media in China


If you happen to see me speaking to my phone (not talking on the phone), don’t worry that graduate school is driving me crazy. I am just using the new social media app, WeChat. It is not popular in the US now, but I believe that if it keeps its high growth rate, we may have it for Tool Presentation in Social Media class next year.

According to the definition on Wikipedia, WeChat is a mobile text and voice messaging communication service developed by Tencent in China, first released in January 2011, and now is going to international market with 15 languages. It’s something like a better WhatsApp, which provides multimedia communication with text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, photo/video sharing, location sharing, and contact information exchange. It also support social networking by having a platform called “Moment” which is similar with Instagram, and by location-based social plug-ins ("Shake", "Look Around", and "Drift Bottle") to chat with and connect with local and international WeChat users.

 

This will be a new social media power that cannot be ignored. In October 2013, WeChat have already had more than 600 million users, with more than 400 million users in China and more than 100 million users overseas. The number is amazing, for it is now close to the number of users of Twitter and Weibo (Chinese Twitter). If we define Twitter as a more “open” social media that people can express their idea to the public, WeChat will be a more “closed” social media that focus on information transferring between individuals or organizations. It is not a substitute to Twitter or Weibo, but a new way for individuals, private sectors or government to provide more targeted information and services.



More and more Chinese government agents are using WeChat as a tool to communicate with the public and provide public service, which I will tell more in my next post.

Crowdsourced constitution!


2008-2011 will be known in history as a period of great recession. Especially for the people of Iceland. After the severe economic recession thousands of people of Iceland started to be actively involved in the political (and financial) life of their country - first steps were made on November 15, 2008 when thousands of people of Iceland went to protest
Photo by:  Oliver Wilke

But protests were not the only signs of civil participation in the after-crisis Iceland. Iceland took government crowdsourcing to the next level when the people decided that they should use the collective wisdom to draft their constitution. Today Iceland has the worlds' first crowdsourced constitution.




The Facebook page for the initiative has over 6000 followers. Today it is not active, but just couple years ago the people of Iceland and the international community were witnessing  and participating in this historical event.

I would highly recommend to watch the TED talk of Gurdun Petursdottir - she describes the events of 2008-2011. Petursdottir was the chairman of constitution committee which had a task to gather information for a democratically chosen constitutional counsel. 

Facebook censorship and freedom of expression



 While the freedom of press in Turkey is  heavily  criticised, The new censorship comes from Facebook.

"Social media giant Facebook has waded into one of Europe longest-running conflicts after it banned pages belonging to Turkey's largest pro-Kurdish political party.
 
The main page of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) came down on Tuesday, October 29, following several warnings about posting content related to a Kurdish militia fighting in northern Syria and an interview with one of its deputies in which she spoke out for political autonomy of “Kurdistan.”

Facebook policy on censorship and the recognition of the Kurdish identity proved to be worse than that of Turkey,” the party said in a statement."

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Blog #2: Some findings about Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest

Interesting findings about Facebook, Twitter & Pinterest

Nowadays, we have access to many online services and even sometimes we are not able to know about all of them well. For example, I explored within this course many new tools such as Pinterest, Storify, Reddit, Amazon Mechanical Turk and so on.
In this blog I would like to present some statistical data & interesting info about some of them.
According to Facebook’s reports (3rd quarter 2013):
·   Daily active users were 728 million on average for September 2013, an increase of 25% year-over-year.
·   Monthly active users were 1.19 billion as of September 30, 2013, an increase of 18% year-over-year.
However, eMarketer released an analysis of Facebook's audience, and it turns out more than 10% of Facebook's reported monthly users are not human. Over 100 million active Facebook users are pets, objects or brands. eMarketer found that only 889.3 million of those users were humans.
Twitter stats:
  • Twitter launch date: March 21, 2006
  • Total number of registered users: about 1 billion (9/16/2013)
  • Monthly active Twitter users: 231.7 million (10/17/2013)
  • Country with the most Twitter users: China, 35,5 million (5/1/2013)
  • Total number of Tweets sent: 300 billion (10/3/2013)
  • Daily active users: 100 million (10/3/2013)
  • Average number of tweets sent per day: 500 million.
  • Percentage of Twitter users accessing via mobile: 60% (12/18/2012)
Additionally I’ve putted an infographics Business guide how to use Twitter.

Pinterest stats:
  • About Pinterest you can find useful tips
  • There are 70 million users (7/10/2013) of Pinterest.
  • 80% of users Pinterest users are women.
  • About 500,000 accounts are belongs to business.
  • Percentage of total Pinterest pins are repins: 80%.
About some tips and advices of how to use Pinterest you can see here: http://www.pinterestinsider.com/
About all other social media you can find here:

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Crowdsourcing platform in India


Crowdsourcing and open innovation concept was one of the most interesting takeaways from this course. We seem to be using the concept in India also, but perhaps were not aware of the term and maybe we do not use an online platform such as "Challenge.gov." 

The Indian Government used open innovation recently to design a distinct symbol for the Indian currency, though without such an online platform. An open contest invited ideas from the general public and almost 3000 entries were evaluated by a jury of experts to finally decide the new symbol. 

I have observed that our State Government is always looking for creative slogans for public service campaigns, particularly for community awareness on health and social welfare issues. There is hardly any innovative thinking on the part of our Government employees. We generally take the services of NGOs and non-profit sector to assist the Government in this task, but in some sectors, they also don't have the capacity. An open call inviting ideas would give a variety of options to the Government to choose from. 

For designing a city mobility plan for the State capital last year, our State Government hired a consultant and had to shell out a huge amount. But people were not satisfied with the quality of output. A good majority of city residents found the plan impractical and felt that they had not been consulted. 

A crowdsourcing platform encouraging open innovation would be a win-win situation for both the Government and the citizens. It would help to inject new ideas into the Government that otherwise need to be purchased from consultants. It would also help to improve participation and engagement of citizens directly in the decision making process. It would improve transparency and accountability and would make the citizens feel that their voice is heard.  There is a strong case to design a crowdsourcing platform for our State Government on the pattern of “Challenge.gov” 

This is one idea I wish to implement immediately for use in my own department and dovetail it with funds for innovation. I would also give a proposal to our State government to conceive an online platform to be used by different departments of the State government.

Social media penetration in India through mobile phones


This course has motivated me to explore the possibility of using social media in my day-to-day engagement with the general public in my work environment in India after I get back. Thinking about using social media in Government in Indian conditions, one factor that worries me is the low access to internet, especially in rural areas. But deep penetration of mobile phones and designing of social media mobile apps hold good promise for India. 
According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, India’s coverage of wireless density is about 900 million, which is quite an achievement, whereas internet access is available only to about 120 million. Mobile phone penetration can be leveraged to connect to a large number of citizens in rural areas. Mobile phones have the unique advantage of being able to reach areas where the infrastructure required for Internet or wired phone services is not a viable option. Smartphone costs are falling rapidly with economies of scale, while the proliferation of 3G/4G services in India is likely to reduce connectivity costs. New Internet users are likely to be mobile-only subscribers using internet-enabled devices. It would be necessary to make applications or services compatible for users with a basic mobile device, in order to target the rural population who may not be able to afford advanced smartphones. India would be a "mobile first" country where social media would reach out to millions through mobile phones rather than computers.
Social media applications using mobile phone technology can also explore the scope of e-democracy and e-participation by engaging citizens in democratic decision-making through various modes of communication between citizens and the government. The Government can consult the citizens and even seek votes on public policy issues, asking people to post "likes" on Facebook pages and "retweets" on Twitter.
The future holds a good promise, but it is required to facilitate an enabling environment and conditions today are better than ever. 

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Detecting the fake followers

In my last post I discussed on how people can buy fake twitter followers. In this post I will try to elaborate on tools that will let you know whether any particular account has fake accounts or not.
Each tool that you might encounter might have different approach to determine the portion of fake followers but it it should give you overall idea about the followers. Generally speaking, according to NBCNews 1 in 10 Twitter accounts is fake.
The first tool I want to discuss is twittercounter.com You can specify any account and the duraction (Today, Last week, Last month, 3 months) and it will display the chart with number of followers within this period of time. Let me show you the person that basically bought most of his followers, meaning the majority of them are fake. Ladies and Gentlemen, please meet Paul Ranni.


A quick statistics on the account: 5949 Tweets, 23 Following, 74 690 Followers.
I encourage you to go to TwitterCounter and check his stats. According the the chart above the peaks show tha on November 1, 2013 Raul got 37 567 (!) followers. Overnight! It looks like a good increase, right? Well it just looks like. The next day he loses 42 210 followers. Perhaps Twitter algorithms detected the fake accounts and deleted them. But Paul Ranni is a serious guy - the following day he comes back and compensates the loss with new 22 668 new followers. Anyway, this game between his followers and Twitter algorithms has been there for a while.

Now, let's test his followers with another tool - TwitterAudit.com. All you need to do is log in with your twitter account, specify the account to analyze and wait for the results. Well, surprisingly the tool gives Paul Ranni 94% score so the November ups and downs are not included in the audit. But this audit was generated 6 months ago.

Let's audit someone else. Someone we all might now - like Johnny Depp. Why Johnny Depp? I just like pirates of Caribbean. So  according to TwitterAudit only 62% of his followers are real.


But don't let this percentage fool you. This is just an estimate based on a 5000 randomly selected followers of Johnny Depp. He has over a million followers so it would take TwitterAudit long-long time to analyze each follower. The service tries to identify the fake followers by examining their profile, number of tweets, last tweet and ration of followers to friends.  The company realizes that it is not the most accurate way to determine the fake followers, but this is the algorithm they came up with.

What about you? How do YOU spot the fake followers on Twitter?

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The cost of Twitter follower

We talk a lot about measuring social presence and determining who is "popular" on twitter by their follower base. I am not really into twitter and obviously I don't have many followers. But what If I wanted (or you wanted) to cheat and gain some extra followers in order to look more "reputable" in the online world.

Photo by:  Dustin Diaz
First things first - I went directly to mr. Google and searched for buy twitter follower. 300 million results. Not bad. That means that there is a good market for that and perhaps this market has been driven by a demand from the online community.

It turns out that this type of service has been there for a long time now. Twitter Follower Service - is the official term for it and there are hundreds and perhaps thousands service providers in this business. The site that caught my attention was buytwitterfollowersreview.org - it basically gives you the Top 5 service providers with the review and pricing. Being a student you always pay attention to the price and try to get the most out of your dollars. It looked like buyrealmarketing.com had the best deal and I started to look at the pricing. So 1000 Twitter followers will cost you only (drum rolls) $9! It is not even a cent per follower! Pay securely with Pay-Pal and within 2 and 4 days you will have 1000 additional followers. Of course it would not generate any re-tweets and engagement - just numbers. But did't we decide to go for numbers only?

The same website can also boost your Youtube video views, Vimeo video views, Soundcloud plays and Pinterest followers, likes and repins.

Another question would be whether we should do it or not? I personally think that It is not a good idea but as i said, i'm not into twitter. Some people might feel they need it and for those there are plenty of options. But my advice would be - Don't Rely on those numbers. The practice shows that the numbers don't stay there long and over time those accounts are either deactivated or disappear.

In my next post I will try to do the opposite - will try to identify the fake followers of people with large follower base. Stay tuned...
  

When countries block social media...



The term "Twitter revolution" became widely known after the Arab Spring but not many people are aware that it was first used during the 2009 Moldova unrest. After these events many leadership of some countries started to see "foreign-owned" social media websites as a serious threat to their national security. It seems to be that the more authoritarian the country, the more there is a probability of blocking social media websites or at least some of them. 

Photo by: compujeramey
Initiatives as Open Net Initiative constantly monitor the situation with countries that restrict access to social media websites.  China is known to block most of the popular social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, but on the other hand Chinese government extensively uses the in-house social media to communicate with its citizens. Unfortunately, other countries don't have the same technology or political will to directly engage in discussion with civil society. It did not take long time to report that the recent news about Iran unblocking social media was just a technical glitch and Iranians were again deprived of Facebook and Twitter.  
Photo by: OpenNet Initiative
There are different reasons why these countries try to restrict access to information. Some are afraid of opposition using social media to organize demonstrations, some want to isolate their citizen of outside world and its influence. Nevertheless, in a post-cold-war world  of modern technologies all these attempts of different governments are faced with resistance of online activists. Due to such technologies as anonymizers or anonymous proxies, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)  and such projects as TorProject there always be a way for people to get connected to the rest of the world.  

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Blog #1: Open Innovation Examples & Articles about them

Open Innovation & Crowdsourcing Examples

After some readings from Blackboard I was impressed by possibilities of crowdsourcing platforms and I found these following two websites, where you can find valuable additional information:

 1. Open Innovation & Crowdsourcing Examples: 


2. Top 10 articles on Open Innovation in 2013: www.openinnovation.eu/07-05-2013/768/

Here I would like to compare principles of Open and Closed Innovations:

Closed Vs Open

Principles of Closed Innovation
Principles of Open Innovation
Talented people with expertise in their field are work for our organization.
Not all talented people working for our organization. We need to interact with talented people, active both in our company, and its outside.
To profit from our Research & Development, we must invent something by ourselves, develop it to the level and bring the product to the final result.
Significant value can create external
R & D, internal R & D are necessary to get some of this value.
If we make the discovery ourselves, we can first enter to the market.
To make a profit we don’t need to carry out research itself, which is based on their results.
The company, which brings innovation to the market first, will win.
Creating a perfect business model is more important than the first exit to the market.
We will win if we will create the most of industry’s best ideas.
We will win if we will use the both best internal and external ideas.
We must well control our intellectual property against competitors, who can use our ideas for their profits.
We should profit from the uses by other of our intellectual property, and we have to buy the intellectual property of other companies each
times when it fits into our business model.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Is there a Twitter sweet spot?

In the few months that I have been on Twitter I have found it immensely useful. At the same time, my Twitter stream has occasionally been overtaken by a single user, crowding out other tweets and leaving me feeling slightly overwhelmed. My colleagues recently submitted a post entitled "Information Overload in Social Media" (11/12/13) and I'd like to try and respond to some of the issues they raised, focusing solely on Twitter.

First, the issue of content. I read something several weeks ago that suggested the following breakdown for individual Twitter users:

  • 1/3 original content or reaction to news or information, reflecting your professional interests
  • 1/3 retweets of information or news that your followers are likely to appreciate
  • 1/3 personal, non-sequitur content (for example - what you are doing, where you are, random thoughts or statements) which provides insight into you as a person
I find this content recommendation rather agreeable and it also reflects what I'm seeking from the people I'm following on Twitter. There are some exceptions, of course. Celebrities have license to tweet about themselves almost exclusively. There's more tolerance for it since they are expected to engage in promoting their own brand, whether highlighting their rarified existence or relating their everyman experiences (celebrities put their pants on one leg at a time too!). And organizations, notably professional ones, lose credibility in my eyes if they start tweeting topics outside their realm of expertise or content simply unrelated to their mission.

Now, the question of quantity. In my limited experience, I would have to say that I find the sweet spot to be somewhere between 5-10 tweets per day per follow. Assuming 16 waking hours in a day, that means tweeting in 1.5 to 3 hour intervals. In reality, the window is much smaller than that, so the key would seem to be spacing out tweets rather than sending them in blocks. The reality is that I'm a mother and full-time student which is overwhelming enough without replicating the experience online (Yes, @MomsRising, I'm looking at you. Love the mission, loathe the tidal wave of content). Dear colleagues, what is your Twitter threshold?

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Morass of measurement and metrics

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.  
As a previous and (hopefully) future employee in the public sector, this course has provided a basis for understanding and effectively utilizing social media. One question that has occupied my thoughts throughout the semester we discussed in class today - measurement. In my field of practice, public health research, we obsess over measurement - quantitative versus qualitative, degree of validity, sensitivity and specificity - the list goes on and on. For every program dimension or intervention component there is a corresponding measure, oftentimes several. In that vein, it surprised me to learn that government is generally not measuring the impact of social media.

At the same time, there are limited options for capturing the return on investment, especially for the public sector. The dimensions discussed today, such as citizen engagement, are not easily measured and even more difficult to correlate to social media strategies. In behavioral research, it generally requires either surveying, directly observing, or objectively measuring participants' behaviors. To what extent is this an option in the public sector? In addition, we generally collect data on all other potential moderators of behavior in order to rule them out as the cause of behavior change. It seems rather daunting in light of the many influences on individual behavior and concerns of privacy.

Luckily, these issues have not kept many federal, state and local agencies from establishing a presence on social media platforms, which suggests their leadership is more forward thinking about the potential benefits despite a dearth of data. Such is the nature of technological innovation in this day and age which finds policy and research playing catchup. At any rate, it is likely just a matter of time until market forces and academic research respond to the need for social media analytics in the public sector.


Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Blog #3: Information Overload in Social Media

When discussing on the final project, our team went through a question that we found interesting but is seldom discussed on our class: information overload. We have focused a lot on how to provide sufficient information, but if fact, information overload also brings negative influences.

The first question is how detailed should the information be. Take the example of a NGO that is planning to provide information to its volunteers about an event on social media. Since volunteers are only a part of the audience, too detailed information may be so annoying for other audience that they will “dislike” it. But if the NGO doesn't provide the detailed and trivial information, volunteers may discontent because they do not get sufficient information. Our solution is to put more information on volunteer group page and less in public page, but we are wondering if there is better idea.

Similarly, frequency of tweeting or posting on Facebook is also necessary to be controlled. With tons of interesting things happen on Facebook and Twitter, an organization needs to show up from time to time on social media; otherwise it will be easily forgotten. But if they occupy all your News Feed, you will also not like them (actually I myself have dislike some pages because they are too “noisy”). So, is there a best frequency to show up?

Besides quantitative aspect, qualitative aspect is also important. Usually, most organizations will not always posting things directly related to themselves, but will retweet or talk about something else, for example, providing some tips. However, is it appropriate for a police department to provide recipe everyday (this is a real example in a city of China)? What is the ideal proportion for “unrelated” information?

Here I just throw out some questions about information overload. We can have more discussion on them.

Social media measurement class

Our next class will focus on social media impact measurement. We want to explore what information about social media interactions public managers might want to see that can help them support the mission of their organization. We will focus on tactics, techniques, and technological skills.


  1. In preparation for our class, please think about what the information is that you as a (future) public manager would like to receive to know that the resources invested in time and personnel make a difference to the public. In what format would you like to receive this information?
  2. As a public service employee charged with the use of social media on behalf of your organization, how would you prepare your business case to convince your superiors that social media helps to support the mission of your government organization?


As you prepare the readings for our class, please think about these issues and leave your questions here on the blog in the comment section to this update.

Friday, November 8, 2013


With mood of the people upbeat about social media, it is also important to know what is return on investment for social media. Public sector expenditure is met from taxes paid by citizens, and as a responsible administrative machinery, one should have clear and satisfactory answer ready as to what we achieve by investing in social media. However, impact of any investment made in the public sector is difficult to measure, and social media can not be exception to it.
While measuring the impact of social media, one should not consider only short term benefits. Long term benefits, which are not visible at the early stage, should also be taken into account. Donna L. Hoffman and Marek Fodar have rightly held that impact of investment for social media should be measured in terms of number of visits to and time spent for blog comments, facebook updates and twitter pages etc.
So far social media is concerned, one has to change his/her mindset seeing returns in terms of monetary benefits only. Developing meaningful engagements with citizens takes time, and therefore result of social media usage present a fair picture only if a long term view is taken. We have to change our mindset viewing social media as just another communication vehicle. The shortsightedness prevents more valuable aspects, such as citizens' inputs, coming to fore. From a knowledge management perspective, one has to accept that knowledge is easily shared and managed by social media, benefits of which are difficult to be measured. The rapid growth of social media has revolutionized how people communicate and collaborate, and this can not be measured in quantity.    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 








 

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Expression of Gratitude-Learning on social media with enormous opportunities


Expression of Gratitude

Learning on social media with enormous opportunities

I am submitting my last blog on my learning experiences on the web based social media technology. Our mind is only responsible for our growth or limitation. Before joining this class, I have prejudices about the social media and was not paying heed on the learning opportunities available in this field. After joining this class, the way our professor introduce the subject and the way she developed the learning opportunities are really amazing and eye opener to me.

Her selection of reading, subject selection for assignment and speaker selection for the class are really very calculative, interesting to learn and experience. The teacher within me has been highly influenced by all the tactics and enriched me. At the last, I would say that her first condition of bringing laptop or tablet in the class has created more opportunities for me. Last project compels us to look in to all the central theme we learnt.

The social media tools, its presentation by each group, the way all the sector of our real life i.e. state, market (economy), and civil society organizations are optimize their outcome while using the social media are amazing and eye catching.

I have come from India and the way I maintain my contacts their using this technology, say Twitter, WhatsApp, Viber, Line at almost no  cost are all learning process and realize the capacity lies in the social media.

At the end, I would like to share, every technology has its pros and cons. It is depend on us- the human being- how we use this and all other technology.

Thanks Professor Ines Mergel, Maxwell School, and Syracuse University, Government of Gujarat, Government of India, the citizens of India and my colleagues for your contributions!

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

blog post 4 - The White House and Twitter

This Reuters article does a fine job showing how important social media has become in governmental outreach ... but also discusses the risks that we have discussed in class. The article is long but have a look if you have time! The @BarackObama Twitter account is not actually run by Obama, but by a pro-Obama group called Organizing for Action, which poses many more (additional) risks than if it were run by the White House employees. 

Here are some key quotes I would like to share: 

"White House officials quickly began firing off a barrage of tweets on Twitter, which has become one of the administration's most potent and relied-upon weapons in trying to shape public opinion and media reports." 

"There are risks in the White House's Twitter strategy, said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and author of "What Jefferson read, Ike watched, and Obama tweeted," a study of popular culture in the White House. While it is important for presidents to use the tools of the moment to reach out to Americans, it's also important to protect the stature of the office, Troy said." 

 ... "Security is also a risk, LaMotte said. Last week, the Syrian Electronic Army briefly hacked into a link-shortening service used in tweets from Organizing For America, the advocacy group that runs @barackobama."

So do we think that the White House has its Twitter presence under control or is it "only a matter of time before someone goes too far" ?