Oprah's on twitter!

Oprah is finally on Twitter!

I blogged earlier that Ms. O was seriously absent from the social media train.  Now I'm happy to see that she's finally getting on board.  

To me it only made sense that one of the most influential people in the world, should be using social media to her advantage, and it was surprising that she was not.  

Although Ashton Kutcher may have reached 1 million followers before Oprah, she was a late bloomer and I'm sure she'll reach that in no time!

Skype for the iPhone

Skype has arrived for the iPhone. Initially, when hearing about this, I imagined scenes from “The Jetsons,” where video conferencing becomes the norm. Unfortunately, it is not so. The current Skype app lets you talk via Skype to Skype calls on the 3G network for free, or make calls to land lines or cell phones at a discounted rate. However, the video feature is not yet available.

Although, once it does become available, there might be some problems with the older generation iPhones. For instance, the camera is on the back of the phone, but the screen is on the front, so you would only be able to see/chat by flipping your phone around every minute. I’m holding out for the June iPhone release, hoping for a camera on the same side as the screen on the iPhone and hope Skype updates their app.

Is Boxee right?

Boxee is gearing up to piss off television networks. Boxee is free software that allows users to watch Internet content on their televisions. The reason this is upsetting to television networks, is because there are free services like “Hulu” or iTunes-which isn’t free, but is very cheap to download an episode. The networks are concerned that people are going to stop watching real time TV, even more than they already are tuning out with Tivo and DVR devices. This will further diminish the ad dollars, and then the networks won’t be able to fund the shows.

So let’s talk about the ethics of all of this. Is this wrong? I don’t think so. Boxee is free now. My guess is that at some point when it becomes a necessity-it will probably start charging for its services. Also, all that this is doing is helping the inevitable switch to digital programming move faster. I think that television networks instead need to figure out how to monetize online content.

The good, the bad and the ugly of social media.

Here are a couple of examples of good social media, social media gone bad-and ugly social media efforts.....

The good: Rachel Harris and her website: http://www.iwanttogotonotredame.com/
As a result of her social media tactic, inspired by Barack Obama’s utilization of web technology during his campaign, Harris has already been featured on various news outlets: Detroit Free Press, Muskegon Chronicle, USA Today, WZZM 13 News Channel, NBC2 Fort Myers, FL affiliate. Hopefully, Harris’ social media campaign will help her get the $46,000 a year that she needs for tuition.

The site and effort is ingenious, however Harris should continue to expand her efforts onto twitter, a facebook page and maybe an online blog/diary tracking her efforts throughout school. Harris should also rethink her major to PR/Communications instead of pre-med.

The bad: Mistrials as a result of iphones.

More and more jurors are looking to outside sources for information. With the popularity of iphones and blackberry’s, jurors only need to reach to their pocket to do their own independent research. Although jurors might think that looking up traffic routes, or other information on their own to inform themselves and develop their own ideas is a good idea-it in fact is hindering the judicial process. Not only is it illegal, but also it is resulting in mistrials.


The ugly: The new Facebook. I know. Facebook is trying to be more like twitter-but I personally think it’s ugly and now the home and the friend pages are sort of redundant.

Privacy and cameras-is there privacy anymore?

Imagine that you are talking to somebody. As any good conversationalist, you know to make eye contact. Now, what if that eye you were trying to connect with was actually recording every move you made and every word you said?

With everyone worried about privacy these days, from identity theft, to Facebook owning your own personal profile, privacy is on the mind. And rightfully so. Technology is moving faster than the speed of light-which is great, but also brings some ethical concerns.

One example of privacy and technology clashing, is the creation of the eye camera. No, not the iCamera, the e-y-e camera.

A guy (Rob Spence), with one eye who had been using a prosthetic for most of his life, is now going to experiment with some new technology by making a prosthetic eye that also digitally records with a camera.

To me, it’s brilliant. And Rob wants to use this technology for good: to make a documentary about the rising privacy concerns of surveillance cameras.

I think it’s cool. You could use the eye camera to get more realistic point of view stories, or spy stories. Suddenly the cell phone that 007 used that turned into a stun gun seems lame.

Either way, the eye camera is fascinating to me, and I can’t wait to see what other body parts we can turn into digital recording devices!

Why isn't Oprah on Facebook?

Here is an article that is all about brands that embrace social media, quietly.  PBS is listed as starting social media because of the engaging and educational programming like "This Old House".  HGTV, Oprah and ESPN round out the rest of the list.

Oddly enough, some of these influencers are more quiet than others.  It's odd to me that Oprah is not on Facebook.  There are several fake Oprah or Harpo facebook pages, but nothing dedicated to the official, original influencer herself.  Furthermore, a preliminary Twitter search produced only an "O" home magazine tweet.  O home magazine can maybe live on online, since the hard copy is now defunct.  

Myth Busters on Discovery Channel, was not on this list, but is an influencer in my eyes.  The show could not go on without viewer input and participation.  In terms of engaging, conversational and educational criteria, it seems that Myth Busters has (like PBS) been using social media way before it was even called social media.  And although the show is popular (it's on broadcast TV!), Myth Busters is not on Facebook (officially) or on Twitter-two of social media's largest networks.

Why aren't the real social media influencers or inventors like Oprah and Myth Busters on the two biggest social media networks?  It seems like they have nothing to lose, and can only gain influence and popularity. 

Just a curious observation.

Ethics and the Internet

The Internet is a fairly new medium, but more importantly, it is not a regulated medium.  This means that there is a lot of room for unethical things to happen on the Internet.  And boy do they happen!

The initial ethical issues that most people worry about are the privacy concerns.  What if someone gets my password?  What if they can log into my Internet banking?  Here is a website that lists a lot of similar worries.  Notice that exploitation of internet workers is not listed.

My ethical concern with the Internet is regarding the finances and exploitation of the workers.  Thankfully, the largest payers in the Internet game (Google as an example) have used their powers for good: offering free service, being transparent and valuing their employees.  However, could you imagine if the people who ran America's banks were instead running America's search engines or servers?  Yikes!

My contention is about the business of blogs, forums and websites, aka web 2.0 or social media.  There is no standardization or protection or regulation.  A web developer could therefore charge whatever price they want to develop a site-which is great.  But at the same time-there are no protections for developers, or bloggers when corporations are misguided about the value they offer.  

There are many corporations and decision makers that don't understand development or social media/web 2.0, and therefore don't want to pay for the work being done.  My concern is the ethical implications of a non-regulated internet-not for privacy concerns, but for the exploitation of the work that people are doing for companies that do not want to pay for it.  

Brands are getting endorsements by bloggers, often without pay, yet at the same time, the brands or corporations balk at the idea of actually paying a blogger to immerse the company in web 2.0.

I foresee corporations trying to take all that they can from social media, without paying for the work or the endorsements, and that to me is unethical.