Foursqure

Foursquare is an application for smart phones created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadura, which is used for checking in the places you have been to, like stores, restaurants, and bars. You also can know where your friends are by using this application.
        Foursquare is a useful tool to engage customers of the business, especially it is a good way for the small business to advertise their produces and services. When users check in to a new place, 3 points will be given on Foursquare; when check in to places the users have been before, 1 point will be given. So users can be stimulated to check-in when they go to the places they like. This app allows people comment on the places. For example, when I do not know where I can go for food, I always use the Foursquare to look for a good place, and also I always choose the one who has the most comments. In this way, people know where they should go for shopping and fun.
      However, privacy is a big problem for Foursquare. Foursquare make users expose their location when they are using this app checking in to a place. One of my friends told his boss that he was sick and could not go to work that Day, but he checked in into a bar. His boss found out he lied to him, so he got fired.
     Personal speaking, I like foursquare very much. On by typing in the key word of the place you want to check in, you can know the full name. In this way, you also can know how to get the places you want to o but you do not know where it is.  It is convenient for you to share your life with your friend.

Crisis Communication

Crisis communication, an important concept in PR and itsrole cannot be over emphasized in any company. Encountered with any crisis that greatly negatively influences its reputation, any organization is supposed to have the awareness of crisis communication and then follows strategies of crisis management. A good case is demonstrated in China—Shanghai official metro weibo(ID: shmetro) (twitter in Chinese version) reaction to Shanghai subway accident.

On September 27, 2011，“a subway train slammed into the rear of another train in a sprawling transit line” as is reported in NYtimes.com lately. Shmetro released the first message at 14:10 to warn passengers of longer waiting intervals due to equipment failure. And then (at 14:40) it consecutively posted two messages on the apologies and claims on this initiative . In the next few hours, shmetro constantly released messages on the details of this accident and its treatment of the injuries. This issue ends with the public report on October 6, claiming the punishment of 12 officers .After the accident, shmetro released 27 messages in total covering warning, notification, and apology. This crisis management proved to be successful, which successfully comfort the massive people’s emotion, fulfilling its duty in charge of public transportation.

Even though I have no access to official decision-making process, it is obvious that its strategies just follow the right track of crisis planning, including identification of cause of problem, demonstration of responsible action and consistent messaging. Theories have been successfully translated to practice in such international metropolis. When faced with crisis, which should be avoided in advance, what administrators are supposed to do is not complaint and regret but positive attitude and counter-measurement with the guidance of crisis communication, which can also contribute into individual affairs.

Social Media Metrics

Revisiting influence from social media has played an important role for organizations in this web 2.0 world. It is critical for any organization to collect data including traffic, views, and referring sources so as to conduct quantitative analysis for its strategies in marketing and communication. David Stout (2009) states that it is not always easy to measure the impact and value of social media. Yet powerful tools such as Tweetreach, Klout, and Google Analytics. They are able to produce tangible data such as exposure, engagement, influence, and action.

Exposure reveals how many people have accessed the information posted online; engagement measures how many people interact with the information; Influence indicates how social media has impact on the people—positive, negative or neutral; and Action, the most important indicator, shows the conversion of viewers to real consumers, which are the origin of profit.

However, how to translate cold data to practical decisions and then profits requires specific knowledge in the field or even acute business intuition. Meanwhile, it shall be attractive to measure individuals’ personal social media such as twitter, facebook, and Myspace, and then figure out methods to transplant business information into the top trending accounts in an implicit way so that the advertising effect would be maximized at minimal cost. It also leaves space for the development of consultant companies which specialize in offering customized advice and interpretation service according to the data collected from social media metrics tools.

In conclusion, powerful social media metrics tools are of great use and value in the web 2.0 world, yet its interpretation and strategy-making require professional skills in specific field.

Content Curation

Content Curation is the process of collecting information through the vast amounts of contents and organizes them around a certain theme. It is both beneficial to personal and organizations. It can be divided into four steps:

First and foremost, you should define and explain what you curate about. This is especially important for the organizations because it can contribute to group your audiences who are interested in your themes thus to build a community. The community will help to energize your company through sharing the information you post.   

Keeping updates of your sources frequently and timely. Nowadays is a age of information cluttered times, the only way to make your audience loyal to your curation is to find out what they are looking for, and what is the most latest and useful sources.

Summarizing what you have found and making it organized. Since you have found much information through various means, it is important to classify. A piece of organized and high-value post will defiantly draw the attention from your audiences.

Analyzing the collection is one of a curator's essential tasks. To pick the good and get rid of the useless or wrong sources can add a lot of value to your online "collection".

Pinterest is a perfect tool for content curation.

The word Pinterest is made up of “pin” and “interest”, which means users on Pinterest can upload or sort through the whole internet of images and put them into a context based on their “interests”, known as “pins” on this platforms. Pinterest is a personalized media platform, but everyone in this platform can see each other’s interests through the function of "Pin It" button. And even those who are outside the platform can find the popular pictures belong to the same topic and save it.

   Content curation is both beneficial to personal and organizations. Persisting in doing it will make your organization to be the thought leader of the specific area, in turn; every personal audience also can learn and get the professional knowledge from it.   

Live-tweeting Experience

Hi, every reader, here is my link to Storify

http://storify.com/gui_zhao/reflection-on-my-live-tweeting-experience-1

Personal Branding

Companies use brands to market their products because good brands can make products look visible and memorable and stimulate consumptions. However, have you ever thought to be your own boss by   using brands to market yourself? Personal branding will give you a competitive advantage over the numerous masses that are looking for jobs.

A personal brand, in a nutshell, is the way you present yourself to the world. So the most vital step to successfully branding yourself is to establish a personal identity. Who are you? What do you do? What is your focus on your future career? Once it is defined, you can Control what others feel about you and who are the key audiences interacting with you. Then you should make full use of the media channel, like twitter or blogs to develop you reputation. Writing articles, sharing professional information and knowledge, or submitting comments on others’ social platforms in your field is effective. This lets targeted audiences see your name frequently and become aware of the benefit and knowledge that you offer. It will absolutely enhance your influence and popularity, making you a pro in your industry; an expert in your field. Using professional networks that built around one’s employment capabilities, like creating a LinkedIn profile, will also promote your opportunities to be known to the public.  

 As for me, I only use blogs on Google Plus to position myself as a social media enthusiast. I post new articles related to how social media technology evolves and how it affects our lives each week. Moreover, I never post words about my personal life because I want my personal brand to look more professional. It takes time to build personal branding as a social media practitioner, nonetheless.

The Photo Sharing Age

Flickr is a “free or pay” online platform to store and share digital photos. It has been generally believed to be a great example of the way of Web 2.0 application. Flickr was launched in February 2004 by Ludicorp，and Yahoo purchased Ludicorp and Flickr in March 2005.

The key feature makes Flickr outstanding is the presence of tags, which can be used for marking photos as favorites, group photo pools and interestingness, for which a patent is pending. The function of tagging enables users to find imagines related to the same topic or even the same place names, so that people can find out others sharing on the same subject. It is the first website to implement tag clouds,

Actually, the real value of Flickr should not only in photo sharing, but also to build the social network based on sharing photos. In the age which people do not know what is social network, Flickr already have created one. Groups are used as a way to communicate with fellow members of Flickr around common photography interests. By choosing to follow groups, recent uploads of the group will sometimes appear on a user's homepage when they log on. The relationship between users is not the traditional, for example, one can put the other person into “family” group without adding friends first. Such flexibility largely encourages sharing, giving comments and interaction between users, as well as improving the database.

Grasping better photography will sure to enhance the popularity of your photos shared on Flickr. Here are some tips:

It is hard to make perfect concentration on a photo, to move a little to the left or right, or zoom in or out just a little more. Using the zoom on your photos will not only change how close your subject appears but it will also change the depth of field. You can hold the camera horizontally or vertically to include the whole shot.           

When you take a photo of a friend, a pet, or an animal, do not let the surroundings to distract attention away from the subject. Standing further back and zoom in with your largest lens magnification. This will minimize the depth of field, which means only your subject should be in focus

Using a tripod will keep your camera steady which will make your photos clearer. For example, if you are using a 500 mm lens, the minimum shutter speed you would normally need to use without a tripod would be 1/500 second. When using a shutter speed slower than this simple rule of thumb suggests, a tripod is in order.

Some of people may ignore the function of mode setting, like ‘portrait’, ‘landscape’, ’sports’, and ‘night’ etc. This function can help to change the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, making the shot more life look.