Motrin Moms

Last week in class, we discussed Mad Motrin Moms. If you haven't seen the commercial, you can watch it HERE!

Personally, I am not a mom, and am well aware that I am not the target of that commercial, therefore, I do not feel affected by this commercial, whatsoever. However, when it was discussed that there were so many women upset, and that had been responding through the use of social media, I decided to do a little bit of research on my own.

I went ahead and looked up them up on YouTube, and definitely found quite a few. Then, I realized that they were all being hosted by Newbaby.com. One of the ads has this as a description:

http://www.Newbaby.com presents Lisa from Crazy Adventures in Parenting as she responds to the Motrin ad's claim of being 'fashionable' while wearing her newborn. Lisa blogs regularly at www.CrazyAdventuresinParenting.com. View all Motrin Mom response videos at http://www.Newbaby.com. Spread the news about this and feel free to post this on your blog and please attribute http://www.newbaby.com

I went to the website, to figure out what they were about, and realized that they are an online social network for moms to gether, share tips, but, primarily share videos.

I thought this was interesting because we had recently been discussing how different sharing through video can be from sharing through a blogs. The website itself seems to be really successful with a lot of users and a lot of insight.

Web Video: MEDIA CHANGES THE FEMALE IMAGE

In class, we are currently discussing web videos and their use in media and public relations. We were assigned to express ourselves through expressing an opinion through the use of a web video.

I chose to create a video which discusses the media's influence in women. I decided that an interesting way of proving my point was to show how the media has obviously stylistically influenced women throughout the last 100 years. This was a very interesting way of showing my information, especially in comparison to the podcast, or just a blog, because it allowed me to communicate in a more visual manner, and letting the images speak for themselves more than text. Since, this topic is something that is very physical, images allowed me to make this concept more interesting and direct. I used Ratatat's song, "El Pico" to help me move the video along. All of the images were obtained from the Internet.

I used Sprout Builder to do this video. In the beginning, it seemed like a friendly and easy to use program, but, in the end turned out to be way more troublesome than I expected. I mostly had trouble with the timing and publishing features of the software.



I hope you enjoy it!

Facebook and the Elections

I realized that several people wrote some very interesting blogs in regards to the elections, but, more specifically focused on Facebook. I was also very intrigued by how much of an impact Facebook itself might have had in these past elections.

As I am sure several of you witnessed the rampage of Facebook status updates minutes, perhaps seconds, after President-elect Barack Obama, was announced, I am sure most of you also witnessed the ones days, perhaps hours before the voting casts closed. I personally, didn't do this, but, I was very interested when I read the "...is the 1,618,392nd person to donate their status to get out the vote for Barack Obama today. Donate yours: http://causes.com/election/11700602" and the same for McCain. Talk about fabolous PR move!

According to an article, For Facebook's Causes Election Rally application on the social-networking site, users can pick to which candidate -- either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain -- they would like to donate their status on Facebook. They also can donate their status simply to get out the vote.

We have heard time and time again, that this was the election of first time voters. According to polls in the same article, sixty-nine percent of Facebook users who used the application opted to remind users to vote for Obama, the Democratic Party candidate, while 16% wanted to remind people to vote for Republican Party candidate McCain. Obama and McCain are the main candidates for the U.S. presidency, though there will be other candidates on the ballot.

Now, I am not saying that this is proof of anything, but it is definetly worth noting how this social network allowed us to have some sort of idea as to what the young voters were thinking, isn't it?

The Social Networks World

Recently, in class, we have discussed social networks in relevance to geography. For instance, do people in the U.S. use Facebook just as much as people in Singamore use Friendster?

Well, I did a little bit of research, and found an article that showed an interesting visual...


The areas are color coded by dominant social networks by country. In the site, you can see a chart see this information, but in a text chart.

According to the site...

Some patterns from the data:

• Orkut leads in the Indian subcontinent, as well as Brazil;
• Facebook is stronger, internationally, than Myspace, with surprising strongholds in the Middle East;
• hi5.com is the most international of all the social networks, leading in Peru, Colombia, Central America, and other, scattered countries such as Mongolia, Romania, and Tunisia;
• both Bebo and Skyblog follow colonial patterns, the first strong in smaller English-speaking countries such as Ireland and New Zealand, and the latter in Francophone countries;
• and Friendster, the original social network, leads all across Southeast Asia.
• Fotolog, a photo service defeated in the US by Friendster, has re-emerged as the dominant social network in Argentina and Chile.

I personally, only use Facebook, and have seen, first-hand, the impact of this social network in regards to both social facets, as well as how advertisers have slowly began to take over it. It would be interesting to know if it has had similar effects in other countries..

Self-Empowerment Podcasts

Recently in class, we have been discussing and working on podcasts. Personally, I have never been really into the whole podcast thing, so, I decided to do some research and check out what was out there. There seems to be podcasts that focus on everything out there...from technical gadgets to art history and environmental affairs.

Being the podcast newbie that I am, I was astounded to see just how many classification and types of podcasts there are. One of the best resources I came across was Personal Life Media (PLM). PLM is a publisher of "lifestyle podcasts" which are made for people that are, according to a report I found, on the "leading edge of culture." Recently, PLM announced that ten new shows have debuted or joined their network, which brings a total to 35 weekly audio shows and one daily vidcast with their companion blogs." The site launched 18 months ago, and has continously grown in popularity. According to their reports, " in addition to more than doubling the content offering since launch, web traffic has increased 128% for the year, 1,000 episodes have been produced with nearly 600 guests resulting in more than six million downloads. The free multi-show podcast player widget launched September 2008 received nearly 500,000 page views in its first month and is utilized by myriad podcasters on and off the PLM network." Four of their shows are even now finalists in the upcoming Podcasts Awards, and all of their shows can be found in iTunes.

Family History: Genealogy Made Easy.

As for the 10 new shows, they range in topic to better serve their wide variety of listeners:

• Once Susan and Tim Bratton optimized my podcast on their network, it simply caught fire

  I climbed to #41 in the iTunes Top 100 within two short weeks of moving my show to Personal Life Media.

  We moved TheDivaCast to Personal Life Media because the podcast advertising campaigns and sponsorships PLM is already bringing us reflect the quality of our very popular show

  Michael and I could have launched a new photography show on any network based on the sheer success of our first endeavor, The Digital Photography Show, but we chose PLM because of their combination of technical savvy, amazing creativity, business connections and commitment to our success, says Scott Sherman, Host of

  Digital Photography Life - Make Every Shot Count : Digital Camera Reviews and Tutorials
  

• Camera Dojo: Digital Photography Enthusiasts

• TheDivaCast: Encouragement, Work Life Balance, Girl Talk, Women's Issues
  

• Music For Midnight: Downtempo, TripHop, Ambient, Lounge, Chill and Independent Electronica

• Family History: Genealogy Made Easy

• Life Zero: Adventures in Zen and Lifestyle Design

• Sales Magic: Motivations, Meditations and Visualizations to Kick Your Assets Into Action!

• ">Words to Mouth: Women's Novels & Non-Fiction, Author Interviews and Book Reviews

• Dear Zanny: Relationship Advice from a Family Therapist
  

• Modern Immortal: Unleash Your Vitality, Alternative Medicine, Holistic Health, Wellness and Longevity

If you didn't find any of those interesting, or exactly your taste, check out Personal Life Media site, because with about 35+ uploads a week, you might find something worth subscribing to!

Virtually Divorsed

Recently, I blogged about how virtual reality has in turn affected the way we treat relationships both in and out of the web. Well, while reading the news this past week, I came across a crazy article that deals with a similar situation.

According to reports, "A 43-year-old player in a virtual game world became so angry about her sudden divorce from her online husband that she logged on with his password and killed his digital persona." Apparently, the woman got really upset when receiving the online notification that her virtual husband was cutting her off. She has not yet been formally charged, but if she is convicted, she could face up to five years in prison or a fine up to $5,000

While this is an interesting case, what I found most important, was the way that it reflects how seriously we are beginning to treat online communities and social networks. Not only are they becoming more common, but, they are now affecting people's lives in reality not just virtual.