“Tweeting Intern” Needed at Pizza Hut

23 04 2009

Twitter iconI just read this article on CNET today that Pizza Hut in Dallas, Texas (company headquarters) is looking for a summer intern who uses Twitter. On the Pizza Hut homepage, you will find: “Apply to be the First Pizza Hut Twintern.”

The job description says:

Pizza Hut-iconThe intern will act as a fully integrated member of the PR team and will focus on new and emerging social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and others. This is a full-time paid internship, and Pizza Hut will work with you and your school to support academic credit, if applicable.

How cool is that?!

They’re looking towards hiring those students specializing in marketing, journalism, communications, public relations, or any related course study. If the job description fits you (and you’re in Texas or planning to go there), better hurry in applying because deadline is May 3rd, 2009.

I’m not in any way in those fields, but it still would have been a cool opportunity to apply for if I was. Maybe other companies should try employing this kind of position, too. Hey, after all, social media is very much used everywhere now and this would surely help in their marketing.


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Tweet Tweet…Are You on Twitter?

26 03 2009

Twitter iconTwitter is fast gaining popularity on the internet now. It’s being used by a lot of people ranging from politicians to actors to musicians to business people to IT people to just regular everyday people.

What makes Twitter so popular? I think it’s because it is a very simple application that is easily accessible and easy to use to get and share information.

So what exactly is Twitter? Here is a definition from Wikipedia:

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 bytes in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

“What are you doing?” is the question being asked by Twitter. If you have information you want to share, you can share it in 140 characters or less without needing to elaborate on it so much. If you need to elaborate, you could always use a blog for that.

Users follow other users, usually referred to as tweeple or tweeps, whom they share similar interests. You can follow people without needing them to follow you back. The reason that others may not follow you back may vary from one person to another. For celebrities, I’d probably say their reason is they don’t really need to know updates from thousands of people’s lives every second of the day.

You could still interact with anyone even if they don’t follow you (as long as they don’t block you) by simply sending them a message or what is known as an @ reply. Twitter has made it possible to connect and get to know people in whole new different way.

Twitter on iPod TouchPersonally, I use Twitter to learn information from people in the IT industry. I learn new things everyday through reading their tweets. Usually their tweets would include links to very useful and helpful articles. If I like what they tweet, I retweet them to my followers. And if anyone likes what I tweet or retweet, they would do the same, and it goes on and on.

To make my Twitter experience more productive, I use the Tweet Deck application. It allows me to organize the updates I receive into separate columns so I could easily scan through them to find the information I could use, and retweet or reply to messages easily.

Even if you’re not in front of a computer, you could still use Twitter through your phone by SMS or mobile internet.

There’s a lot more to the Twitter community, or Twitterverse as some would call it. If you’re still not on it, go sign up now. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Add me up if you like: @AnnaSaldivar.


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Facebook Responds to Users’ Feedback

24 03 2009

Facebook iconFacebook has been through several redesigns since it first came out. The old design was very clean and simple, which made me attracted to join the social network when I first found out about it.

When Facebook revamped its website with a new design, many users complained about it. They didn’t like this, they didn’t like that. On the other hand, many users did like it. Then after some time, Twitter, another social networking plus micro-blogging site, became popular. Facebook, again, decided to redesign their homepage resembling their micro-blogging design.

Again, many users disliked it while other users liked it. You simply can never satisfy everyone.

Comments, complaints, requests and suggestions were aired out by users, so Facebook responded with a list of improvements they’re making as written by Chris Cox, Facebook’s Director of Product, on Facebook’s blog today:

  • Thumbs upLive updating: One of the most common requests is the ability to see your stream update automatically. We will be adding the ability to turn on auto updating in the near future so you no longer need to refresh the page.
  • Photo tags: In order to surface more photos you might like to see, we’ll be adding photos tagged of your friends to the stream. This will happen in the coming weeks.
  • More choices for applications: We’ve heard feedback that there is a lot of application content appearing in the stream. We will be giving you tools to control and reduce application content that your friends share into your stream.
  • More Highlights: Highlights will update more frequently and will show you more content throughout the day to mirror more closely the content that the earlier News Feed provided.
  • Find things more easily: Friend requests and event invites will be more prominent at the top of right column. Also, from the filters on the left, you will be able to create a new list of friends with which to filter the stream.

I’ve encountered quite a few friends of mine who didn’t like the latest Facebook design. Well, some of them I’ve told about how Facebook seemingly decided to pattern it to Twitter’s layout. Most of those who haven’t used Twitter, of course, cannot relate.

I understand that this makes them upset about the Facebook situation. Why fix what isn’t broken, right? Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on this matter. For me, I’m glad that Facebook listened to my suggestion, that is, to have the automatic stream updating. Thanks and I’ll be looking forward to that, Facebook.


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Using Social Media

23 03 2009

Social media has been existing for quite some time now. It is very much different from the old school media that a lot of us have known before this “social media” existed. The media that we are familiar with, which is also known as industrial media, traditional media, broadcast media, or mass media, still continues to exist along with this new media. Newspapers, television, and film are still used to keep the community informed of the world around us. But along with this, using social media is very much important as this has also a lot more benefits than the traditional ones.

Using the internetWell, what is social media? In my own understanding, social media is a means of communication using highly accessible technologies typically done through the internet and mobile communications. This can take different forms including blogs, vlogs, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, picture-sharing, and video-sharing. YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, and MySpace are some examples of the most popular social media being used. In the Philippines, where I grew up before coming to Canada, the most popular social media being used there are Friendster and Multiply.

Social networking isn’t the only purpose of using social media. With this, you can find out the information you need to know through more accessible means. Businesses also use them for marketing or for customer relationship management. If you have information that you want to get out to a broader audience, social media is definitely one way that can help you on that.

Let’s focus on the blog for example. With a blog, not only are you able to use text to get your message out, you can also use images, audio, and video. You can also make it interactive with the addition of an online forum or through a chat room on your blog or website. With a regular printed newspaper, can you do all of that? No. But with an online newspaper, you sure can.

Personally, I use social media to connect with my friends, to keep updated about their lives (since we can no longer do that in person since we’re in different continents), to complement my job search, and of course to learn more things everyday. There are just so many more ways that social media is useful to the world today. I’m simply thankful that such a thing exists.


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