Bloomberg Game Changers
One weekend a couple of months ago or so, my S.O. and I were looking for something to watch on Netflix and he found this documentary series called Bloomberg Game Changers. The series produced by Bloomberg TV features different business leaders and successful entrepreneurs who “climbed to the top and changed our world” in one way or another. There were a few there that really piqued my interest, namely:
- Apple Founder and former CEO Steve Jobs
- Google Co-Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page
- Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg
- Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos
- American Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour
- Twitter Co-Founders Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone
The list above is hyperlinked to the series videos found on the Bloomberg TV website which I highly recommend to watch. The last one on my list above was actually not available at that time on Netflix and I had just watched it while writing this blog post.
It’s pretty cool learning about these people’s lives as told by their peers and colleagues leading up to the success in whatever they had created. Without these people, the world would definitely be significantly different than what it is today. All of them have contributed to making the world and its people more connected in some way. I think that’s something to be thankful for. (Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!)
“Tweeting Intern” Needed at Pizza Hut
I 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:
The 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.
How Schools Could Use Social Media
This topic idea is taken from Chris Brogan’s 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write About (No.12).
When I was in university, social media wasn’t being really used that much. I mean, yes, students use them for personal use, like Friendster, Multiply, YouTube and instant messaging, but for the school itself, they didn’t really utilize it that much. That was in 2002 to 2007.
Right now, social media is everywhere. Businesses, organizations, academic institutions, and just about everyone else uses social media. If you don’t use it, I’d say you are way behind with the times. The community and the world constantly changes. Lots of new things are being developed and it is always good to know what these are so you will be able to know if you could use it as you continuously try to improve yourself and your organization.
Let me talk about how I think schools could use social media. Firstly, I think the most important thing is that a school should have a website. With a website, its students, alumni, faculty will have easy access to general information including student registration, events and important announcements.
However, just having a website is not enough. I have noticed that there are those who are satisfied with having the same content on their website for months, maybe even years. It is important that the school’s website content be regularly updated. Setting a regular schedule weekly or monthly, if not daily, would probably be sufficient. At least one event does happen every month after all, right?
A Wikipedia page would be helpful as well. In addition to a website, I’d say an online forum will be a great addition. This will be a great venue for students to speak out their concerns to the administration, the student government, the student clubs, or any other relevant groups or purpose.
Speaking of a venue for students, faculty, and administration to connect and interact, a Facebook group would be great, too. Many students are already on it; all it needs is a common place in it where they could all gather.
Another idea is the use of video-streaming or even just regular online video. According to Mary O’Malley, executive producer of University of New South Wales’ YouTube channel, “
This is a vehicle for communicating research and selected teaching material and is part of an overall strategy of publishing content where it can be most easily accessed.”
Richard Buckland, a computer science lecturer at UNSW, has used YouTube as his classroom allowing students to earn college credit. This strategy may work for some schools, while some it may not. It all depends on every situation the school faces.
One last thing, email is also important. Sending out newsletters or regular communications through email would also be a good idea for schools to implement. With this, students will be informed directly even if they do not use all the other social media.
I’m definitely not an expert in social media, but I just wanted to share my thoughts on this and I am always open to more ideas.
Facebook Responds to Users’ Feedback
Facebook 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:
Live 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.
Facebook and Me
Facebook is a social networking website that allows you to connect with friends, co-workers, and other people whom you share common interests with. There are four types of networks that users can join: city, workplace, school, and region. Sending messages, posting on friends’ walls, and updating personal profiles are a few of the things users can do in order to let friends know about themselves.
I’ve been a member of Facebook since early 2007. It was an aunt of mine who mentioned that website to me and my sister. “You should get on Facebook,” she said when I was still new here in Canada in 2006. I initially didn’t know what it was, and then I found out that it was a website comparable to Friendster. I was more familiar with Friendster then since it was the popular networking site that was used in the Philippines, where I originally came from.
At first I was thinking: I don’t know if I want to join another social networking site. I also have MySpace but I don’t really use it. I only joined it at first because I think I got an invitation to join from a friend. That one is pretty much useless to me. I get a whole lot of invitations to join other social networking sites as well, so I usually just ignore them. I don’t think they’re all going to be very useful to me.
I decided to check out Facebook and it looked pretty decent to me. I liked the layout and features since it was very clean and simple; it was so different from Friendster and MySpace. And so I joined. I only had about ten or so friends on Facebook at that time (not including relatives) but I was okay with that.
I checked out the features and saw that there was this Groups. Hmm, I thought, maybe I should start a group for my school. Then and there I started the University of St. La Salle – Integrated School group. It was where I went to school during my grade school and high school years. I invited my friends who were already on Facebook and sent email invitations as well to those who weren’t on the site yet.
2002 was the year I graduated from high school, thus, I only knew the email addresses of those from my batch. I did a little research to find the group email addresses of other batches so I could send them an email invitation to join as well.
My high school classmate, who was on Facebook already, also started a University of St. La Salle group which is aimed to gather all those who went to our school from pre-school until college/university. I made him an admin on the group I created and vice versa.
Little by little, our groups started gathering more members. As of this writing, the USLS-IS group now has 800+ members and the USLS group has 1,000+ members. Compared to the actual number of students who studied in our school, I know we’re still far off, but well, at least we were able to create a venue for current students, alumni, and teachers to get and stay connected with each other.
This is the story of how my love for Facebook started.
Tech-Life in Pink 