What i learned in NTFM

Unfortunately this will be my last blog for this year as another semester has come to a swift end once again. I must say I have really enjoyed this module New Technologies for Marketers and it has really given me a different insight into how markets use social media to attract potential clients etc.

When I took up the module at the start of the year I didn’t really know what to expect but I must say it was really worth my while. The module began by setting up various different accounts such as professional marketing account for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin and WordPress.

After the first two weeks of the module we started to blog about numerous different topics that are relevant to online marketing at the moment. We had a different topic with the last six weeks and to be honest I really enjoyed my time blogging about these current trends. Addicted to facebook was probably my favourite blog as it was so relevant to me as I knew so much about facebook it was very easy to blog about.

One of best aspects of the module was the fact the work load was continuous and spread out right through the semester a blog each week was a lot easy to manage then doing six in a row. Hands on practical approach really helped me to learn more about online/digital marketing between numerous discussions in the class and on the web through reading all of my fellow student’s blogs I got a real understanding for every topic that we wrote about.

All in all I really enjoyed this module and would recommend to anyway who would be thinking in doing it next year. NTFM has given me a real understanding how marketers use online social media etc.Hope you enjoyed reading my blogs over the past six weeks, I have certainly enjoyed blogging them 🙂

Here is a quick video in how you can get a small insight in what we learned

#Addicted to Twitter??

For many people addicted to twitter is very true, but for others its totally irrelevant. I personal have an account for college which I rarely use and that is all the contact that I have with twitter. I probably login once maybe twice a week I don’t really see the purpose of having two social media website as they are quiet similar.

When I do use twitter it is very helpful to find out information on scores in matches when not at home as people are constantly twitting about current events. For others  twitter is part of there daily life, some people tweet when they wake up and all through the day. I believe they’re addicted to tweeter.  Twitting is part of the daily routine and with smart phone becoming so popular its just so easy to tweet that they tweet without realising they’re always tweeting.This is a a list of the top ten countries that are addicted to twitter the most.

Currently there is over 500m active users currently on twitter most of this users tweet via there smart phone in fact 41% of users do.  Everyday there are over 55 million tweets across a broad range of topics. Celebrities use twitter to reach out to there fans and to make them aware of upcoming events etc. For example the boy band one direction have over 11m followers on twitter. People are not only addicted to twitter they’re addicted to what celebrities are doing and how they can be more like them etc.

Twitter is growing all the time and will continue to do so for some time as people are so self consious of what other people are doing. Also when a person makes a tweet they will continuously check there page to see if some has retweeted it or put it as there favourite. These are the people who are addicted to tweeter as they are constantly checking to see what’s going on online etc.

Here is a simple video to show how people are becoming addicted to twitter!

The Filter Bubble!

What is a filter bubble?

Before starting to write this blog I did not even know there was such a thing as a filter bubble and had a number of ideas of what it could be before I found this definition. Basically a filter bubble is A filter bubble is a result state in which a website selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and search history) and, as a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles.

From all the time I have been searching the World Wide Web for various information every day, I never realized that the information appearing in front of my eyes is filtered to a certain extent. Search operators such as GOOGLE, BING and YAHOO are filtering the content that appears on our screen and we have no control over it!

The reason why they are doing this is simple there is over seven billion people in the world and they feel they will show us what we need not actually what we what to see. For example Google has fifty seven different computer for when we search the web, so if a friend and I search the web at the same time for the same information we will probably get different information. Google takes into a number of different characters when searching the web where you are sitting, what kind of computer you use and what search engine you are using. They then give back the results with these various pieces of information taken into account.

We don’t decide to be surfing in a filter bubble it is done for us and we have no control what kind of a bubble we are in. We are being categorized into various bubble due to our location, age, gender, computers, demographic and even political reasons. From all of the above it true we are surfing in a filter bubble and will be for sometime to come.

Here is a simple video to help you understand it further.

Facebook brings out new features how will people react to them??

This week facebook have announced new features to their newsfeed, guide lines on how to use this new newsfeed are on technorati.

Another recent change on facebook was to their graph search feature, here is a video to show how they’ve changed it up.

Is facebook taking over our lives??

This statement is very true and for sometime has been pestering away at us. There are over 1 billion people on facebook all over the world. This means that one in 7 people in the world are on facebook as the population of the world is over 7 billion. I must say from my own point of view you could say I am letting facebook take over my life, as I write this blog my facebook in signed on in another tab. Everytime I go onto the internet whether its to check my emails I always end up logging into facebook to see what is going on afraid of missing something. In a typically day I probably check my account around five to six times daily.

Along with myself people are becoming obsessed with what’s happening on facebook. When a person puts up a status or a photo on facebook, they check their account constantly to see how many likes they are getting and if someone has left a comment. With one in seven people having a smart phone it becoming extremely easy for people to assess there account on the go hence why people are becoming obsessed with facebook. This is becoming apparent on nights out socializing with friends. People update the facebook status and check in where they are with their friends. This is clearly letting facebook take over our lives and our sense of privacy as its out there for the whole world to see where we are and what we are doing. Daily 175 million people login to their account with 100 million of these on there smart phone. The average person checks their facebook account 6.1 times daily.

I believe some people that are constantly updating are lacking confidence and seeking attention. Researcher Soraya Mehdizadeh from York University in Canada asked 100 students, 50 male and 50 female, aged between 18 and 25 about their Facebook habits..Those who scored higher on the narcissism test checked their Facebook pages more often each day than those who did not.There was also a difference between men and women – men generally promoted themselves by written posts on their Facebook page while women tended to carefully select the pictures in their profile. From this study I believe that people are depending on facebook to keep themselves occupied from what’s really going on in their lives, in a sense they are using facebook to make them feel good etc.

Here is a video to further back up why facebook is taking over our lives and will continue to do so for some years to come.

Apps are dead…… long live moblie

The app is dead….. long live mobile
This statement is a very bold one and can be discussed in a number of ways. To say the “app is dead” I believe is not necessarily true, 64% of mobile users time is spent on apps on their mobile. But in saying that mobile is growing and starting to knock apps off their perch, 75% of mobile users prefer a mobile friendly site. In 2012 ios hit 1 million apps created with 40m downloads and nearly half of these downloads in 2012. But for the point of view of businesses the app is in decline and mobile friendly websites are becoming a lot more attractive to businesses.

There are a number of reasons why this trend is prevailing. By 2014, mobile internet should take over desktop internet usage that’s one of the key points in a recent containing various stats on the future of mobile in other words, in a few years from now mobile devices will be more commonplace than desktop computers.

Moblie traffic is on the rise 31% of mobile internet users “mostly” go online using their phones 75% of emails are opened, 60% of Facebook posts and 90% tweets are all conducted from a mobile device!  1 in 8 page views are from mobile devices. These stats are proving moblie is taking over from apps and people prefer moblie friendly websites. I believe apps will always be available and are not quiet dead yet, apps are moving away from being part of businesses marketing campaigns and more to gaming etc. From 2 billion apps downloaded 65% of these are games. From all of the above I now believe apps are on the way out and mobile is the way forward. Here is my video of an example why moblie marketing is becoming popular.