All posts by Matt Gorman

Crush It Review Rough Draft

In his book Crush It: Why Now is the Time to Cash in On Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk gives a strong pep talk about why your job should have something to do with what you truly love, and why you should leave that job if it doesn’t. His main argument is that in the current state of the online world, if you make content about anything you are strongly passionate about, it will attract other people, and therefore money. To prove this point, he shares his own story of how he went from working in his immigrant father’s liquor store to running a multi-million dollar business, and how social media and adaptability helped this happen. In other words, then, he explains that with passion and a willingness to adapt to change, social media has created an environment where almost anyone could make money.

Given the subject matter of ‘anyone can be successful,’ this book seems to be written for a general audience of people who may not be happy with their jobs, or even if they are, are looking for some kind of change in their life. Because of this, Crush It never goes into any specifics of a social media plan, and even mentions that you should not “…put on an act to try to imitate me or anyone else who’s had some success with social marketing. You will lose because people can sniff out a poser from a mile away” (42). This single sentence, in fact, is the basis for everything else that Vaynerchuk talks about in the book. Aside from your passion and the business need for adaptability, authenticity is the most important quality in the social media space, he says.

Part of being successful at promoting whatever kind of brand you may have on social media, he says, is understanding that sites like Twitter and Facebook are more about establishing relationships with your customers, fans, and followers than selling anything in particular. He points to his own use of Twitter, where he says, “Can you imagine how obnoxious I’d look if I sent out tweets every day urging that call to action? Instead, I use the other tools in my toolbox to bring viewers back to my blog, where I knock their socks off with my content, which inspires them to hit the “Buy My Book” call-to-action button and convert a blog visit into a chance to further build my brand and my revenue” (68). In other words, there is a time and a place to make a hard sell for things, but if you do this all the time on social media, people will feel the ‘phoniness’ of it, and most likely be less inclined to buy something from you, or even worse, might stop following you in the first place.

Vaynerchuk is not alone in discussing this issue of online authenticity. Because of the virtual nature of the online world, authenticity is a factor that cannot be ignored in any discussion of social media. In fact, Marwick and boyd mention a similar balance to what Vaynerchuk is explaining, as they write, “For Twitter users trying to build audience, personal authenticity and audience expectations must be balanced. To appeal to broad audiences, some popular Twitter users maintained that they had to continually monitor and meet the expectations of their followers.” (126). In other words, the rules of balancing different types of messages online is not only a business concern, but holds true for social media use in general.

While Vaynerchuck’s messages certainly do hold true in many degrees, I think the idea that simply being authentic on social network sites and creating content about something you love will not necessarily lead you to success. Someone could be extremely passionate about cooking and film themselves baking cakes in an authentic, unedited way, but if they do not offer anything particularly interesting, people are not going to be drawn to them. Vaynerchuck mentions that you have to offer something unique and different from everyone else, but I think with that comes both the fact that it must be interesting and you have to have some knowledge of how to promote it aside from just setting up a Twitter account and tweeting.

Overall, I’d say the book is a good jumping point for anyone who is just getting started with what could be the scary land of social media, as it certainly points out some good pro-tips that people just starting out might not realize. This, along with the amount of excitement the book instills, could definitely get someone who hates their current job motivated to try something new, but I think a little more detail about what to do once you’re online would make a great supplement to Crush It.

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by Matt Gorman on April 27, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Matt Gorman on April 27, 2012

http://csmt12.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/crush-it-review-rough-draft/

The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance: News Stories Everywhere Claim Technology is Evil, Kids are Helpless

In today’s world of ubiquitous social media, it seems like every day you hear a news story about why social networks are bad for kids in some new way. While I was researching the topic, I came across an article titled ‘Are social networking sites turning teens into substance abusers?’ which seemed like the perfect starting spot for an analysis of media overreacting about kids’ online lives. The article cites a press release from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, which states that ‘Teens who use Facebook and other social networking sites on a daily basis are three times as likely to drink alcohol, twice as likely to use marijuana, and five times more likely to smoke tobacco than teens who don’t frequent the sites.’ While such statistics may sound like the standard ‘the internet is bad for your kids’ rant, this article actually did point out that rather than keep kids from the internet, perhaps something should be done by sites like Facebook to prevent teenagers from posting such pictures online. However unrealistic this may be, it is at least a different perspective than the norm. Another interesting point of differentiation from the standard discourse was that about 90 percent of parents interviewed in the survey believed that social networking had no effect on their kids drinking or drug use.

While this article does provide some interesting insight, the major issue that I find is that it directly relates social networking with drinking and drug use, completely ignoring all other factors. This type of technological determinism is criticized in Amy Adele Hasinoff’s article ’Sexting as media production: Re-thinking dominant ideas about teen girls and sexuality online.’ In the article, Hasinoff points out a CBS news story which, in regard to teens and sexting, stated, ‘When people see these sexy pictures, they are more apt to have sexual relations which will lead to teen pregnancy .’ Again, such a point of view directly blames the technology for teenagers’ decisions and removes all agency from the teens themselves.  Just as Hasinoff provides the alternative view of sexting as a means of expression, perhaps the authors of the article that I came across should consider that in posting pictures on Facebook, these teenagers are simply expressing themselves, but that an issue worth tackling might be how and why the teens are drinking in the first place.

Another issue with how the information is presented in this article is that it mentions a broad generalization in saying that using a social networking site on a daily basis makes teens three times more likely to drink alcohol. Similar to the way in which the article is ignoring any outside context, such numbers should be looked at under a closer light, much like Kimberly Mitchell and her team do in their article  ’Prevalence and Characteristics of Youth Sexting: A National Study.’ Just as Mitchell and her team find that past studies overrepresent the amount of sexting going on due to vague definitions and flawed research methods, perhaps a more in-depth study would be more informative than such quick correlational statements.

Articles like these clearly try to provoke some sense of panic in parents of teens, much like the video we watched in class about the ‘new ways kids are hiding sexting from their parents.’ News reports like these seem to say that the only way teens can be safe is either by not being on social networking sites at all, or by having heavy parental privacy invasion supervision. Rather than present these terrifying statistics in raw form, maybe these news stories should focus on talking with your kids and teaching them to make responsible decisions both online and offline, rather than simply saying that the internet is an evil place where your kids will be completely out of your (and their own) control.

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by Matt Gorman on March 23, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Matt Gorman on March 23, 2012

http://csmt12.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/the-kids-dont-stand-a-chance-news-stories-everywhere-claim-technology-is-evil-kids-are-helpless/

Culture vs. Cult: The Role of Social Media in Our Lives

In an article from October on the Huffington Post, Katherine Bindley explores what role social networking and jealousy play in “your” life. Her main argument is that while Facebook is a very powerful tool to help people connect and stay connected to one another, it has equally as much capacity to effectively ruin relationships. Specifically, she points out a few main things that people tend to do (or not do), which lead to their partner to feel either jealous or uncomfortable. Some of these examples included things like over/undersharing about the relationship on the network, having tagged pictures of exes, and seeing ‘worrisome’ things on partners’ pages and assuming the worst.

With all of this, though, it becomes clear that the underlying issue is a lack of communication rather than anything Facebook itself is doing. In fact, Bindley quotes a couples therapist from San Diego, Jennine Estes as saying, “Facebook isn’t usually the problem. It’s the behaviors that are the problem.” This statement is particularly important, because it immediately takes out considerations of Facebook being the ‘active ruiner’ of relationships. Such a blame on Facebook would be a very blatant statement of what Judith Donath (and others) would describe as technological determinism. In fact, Estes goes even further, saying:

“To be clear, Facebook itself isn’t to blame for the demise of domestic bliss. Instead, it’s an avenue by which threats can develop if you fail to communicate about them, and one that can exacerbate problems that already exist.”

Again, this is a very clear way to disprove arguments of technological determinism and instead emphasise what more looks like a social shaping view of technology, where people’s usage of new technology are taken into account. Because Bindley presents this concept early on and comes back to it throughout the article, the general ‘story’ of what she writes does not blame Facebook for strains in relationships, but rather points out how people can abuse its capabilities in ways that lead to a strain of trust.

The jealousy that a boyfriend or girlfriend might feel as a result of something done on Facebook is not very different from the ‘psychological warfare’ that dana boyd describes from the MySpace ‘Top 8′ feature.  Again, however, neither boyd nor Bindley suggest that the social networks are to blame (although in the case of MySpace, it’s hard to imagine a practical use for ‘ranking’ your friends), but rather that people are quite prone to be sensitive in these publicly social spaces. Overall, then, I think she presents the possibilities of Facebook in a reasonable, objective manner.

In the film Life 2.0, however, the users of Second Life are presented in such a way that they come across as if they were members of a cult: that they got into ‘this thing,’ couldn’t stop, and may or may not have made it out. In fact, the way it was put together made me think of the movie Jonestown, (trailer below)  where the people who joined the ‘People’s Temple’ cult were vulnerable for some number of reasons, found a comfortable, welcoming environment in the cult, eventually found out that it was ‘bad,’ and either made it out or didn’t (although obviously there was no mass suicide shown in Life 2.0). Although the stories presented in Life 2.0 had varying areas of success, I felt like the filmmakers generally presented Second Life as something that could be very dangerous, and that it was best to get out of it rather than lose all touch with reality.

Because of the way Second Life seemed to be shown as ‘dangerous’ in the film, I would argue that it takes more of a technologically deterministic view, where people have little or no control of what they are doing once they sign up for the game. To avoid this, the filmmaker could have shown a few people who use Second Life casually and who still maintain normal relationships with other people. This would have given proof that there is nothing inherently wrong with Second Life, but that it may bring out underlying social issues in some people who play it. In fact, I would imagine (or hope) that the stories shown in the film were extreme cases chosen to exhibit an entertaining yet disturbing look into the lives of Second Life addicts, posing them as an ‘other’ character for people to laugh at and maybe feel better about their own interpersonal relationships.

Given these two differing perspectives on social media, I think it is important to study these areas through an unbiased lens and present all sides of the story. Rather than present the audience with predetermined judgements, it would be better to show people how a social network works in its most basic form and how people have changed and adapted this, but most importantly, that all these uses are different for everyone.

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by Matt Gorman on February 17, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Matt Gorman on February 17, 2012

http://csmt12.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/culture-vs-cult-the-role-of-social-media-in-our-lives/

How Should We ‘Follow’ Social Networks?

In his article “Social network(ing) sites…revisiting the story so far: A response to danah boyd and Nicole Ellison,” Dr. David Beer provides a criticism of boyd and Ellison’s article on Social Network Sites. Some of his main issues with their initial analysis of Social Network Sites include that using the term Social Network Sites as something similar and yet distinct from Social Networking Sites is problematic, as it is too broad a category for such a topic. This, he argues, leads to a limit on how closely the SNS can be studied. Another issue Beer finds is that boyd and Ellison consider the online and offline worlds as two separate arenas, whereas he feels that the two are continuously merging together more and more. Along with this, Beer finds that considering situations in the ‘offline world’ to be unmediated, whereas all interactions are mediated in some way. Finally, Beer goes on to discuss how SNS should be studied in the future. He feels that researchers need to become more involved in the SNS to have more of an understanding of who is using them and how, and believes that SNS need to be understood as a player in the world of capitalism above all else, as the data these companies collect is highly valuable.

While boyd and Ellison’s article is quite thorough, Beer makes several valid observations here. For instance, the idea of taking the online and offline world as two completely separate concepts is a fairly bold concept from boyd and Ellison, and Beer’s point that these two worlds are actually quite connected is very much true. While I think it is still important to consider differences in how people present themselves in online versus offline situations, researchers should also think about those in between times, such as when a person is at a concert with friends and uploading a picture to Facebook. Should this be considered an online or offline moment? Regardless, Beer does make a very valid point that there are essentially no interactions that are in some way mediated. The great sociologist Erving Goffman would certainly agree with this, as he points to the metaphor of the ‘self’ as something represented on stage for the public in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. With this in mind, it is quite surprising that boyd and Ellison would consider such a claim that there could be ‘unmediated interactions.’

Since this response was written in 2008, the iPhone had been released just a few months earlier, and Twitter was just starting to catch on. Along with a slew of other new products and platforms, these clearly changed the way many people interact with the offline world. Nowadays, people are constantly checking their phones to see what their friends are up to and to share their own thoughts and experiences online. In fact, the urge to Tweet or check emails has been found to be more addictive than smoking or alcohol. While this may have been the case with email back in 2008, the penetration of smartphones in the US, although still not the majority, has undoubtedly led to an increase of this. I think this blur between the online and offline world should be something that scholars should focus on while studying social networks: how people act when they are participating in both ‘worlds’ at the same time.

Another important discourse I think scholars should pay attention to when studying social media is that of the capitalist nature of SNS. As users become more and more concerned about what is being done with their data and how these sites are making money (Facebook even released a page explaining how it all works), the privacy anxiety that comes with the capitalist aspect is very interesting. Aside from the methods Beer, boyd, and Ellison mention, I think a study of why people migrate between SNS can reveal a significant amount about why people use the sites, and what they expect from them. For instance, a recent study has shown that many teens are leaving Facebook for Twitter, often for privacy issues. A more in-depth look into this could show why these shifts among networks happen, and how popular culture decides which ones are ‘cool’ (we all remember what happened to Myspace).

Obviously social media will continue to change, but studying the types of networks people use and why should provide an insight into how social people really want to be with their SNS. It will also shed light on how big of an issue privacy, authenticity, and other matters are for users.

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by Matt Gorman on February 3, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Matt Gorman on February 3, 2012

http://csmt12.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/how-should-we-follow-social-networks/

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