Today Coleman tweeted that the Ministry of Education’s teachers’ day website was a risky move, and coincidentally at the time when I clicked on the link the one and only “careless” tweet appeared (screenshot courtesy of Coleman):
Teachersday.sg
Yes, I give MOE credit for trying something new and for experimenting, but there are still points to be made/lessons to learn:
1) It may have been the only negative tweet, but I think we need to think about these things. Who else will see these tweets besides the teachers? Other kids? Parents of kids? It’s entirely possible to get on to a service like Pheed.me and remove foul language in advance. And I think we need to be keenly aware of our target audience.
2) I understand that the purpose of keeping it uncensored was to maintain authenticity, but looking at the tweets that came out.. I’m not sure how many were just set up for the sole purpose of tweeting this one hashtag.
3) As Daphne points out, this web portal wasn’t largely publicised and therein lies why this was the only “careless” tweet. If more of the general public got to know about it, I bet it wouldn’t be long before tweets like “Miss Lim from [whatever] school I remember you for being such a b!tc# 20 years ago and I hope you’re still single #tday09” start appearing, and this turns into a #skittles fiasco – where people tagged on racist/malicious comments to the #skittles hashtag for everyone to see.
So for a moment, let’s forget this is the Ministry of Education (MOE), let’s forget that the people tweeting are predominantly kids, and let’s think about it in the real world:
First, while I don’t think the people who are involved are inexperienced or ignorant of social media, I think they jumped on the shiny object bandwagon without thinking it through. From their blog post:
If Facebook was the vehicle that brought social media to the mainstream, Twitter is the shiny new Ferrari F70 of the online space
Accurately said. I shiny new Ferrari isn’t an everyday, run-of-the-mill car. It’s like re-taking your drivers’ licence test again and making sure you understand the vehicle and can control it under all sorts of conditions, sunny or stormy.
Second, I know I’ll get some flak by being critical of something like this where there’s one negative post in a sea of hundreds. But that’s not where I’m coming from. It’s not specific to the case. It’s specific to the understanding, usage and application of social media that I think we have to be aware of. Those of us who are fortunate enough to work in this space really have to be conscious of this. If you did this for a client, or your CEO of an MNC and they saw this happen. What do you think are the odds you’d get budget for your next “social media experiment”? Slim to none?
Basically, I think you have to be careful how much risk you take with your brand. It’s great to hand over control to the consumers, but you gotta know your audience. Have you already been in the community cultivating “antibodies” for awhile who will come to your defence when someone steps out of line? Or are you jumping in cold? Just because you introduce a platform for one, noble purpose, doesn’t mean it will be used that way by everyone. And you have to take the good and the bad.
Back to the specific case, although the boy managed to delete his tweet and seemed quite embarrassed afterwards, I really hope he doesn’t get punished or anything because of this. It was a conscious decision to make this platform public, and therefore consequences that arise of it being public comes from that choice to be public, not the user.
After all, he just served as a reminder to us that anybody can be made aware of anyone’s social media efforts at any one time, and they’re not always going to be in sync with your organisation.
Experiential marketing – “the art of creating an experience where the result is an emotional connection to a person, brand, product or idea” — Wikipedia
So awhile ago my girlfriend was interning at an agency doing “experiential marketing”. Through frequent updates on how work’s going it seemed to me that creating this “experience” through which to market a product to a consumer, largely manifested itself in the way of holding costly, one-off events with some snazzy technology or maybe some alcohol.
During one particular talk I asked: When was the last time such an “event” really created a connection and motivated either of us to check out or purchase the product? We both drew a blank.
Then three nights ago a few of my friends were at my place having a drink and out of nowhere, one of them asked “remember that time we almost drank 8 litres of beer?”
Erdinger
Short story: In 2007 two of my friends won a contest with Erdinger Beer and four of us got invited to dinner with free flow of said beer.
While talking three nights ago, what did we remember?
How much we drank
The brand manager who kept coming by to talk to us, making sure we felt great the whole night (and that our glasses were filled all the time)
The alternative (read: proper) way to clink glasses together after a toast (which is a ritual we now share)
Other embarrassing things I shall not reveal in public
After that night in 2007, what happened?
When Erdinger was available, more often than not it was purchased
One of my friends tells everyone he knows how that beer is his favourite (I’ve witnessed this countless times)
It’s now 2009, two years later. Clearly the experience has stuck.
So my question is: Will your projector/laser/holographic screen do the same? Would your branded liquor party be any distinguishable from the ten other parties the partygoers got sloshed at? Or will these “experiences” merely be over-expensive events that are one time only?
As Joseph Jaffe says: Marketing is a committment, not a campaign. Let’s try to remember that.
As everyone knows by now, Singapore has it’s first H1N1 case, a schoolmate of mine from SMU (I don’t know her name or who she is). She came back from a business study mission to New York, and I was on a similar trip two years ago in 2007, and many of my friends were on trips before, during and after that.
So when the media gets hold of information that
a) The H1N1 case is a student from SMU
b) She was on a business study mission to New York
What do they do? Call/email/sms/instant message anyone and everyone they know who has ever gone on the trip, regardless of which year it was. I personally was contacted for information, so too were other friends who were on the previous trips, and not this year’s. They then start asking for the phone number of the professor in charge.
Look. If you want to do responsible reporting, do responsible reporting. Call the hospital, ask the doctor how she is, ask the ministries if we’re prepared for the flu, whatever. Don’t sensationalise reporting by finding out facts that don’t matter, and don’t harass people who have nothing to do with it!
You know the rules. You want a comment, call the school, not the students.
And for goodness sake, leave the poor girl alone to recover in the hospital. It’s bad enough she has to go through the trauma for having the virus, the last thing she needs are vultures circling around her door, phone and anywhere else to get every juicy tidbit of information that matters.
By the way, Channel News Asia, there’s no point being on Twitter which is meant for instantaneous messaging, if you break the news almost five hours after it’s out.
Awhile ago, the Singapore Management University Students Association (SMUSA) did a large scale electronic survey to SMU students, asking them about satisfaction/dissatisfaction with various aspects of the school ranging from facilities, grading, professors and so on. The premise of this survey was so that they could know what the general population is feeling, and act on it.
Post-survey, I saw this pasted to one of the pillars in SMU:
SA Research
Here’s the thing though. I walked past this and immediately thought: This means 43% (or almost half) of SMU students don’t feel a sense of belonging to SMU. Wouldn’t that be a more grabbing or immediate statistic to display and act on?
Also, the poster asks those are in that 57%, who do feel a sense of belonging, if they have something to say about it. Wouldn’t it be more productive to ask those in the 43% to ask them if they have something to say about it?
That said, I’m not a research major. Would anyone who is like to chime in?
1) No one seems to really know what responsible participation means. Does it mean different things depending on context? For example, does “responsible participation” take on different manifestations in a B2C context as contrasted with a public-sector context?
2) Responsible participation, regardless of the context, needs to be two-way. I’m astounded at the sentiment on one side of the fence that calls for, or demands responsible participation, without even being engaged and participating themselves in the first place. Reciprocity is a global norm, no?
John collecting opinions
As a side note, I had a subsequent class visit to Edelman the following week, and the topic of discussion was “Crisis communication”. Before any of us could bring up the Wal-Mart example, the speaker brought it up first as an example of how they had to deal with it and it’s nice to see them openly acknowledge past mistakes and use them as a learning experience.
All in all, it seems like Edelman is genuinely trying to tap into the community to aid them in their social media efforts and this is only the first of such discussions. I’m looking forward to see what comes next.
As a graduating student, it’s hard to go by a day without someone asking “have you found a job?” or talking to a fellow graduating student about job prospects, job hunting efforts or the like. On Monday, it hit me that I have officially eight weeks (or two months) to go, before I hit my last day of school in SMU.
I don’t know how big deal getting a first job is for most people, but it’s a huge deal for me. I’ve had friends who got a job early after graduation, or even before graduation, but find themselves in another job after a year. Some will say that’s experience, I see it as a waste of time. Call me the typical Gen Y-er, but if you’re not waking up happy to go to work every morning, why are you going to work?
As much as I’m eager to get a job and not be unemployed for moths on end, I feel it has to be the right one. Or as right as possible, given the current economic climate.
I can’t speak for the rest of my friends, but I have different expectations when it comes to work. Many of my cohort think about money, I think about fit. Many think about how fast they can get to the next pay bracket, I think about culture. Perhaps it’s idealistic, but I figure it’s better to think about these things now and aim for them, rather than “wake up” figuratively after three or five years, realising that you weren’t working for what you wanted all along.
So what are my options? Knowing my passions and skill sets, and graduating with a business degree majoring in marketing and communications (specifically, digital media) I see myself doing one of five things:
1) Working in media
It could be a TV station, radio station, record label or publication. If it deals with media, I’m for it. If it deals with digital media, music and/or youth, all the better. I did two stints at MTV Asia and at least specific to those experiences, I think it would be something I would really enjoy. Granted, people with business degrees don’t usually end up with such fields, but in this day and age, I think it’s a plus to have someone from business school who can understand the value of delivering results/ROI over artistry. Additionally, many of these traditional media channels need to adapt to digital, an avenue I could potentially add value to.
2) Working in a company interested in a social media strategy
This is a no brainer considering the content of my blog. Admittedly, I would go into this with no “real” experience as measured by conventional businesses. But I’d wager I could bring more to a social media strategy than a Gen X-er who doesn’t get what social media, community and conversation is about. The difficulty here, besides the thorny “experience” issue, is finding the “fit” with a company that is genuinely interested in embracing a social media strategy for the long run, and working in one that is truly going to bring about change, as opposed to doing it because digital is the new TV.
3) Working in PR
Another semi-no brainer. It is after all my major and I did have a very short stint at Waggener Edstrom doing digital PR. Difficulty here is similar to #2. Working in PR should be a fairly straightforward thing. Working in an agency that is truly embracing digital and not doing it for the sake of doing it, will be difficult.
4) Teaching
Teaching used to be a “long term” end goal of mine. Given the conditions, maybe I’d go into it earlier than I thought. Youth is a passion and I’ve been helping out back in SJI for four years. I know the fantastic feeling it is to bring boys from secondary one to secondary four, and the pride I took in the journey is immense. The tradeoff? Transferring back to the corporate world may not be easy.
5) Starting something myself
You may have read about Claudia’s new company, 24seven in the papers yesterday. I think doing something like that requires a lot of guts and a lot of sacrifice. I’m convinced there’s a market who wants the stuff people like Claudia and myself can provide. I just wonder if it’s big enough, and how long it would take to pay itself off.
What about you graduating students? What do you want to do? What’s more important to you in life right now? Just finding any job with the hopes of switching once the economy picks up? Or trying to find that elusive “right” one?
I think our wiki is deserving of a nomination (and a win) because it is the epitome of crowdsourcing and collaboration, the very things that inspired wikis. It’s been maintained for over a year by over 100 students, but not by their efforts alone. We’ve reached out to the prominent figures all over Asia to get their input and integrate it into a comprehensive wiki for anyone to find out more about different social media usages across Asia. I daresay it is the most comprehensive resource for anyone looking to get a quick primer on social media in Asia.
Coming here to Canada for exchange, I’ve met people from all over Asia – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, China, etc – and it’s amazing to see that our collective research really does mirror what actually goes on in their lives.
If you’ve seen or used our wiki, or even just like the idea of the wiki as a central informational tool, do give the wiki your support and drop a link to the Edublog Awards page and support the nomination!
[Disclosure: I am a contributor to the wiki as part of a course (Digital Media Across Asia) in SMU. I will also be teaching assistant for this course in January, and as such feel tremendously involved in this project and nomination!]
Tonight wrapped up my Film 240 class here at Queen’s University called “Media & Popular Culture”. One question asked was “Do you use RSS?” and the poll came to about 15% saying yes (which is not far off from the recent 11% RSS adoption rate that was researched). [No, I didn't count hands raised. The poll was done using electronic clickers so the percentages are shown instantaneously on screen.]
If these are the numbers for the more functional and popular tools, I’m expecting the figures for other avenues of web2.0 in education (wikis, social bookmarking, blogs, document collaboration) to be much lower.
So my questions tonight to you are:
1) Do you think these numbers are generally reflective, or should they be higher or lower?
2) If you don’t know about these tools, do you wish someone would teach you how to use them?
3) If you do know about these tools and discovered about them yourself, do you wish someone had introduced you to them earlier?
4) What aspects of education would you be most keen to utilise social media tools?
5) Do you even think such Web2.0 tools have a place in education?
6) If you’ve heard of tools like RSS, Twitter, Wikis, etc, what’s stopping you from using them?
I really, really wanna hear from you, so help me out. If you already know the tools, pass this post on to someone who doesn’t, and ask them to answer the questions!
On a personal note, if you’d like to collaborate with me on an SMU project similar to the one Hack College did, drop me a line!
We have a pretty lively SMUcommunity on Twitter with @studio_bug and @iammyy joining us just this week. In a way it’s this awesome community that led me to the revelation of why Twitter is so powerful. In short: It’s like mIRC in that you can talk to anyone and leave messages for anyone and usually do these with multiple people at once.
It really plays up on the “social” effect of web2.0 where you and your group of friends can come home from being separated from each other all day, and catch up on what happened in their lives.
However, outside of the 20-30 of us, I’m quite acutely aware that there are another 130ish people following me on Twitter (a healthy amount not even from Singapore) who may find all this inter-tweeting a little…. frivolous. Or maybe even bordering on annoying.
I realised this awhile back and struggled internally whether to start a new, personal account to do all the chatting guilt-free, or to exercise more self-control and not tweet excessively, or use direct messages more often. I chose the latter option (and it’s a slow process, I assure you), but I just wanted to take this opportunity to add on a ninth mistake that bloggers make while using Twitter, inspired from Twitter-Themed Social Media Wednesdays from @stripedshirt who picked up the original post of eight mistakes bloggers make.
#9: Twitter gives you great mIRC-like benefits, but it doesn’t mean you should use it like IRC.
If you say something great on Twitter, chances are you might share the news with friends in real life, pass it on on Twitter or even blog about it. I think this is the new water cooler effect (and you can feel free to disagree with me). But if we as Twitter users abuse this new found “power” and choose to blast anything and everything via Twitter, sooner or later there will be people who find that you aren’t adding value and ignore you. Similar to how we don’t use IRC anymore.
In short, let’s all try to be watchful of what we tweet, and keep in mind that although it may be relevant to those 10-20 people in a specific community, it may come across as spammy or annoying to the rest of the majority who are following you.
If all else fails, try Mibbit. It’s an online IRC client that doesn’t need installation or anything. A couple of us tried it yesterday and it works pretty well! I do think we’re going to end up full circle in terms of chat and instant messaging, so I’m up for a test drive anytime.
Are you feeling like Twitter is getting more and more congested? Or do you think that there’s not even enough being posted on Twitter? Let’s hear your views in the comments below.
Japan’s crazy status there doesn’t surprise me. Just check out TwitterVision and half the time the tweets are popping up from Japan. It’s interesting that the UK almost doubles Canadian usage of Twitter. Another non-surprise is how Indonesia has very few Twitterers. Perhaps they’re all on Kronologger? In any case, interesting to see where this goes in the next 4-6 months.
If you’re looking for a way to “segment” your Twitter friends, I picked up an interesting app called Crowd Status that essentially allows you to do this (click for bigger picture):
Personally very useful for me because sometimes I get caught up in the Twitterstream so much that it’s hard to know what a particular group of friends are doing. No such problems anymore!
While we’re on Twitter and SMU T*Buddies, after 2 weeks the results of the SMU Twitter Experiment are in. If you missed it, the recap is the original 13 SMU Twitterers were supposed to get one more person in each and double our SMU Twitter Community. Results as follows:
