Flip the Media » Social Media

Nevada GOP’s fail whale: A warning to all political organizations

Corey Christiansen — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:50:11 +0000

I’m currently traveling with 4 other PhD, Masters and undergrad students, and several faculty members as a collaboration between the Communications Department and the Seattle Times. Our blog, UW Election Eye follows the campaign trail through the perspective of students and faculty. This piece is being cross-posted because we felt it tied in well with the theme of Flip the Media.

Storify is a software that enables a media-rich method of synthesizing and telling of a story. We employ it here to document and interpret key moments in the Nevada Republican Party’s decision to use — and trumpet — technologies such as Google and Twitter to digitally publicize caucus results.

But they failed to provide a crucial element: The analog infrastructure actually required to count hand-marked ballots. Take a look at the Storify that we’ve created as a part of the UW Election Eye team to show how technology and media are being used to cover this Republican primary.

Consider this a cautionary tale for all political organizations, including the Republican Party in Washington state, which hosts caucuses slightly less than a month from today.

Lindsey Meeks and David Domke contributed to this story.

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Are Stock Photos Telling Your Story?

Cheryl Lowry — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:17:46 +0000

If you’ve given a presentation lately, you’ve probably spent some time digging through stock photography websites to dress up your words. Presentation Zen counsels that images should largely replace words due to the picture superiority effect, and increasingly in presentations these days, they do.

This makes sense in our current age of inattention and info-overload, where we’re often reminded that short-term memory holds only 7 chunks of information, and these fade from your brain in 20 seconds. If this is really the case, however, it’s worth questioning whether slides of orange slices and sunsets are as effective as we think at reinforcing our ideas. A few problems with the stock photo approach include:

#1: Inauthenticity

Projecting an authentic voice is an essential component of social media success. People have turned away from advertisements and corporate messaging and toward personal perspectives, user reviews, and other signs of human life online. Stock photos don’t show the world through your eyes, and are hard to distinguish from ads.

Problem #2: They distract from your story

Decorative imagery can also, according to Graphics for Learning, “risk interfering with essential learning processes needed to promote learning” if it doesn’t inform, motivate, or build conceptual understanding of a topic. In other words, fruit metaphors and scenic backdrops may fall short of usefully supporting your ideas.

So what are the alternatives to the orange slice aesthetic if you’re not an artist or photographer?

1. Basic drawings

A number of recent books from the visual thinking movement such as Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist and Dan Roam’s Blah Blah Blah: What to do When Words Don’t Work provide encouragement and strategies for non-artists to begin creating meaningful (and simple) ideograms that reflect sophisticated concepts.

2. Cell-phone photography

Elementary cell phone photography techniques and special effects apps like Instagram make it possible to create artistic photos that capture unique subjects from a personal perspective.

Anyone can apply visual thinking skills to their presentations with these simple techniques, potentially improving audience connection and comprehension in the process.

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Viral Video of the Week: is English a foreign language?

Kat Schroeder — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:21:05 +0000

People have seemed to have a love/hate relationship with Apple’s Siri technology. Since it (she?) first debuted last fall, Siri has received mixed reviews, among them that if you have a foreign accent, you’re out of luck.

Well, foreign or Scottish, that is.

This video is the result of an article that ran the other day in the LA Times, on the good sales of the iPhone 4s in Scotland, despite Siri’s trouble with the Scots’ “foreign” accents. Be warned, there is profanity.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Come Hang With the FtM Crew February 10th at Big Time Brewery

Jonathan Cunningham — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:48:14 +0000

Ever wanted to know exactly who are the folks involved with and working behind the scenes at this growing digital news site? Ever thought about contributing to Flipthemedia.com? Now is the time to come and chat with us in person. We here at the Flip are making a concerted effort to be more visible this year. We will be attending more events throughout the Puget Sound area and also throwing a couple of our own.

Next Friday, February 10th, we’re putting on a Flipthemedia mixer at Big Time Brewery in the U-District from 6-9pm. It’s all about getting together, having a few drinks and talking casually about digital media. Something right in between a focused happy hour and just hanging out on a Friday evening. Our idea is to make this an informal gathering where people get in the same room and have a few good laughs as we promote Flipthemedia and introduce the editorial staff currently involved with the site.

Big things are brewing with us in 2012 and we’d love to have people come by Big Time Brewery for a drink (or three) and figure out better ways to work together in the future.

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The Benefits of Studying Abroad (Infographic)

Corey Christiansen — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:13:25 +0000

About a year ago when I decided to study abroad in Germany, I knew that it wouldn’t be easy or cheap, I also knew it would help me in the long run but I had a hard time identifying exactly how. Now that I’m back in Seattle I’ve begun to see how it affected me. Thanks to Course Hero, I have a fancy infographic with the results of a survey to help illustrate my experience!

Two of the main reasons that I decided to study abroad was to learn more about how wearable computers can be used to change the way we communicate and to better understand the technological differences between the US and Germany. For some reason I had grand illusions that Europe and especially Germany was more technologically advanced than a lot of other countries including the US. What I found was a large digital divide between regions, age groups and social classes much like we have here in the US.

Studying abroad notably affected and broadened my career goals although it didn’t cause me to want to live or work in another country. In fact it caused me to realize how lucky I am to be in Seattle. On the other hand though, studying in Germany was fascinating because of the way higher education is structured. Graduate students are paid to work full-time on their research projects instead of competing for various scholarships.

Now that I’m back in the job market I’m testing out just how important studying abroad is to employers, but so far it seems to line up with the numbers below. One thing that kind of surprised me while I was away was how many small business ideas kept popping up. Everything from bicycle tube vending machines to competing bars with self-serve touch-screen taps.

Credit: Course Hero

If you’re still not convinced that studying abroad is worth your money, check out this TEDx talk from November with Rick Steves. While he isn’t necessarily advocating for studying abroad, his point is that spending time away from home will likely broaden your perspective and enrich your life. While I’m by no means the world traveler he is, I would have to agree; “fear is for people who don’t get out very much.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’ve studied abroad or are thinking about it please let us know your thoughts below in the comments.

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Google Analytics Adds New Insights

Sean Wang — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:58:59 +0000

No internet presence can be successful as an isolated island. Measuring traffic and understanding user behavior gives developers powerful tools in designing effective sites. Google Analytics introduced a new interface this year. Although it is often difficult to navigate, a few features are worth noting, if you can find them.

Visitor flow visualization

A powerful tool in understanding visitor behavior the flow visualization “tracks” user navigation through web pages within your site. For example, we see users coming to FTM from the Internet, and a smaller percentage browses further into the site reading other posts. For a site that is designed to retain user attention, or to encourage users to complete certain processes like entering data or completing a sale, visitor flow provides clues that site designers can use to improve outcomes.

In Site Analytics

Another great visualization tool puts analytics data directly on a site. This is an effective tool for web designers to see what works and what does not. It is like a map of user activities. It definitely helps designers to experiment with changing the layout and placement or look and feel of a sites based on actual user feedback.

Mobile

With the surging share of Internet access coming from smart phones, Google Analytics can track mobile websites and mobile apps. Tracking traffic to a mobile website from all web-enabled devices is enabled by adding a server side code snippet. More so, iPhone and Android mobile applications can now also track how users engage and interact, just as with tracking engagement on a website.

Site speed

Site speed provides performance measurement of user experiences. A web page taking too long to load may send users away. Designers can use the information to balance between richness of content and performance to optimize user experience. Technically, site speed provides break down of redirection, domain lookup, server response, as well as network latency time. This is valuable information to determine where the improvements may come from.

It is worth noting that Google Analytics still has a lot of limitations. For example, bounce rate and time spent on page can be misleading. This is particularly true when a reader reads only the front page of a site. If a visit involves only one page, regardless of the amount of time spent on it, it is considered a bounce. Since Google Analytics calculates average time on site is by subtracting the timestamps between the first and the last page view of a visit, it is unable to calculate average time on site for visitors without a second page view. Furthermore, there is currently no way for Google Analytics to know exactly when a visitor left the site since it is not informed when the visitor closes their browser or navigates to a different site. This may change in the future when browser codes are integrated with analytics, which will require cooperation among vendors to establish consistent standards.

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Mastering the Digital Media Campaign

Sam Rosenbalm — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:17:25 +0000

A great media campaign, like a perfectly balanced wheel, is most powerful when the individual elements come together in perfect harmony. Unfortunately, too many marketing professionals or “hip” executives think that building up one digital media element will make their campaign successful.

Like a perfectly tuned bicycle wheel, the spokes of a well crafted digital media campaign need to be in balance and connect to the central campaign hub. Digital media brings in a new set of opportunities to connect with consumers and more accurate technologies to measure reach and impact. To find out how to effectively manage the digital media channels and tools, I interviewed co-founders and digital media experts Mike Whitmore and Jeff Dance from Fresh Consulting.

We talked about the fact that digital marketing evolves and changes quickly and popular platforms emerge to importance and then can become quickly abandoned by the digital crowd (e.g., MySpace).

Mike explained that it can be really hard for companies to figure out which platforms to engage with and that “once a firm dives into digital media having a meaningful presence on multiple sites can seem like boiling the ocean.”

He also shared that firms can avoid getting caught up in this often overwhelming challenge “by approaching the task using an organized and proven methodology based on a hub & spoke approach.” Jeff outlined the model on a napkin for me, represented in the graphic below.

Jeff explained that the company’s website (their hub or “core” website) becomes the focus of attention. All of their external media assets (the spokes) point towards, drive traffic to or create measureable and, hopefully, meaningful interactions with their core website. These efforts are all part of the overall marketing, brand-messaging and lead-generation efforts.

Mike indicated that “most people get the model since it is easy to conceptualize, but the implementation and execution is more complex.” Understanding the types of content for the hub and spokes and how they interrelate and support brand messaging takes discipline and expertise. “Firms must be aware that each one of these new channels reaches audiences differently and the content at the spokes becomes as vital as the messaging and call-to-action at the hub. Each spoke also presents some level of inherent risk to the brand and must be managed with care,” he said.

As with racing wheels, the number of spokes or channels for an effective media campaign can vary. Mike illustrated the point by reviewing seven spokes they used in a recent case study:

BRAND: Link your brand to creative content, campaigns, and social engagement to communicate the key messages to consumers.
CONTENT: Produce and re-purpose creative content that will excite sales teams, motivate resellers or interest the end consumer to check it out.
CHANNELS: Create an integrated presence in new general and niche social media channels and engage the sales team to listen to their customers and build community.
CAMPAIGNS: Include creative new campaigns that will acquaint customers with the new hot product or service, its growth and relevance to them
TEAM: Include training materials and responsibilities for the leadership and employees involved to lay the groundwork for building a social media team.
TOOLS: Include new tools that will support channel engagement, measurement, and listening.
MEASUREMENT: Address what key metrics are important to the client and how to tie metrics to financial measurement.

Well that certainly looks good, but will it work? We will put it to the test with some startup companies and brands right here at the University of Washington. For example, how does the MCDM program levereage the model? What can the Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC) do differently to create a balanced digital media strategy? Expect a monthly post this year on the hub and spoke model. We will share best practices for developing and managing content within the spokes.

If you would like your product or company to be considered for one of the posts, drop me a line at samrosen@uw.edu or @rosenbalm

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What the New Privacy Policy at Google Really Means

FlipTheMedia — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:33:14 +0000

Gus Hosein is the executive director of Privacy International, a leading international watchdog organization regarding privacy and technology policy reform.

Within thirty seconds of the BBC publishing a quotation from me on the latest round of the nymwars and Google+, my phone rang. Caller ID indicated that it was my colleague at Google. “Had I said something wrong?” was my first thought. I quickly retraced in my mind what it was that I had said to the journalist; I had responded in the article that Google’s recent announcement could be seen as positive but really it was a sidestepping of the larger challenge of identity management. Yes, I’m surprised that the BBC printed the quotation too. Must have been a slow news day.

I answered the phone with trepidation, wondering if it was something I had said. Then I learned quickly that no, it was something that Google had done. It felt like 2010 all over again, that terrible year when Google released Buzz. And announced WiSpy. And countless ridiculous statements from Eric Schmidt

This time Google announced that they were only merging their privacy policies under one single policy. This was the small development. This is not a good idea for so many boring reasons that most people won’t quite understand. People don’t read privacy policies. They are almost always inane statements of things that we are not meant to understand unless you are a privacy geek or a lawyer. What I liked about Google’s previous myriad of policies, and other organizations with detailed policies, was that if you cared enough to read it you could find out exactly what Google was doing with your personal information. By bringing them altogether under one regime, the risk of vagueness increases. A privacy policy may become even more pointless for everyone involved.

But the main development from Google, and linked to the nymwars announcement, is that this was all about identity management.

Desktop Deviation
In the world of the desktop computer, you have an operating system that cares not about who you are. It just asks if you have the privileges to install new applications, make core changes to the operating system, etc. Identity is meaningless.

In turn, you run applications. Your email client allows you to have multiple email addresses, and in turn multiple identities. I have three different accounts; I know people with many more (work, play, clubs and hobbies, etc.). Then you have a calendar — or like many people, many calendars (again, work, play, clubs, family, friends, etc.). These apps don’t really care about who you are, but the servers involved may: for instance, your work email server may care that you are the employee you purport to be before letting you download information.

In essence, you are the master of your domain and can have as many identities as possible. You can even set up multiple users on your computer. Your operating system may know the links between your identities, but it really doesn’t care. But Google does care, and this is the real change that is occurring.

Google’s Ambition
Google is trying to move everything off your desktop. This is not necessarily problematic, though it does raise some security and privacy implications, but I’m not going to belabor those, at least not on this occasion.

Where Google is going wrong is that it wants all these identities to be merged into one single identity: you. Previously, you had a Gmail account; and separately at YouTube account, Buzz, G+. Now they want one policy and one identity to rule them all. They believe there is only one you, and that they need to know it.

I’m not saying necessarily they want your rank, file and serial number. In a sense, this was resolved slightly with the announcement last Monday that Google+ would permit you to have a pseudonym. But they still expect that beneath that nickname, Google will still know you.

Yes, you can fake your name. But this isn’t about your name. It is about your identity. Google is imagining a world where you only have one identity at the core of everything. And they want to know that core: that beneath that nickname, there is someone who’s interests they know based on your emails, searches, locations, friends, etc. Across all their platforms they want to treat you as a single person. Sure you can have multiple email accounts, multiple calendars, etc., but they want to know the person behind it all.

My computer cares not about who is behind all of the activities. But now your mobile phone that runs Android will signal to Google what you do; Gmail will signal what you do; when logged in, search will do the same, as will all the other products and services.

Google is doing this for two reasons. The first is obvious: they can better know what to advertise to you. This is not inherently a terrible thing, and they let you opt out if you want, or you can log out of some services if you like; and Google is notable for letting you have access to some of the data that they hold on you. It’s not like they’re a government and want to know everything about you, or create an ID card in order to monitor your activities.

Except, that this is the second reason: Google wants to be able to provide an ID card equivalent for the Internet. And there’s a reason why.

Blame Facebook
Facebook has been quickly moving to establish itself as the ‘identity layer’ for the internet. Want to log in to your favorite newspaper’s website? You can of course create a username and ID, or you can use your Facebook account. Spotify has done this as well. By doing so, Facebook can become part of the transaction. And Facebook can also know what it is you’re up to.

Facebook does want to know your name. And it will boot you off for not giving the right one. And Facebook believes anonymity is bad. This is because they want to advertise to you, and to know you. And they want to make billions of dollars doing so. Governments may be keen to identify internet users, but Facebook is actively changing the rules of the internet, for their own purposes.

Google wants some of this pie. After all, it can better know you for advertising purposes if it is involved in your interactions outside of Google’s services. Sure they know your email use, and your mobile phone usage; but they don’t quite know your wider use of the internet on domains they do not own. But if they were part of the authentication process, they could know ever more about you.

Optimism?
The most amusing thing is that 12 years ago Microsoft tried the same thing with its Passport. They wanted to hold on to all the keys for all your accounts, to make life easier for you. But nobody, for good reason, trusted Microsoft. How did Microsoft respond? They went off and started to do some fascinating research and product development on novel identity systems that empowered users, allowed multiple identities, selective disclosure, and resisted models where powerful central bodies oversaw all transactions.

But Microsoft knows best how to kill off good products, and so nothing much has happened with all that great research and development. This is where Google, if it is as smart as we all believe it is, can succeed: develop an online identity environment where there is no one central God overlooking every transaction, playing the role of authenticator in chief.

Unfortunately, so long as two of the enfants terrible of Internet privacy compete against each other for revenues and control, we’ll have to watch from the sidelines as bad ideas are embedded into key internet services and labelled as ‘innovation’. And in today’s environment, we can’t question innovation .

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