NYC proposes ban on sale of oversized sodas - WSET.com - ABC13

NYC proposes ban on sale of oversized sodas - WSET.com - ABC13

Yet another example of social media in government that is going viral as we speak. The proposal - expected to be announced formally on Thursday in a City Hall briefing - would take 20-ounce soda bottles off the shelves of the city's delis and eliminate super-sized sugary soft drinks from fast-food menus. It is the latest health effort by the administration to spark accusations that the city's officials are overstepping into matters that should be left in the hands of individual consumers.

When something like this happens in government, look at the social media that the particular agency uses. In this case check Twitter @NYCmayorsoffice and look at all the remarks. They range from, Bloomberg is actually nuts to should I wipe standing up or sitting down. 

Don't get me wrong, Michael Bloomberg will probably go down as the greatest Mayor in the City of New York's history. After all, the man is in his third term and he waived his salary to be the mayor (not withstanding that his billion dollar fortune was made in NYC). However, this is a classic example of how social media can take a dumb proposal (in my opinion) and get immediate reaction. This too however, is part of our basic civil liberties to speak out and be heard against or for our elected officials. It just is a lot easier in 2012 then it ever was.

Top 14 Government Social Media Initiatives -- InformationWeek

Top 14 Government Social Media Initiatives -- InformationWeek

Well, we have seen many good things come out of social media and we have discussed how we have to endure the bad along with the good.

The recent news of the parent, upset with his son's iPod being confiscated, is an extremely disturbing story (link included at end of post). In reality, what was this guys defense strategy in court? I am not going to state that he lacked motivation, but the punishment should always fit the crime. Due to his poor judgement and acting out in this extremely malicious manner, this guy is looking at serious jail time. Forget about the civil suit that this principal is going to have, no matter if this parent is able to pay it or not, he will walk around life with a default judgement, having to operate under the radar in every job opportunity that he potentially may have in his future life.

Of course as you read this article, you probably don't care much about the offenders job outlook, nor do I.

When I read about how FM magazines blog (in Clay Sharky's book "Here Comes Everybody"), I thought it difficult to imagine how young girls could actually post methods to remain anorexic and offer bulimia tips. This is much more than self mutilation. This incident potentially could have caused an innocent man (if his sons iPad was confiscated or not), to have his good name dragged through the mud. This didn't just include the mans reputation as a principal, it also included his wife and family. There is a saying in the courts, "once you ring the bell, you can't un-ring it."

Well, at least justice was served in this case and the now two time felon is off to sit and think about his own life.

Read about this article at http://www.newkerala.com/news/newsplus/worldnews-27368.html#.T8Xy77BYvSg

another two cents

Just read a great article in Wired Magazine titled #Crowd Control. (Wasik 2012) It is about how social media fuels social unrest. It gives a timeline of the unrest that social media has caused in 2011. It covers how some 20,000 people gather for a “day of rage,” in Yemen to Athens Greece where up to 100,000 revolt against pay and pension cuts to how in Boston where a kid on Facebook invited and had hundreds of kids show up at a late-night beach party; forcing for a SWAT team to be called in.

The article lists 26 incidents that gathered people together throughout the world, for some cause good or bad, all who got the message from a social network or a SMS or email transmission.

I personally identify with the opening statement, “Why pack into Target when Amazon can speed the essentials of life to your door? Why approach strangers at parties or bars when dating sites like OKCupid … can more efficiently shuttle potential mates into your bed? Why sit in a cinema when you can stream? Why cram into arena seats when you can pay per view? We declare the obsolescence of ‘bricks and mortar,’ but let’s be honest: What we usually want to avoid is flesh and blood…”

I do not think I could have said it any better than that and that is exactly how I feel. Don’t get me wrong, I am the first one to want to have dinner and drinks with friends, but only with those friends that I have already met. I suppose I have enough friends already and really do not care who I meet at the supermarket. I have a 50” flat screen with surround sound, why would I go to the movies just to pay $14 for popcorn and a coke, let alone the price of the ticket when I can have Netflix stream directly to me. It saves me the hassle of walking on the sticky theater floor, sitting next to the people that do not stop talking and even better, when I want another Coca-Cola, I can pause, go to my frig and get one that cost me .42 cents at Costco.com.

Did the convenience of social networking cause me to have societal anxiety that I do not need to be around them? I doubt it is the cause, but it certainly showed me that there is a better way to buy everything from Mother’s Day presents to computers (as I type on my new Dell Alienware Aurora X79 with Dual Layer Blue-ray reader, dual 23” wide screen monitors and 2 TB RAID hard drive that I custom built online from Dell) to products from Walmart.com (even though Walmart is only 5 minutes away).

One of the best things is when I find a vendor out of state that offers free shipping and no sales tax! Maybe it’s just laziness, because I KNOW that Target would have a problem with me if I went in their store and shopped in my pajamas. My two cents again. – Chris.

Wasik, B. (2012). #Crowd Control. Wired. U.S.A., Conde' Nast Media Group. January 2012.

my two cents on Facebook IPO

I think that all of the hype behind the Facebook IPO is the primary reason that it only closed .6 percent higher at $38.23 than its open of $38. This still was the single largest IPO for any technology company. Still shadowed behind the one day IPO of Google in 2004 that had an 18 percent return.

It still is hard for me to romance a stock that is based on something that in reality doesn’t exist. I mean, Intel manufacturer’s chips, Dell and HP put out computers and we can see and touch them. In addition, many people are viewing FB as a fad. Look what happened to MySpace, it almost doesn’t exist anymore compared to what it used to be.

According to Bloomberg.com, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating into why initial trading the stock took a half-hour longer than NASDAQ OMX Group Inc.’s forecast. The underwriters of the stock, which numbered more than 30 of which included Goldman Sach’s (GS),(remember, they were the ones that avoided BK during the subprime mortgage meltdown due to the fact that the U.S. Treasury Dept.’s head chief was an ex-GS executive…Hmmmm) purchased the stock to keep it from dropping below its IPO price.

This IPO made FB more expensive than every stock in the S&P 500 except Amazon and Equity Residential. FB sold 421.2 million shares, raising $16 billion dollars. Not bad for a Harvard drop out who is only 28 years old.

I used to be an avid day trader, spending more time watching the ticker on my screen while at work than actually doing the work that I was paid for. I would never buy a stock that traded at 107 times trailing monthly earnings.

Without question, anyone who WAS able to buy this stock did so mostly because of emotional reasons. I guess I am still stuck on buying something that isn’t tangible, even though Amazon, eBay and Google are also virtual company stocks, they all offer something that I can either get an answer from, buy new plants for my garden or purchase a book. That’s my two cents on this subject.

Social Dilemma

Social Dilemmas

I found the social dilemmas the Shirky discussed in chapter 8 (Shirky 2008) to be extremely profound in two areas. First, the blog that was created within what was FKA for Young Miss, and then Your Magazine, then just YM, was extremely disturbing. Naturally, as the father of four sons and two step-sons, there never would have been a reason that I would have even visited this site, let alone know of the popularity of taking pride in young girls who got together to discuss how to remain anorexic (Shirky states that they became known as Pro-Ana) as well as bulimia and other mental disorders These disorders YM did not want to be affiliated with, therefore shutting down their blog.

One thing that I believe that YM could have done however, is monitored their website closer, putting into their code that every post that contained certain keywords, which other blogs and chat rooms have in place that automatically either redirect an email address to one within their own, or even censor keywords, this case pro-ana, anorexia, bulimia and other such terms would show up as **&&^%&** to block such content, then that user would simply be eliminated. At this point, as their IT director, I would have made it mandatory for a cookie to be dropped on their IP Address and prevent that person from logging on under a different identity. Although this has a simple “go around,” many users do not understand how to do it and thereby would be shut down by default.

“Sorting the good from the bad is challenging in part because we’re used to social disapproval making it hard for groups to form.” (Shirky 2008) He speaks of social loss and how these new found freedoms, due to the Internet[i], are often stymied. Governmental interference, such as that of the Singapore government blocking content of blogging prior to a 2005 loses all respect for mankind’s most basic freedom, Freedom of Speech. This is similar to how content is blocked/ restricted in countries such as China, North Korea and others where state owned media controls/ owns the Internet providers.

Reference

Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everyone. New York, Penquin Group.

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[i] Shirky uses the word Internet without being capitalized. As an avid reader and past high school teacher of English, Internet is a proper noun and I am not sure how the editors allowed for this word to be published without capitalization. This I would like to get clarification on. 

Personnel and social media

Personnel and Social Media

Is it Legal?

Many employers cross the line when they perform their due diligence on prospective employers. Although it is hard to check on the employers hiring methods, the question of the legality of the proposed possibility that an employer can be looking at criteria other than just personality and intelligence to fit the right job to the right person. Federal Equal Employment Laws prohibit employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities, and prohibit bias based race, color, religion, sex or national origins, age, as well as other considerations. (Greenstein 2010)

The purpose of social media in hiring practices should be limited to an effort to improve hiring decisions. The good trained HR person can consistently and accurately assess important organizational characteristics such as personality, intelligence, and performance when utilizing social networking web sites. (Kluemper and Rosen 2009)However, it is easy to find out other information that they normally would not be able to ask in an interview due to breaking of equal opportunity laws.

An article in the NY Times detailed an event whereas an employer used Facebook to review information about a recent graduate of the University of Illinois. The employer found on his page a description of his interests: “smokin’ blunts, shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang. (Finder 2006) “A lot of it makes me think, what kind of judgment does this person have?” said the company’s president, Brad Karsh. “Why are you allowing this to be viewed publicly, effectively, or semipublicly?”

Employers may make it a common practice to utilize social networking, however those employers continue to inadvertently learn about matters such as candidates age, marital status and other topics typically that are off limits.(Kluemper and Rosen 2009)

References

Finder, A. (2006). For some, online persona undermines a résumé. The New York Times. New York.

               

Greenstein, H. (2010). "Is it legal to use social network data when hiring?" Inc.com.

               

Kluemper, D. H. and P. A. Rosen (2009). "Future employment selection methods: evaluating social networking web sites." Journal of Managerial Psychology 24(6): 567-580.

Reward systems Marketing

Entrepreneurial orientation has positive influence on customer orientation and competitor orientation, market-based reward system has positive influence on customer orientation and competitor orientation, customer orientation positively to marketing performance, while competitors do not have a positive orientation towards marketing performance. (Soederiman 2011)

The following is an example of reward systems marketing used by Schmidt and Ralph; “Slater's 50/50 is a burger restaurant located in Anaheim, CA is currently running a promotion in Facebook. They want to increase their "like" count in Facebook. Facebook users often refer to the "like" count as a recommendation for or against a company. As a restaurant, a high "like" count would indicate a great option for an individual that is looking for a new place to eat or a place to eat in a town they are visiting. To increase their like count they have started a promotion stating that the Friend that gives them their 1000th like will receive a "SURPRISE". The promotion sends out a message updating the count in an attempt to get more people to "like".” (Schmidt and Ralph 2011) The surprise would be the market-based reward system.

Networking is not new to the business world. Networking has been able to create a new medium within social media. Social networks, blogs, micro blogs such as Twitter and really simple syndication (RSS feeds) all have had a deep impact on how promotion of the organization can be utilized. These tools require different approaches in order to be effective, efficient and successful.(Schmidt and Ralph 2011)

References

Schmidt, S. M. P. and D. L. Ralph (2011). "Social Media: More Available Marketing Tools." The Business Review, Cambridge 18(2): 37-43.

Soederiman, J. (2011). "Effect of entrepreneurship orientation and marketing-based reward system towards marketing performance." International Journal of Business and Social Science 2(6): 7.

               

transaction costs

When we speak of groups that do the organizing..." (Shirky 2008) Shirky spoke of following a $300 telephone to the new found owner. Did the transaction of obtaining the phone decrease or increase? It is apparent that the data involved was much more valuable than the phone itself. Therefore, did the transaction cost of regaining said lost phone exceed "We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the its original cost? Perhaps not, as we weigh into the matter that the data was far more valuable than the hardware itself.

What is the tangible effect on transaction cost if we weigh into the matter such items as operational efficiency and employee engagement? (Jue, Marr et al. 2010) If we utilize an internal social media presence, such as Oracle did, we can understand without reservation the connection to success that our employees believe are needed. In itself, these connections may not be met via a personal interview, but left alone to its own creation; the employee appears to become more engaged in its effort to provide success to the relationship.

As Kelly stated, communication is not just a sector of the economy, communication IS the economy. (Kelly 1998) So given the phenomenal success of Amazon and eBay as an example, do their simple suggestions of what “others like you” have purchased weigh into the strategy of permissible marketing? Obviously they do as their continued success of marketing in this low cost forum will endure many profits into the future and far beyond.

References

Jue, A. L., J. A. Marr, et al. (2010). Social media at work: How networking tools propel organizational performance. San Fransico, Jossey-Bass.

               

Kelly, K. (1998). New rules for the new economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world. New York, The Penguin Group.

               

Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everyone. New York, Penquin Group.