alexviviano-blog

[alexviviano-blog]

Ethics in Social Media

Some of the ethical issues stem from a total lack of privacy, especially on a personal level. This can create messy situations depending on the crowd. For example, a couple weeks ago, LSU beat Alabama for the first time since 2011 and ensuing the victory a LSU player was live streaming the locker room while Coach Orgeron giving a speech which included the sentence “roll tide who? F*ck you!). This created a semi messy situation because that is incredibly disrespectful towards another school. However, with it being related to a football game not many fans cared and most thought it was funny. If you were to take this situation out of this context and put into a business It could be detrimental to a work environment and create a much bigger publicity situation. In sports there is a lot of trash talking so a lot of it is in one ear out the other, but if it was between companies there could be a lot more attention drawn to it.

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Building Your Social Community

The social organization is framework laid out in the form of suitability of mass collaboration. The goal of community building is mass collaboration. Therefore, it is important to know exactly what content is best suited for building a community and getting your community to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves. Actively trying to build these communities up is a relatively new concept. Building a community used to be an after thought. Given the state of the modern world and how prevalent social media is, we find ourselves belonging to online communities more and more. A big part of having a good community is having it set up so the community can provide their own content or help out other people who might be experiencing the same issue. The best example I can think of for this is various Reddit pages for video games. A couple years ago Star Wars Battlefront 2 announce they were adding microtransactions and loot boxes. That post by a developer soon became the most downvoted post in Reddit history. This caused the dev team to take out the bulk of the microtransactions as well as some other things mentioned in the same post. It is nice to be able to talk directly with a developer for your favorite games in hopes they make the changes you want to their game.

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Big Problems with Big Data

I think businesses should be more aware of the risks to big data such as data breaches and value how important some of our data is. A lot of apps track location and they are apps that do not need to know my location. A fair amount of websites also have my social security number, phone number, and debit card number. Those are some things I do not want just anyone to have access to. It seems like it is getting more and more common that we are hearing about companies we didn’t know were selling our data are selling our data, but what exactly is being sold is never disclosed which makes it even more sketchy. Consumers need to be aware their data is being sold period. There is not much transparency when it comes to selling data. Consumers should also note that many apps that do not need various information is recording that information. For example, SoundCloud, Venmo, Outlook, GroupMe, Dropbox, Bleacher Report, Discover, ESPN all have the option to track my location and I do not see any reason any of these apps would possibly need to know my location. It’s entirely possible I am missing something, however SoundCloud only needs to know what songs I like and that is it. Consumers can turn this feature off in their settings app on their phone for those of you who don’t know.

I think the best way to balance the opportunities and threats is to be transparent about what data is being sold. Are you selling my one of my email addresses? Cool that’s fine. Are you selling my social security number? No that’s unacceptable and let me opt out or I will take my business elsewhere. We are essentially giving them a product to sell and we are 1. not being compensated for it and 2. not being told anything about it. Even when you are an employee somewhere you know is going into the product, but we have no transparency here. It also feels like companies do not value our data as much as they should. If they did, there would be better firewalls to prevent hacking and data breaches.

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Fake News

Social Media has quickly became one of the most used mediums for news and current events consumption. People can get their piece out to all their followers by simply going to Twitter, typing up a tweet, and clicking send. There’s no need for an editor nor is there any delay in getting the information out there if it were to be issued through the newspaper or magazines. According to the Oxford Internet Institute, the three main reasons are: algorithms, advertising, and exposure.

Algotrithms

Algorithms have been used in many facets of the internet. It’s what pulls up the “Other users also purchased:” area on Amazon when you’re looking at a product. It pulls keywords, recent searches, or in Amazon’s case the shopping cart from other people’s orders when they bought that specific product. This process keeps showing the customer more products they should be interested on given the aforementioned information which in turn keeps them on the website longer and could increase sales.

Advertising

Advertising ties into my previous point because the algorithms are used to send ads to users based on their information. For example, if someone buys a Detroit Lions jersey, the ads they should see following the purchase should be other Lions apparel or even NFL apparel because they might know people who are fans of other teams. The issue is that advertising can get a little aggressive at time. I don’t ever start my shopping from a social media site, I always know exactly what I want to get, so I go straight to the site and order my stuff. However, after a couple days my social media ads are flooded with things relating to what I had just purchased even though social media was never part of the original purchasing equation.

Exposure

Exposure can really sour a social media experience. I like being showed articles/tweets based on what I search, but the frequency of those things days later can be really frustrating. I am by no means a car guy but I like the Honda Civic Type-R and after looking up the car to find more information all of my social medias were flooded with not only Type-R related things, but various other vehicles made by other manufacturers. I didn’t realize one search could really ruin my youtube recommended feed.

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Social Media Consulting

Just like any occupation, social media consultants need a few skills. In my opinion, the skills needed are: problem solving skills, understand the ins and outs of social media platforms, and the ability to communicate. Problem solving skills are necessary because a consultant was brought into their situation because there’s an issue of some sort. No one hires a consultant when there isn’t an issue. Understanding their social media platforms seems like a given, but it’s still very important to know how to navigate through social media platforms and what type of audience is most likely on each platform. For example, Twitter is much more 15-25 year olds so you if you’re trying to get more exposure then I’d make posts they can relate to. The ability to communicate is huge because a consultant needs to have clear communication with their client to understand what the client wants and why they want it that way, but then translating that into social media posts while still communicating the same message.

As a consultant, I’d recommend utilizing more social media platforms because my understanding is that not enough companies use anything more than Facebook. While Facebook has a large audience, so does twitter, instagram, etc. Another thing I’d do is post more polls asking the community’s opinion. For a restaurant, we could post a poll and have the community vote on it about possible menu changes or maybe asking the community if they want to see us at the local fair/festival.

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Big Data is Sketchy

The 60 Minutes segment called “The Data Brokers” enlightened me on what exactly big data is and after watching the video I realize why people are so against it. It’s tracking everyone’s purchases, which websites we go to and how often, restaurants we frequent, and even our physical location. I understand why they do this so they can market to us more effectively and based on the information they can give us ads for things we would probably buy, but we didn’t even know they were out there in the first place. If it could only be used for purely that, it would be a little creepy and an aggressive marketing ploy. However, it’s a huge invasion of personal privacy. The internet knows more about me than even my parents or friends even know about me. It probably knows even more about me than I know about me and I consider myself decently self aware.

The biggest issue with big data is that it can be abused so easily. We shouldn’t be trackable like animals on a reserve or something. I’ve never experienced anything like this personally, but my friend told me one time he was studying with a group of friends at MSU and they had a brief discussion about how nice the whiteboard in the study room was and as soon as he got home and logged onto his computer he already had an ad pop up for that exact whiteboard on Amazon. That’s way too creepy for me! After hearing that story it feels almost inescapable. They didn’t even look it up online or anything but somehow Amazon knew Jake could possibly be interested in purchasing this whiteboard because he liked the one in the study room.

That all being said I do find it nice that the ads I usually see are at least targeted for me. I remember seeing an ad while watching cartoons when I was a kid and thinking why is this being aired? I’m not going to buy this ever. Whereas if the new edition of Lucky Charms commercial came on you would be smart to bet that I immediately brought it up to my mom and did my best persuasion tactics to get her to put it on her grocery list.

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Social Media Detox Experiment

Hey y’all! I went social media free for all of Saturday (9/21) to see if I could do it. I decided this day because my family had a party for my great grandmas 88th birthday as well as my cousins 21st and his mom turned 29 for I think the 20th time. I thought all the social interactions would help me stay off my phone anyway and I’d feel better about the party if I gave everyone my full attention without worrying about the latest sports news or what meme format was going to be introduced into the world.

I really enjoyed the experience. I felt more focused on what was going around me and it was nice not pulling my phone out while I was talking to someone. I think the older people in my family probably appreciated that. My cousins and I talked a lot more than normal and I realized that if I don’t pull my phone out then they pulled their phones out less as well. Overall this boosted the social engagements we had throughout the day.

I will say this was more challenging than I originally thought. I caught myself reaching for my phone and I’d have to stop and try to keep in whatever social engagement I was in. I also had memes to show my cousins that I couldn’t get to because they were on social media. Overall, I’d say it was a good experience and maybe with some practice I won’t be reaching for my phone as much!

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Social Media’s Influence

I don’t think I’d ever consider myself addicted to social media. I use it primarily for memes. I made a Facebook in middle school because everyone was and I rarely go on it anymore. I go on twitter, Instagram, and reddit when I get bored or feel the need to contribute to my meme group chat titled “Memeville”.

I also use twitter and Instagram to keep tabs on people who I genuinely care about what they’re doing with life now or see who’s the next person getting pregnant before i can even graduate college. For example: the first friend I ever had in my life recently got married, but Ellie and I haven’t talked in probably 12 or 13 years. Without Instagram I would’ve had no idea. When we were kids it was so much easier to stay connected because she just lived across the street until her family moved away when I was about 9 or 10. Twitter also allows me to keep up with the latest sports drama thanks to Adrian Wojnarowski dropping his infamous “Woj bombs” where he often reveals the next big NBA headline before the teams even make the news official.

I also use reddit to stream sports because I refuse to pay for cable to watch a limited amount of games when I can stream any game in the country off reddit. There’s also a reddit for basically anything you could be interested in. One of my personal favorites is r/Accounting. It’s a community of about 100,000 members who all work in the accounting field at various job titles. The older members seem to have no problem guiding the younger members when they have questions about the CPA exam or just general career advice. I recently found one the other day called r/CPA which is specifically for people studying for the CPA exam. Members share their study tips, habits, how much time to spend on studying each day, what material overlaps, and even what order to take the sections in.

Having the internet constantly has been a huge help whenever my friends and I have a argument because we can pull out our phones to look up and make sure we are saying correct facts instead of saying something that is only partially true or not true at all.

The last time I didn’t have great access to technology was when my friends and I went camping at the Ludington State Park for a week. For us this wasn’t much of an obstacle and we packed enough alcohol and good hiking clothes/shoes to keep us entertained for the entire week. We had cell service so we kept in contact with our parents and girlfriends, so they knew we were still alive. Other than the occasional text here or there, we just enjoyed each other’s company in the woods, on the lake, and at the beach. We didn’t have a single care in the world about anything that was going on outside of Ludington. It was arguably one of the best weeks of my life and I’ll never forget it. I strongly recommend doing this to anyone regardless of how outdoorsy you are.

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315 Introduction

Hi, I’m Alex Viviano. I’m an accounting major with an information systems minor. I will become a CPA and become and auditor after college. My goal is to become a controller by the time I am 30.

https://twitter.com/BWWings

Buffalo Wild Wings has a great social media presence. They stay in tune with big sporting events as they’re happening. When Andrew Luck unexpectedly retired recently they tweeted out saying they have beer to help fans cope with the loss of their foreseeable future chances of competing for a Super Bowl.