Emerging Technology in Business

As always with different social media successes, effective content is developed and shared on different platforms, and each platform has different ways to be shared to ensure that content will be successful. When it comes to sharing content on different social platforms, you have to keep in mind what platform it will be shared on, and determine how you are developing and sharing it based on which platform it will be located on. As with every platform, frequency of how often you post should be determined by feedback and insights coming from your audience. I’ll be discussing individual platforms below;

Facebook is a platform for sharing content. For Facebook specifically, I have learned in module 3 of the Hootsuite information that organic, non-paid post reach is on the decline due to how busy Facebook has become. This means that each post you make will only reach a certain percentage of your fans/friends. To ensure that your posts reach your fans/friends, you must focus on sharing content to increase engagement, such as well researched articles that include a lot of valuable information. I have also learned that shorter posts get more engagement, and Hootsuite suggests to keep the length of posts to a maximum of 120 characters. I have attached a link to a good example of a Facebook post. This link is to a post made by the Detroit Lions, and has a video of the game-winning touchdown. https://fb.watch/9K5_u5J-ws/ This post has gotten 4.5k likes, 264 comments, and 655 shares in the past 20 hours (when it was posted).

Like Facebook, Twitter is a platform that calls for shorter posts of 120 characters. Twitter purposely has a character limit per tweet, which is part of their fast-paced environment provided on their platform. Due to their platform being so fast-paced, this means that more frequent postings are okay. The posting volume is much larger on Twitter than on Facebook, which means you can re-promote the same content. Hashtags are also a very good way to maximize engagement on Twitter. Hootsuite also suggests to keep your volume of retweets under 20% and focus on selecting and amplifying high-quality content that would be valuable to your audience. I have attached a link to a good Tweet posted by Wendy’s. Wendy’s is always replying to customers, and other companies. In this example, Wendy’s is collaborating with T-Mobile with #TMobileTuesdays. Wendy's replies to many comments written by customers to increase engagement. https://twitter.com/Wendys/status/1467922487514173440?s=20

Lastly, I will discuss Instagram, which Hootsuite notes is the leading social media platform for discovering new brands, experiences and trends. Due to their algorithm, the posts a user sees on their timeline depend on how much a user interacts with similar content, and that more recent posts are prioritized over older content. With this being said, it is important to post engaging content regularly on Instagram. Hootsuite comments that experts advise only 20% of your content should be promotional; and the rest should tell your brand’s story. Instagram also offers a carousel feature, which combines photos and videos into one post, and should be utilized by users. Instagram also lets you use hashtags, which helps make your content more discoverable. Due to the most recent posts being prioritized on a timeline, times you post your content are important as well. You need to keep track of when your followers are active, which you can do with a business profile in the insights section. An example of a company with a good instagram strategy is Tiffany & Co. They post at the correct times to increase engagement, have short but meaningful captions, and use branded hashtags to make their content more discoverable. https://www.instagram.com/tiffanyandco/

Chapters 4 and 5 of the Social Organization are titled, “Forming a Vision for Community Collaboration” and “Developing a Strategic Approach to Community Collaboration.”

Chapter 4 discusses how social media can have a positive impact on pursuing mission and vision statements of a company. However, one big point Chapter 4 highlights is the understanding of when community collaboration is appropriate. “Community collaboration is more appropriate when large groups of people act independently to contribute and share open and complementary information that aggregates well into a bigger picture and results in actions that lead to heightened performance.” (Bradley, 2011, p. 42). “Community collaboration is less suitable for challenges that require deep analysis, where information is best provided by intermediaries who are often recognized experts and who influence one another. Also, if information is sensitive and requires significant safeguards in its use, then sharing it with the masses is less appropriate.” (Bradley, 2011, p. 43). Another huge takeaway from Chapter 4 that I recognized is the “Six F” Model of Attitudes Towards Social Media; folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging and fusing. Each of these characteristics determine an audience’s view on social media, and having a clear understanding of which attitude your audience has towards social media can be extremely beneficial when deciding whether or not community collaboration will help your company increase value.

Chapter 5 discusses the importance of purpose within a community collaboration strategy. When inviting your audience to participate in your community collaboration, the invitation is important. Having bland and boring invitations will not increase any engagement. When discussing the purpose of your community collaboration strategy, you must answer four questions: “Who are the target participants? What is the nature or focus of their collaboration? What’s in it for participants? What value will the organization realize?” (Bradley, 2011, p. 59). One of the biggest takeaways for me through Chapter 5 is “determining the power and potential value of a purpose by assessing it against the following characteristics: magnetic, business-aligned, low community risk, measurable, facilitates evolution.” (Bradley, 2011, p. 60-61). I think that this is an extremely important point because it gives you a guideline to determine if your company will increase value within community collaboration. A high-quality purpose for collaboration will have each of those characteristics. If it doesn’t, the collaboration probably won’t have that much value, and therefore may be a waste of time, or ineffective.

From the Hootsuite modules this week, I was able to establish the importance of targeting differently depending on the social platform you are using. Each social media platform has a different audience that needs to be stimulated in a different way to target engagement. The hootsuite modules this week give you “best practices” per each social platform, which I found to be extremely beneficial. The client I am working with for my project is my sorority, Sigma Sigma Sigma. I think that these modules this week helped me have a better understanding of the main platforms used by my chapter, consisting of Instagram and Facebook. The modules gave me different suggestions to engage within each of these platforms, especially Instagram, by discussing many of the various features it has to offer, such as Instagram TV, Instagram Insights, Instagram Ads etc. These modules gave me a better understanding of all of the features Instagram has to offer, and how I can better engage my audience with these features.

After watching “The Legal Side of Big Data,” I’ve learned about some issues I was unaware of. Businesses specifically need to be aware of how likely it is for their “big data” to be hacked, or compromised. Of course it is important for businesses to try to ensure that they won’t be hacked, however, it happens more often than we think and it happens to companies we wouldn’t expect, such as Target and Home Depot. Following this, it is especially important for businesses to have a plan for what to do if they were to get hacked. Businesses have to address a poor risk assessment, and determine things such as how likely is the hack to happen, what would it cost, how would it hurt your company and consumers, and how that would affect your company on a competitive aspect. It is important for companies to be ahead of the problem, and spend money to prepare in case of a hack.

As consumers, it’s important to know that there is nothing we can really do to prevent this from happening. It was insane to me to read and hear about big data being sieged within big companies, such as Target, Neiman Marcus and Home Depot. The Target example shocked me, that there were 740 million data records exposed in 2013, because I shop at Target almost weekly. It is also important for consumers to know that there is a possibility that companies are not being reliable with what they are using their data for.

The best way to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data is to get ahead of the problem. It is possible to spend more money to ensure that your data is as safe as it can be, and it is stored correctly. If a hack were to occur, it would probably cost just as much money to fix as it would to ensure safety before the problem arises.

After reading “The Internet’s Original Sin,” and watching Maciej Ceglowski’s talk, I can confirm that the Internet business model wasn’t “supposed” to be used to influence and normalize surveillance. I really liked Ceglowski’s example about cars. He was discussing how cars were a great idea, however, now the entire country's landscaping is built around the idea of cars. He said, “Now that everyone has a car, everyone needs a car.” which is true about the Internet too. The Internet used to be a source of freedom, and now, everyone’s on it. This can relate to the article, when it states, “The model that we acquired was analyzing user’s personal homepages so we could better target ads to them. Along the way, we ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolkit: the pop-up ad.” (The Internet’s Original Sin). The quote continues by stating, “I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good.” (The Internet’s Original Sin). What I got from both the talk and the article, is that this surveillance and data gathering and hacking was not expected, and was not supposed to be what came from the Internet. The creators of the Internet had good intentions, likewise the inventors of the car had great intentions. Both came with negative outcomes (accidentally). Now that we are here though with advertisements generating so much money for companies, there really is no going back to an Internet without surveillance. The article mentions that “the primary benefit of online advertising is the ability to see who’s looking at an ad. Simply paying for online advertising requires surveillance, if only to eliminate click fraud.” (The Internet’s Original Sin). When companies know who is looking at an advertisement, it is put into the algorithms and the people who looked at the ad longest will receive more ads based on that ad, and those who immediately clicked away from it will keep receiving different advertisements until there is one they look at for a long time. This is how companies can determine our likes and dislikes, and work us into the algorithms.

References

Ceglowski, M. (2021, November 23). Maciej Ceglowski – the internet with a human face – beyond tellerrand düsseldorf 2014. Vimeo. Retrieved November 23, 2021, from https://vimeo.com/102717446.

The first reason Howard discusses on why junk news spreads so quickly across social media is algorithms. Howard states, “the ways in which algorithms select and prioritise information have been heavily criticised: instead of promoting the free flow and transparent exchange of ideas that is necessary for a healthy democracy, the personalisation of content has created filter bubbles that limit information flows and perpetuate bias.” (Howard, 2018). This reminds me a lot of what we watched in the Social Dilemma. The algorithms are purposely created to show you information that will generate the most engagement. Howard also mentions a point I have noticed as well stating, “although the Internet has provided more opportunities to access information, algorithms have made it harder for individuals to find information from critical or diverse viewpoints.” (Howard, 2018). This is because algorithms try to show you things that will keep your interest, and a lot of people are mainly interested in content that they believe or stand for. This is prevalent during elections, and things having to do with politics. If you are someone who stands very strongly to one side, of course you’re only going to engage with information about the side you stand with. Even on the news, people tend to watch the news stations that promote and provide information standing with whatever political side you stand with. This creates a huge divide, and it’s all because of algorithms.

The second reason Howard discusses on why junk news spreads so quickly across social media is advertising. The first paragraph of this discussion also reminds me a lot of what we learned about by watching the Social Dilemma. The discussion about why social media accounts are free is something directly talked about during the documentary. Nothing about social media is free, except the sign-up. Users are the product, the user's attention is the product, and it is being sold to different advertisers who are competing for your time. Howard breaks down the advertising aspect into two different parts. “First, the advertising model itself rewards viral content, which has given rise to clickbait. Second, is by empowering various actors to micro-target potential voters, with very little transparency or accountability around who sponsored the advertisements or why.” (Howard, 2020). I have seen multiple youtube videos with an exaggerated title that makes people want to click on it, and then the video is nothing like the title. This is an example of clickbait. It’s misleading content.

The third reason Howard discusses on why junk news spreads so quickly across social media is exposure. “Online friend networks often perform a social filtering of content, which diminishes the diversity of information that users are exposed to.” (Howard, 2018). This ties directly into the example of algorithms, because people are more subject to see what they’re friends are seeing and sharing with them. “The partisanship explanation suggests that people pay attention to political content that fits an ideological package that they already subscribe to. If they’ve already expressed a preference for a particular candidate, they will select messages that strengthen, not weaken, that preference.” (Howard, 2018). This ties directly into what I mentioned earlier with algorithms creating a huge divide.

Overall, these three reasons all tie together to spread junk news quickly across different social media platforms. To prevent this from happening and respond to these conditions, individuals need to be more open to different viewpoints, and stop relying on social media for their updates on the news. We need to find credible resources to obtain information about what’s going on in the world, instead of relying on biased social media platforms that only show you information about what you support.

Resources

Howard, P. (2018, March 26). Three reasons junk news spreads so quickly across social media. Oxford Internet Institute. Retrieved November 18, 2021, from https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/blog/three-reasons-junk-news-spreads-so-quickly-across-social-media/.

There are many different qualities that a social media consultant must possess in order to be successful. In my opinion, the most important qualities of a social media consultant are innovation/creativity, communication skills, and organization skills. Creativity and innovation are intertwined in the social media industry because social media trends and technology trends are always changing. There are so many trends you have to keep up with, so social media consultants have to keep trends relevant to their company. This has to do with creativity as well because they have to find a creative, out of the box way to keep their company relevant and stand out amongst competitors. Effective communication is essential to social media consultants because you are communicating with your “consumers” through a screen. Things that you post online must be able to convey your message to your audience. Lastly, organization skills are extremely important to social media consultants due to all of the information they have to track in order to be successful. Insights, posting, what to post, when to post, contacts, analytics and more all have to be organized in order to keep your goals on track.

Big data is such a powerful tool because everything you do online is monitored. What images you look at, for how long you’re engaged with an image, your current moods, your browsing history, your personality traits, gps coordinates, etc. There is an immense amount of information that can be tracked and recorded by the internet. Using this big data, social media platforms are able to predict what you will be doing therefore, they can personalize links and “recommended for you” links to see what will keep you hooked on social media. Something really weird about that has actually happened to me is when I plug my phone in to carplay, it immediately maps me to some place I was previously talking about. It’s scary to think that even though these social media platforms are free to sign up for, you are the product. Your attention is being sold to different advertisers who are competing for your time. We are all lab rats being used in experiment after experiment to try and determine what will be the most optimal for overall engagement. Social media experts purposely try to manipulate your psychological behavior as fast as possible by implementing different experiments to see which method of advertisement or which types of posts/videos will generate the most engagement on their specific platform.

There are three technology goals according to The Social Dilemma. The first goal is engagement, which hopes to drive up usage. The second goal is growth, which will keep you coming back, inviting your friends and getting friends to engage with the platform. Lastly, is the advertising goal, which essentially is the goal of generating as much profit as possible. Each of these goals are powered by different algorithms, whose jobs are to figure out what to show you on each platform to ensure you will remain on the app for as long as possible, and to keep you coming back for more. This is extremely important to the social media world because algorithms are driven by big data. The data that is collected by “monitoring” your social media usage is exported into a computer that can create an algorithm based on what was humanly written.

The danger of the use/abuse of big data, algorithms and social media can vary on multiple different aspects. It scared me a little when I was made aware of how technologists can be compared to magicians, who were among the first to understand a different aspect of people's minds. The documentary mentioned that magic illusions work because magicians are able to tap into a part of an individual's mind that they don’t know exists. Having this perspective described to me really showed me how dangerous social media really is.  Technology has to deal with a larger aspect of psychology than I can even comprehend. They also compared phones to slot machines in Vegas because whenever you have your phone laying on your desk or your bed, you just check it to see if there is a notification there. This unconscious behavior is a design technique, just like it is with the slot machines in Vegas to see what you’ll get if you pull the lever one more time.

The discussion about photo tagging was extremely intriguing to me also, and can also be a danger/abuse of algorithms. Social media platforms purposely notify you when you have been tagged in a photo, but don’t include the photo in the notification. Having the photo on the notification pop-up would make it much easier and faster to quickly see what photo it is, however, they purposely don’t include it to make you go on the app to see what photo you were tagged in. This will increase their engagement goal, especially when it is a photo of yourself. This also has to do with the growth goal because tagging in photos allows friends of tagged people to see the post, and engage with it using the comments and/or likes feature. This is known as growth hacking.  

Another danger that really hooked me was the discussion about tools-based technology. The example provided was bicycles are a tool, just sitting there waiting until you need it. Social media on the other hand, is not a tool. It’s demanding things from you and is manipulating you. We’ve moved away from having a tools-based technology to an addictive and manipulative technology because of social media’s idea of using your psychology against you to generate engagement and growth.

Additionally, another danger has to deal with self-worth and identity. It matters to everyone what people in our “tribe” think of us. But we were not supposed to be built to experience what thousands of people think of us. This “fake popularity” on social media with like counts and comment counts forces individuals to think of what is next so they can gain that sense of popularity and that spike in dopamine again. This has increased depression and anxiety amongst teenagers. There was a conducted study of U.S. Hospital admissions for non-fatal self harm per 100,000 girls which concluded to have increased 62% since 2009 in girls ages 15-19, and increased 189% since 2009 in girls ages 10-14. This can be blamed on social media algorithms keeping them addicted to their phones and social media platforms.

I think that the biggest danger also correlates with why algorithms are so important. It is the fact that not very many people working at these social media companies even understand them. Algorithms are opinions written in code written with the goal of their definition of success, which at most times, is profit. Everyday, these computers installed with the written algorithms are getting better and better at picking the next post, or the next video, or the next tweet to keep you on the platform for longer. The scary part about this is that the machine is doing all the work, which means the algorithm is controlling us more than we are controlling it. This can be proven because multiple of the interviewees who have previously worked for a social media platform can also say that even though they see and understand the behind the scenes work of addiction, they too, are addicted to their phones.