Emerson Social Media #ESM

Latest App Craze is Drawing in The Numbers

By: Jamie Pekunece

A new age Pictionary game has hit the Smart Phone circuit and everyone is eager to start playing! Draw Something is the latest app to hit the iPhone and Android markets and everyone and their grandmothers are connecting with friends and strangers alike to play the game.

Players are given a choice between three different words, each a different level of difficulty (one, two or three coins) in which they are then required to draw so that their opponent/teammate may guess correctly from an assortment of jumbled letters. Words range from your standard dictionary vocabulary such as “building” or “sunblock”, to your pop culture references such as “wutang” and “tomhanks”. According to VentureBeat, ”The most popular words in the game are starfish, pregnant, hangman, six pack, and boom box. The least popular word is latrine.”

Having only launched seven weeks ago, Draw Something boasts an impressive 20+ million active users who have since created over six billion drawings, and made the app number one in over 85 countries. It has sold 37 million units and an estimated 3000 drawings are created per second. The app was created by OMGPOP, which was acquired by Zynga just last month for $180 million.

To check out a gallery of some pretty impressive Draw Something illustrations, go to http://mashable.com/2012/03/22/draw-something-best-doodles/.

NEW TODAY: Instagram for Android

By: Jessica Peck, @jesspecksays

It’s finally here! After much long anticipation, the popular photography app, Instagram, has finally launched their new compatible app for Android devices. With an already large fan base with roughly 30 million users on their iOS devices, according to their blog, Instagram is excited to expand their user base across devices in a fully integrated application. Users of the new Droid app will have all of the same features of the iOS app including similar filters and the ability to share photos amongst other users in the Instagram community.

Here are a few screen caps of the new Droid version:

Since March 25th, Android users have had the opportunity to pre-register for the upcoming app. With 400,000 users all ready signed up at that point, the new Droid app will surely see some success in user growth. Now both iOS devices and Droid devices can share their smartphone photography together with the new integrated Instagram photo-sharing community in harmony!

You can find the links to get the free app here on their website!

Happy Instagramming everyone!

(Sources: 1, 2)

This just in… Facebook for iPhone update.

By Justyna Lewinska

If you are an iPhone user and have the Facebook for iPhone app downloaded on your phone, today is almost like Christmas day. For the past month and a half, this app has been nothing but full of bugs. From not notifying me whenever I received a notification to scaring me by swapping my friends’ profile pictures, it’s about time that Facebook released an update to fix all of these problems.

After downloading this update, the app seems to run a bit smoother. My friend Kathy no longer has my friend Joe’s profile picture next to her name. The app isn’t crashing. I now know when someone likes a photo of my cat the second that they do it. Life is good.

Be sure to head over to the app store and to update to version 4.1.1 and breathe a sigh of relief.

The students of this semester’s #ESM are desperate to relieve their professor, David Gerzof!

Here’s the video they made Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) asking him to come in as a guest speaker.

There’s only 2 chances left! April 9th and April 18th are the last #ESM classes!

2012 Presidential Campagne and Social Media

By Lana Atamian

As the presidential candidates continue to fight for the popular vote, social media has been one of the most important platforms used to gain popularity amongst voters. Has the challenge of engaging with an entire nation, although no different than any other marketing challenge in the past, gotten easier with the use of the internet? Or more difficult? With social media, presidential candidates have a new great tool to reach out to the 600 million people across the states—but could it be getting more difficult to gain attention with the amount of access there is to the public through internet use? At least now, candidates can introduce and create an emotional connection with the public through Twitter and Facebook, as well as entertain and engage the public with relevant up-to-date content, and make the experience fun—but is there just too much information getting put out there to really build a connection?

As of right now, Obama has 25.8 million fans on Facebook, compared to Mitt Romney at 1.5 million. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich fall far behind with only a few hundred thousand fans—does this foreshadow the future? Could it be that your fan base proves your likeability? And does your online popularity mean something when wanting to become future president?

Check out the Republican Likeability here, and decide for yourself:

http://socialmedialandscape.com/cms/

I Bought My Computer for Social Media.

By Max Schadler

One day it’s here and the next day its gone. This is what is written on the grave stone of my last computer. On Tuesday my computer took its final bow after four good years. As I stood in the Mac store looking for a “reasonably” priced new computer, one of the sales guys approached me and asked me if I needed any help. His first question was if I was familiar with any of the new models. Having not bought a computer in four years my knowledge was pretty limited. He took me through the two main models, The MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. Then he asked me the golden question.

“What are you going to be using this computer for?”

I stood there uncertain. I am graduating in May so I will never have to really write papers again, I don’t play games on my computer, so I was left speechless. I responded with, “Mostly for email and Social Media I guess”. He brought me over to the MacBook Air, and told me that this was the computer for me.

The moral of the story is that at the end of the day I purchased my computer for the purpose of keeping touch with those around me. This shouldnt surprise me I suppose, humans are social creatures, but it did make me think about the fact that I made a very large financial investment in a machine that will serve largely as a means to keep in touch with others. Social Media has made such a splash that it has become a standard thing and we will make sacrifices so that we can be a part of it.

Winter Is Coming… And Crashing Get Glue

In which #GameofThrones trumps #MadMen by @lormora

Last night was another eventful night for television.

Mad Men, whose 5th season premiered last Sunday, aired its second episode at 10pm on AMC.

At the same time, the highly anticipated second season Game of Thrones came back to, as Khaleesi Danerys Targaryen put it, “take what is mine with fire and blood!”

Alright, so that’s an over-exaggeration, but GoT DID garner more Get Glue check-ins than Mad Men.

As a Get Glue user, I checked in to both — first was Mad Men (sorry, I have my loyalties), which, by 10pm (the time I checked in), had only garnered about 5000 check ins. Game of Thrones on the other hand, had well over 50,000 people check-in in the minutes leading up to the premiere.

Mashable calculated past check-ins for both shows, as well as similar shows that are popular among Get Glue users:

To put the 50,000 check-ins into context, the highly-anticipated return of Mad Men last week brought in 22,000 check-ins. Meanwhile, the season 2 premiere of The Walking Dead had 43,000 and the 2011 season premiere of True Blood had 38,000 check ins.

This 50,000 check-in number crashed Get Glue momentarily, as many users were eager to comment/talk about the show’s new season.

What does this say about television audiences? Not only are people expressing their tastes through social media, but we’re seeing specific demographics and their behavior. This particular occurrence shows that fans of Game of Thrones are more likely to use applications like Get Glue and Twitter as an extension of their fandom. Fans of Mad Men, on the other hand, don’t seem as concerned with sharing what they’re watching and when.

This might also be very telling of viewers of basic cable vs. paid subscription channels. Are channels like HBO, Showtime and Starz more likely to push their content through social media in order to gain subscriptions? Whatever it is, these shows don’t need more than flashy promos and word of mouth to gain cult followings.

If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, a Burrito Must Be Free.

by Garret Siegel

Last month, Boloco launched a 15-date event in which they supplied free mini and small burritos to their customers.

Each day of the event, Boloco not only tweeted to remind their customers where to get their priceless birthday gifts and asked for feedback on their Facebook page, they focused their interactions to Instagram as well.

Boloco posted a few pictures of the lines waiting for burritos, and also utilized Instagram’s tagging feature to search for other users visiting their restaurants to keep up with their reputation of being highly engaged with their customers on social media.

Will we be seeing other chains utilize Instagram to thank their customers for visiting, or is Boloco just ahead of the curve?

Social media changing journalism

By: Markus Garica

Social Media sites like Ustream and Twitter are changing the news industry. These sites are not only changing how Journalist reports on stories, but the skills needed to work in the business. When I was a freshman in college, I was told I needed to be able to write, be comfortable on air and be a good storyteller in order to be a broadcast journalist. Now, the game is changing, instead of calling myself a broadcast journalist I have the new title of multimedia journalist. This new title implies I have the skills to use these social media sites, while still having the skills I mentioned above. When I was applying for my internship at ESPN I was told to add the social media sites I was on, because news stations are starting to make it a must that its journalist are apart of these websites. Because as we move to more of an online world people are starting to read the newspaper less, TV ratings are declining everything is starting to move to the web and news stations are making sure they are not getting left behind.

For instance news stations/sports stations like ESPN, The New York Times, all have either Facebook fan pages or twitter accounts where these post their content. But its not just News Stations that have these accounts, but their journalist as well. For the New York Times it seems all of its writers/journalist have twitter accounts where they post not only the stories they write, but breaking news, updates on stories and a place where they can interact with their readers and answer any questions they might have. Before Journalism was more of a one way communication network, reporters used to talk at the viewer, what I mean by this is the viewer really had no way to communicate with the reporters other than calling into the station. But now people have a direct link to express their opinions on stories and reporters. It is adding another dimension to the game, where people can directly express their outrage about something and can connect with other audience members that feel the same way and if enough people come together about a certain issue they force the station to change how it approaches something or could cause them to do a story on it. Social Media sites are forcing Journalist to interact with their public, which can be a huge benefit or an utter disaster, because like I’ve written before, if someone says something stupid on twitter they can’t take it back and it could lead to them being fired, suspended, their credibility being forever questioned (and as a journalist all you have is your credibility).

Buts that not all these sites are also allowing non-journalist to become civilian journalist, for instance last year or so, Kevin Love announced the firing of the Timberwolves’ head coach on Twitter and this was a story that hadn’t been reported yet. So now you are adding another dimension, where everyday people can start breaking news faster than those whose job it is to report on it. Which again can be beneficial or a serious issue, because if you have normal people sharing breaking news it can hurt your newscast if your competitor sees what’s being posted. And that’s the same things that can happen when a news organization breaks a story or twitter or Facebook. It takes the risk of its rival seeing this story and losing its edge for nightly newscast and losing the story of the night.

So social media has not only changed the Journalism on a content sharing basis, but it has changed the entire foundation of this particular profession.

April Fools 2012

By @Maxwell_Mozes

The internet was abuzz with April Fools pranks even before midnight on April 1st. Google alone has been connected to 10+ pranks this year, and here we will be taking a look at how some companies took advantage of the day.

Google Maps 8-bit

Some gamers wish this wasn’t an April Fools joke. Today, you can click on the ‘Quest’ button in the top left of maps.google and experience Google Maps 8-bit as a reality. It even goes all the way down to street view:

Google didn’t stop there. The Gmail team was up to something as well. Turns out, they want to reintroduce Morse Code to texting:

GMail Tap: Reducing the keyboard from 26 to 2 keys. A dot and a dash. Nothing is more simple than that.

Still think this might not be a joke? See picture below.

Do you really think James Todd Smith, better known as LL Cool J is the Product Lead of a Gmail project?

Reddit.com also got into the April Fools game. The online forum introduced their version of Facebook’s Timeline, Reddit Timeline. You can even see into the future:

Sir Richard Branson decided to travel to the center of the earth, launching Virgin Volcanic, a project that would put 3 people at the center of a volcano and look to establish underground travel via lava flows.

You may notice that the text says “Screw business as usual”

ThinkGeek entered the April Fools game with a product we all think should actually exist. Hungry Hungry Hippos for iPad. Who wouldn’t buy this?

Are you a Youtube Fan? You’re in luck! You can now request the entire video library of Youtube on DVD! Order yours today!

“With over an hour of video uploaded to Youtube every second, you’ll receive a new truckload of DVDs every week!”

And here the BBC has a little fun with April 1st:

What April Fools jokes did you enjoy the most? Leave your favorites in the comments below!