22-02-2012 11:51 The Everyone Gives campaign allows you to rally support for your favorite causes, while encouraging your friends to do the same.
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'Everyone Gives' Uses Social Networking To Help Charities - Video
Our peers could best be described as the cyber generation. Year after year, we delve further into the Internet. Be it for academic purposes or a simple hello, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are a dominant force in shaping our activities.
Yet our generation is also criticized for succumbing to that very influence. Common criticisms include that we are too obsessed with social networking, we avoid social interaction and compensate by social networking, and we waste precious time on the web instead of being productive. Though I understand these are legitimate concerns, there are some substantial benefits of Facebook and Twitter, especially for college students, that many critics ignore.
At the University, social networking is playing a greater role in public communications. For example, the University’s College of Arts and Sciences has a Facebook page where the College administration posts new, upcoming class, research and internship opportunities which are available. Facebook has become a great mechanism to inform students and keep them up-to-date on College happenings.
The University’s use of social media has further legitimized such websites as an authentic source of communicating information at the University. Granted, at first when I found out that the University was on Facebook, I felt this would only increase our interaction with social networking and further glue students to the Internet. But since we are always on Facebook as is, why shouldn’t the University utilize the medium to inform students of things which could benefit them? Furthermore, the page really does supplement other communication mechanisms such as University-wide emails.
Furthermore, my professors are on Twitter. I am enrolled in PLAP 3700: Racial Politics, with Prof. Lynn Sanders, who uses Twitter to convey to us topics and articles relevant to our area of study. “I started using Twitter because I read an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education that said professors should try it,” Sanders said in an email. “Also, lately I’ve been thinking, I better start making an effort to get more modern in my media habits. And, I’d found myself deluging and annoying students with not-all-business emails, like stuff I think is funny … So I started tweeting to replace email, and now, I find twitter is a great way to capture all the scatter, both serious and lighter, that I think connects to Racial Politics.”
In such circumstances, social networking can be used in an interesting manner to further our understanding of the subject matter. While social networking sites do not allow for thorough teaching, short, direct messages do attract a student’s attention and are easy to remember.
On a larger scale, social networking played a significant role during the Arab Spring by spreading the message of revolution and rebellion to the public. Of course, the Arab Spring is only one example of social media making a large impact.
We can also see its importance in the United States. How Republican primary candidates are campaigning on Twitter truly shows its impact in our society. A January 28 New York Times article discussed how Newt Gingrich has been online in hopes of communicating to the public, while Mitt Romney’s team takes to Twitter to better shape perception of the candidate. Twitter, and social networking in general, has undoubtably changed the political playing field and added another dimension in appealing to the electorate.
Yes, I agree we could probably communicate less on Facebook and more in-person. This is especially true if the people with whom we are communicating live within traveling distance. As college students, social interaction is part of this experience. But as our technology becomes more advanced, we will invest more in technology. While social networking sites are important in the life of a student, this does not necessarily mean that we have completely dedicated our lives to social networking.
Critics of social networking have valid arguments. Nevertheless, social networking will remain, whether we like it or not. As a result, it is better to take advantage of it and the efficiencies it provides. I, too, first thought we were too invested in social networking, but that was when I failed to recognize how large an impact social networking could have.
Fariha Kabir’s column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at f.kabir@cavalierdaily.com.
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Critics of social networking ignore the benefits and political potential such technologies enable
You wouldn’t walk up to a co-worker’s cubicle and challenge him to do 25 sit-ups on a typical workday, but you might challenge him online if your company was using one of the new social media platforms designed to encourage employees to stay (or get) in shape. Or you might find that challenge in your own inbox, or an offer to go for a bike ride after work.
A growing number of companies are banking on social media to boost the participation rates in their employee wellness programs. As it is, about 90 percent of companies (with more than 5,000 employees) use the web to deliver their wellness programs. For example, one employee wellness company, ShapeUp, has a Facebook-like platform, where people invite “friends” to participate, create “teams,” and can log their own fitness and weight control efforts and see how they’re doing compared to others in their company.
“The prime motivator is the social accountability we engender,” said Dr. Rajiv Kumar, founder and chief medical officer of ShapeUp. The “friends” can be a powerful motivating force, especially when everyone can see how much (or little) you’ve done each week.
“We believe this peer accountability, which is stronger than accountability to a faceless HR department, can be as powerful, if not more, than financial incentives,” Kumar said.
According to ShapeUp’s research, about 30 to 50 percent of employees at their client companies participate in their social media wellness program compared to, say, a typical walking program, for which 15 percent participate, or a weight loss program, for which about 8 percent partake.
Other studies explain why social media may help motivate people to exercise more or lose more weight. These studies show that peers have a big impact on your health behaviors. When people are losing weight around you, you’re more likely to lose weight, and when they’re quitting smoking, you’re more likely to quit too. But it can also go the opposite way - when they eat donuts, you’re likely to do that as well!
ShapeUp makes fitness and nutrition challenges and the teams compete against each other to see who can walk the furthest (measured with pedometers), bike the most miles, lose the most weight, eat the healthiest, and do the most sit-ups. Employees log their efforts and accomplishments daily or weekly. If you don’t enter your log for a few days, you may get a friendly nudge from a teammate. On the other hand, when you run a 5K or simply go for a long walk, you might get a round of cyber high-fives from your teammates.
One of the best aspects of these social media wellness programs is that they are like Match.com for exercisers. You can crowd source a cycling partner, jogging buddy or someone to play tennis with. If your company isn’t doing social media wellness, you can check out Fitocracy and Daily Mile, direct-to-consumer websites that use the same concept of social media to help people meet their fitness and nutritional challenges.
Laurie Tarkan is an award-winning health journalist whose work appears in the New York Times, among other national magazines and websites. She has authored several health books, including "Perfect Hormone Balance for Fertility." Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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How social networking can boost your workout
Internet Dental Alliance, Inc. (IDA) announces social networking tools and dental marketing strategies designed to find new patients and maximize dental practice marketing success.
(PRWEB) February 23, 2012
Internet Dental Alliance, Inc. (IDA) announces its new dental marketing strategy that allows doctors to meet prospective patients where they gather on the web. Social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp are the most popular way for people to ask their friends for recommendations and share information online. In response, IDA created dentist social networking tools that can be easily integrated with any social networking profiles that a dental practice may already have.
The success of social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Orkut, WordPress, LiveJournal, TypePad and others means that social networking tools need to be included in every dental practice marketing plan. However, successful social marketing requires maintaining an active presence, which can be overwhelming (or impossible) for busy doctors.
"That's why IDA designs customized dentist social networking strategies that are easy to implement. For example, websites and portals can be completely integrated into a dentist's personal or professional Facebook profile," says Jim Du Molin, dental patient marketing consultant and founder of Internet Dental Alliance, Inc. "Individual Facebook pages can be built for each market segment a doctor wants to target, including geographical locations, and specialties such as dental implants, braces & orthodontics, Invisalign ©, dentures and wisdom teeth."
Each dental website page is designed so that new patient prospects can be strategically sent to the practice’s social networking profile pages for social proof or more information. Twitter feeds and Yelp reviews are good sources for testimonials from existing patient. LinkedIn listings and YouTube playlists are good ways to provide more information about dental specialty areas such as cosmetic dentistry, orthodontics, periodontics or sleep apnea.
"Since most web visitors will have profiles on their own selection of social networking sites, displaying a variety of social networking tools on your dental practice website makes it easy for them to do some dental marketing for you," adds Du Molin. "Referrals are the most powerful kinds of advertising. Patients can spread the word to family and friends by email, or by using their own Facebook pages, blogs or other online networks they’ve joined."
Dental practice lead generation is an important online marketing strategy for increasing dental practice size, so New Patient Portals are designed to invite web visitors to share the information they find with their own online contacts. Each page is embedded with a selection of links, creating social networking and bookmarking opportunities for patients on hundreds of different sites. Since new social sites are constantly appearing on the web, the list is regularly updated to include the newest online destinations.
About Internet Dental Alliance, Inc.
IDA is North America's largest provider of websites for dentists, email patient newsletters and dental directories, and completed development of its unique LeadFire technology in 2012. Internet Dental Alliance provides dental practices with online dental marketing services such as websites and newsletters, find-a-dentist websites, and other dental management advice and resources.
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Julie Frey
Internet Dental Alliance
888-476-4886
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Dental Marketing Strategy: IDA Announces Dentist Social Networking Tools to Engage New Patients
It's a social network for people you haven't met yet, but it's not a dating site. Or so they say.
My welcoming committee on Badoo.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET. Faces and names blurred for privacy.)
There's a social network oozing into the U.S. that you probably haven't heard of yet: Badoo. I hadn't.
But this network has, I'm told, 130 million users around the world, with about 6 million in the U.S. How did that happen? And will it play in Peoria? Here's the story, in two parts.
Part 1: The high-minded theory
Badoo is a social site, but it's no Facebook. Where Facebook is the network of your friends (even if you define "friend" loosely), Badoo is a network for friends yet to be.
But neither is Badoo, strictly speaking, a dating service, according to CEO Andrey Andreev and CMO Jessica Powell. Rather, Badoo is designed to connect you to people nearby whom you don't yet know, for whatever purpose you like. As Powell says, it's like the offline world. "There's always the potential for flirting or dating, but along the way you might just make friends, or meet people you want to introduce your friends to."
Like Facebook, Badoo's design encourages people to keep coming back. "With a dating site, if you go there and are successful, you don't come back. In Badoo, you come back," says Powell.
Badoo is also a location-based social service. It's designed to help you find people nearby who share your interests, and there's a strong smartphone app. It's pitched as great if you're looking to hang with someone in a new city you're visiting, or connect with people at an event.
Powell told me that about 50 percent of the conversations on the service lead to real-world meetups, and that under 20 percent of the site's usage is around dating. These are both very interesting numbers for an online connection service.
I would say my conversation with Andreev and Powell went well. I was envisioning using Badoo to connect with cool people at crowded events like the Maker Faire, or maybe at industry conferences.
Then our meeting ended, and I tried the service.
Part 2: The low-down reality
The initial impression I got when I signed to the service: man, this is creepy. Immediately after signing on, with no photo or information in my profile, I was told that four women wanted to talk with me, one of whom was 382 miles away. Why? I was a blank box with nothing but an age and a location.
Use Badoo to find nearby people open to talking or meeting.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET. Faces and names blurred for privacy.)
Actually, the entire sign-on process tells you a different story than the one the CEO and CMO told me. This is a photo-based dating site. About the only question you need to answer to get active on the service is if you want to meet a girl or a guy (or both) and their age. There is no concept of groups or networks of friends. Even the part where you enter in interests, to match with other users, is relatively obscure.
Then there's the revenue model: the service is free, but only to a point. To be featured on the top of the site's or the app's navigation bar as a nearby contact, you have to buy credits. To activate "super powers" (which allow your messages to go to contacts more quickly, among other things), you either pay with credits or contacts: you can invite other users to Badoo and the service will check your social networks for matches if you authorize it to do so. Other features require payment, too, and you can't do much before you bump into pay-me blocks. Otherwise, you'll feel hemmed in.
A site that's similar in some ways, HowAboutWe, feels more platonic than Badoo. And HowAboutWe has very clear dating mission.
Badoo appears to be all about the hookup. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and it's a reasonable business to be in. There is, after all, one thing that people will always want, and one way or another, pay for.
And I do respect Powell's assertion that in Silicon Valley we tend to like the sterile, or as she put it, "desexified" product. Humans are needy, messy creatures, so why not build businesses that serve that reality?
The challenge is that if you have a sexy product, there's very little else that can bloom underneath it. Powell disagrees with this and said in an e-mail after we talked, "Dating only represents about 20 percent of how users make use of the site. I think Badoo is successful (far more so than dating sites, which are smaller) because it's not prescriptive. We give you the tools to meet people, then you decide what you want to do....I think most people go with some sort of 'romantic' hope, but along the way, they have all sorts of entertaining, flirty, and fun encounters."
I was also told, "Dating is a popular initial use case, and we expect the U.S. to follow the pattern of our other high-usage countries, where the uses broaden out over time and as the site scales."
My exposure to Badoo has been brief, but to me it seems like a gritty, real connection service, not the ongoing social experiment that I was eager to try before I experienced what it really was. Perhaps Badoo will expand beyond "flirting" in the U.S., but I can't imagine going back to it for anything but that.
Badoo raised $30 million from Russian investor group Finam in 2007. Powell told me the company has an annual run rate of $150 million, from about 1 million paying users every month.
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Badoo blazing a new path in social networking?