This weeks Sunday movie ritual was Dennis Quaid's new movie Vantage Point. I am not going to lie, but I have been looking forward to this movie ever since the first time I saw the trailer. However what started off as a strong film really got repetitive and boring to myself. I wont lie but the first half of the film was pretty brilliant with the multiple angles and sequences. It was cinematographers night mare cause the Mise en Scene is imperative for each sequence. Never the less the action scenes and the twist were very good but I was expecting a lot more. So for this weeks film I give it 3 stars out of 5. What did you guys think?
How does a person or a company rank their Public Relation success over the Internet? This evaluation is extremely hard because the definition of success differs from person to person. Darren Rowse explains in his blog that as a blog creator you are not going to be found immediately. In order to succeed Rowse suggests that being a consistent writer with a frequent blog is key in not only creating, but keeping your fan base. He also suggests to use any Internet advertising, like adsense for example, in order to make your name known. In addition, he explains that a creative URL can go a long way because it will help search engine users stumble upon your blog. Domain names and titles such as abcCommunication.com and xyzTechnology.com will be generated in searches more often than joesmith.com.
With this in mind, the case study I have put together is about my roommate’s 30 year old brother, Richard Stern aka Lazydork. During the day Richard is a Miami-Dade County prosecutor in Florida. This young professional has two jobs. He is a lawyer by day and an Internet sensation by night. Richard created his blog/movie website as a way to communicate his passion for movies and goes by the alias Lazydork. The original purpose of the site was to review movies, but he later added movie-drinking games. Nevertheless, he knew that the small success he was having could skyrocket if he could find another channel through which to communicate.
With the growth of youtube.com he saw an opportunity of a new social network in which he could reach an audience with the use of videos. He stated in an interview on CNN that if young teenagers were getting half a million hits for their videos, then why couldn’t he and his girlfriend do the same? What began as movie reviews flourished into funny shorts, including rap videos which are parodies based on random topics, other youtubers, and even celebrities. Here is an example of one of his famous videos:
Richard has entertained over 1.5 million people over the Internet. His success can be monitored from a various array of sources including his main homepage and his youtube videos. On several occasions his videos have been featured as the film of the day on youtube and/or referred to by many bloggers for awards. One example is from http://theutubeblog.com/ which featured this video as their video of the week:
Unfortunately, internet success has a negative side too. According to Scoutblogging there are many ways to prepare oneself. You can either ignore the comments or you can address them. Richard does have many fans, but he also has a following of people who hate him and supply negative feedback. Even so, he studies both the positive and the negative comments and strikes back to his critiques with either strands of internet conversation and/or video responses. Negative comments in my opinion do help in terms of constructive criticism because you find areas you need to improve upon, but what do you think?
In the end Richard is a perfect example of a young professional who had a communication objective of getting popularity on the Internet. He has done so by utilizing his Internet connections and developing a growing fan club while doing so. His success is documented in several written publications and media outlets such as CNN, FoxNews, the NYtimes, The Miami Herald, Wikipedia, and blogs. He is classified as a youtube star. You can go to his webpage and participate in his online radio broadcast and find out what he is up to next. Do you know anyone who has had success like Richard?
What is funny is that I have been debiting in my mind how to write this blog about the battle for High Definition DVD players for about a week. As I walk out of the shower this morning I stumbled upon this story. Toshiba, today finally dropped out of the battle. They claimed that the final blow occurred when Warner Brothers joined BluRay last week. They were behind in the campaign and BluRay had way to many supporters.
Here is there current list of supporters of BluRay:
Sony
Matsushita (Panasonic)
Warner Bros
Wal-Mart
Walt Disney
20th Century Fox
Blockbuster
Netflix
According to internet sources Toshiba will only continue to sell HD-players until the end of March this year and continue to play the technical support role.
This battle reminds me of the VHS Vs. Betamax wars. What happened from that is that VHS became more popular and more affordable and I only believe it is a matter of that time as well for BluRay. What do you guys think?
For more information about BluRay click here Currently Toshiba has not made any remarks on their website as of 2/19/08
Wow…Isn’t this idea nuts? If you click here you can look at some insane statistics about how much revenue is invested in it and the number of users. As of Feb 13, 2008 there are over 12 million users. This is a new untapped industry that has not really been fully acknowledged by the world. The main reason is because it has not been completely mainstreamed to everyone in the world.
Many corporations and companies are investing in this technology. One example is how IBM has their own island for meetings and has people all across the world meet in a virtual boardroom. IBM states that this is a cheaper and more productive way of conducting business. In these meetings they can conduct PowerPoint slides and hold conversations. Just from watching the video the sky is the limit. Just from hearing how universities like Harvard and hotel chains are starting to invest and market themselves.
The revenue of second life is outstanding due to the currency exchange. Rates fluctuate based on supply and demand, but over the last few years they have remained fairly stable at approximately 250 Linden Dollars (L$) to the US Dollar. Second life is a big marketing target for advertisement, but who to say it is not for Public Relations? Political campaigns and music concerts are commonly broadcasted in town halls and on the radio simultaneously. The Machinima world even has its own newspaper of events that are happening in the world. Katie Benner, a Fortune reporter, has stated that second life has excelled in the corporate world by conducting interviews and hiring people from this online form of communication.
Second Life alone is an underestimated Public Relation tool. It is a great place to start advertising products and other feature items or locations for clients. They even have their own daily newspaper. One way many users communicate is through the http://blog.secondlife.com/. This is how they can freely express ideas and events that are occurring in their virtual world. Second Life is only five years old and is full of potential to continually expanding. It would be an advantage to become a master and learn how to succeed in it.
For those who have been following my blog you should be aware of this monumental proposal that Microsoft was offering Yahoo. Yahoo denied the deal stating that the offer was extremely undervalued. The trade talks have been greatly affecting both corporations’ stock prices and now Microsoft has to debate if they want to make a higher bid. This now opens the opportunity for other organizations to seek Yahoo and possibly help cornerstone or monopolize the search engine industry. What do you think?
