New Technology Assingment

               The new technology that I believe will affect social media immensely in the future is virtual reality. I was reading an ARTICLE by Mark Schaefer when I came across this idea of virtual reality being merged with social media and creating something called virtual spaces. This ARTICLE describes these virtual spaces as places where people can create their own avatars and interact with other people’s avatars wherever they want to be. Basically, people can create a better life than what they actually have in their virtual space and escape their normal lives into an amazing world of their own. They can meet people in these worlds and develop relationships through this virtual reality technology.

               When I heard about these virtual spaces I immediately thought about the movie “Ready PlayerOne” that is now playing in theaters. When I saw the previews for the movie it seemed so far-fetched, but what’s crazy is that after reading about virtual spaces, it doesn’t seem so unrealistic. The movie is basically about a boy who transports out of his normal life into a video game that is virtual reality. He has his own avatar and interacts with other people’s avatars. I haven’t seen the movie, but it would be interesting to see the difference between his actual reality and his virtual reality within the movie.

               The reason that I say that it would be interesting to see the difference between his actual and virtual realities is because Mike Elgan predicts that these virtual spaces will be “the most addictive experience ever introduced.” The reason he says this is because when people aren’t happy with their lives they can just transform themselves into another life and live that life instead. It isn’t hard to see why that would be addictive if you weren’t fully satisfied with your actual reality.

               Elgan also predicts that these virtual spaces will be both a good and a bad thing, just like all other social media. Like other forms of social media, Elgan says it will bring people together in the virtual reality but will further isolate us in the real world. I personally think that these virtual spaces sound really cool, but I think that overall they would have a negative effect. I think that giving people that space to create a different life, will just make them less satisfied with their real lives. What people need to do is focus on making their actual life a better one, not their life on social media or their life in a virtual space.

Reflection on Social Media Case 12: United Breaks Guitars

               Honestly, the more cases that we study like this the more I wonder why companies don’t just put the customer first. Anyone can post their bad experiences with a company on social media, and that’s exactly what Dave Carroll did when United Airlines mishandled his guitar. Except Dave Carroll made a whole song and music video about the incident, which received 18 million views. However, he tried to get United to remedy the situation for a year, and when nothing was done he made the video. So United Airlines definitely had it coming.

               United not handling this simple problem caused them a much bigger problem which caused them bad publicity and a loss of revenue. Just a simple search on Google of the song title “United Breaks Guitars” brings up many different news articles on the whole situation. One of the articles that comes up is from FAST COMPANY and they quote The Times of London, saying that the bad PR cost United 180 million dollars from the plunge in the stock market. Although there’s no proof that that price is entirely accurate, I’m sure it did cost them way more than it would have if they would have just addressed the problem in the beginning.

               Dave Carroll even wrote a book on the whole situation which you can find on AMAZON. His book is titled “United Breaks Guitars: The Power of One Voice in the Age of Social Media.” I think that the title of this book says it all. One voice really does have so much power on social media and it’s not just the voices of people with power and money, but the voices of normal everyday people. This is why it is so important that companies provide their customers with good customer service, because any of their customers could be that one voice that shares their bad experience, causing the company more problems than it had initially.

Reflection on Social Media Case 11: OK Go Gravity Song

My initial thoughts after reading about this social media case is why there are so many people reporting on OK Go choosing Facebook to release their newest music video “Upside Down & Inside Out” rather than YouTube. It seemed to be a really big deal to a lot of people and I honestly didn’t really see it as such a big deal. However, Facebook and YouTube did seem to be in competition with their video services with Facebook trying to prove that videos posted on their site can go just as viral as those posted on YouTube. HERE is an article on one way that Facebook is trying to compete with YouTube.

               I definitely think money was involved in OK Go’s decision to post this video on Facebook rather than YouTube, even thought they said it was for creative purposes. I also think that views were involved as well. Apparently, when this whole incident happened, you couldn’t share the link to YouTube videos and so there was less of a reach. However, with Facebook, people could literally share the video to their feeds, which would result in more views, making the video more viral. HERE is more information as to why OK Go chose Facebook to release their video.

               What is very interesting to me is that the company that they worked with to make this video, S7 Airlines, posted the video to YouTube and OK Go got upset about it, resulting in the video being taken down. There were no legal actions taken, but later OK Go actually ended up posting the video to their YouTube page after the initial release on Facebook. This makes me wonder if OK Go actually did have some negative feelings towards YouTube, which was mentioned briefly in some articles that I read about the whole issue.

Reflection on Social Media Case 10: Miracle Mattress Twin Tower Sale

 The ‘Twin Tower Sale’ commercial was created by Miracle Mattress and was overall very tasteless and just plain wrong. The 15^th anniversary of 9/11 was soon approaching and it’s obvious that Miracle Mattress was trying to use this event as a promotional deal on their social media. The whole video is very disturbing and you can find it HERE. This video went viral and the company received a lot of backlash, but it’s pretty clear why it did.

So many people were in the wrong, and it makes me wonder why no one thought that just maybe it might be offensive and probably isn’t a good idea. It will definitely take a lot of work on the company’s behalf to recover from this commercial that has gone viral. So many people have made comments on their Facebook page about how disgusted they are with the whole thing. Some people were forgiving, but the majority of comments are how disgusted people are with the people who made this video. There were even people saying how much they hope that they go out of business for it.

Mike Bonanno, the owner of Miracle Mattress, wrote an APOLOGY LETTER addressed to all of the victims and families of 9/11. I think that the letter was written very well and was a crucial step to recovering from this incident. However, the letter isn’t enough to make up for the wrong thing they have done, which he states within the letter.  

Miracle Mattress closed their doors after the whole event happened, and I’m sure during this time they went over many different policies and things the company could do to regain a positive reputation. However, even with the apology letter and the different things the company has tried to do to regain their reputation, what’s on social media will always be on social media. They are still getting bad reviews today because of the whole incident that happened years ago, which goes to show how hard it is to recover from something like this, especially in the age of social media.