I think we are going down the wrong Path

Recently, I've really been getting into twitter. I follow my horoscope, CNN, Mashable, and a few of my friends. I like how this form of social media is kind of like a time line of what I am doing, and I especially like that I can get my news from this source as well. Why am I telling you why I like Twitter? Well, about a week ago Path was launched to compete with Twitter (Mashable). Path is a lot like Twitter in that you can micro-blog about your life, but the major difference is that Path will only allow you to follow 50 friends. They want to stick with the number 50 because of a psychological study that was conducted that proved that a person can handle only 150 relationships. Path wants to a more intimate setting that you can share more personal things with your friends, and they want you to be yourself. In every post you have to have a person, a place and a thing. The example they give in the article is in the picture below:

                      I really like how this is setup to include pictures with your text, but I don't know how they are going to get a lot of members since you can only have 50 friends. The reason Facebook and Twitter are so successful is because they started with a few people and they brought new people, and so on like the snowball effect. Also, this isn't on the internet, you can only access this through your IPhone. What do you think? Do you think this could be the next Twitter?

November 17th is National UnFriend Day on Facebook

"Jimmy Kimmel calls for National UnFriend Day" CNN

Jimmy Kimmel has a late night talk show called Jimmy Kimmel Live where he talks about things going on in the world and he puts his point of view on things. On Wednesday the 10th Jimmy Kimmel declared that November 17th is going to be National UnFriend Day on Facebook. Kimmel believes that Facebook is "cheapening the meaning of friendship" (CNN). I have to say that I agree with him. It feels like everytime I am on Facebook I have yet another friend request. Yes, I do add people from class that I talk to, but I really do not talk to them outside of class and then I forget to delete them after the semester is over. I know I am not the only one that does this. I will not, however, add complete strangers that creep on my Facebook and add me as a friend. I also have a very tight control on who can even search me.

I think National UnFriend Day should be targeted towards high-schoolers more than anyone just because I feel like they don't see the problems with adding a complete stranger. I know I am definitely take Jimmy's advice and cut some "friends" that I don't even know anymore. I have been at WKU for three and a half years now and I can guarantee that there are some people I am "friends" with on Facebook that I don't even talk to anymore. Happy National UnFriend Day!!

Its "Facebook Official" ...Breaking up on Facebook

Have you ever wondered when you were going to be dumped by your significant other? Well, thanks to David McCandless, a British journalist and graphic designer, you can better prepare yourself to be dumped. He has created a chart of when you are most likely to get kicked to the curb on Facebook.

The graph above is a visual representation of the most likely times of the year you will be left

I personally think this graph is hilarious, as well as fairly accurate. In my personal experience, I feel like a ton of people break up right after Valentine's Day because they don't want to spend it alone. This is good news for marketers! You have made us feel so bad about our lives that we feel obligated to find someone, anyone, and stay with them long enough to buy them something for this particular holiday. Good job! On the other hand, people break up right before Christmas. This could be due to the fact that prices are too high combined with the simple fact that this isn't exactly a holiday that revolves around love.

People love changing their relationship status on Facebook to reflect that they are taken or, to quote a fairly new term, "Facebook Official" which would make this chart pretty accurate. On the other hand, you also have those people who joke around and say that they are in a relationship with their roommate or best friend. What do you think? Do you think this is an accurate chart? Do you think that marketers could use this to their advantage? 

Winners never cheat and cheaters never win, especially on Foursquare

Mayor badge in Foursquare

Earlier in my blog I took my stance on location based forms of social media. Although I feel like they are unsafe, I also know that people are really into the gaming aspect of it. In Foursquare, if you check into a certain place more than anyone else, you become the mayor of that place. Earlier this month in my Social Media Marketing class we discussed how people could cheat the system and check into places from their couch and eventually become the mayor of that place. I also learned from an article on Mashable.com that people can also check into a place if they are near it instead of inside it. I bet you are thinking, "So what?" I would be thinking this too if I didn't fully understand the ramifications. The problem with this is that most businesses are starting to give mayoral discounts, and incentives to the mayor of their establishment so that more people will want to check into their location and cash in on the deals. Foursquare finally caught onto this and so they are putting the power of the highly sought after mayor badge into the hands of the store owners. Since Foursquare cannot fix this problem immediately, Foursquare knows that businesses using this social media platform know their regular customers. This means that business owners can now flag you on Foursquare and you can lose your mayorship. What do you think? Do you think this is taking it too far? Do businesses have the right to tamper with a social media game? I think they have every right to do this if others are exploiting this loophole to gain discounts and other incentives that they don't deserve at the companies expense.