This blog is part of the course Business information technologies at University of Tilburg. It contains my experiences and thoughts of Media and the use of it.
Who doesn't know the Angry Birds?! This addicted puzzle video game developed by Rovio Mobile from Finland sold over 12 million copies of the game since the release in December 2009. First it was only for the Iphone but thanks to the great succes, the company made versions for other touchscreen-based smartphones.
For noob's: Players use a slingshot to launch birds at pigs situated on or within various structures, with the intent of destroying all pigs on the playfield. The further you go, new birds with special ablities appear.
Rovio Mobile has supported Angry Birds with numerous free updates that add additional game content, Stand-alone holiday and promotional versions of the game. The game is praised for its succesful combination of addictive gameplay, comical style, low price and ease. Thanks to this popularity, Angry Birds is also created for personal computers and gaming consoles! And there are plans to make a film or a television serie.
With 140 million downloads across all platforms, the game has been called "one of the most mainstream games out right now", "one of the great runaway hits of 2010", and "the largest mobile app success the world has seen so far".
At the end of this week, as promised, Rovio brings out an update to its Angry Birds Rio game! The Beach Volley update will be followed by a new episode per month till November. For the ones who can't wait, this is the trailer:
And, for the ones who wanna play on the web (now available for the first time) click here!!
As said in my last blog, Facebook's current on-paper value is somewhere between the value of Ford ($55bn) and Visa ($63bn) two major companies that have been arround for quit a while. Google's value nowadays is even more than three times bigger.
The new generation of internet companies are booming, in fact according to some the second Internet Bubble has began. According to Patrick (co-founder of technology consultancy Broadsight) the first breaths have been blown. "A bubble is defined by too much money chasing assets, greater production of those assets, then the need to find greater fool to buy them." The small group of companies chasing money right now can be good investments but it must not escalate. Patrick gives 10 signs that this new Internet Bubble is being blown:
1. The arrival of a 'new thing' that cannot be valued in the old way. Dumb-money companies start paying ove the odds for New Thing acquisitions. 2. Smart people identify the start of a bubble; New Thing apostles make ever more glowing claims 3. Startups with founders deemed to have 'pedigree' (for example, former employees of New Thing Companies) get funded at eye-watering valuations for next to no reason. 4. There is a flurry of new investment funds catering for startups 5. Companies start getting funded 'off the slide deck' (purely on the basis of their Powerpoint presentations) 6. MBAs leave banks to start up firms. 7. the 'big flotation' happens 8. Banks make a market in the New Thing, investing pension money. 9. Taxi drivers start giving you advice on what stock to buy 10. A New Thing darling buys an old-world company for stupid money.
Social media is hot and happening, 'the likes' of twitter and facebook are revolutionary in human communication. These companies aren't making money but are worth a fortune! Michael Errington, creator of Techcrunch (an influental technology blog) and Arianna Huffington (founder of Huffington Post) have sold their publications to AOL. #1
Fred Wilson (Investor at Unionn Square Ventures and a veteran of the 2000 dotcombubble) is ringing the alarm bells for quit some time now, he is worried that a two- or three-person startup could get a $50-$100 valuation which he finds not reasonable. #2
He also stated that for example Quora (Questions-and-answers site) raised $11m last year that valued the firm at $86m, now it is reportedly fending off offers for $330m! #3
David Cohen (managing director of TechStars) says there is a bubble in the number of companies financing startups. #4
Sumon Sadhu (director of intelligence at Quid) disagrees, he states that social media created a new source of information about the people using the web, these identities are just worth a fortune. The first wave of internet firms gave us an overload of information, now we need the filters. We have to trust where the information is coming from.
There is a sense that this isn't real money, and that can't be good in the long run. The sad thing is that we only really know if this was a bubble when it bursts..
About pink elephants and green dragons: Children's awareness of being deceptive
This is an interview with prof. dr. Marc Swerts, a researcher and academic teacher at the University of Tilburg.
The interview includes his research to children's awareness of being deceptive, based on a digital puppet-show where children have to communicate with a prince and a (green) dragon.
Furthermore, dr. Swerts discusses the pink elephant phenomenon, theory of mind, detecting lies as a parent, differences in lying adults and children, non-verbal communication, Paul Ekman and the truth behind the tv-show 'Lie To Me'.
The interview is recorded and edited by group 24 of the course Business Information Technology.
Why is Facebook worth $82.9 billion?! Twitter, $4.5 billion?! And Hyves, taken over by TMG (Telegraaf Media Groep) for an estimated 40 to 80 million euro..
Companies miss opportunities when they are not familiar with or even aware of social media sites like the ones named above or youtube, linkedin, reddit, wordpress etc.
The largest opportunity is the company's image, that can be influenced by the available social media tools! It builds a fundament for a company or organisation with much lower costs than the old fashioned way of advertising and PR. It facilitates control over companies' products, services and business (or personal) image. There is an easy and quick anticipation on seasons and unexpected situations and new customers can be attracted easy and quick to facilitate in a greater market share!
It is the place to meet/connect with each other, for friends - family - and colleagues.
The advantages of a Social Media Policy within a company are at first that it creates trust and therefore appreciation. It reduces the bridge between older and younger employees and improves the internal communication and cooperation. > act on it!
More and more people have an Iphone or an other smartphone that they use very frequently..
You can E-mail, text, surf, game, listen to music, make pictures, navigate and all the other things I can't come up with at this moment.. But, did you know that nowadays you can even report damage to your car?!
Interpolis wants to be the biggest Insurance company and they are going in the right direction by creating new ways to improve customer care and satisfaction. One of the things Interpolis is constantly trying to improve is the ease by which customers can report their (insuranced) damage and the way this can be solved/fixed..
In contrast to some other insurance companies who stick with their old fashion way of working - declaration by written forms what causes a pile of paperwork and long 'waiting times' for customers - Interpolis allready uses phone, E-mail and Internet for their customers to declare damages to their household, house, cars etc.
More than a year ago, Interpolis was the first to develop and introduce an application for the Iphone to report and directly take care of car damages. About 25.000 Iphone users allready downloaded the application and together they have reported their damage over a hundred times. They react positive because of the ease and the speed of reporting. This application is now also available (also developed by Interpolis) for Android smartphones and can be downloaded for free via the Android Market.
The application
After an accident the user of the application can directly call for emergency services and can based on his location approach repair services within the app. Then, the user can fill in a digital accident report, add some foto's and send it to Interpolis. The GPS on the phone automatically fills in the location.
Most of the time there is only one party involved in an accident <You don't wanna know how many people can't park (near a tree or a pile)> for these accidents the app is even more usefull because its simple&fast.
Do you have an Iphone or an Android phone, but you are not insured at Interpolis? No worries, you can also use the app. The report is not send to Interpolis but to your own mail!
I suppose you remember the time in high school, I sure do! Back in the days I did not have the knowledge that I have nowadays (joh!) In fact I was not eager to study and obtain the knowledge teachers tried to teach me. I am glad things have changed (for me) <you cannot stand still in a world changing so rapidly>
You think.. ‘Why she starts babbling about her youth?’ Well, in the year of 2004 I was sixteen and in this year a study performed by tns-nipo stated thatwe were exposed to an average of 3000 advertisements a day!I am trying to remember the amount of advertisements in these days, on the streets, television, radio, Internet and magazines. Honestly, through the haze of brand names, products, commercials, tunes, posters and other ads of the last years I find it hard to remember. But what I DO know is that we are flooded with advertisements anno 2011.
For the past decade companies have tried to stand out by thinking of creative new ways to bring their product to their audience and create brand awareness. Because of the overload of advertisement it is hard to be the one that is remembered. Since last summer I am part of the ‘Acquisitie commissie’, a group of people that tries to sell advertising space for our student association (Plato). We have noticed that it’s hard to just sell half a page for an ad in our magazine, on posters or flyers for activities. Companies want more, they want to see something out of it and now we are looking for different ways to ‘catch them’. Banners on our site, even Facebook, Twitter and a Hyves page.
The competition for awareness starts in advertising. Companies try to attract by making their ads distinctive. # Contrastive, strong and intensive colors. # size (think of the huge billboards in city centers) # new, controversial and unexpected # use what’s on the mind of us nowadays.
Next to these obvious ads, companies start using subtle advertisement. ‘Hidden messages’ that we do not see, but DO notice. For example in the cinema, just before the brake, they flash you the text ‘hungry? Eat popcorn. Research explored that when we are actually hungry, this type of indirect advertising effects us in such a way that we for example buy popcorn instead of ‘our own choice’.
When Media and Marketing actually come together
Branded entertainment is a form entertainment whereby a brand has the opportunity to communicate its image to its target audience in an original way. <creating positive links between the brand and the program> A form of branded entertainment are product placements. For the ones who are addicted to our own Dutch television soup GTST: Try counting the number of products placed on the set this evening. Companies actually pay a numerous amount of money to have their products shown or used (even more expensive) in popular shows. I hate GTST but even I know that Pringles and Douwe Egberts are brands shown regularly in the show. A more familiar and older form of branded entertainment is sponsoring, we all know what Red Bull is sponsoring, what Malboro used to sponsor and what’s on the shirt of our own national soccer team!
Branded entertainment is hard to ignore, the idea behind it is that people are more involved and therefore there is more influence. But there is also unnoticed influence which people can’t correct.
Product Placements and Sponsoring are quite simple forms. Nowadays, more and more brands integrate with entertainment or even create their own shows and games. It’s billion dollar business.
Try to find the product placements in this clip of Lady Gaga – Bad romance. She is the perfect example of an artist who adapts to the need for brands to stand out. When I implemented her video into this post, already 348,890,479 people saw this clip! Hope you'll understand that this type of advertising is effective and therefore is booming!
If you are under the delusion that Twitter is just a site to post and read short messages about what people are upto <my thoughts> then you are quit wrong! Well, not entirelly because this medium IS used to convey how you are feeling. It creates ambient awareness: People read how you think about things, your opinion and your experiences and they take these into account in their own lives.
Companies also found their way to Twitter, they tweet information about activities, new products or 'just' what they are upto. They try to connect with consumers by 'pushing' information to them, and consumers push this further to their friends and so on, creating 'word-of-mouth' <as said earlier, still the strongest form of advertising> Companies use tweets as banners and at the same time they 'pull' information from us to implement this in their business strategies or listen to customer problems and solve them. Speaking of problems, its hard to find a job nowadays, companies already use twitter to post vacancies and now Maarten Dik makes life a bit easier..
That unorganized potpourri of vacancies on Twitter, that can be better must have been the thought of Maarten Dik, a first year student human Information Design & Strategy. Together with his teacher he started the site Twitterbaan.nl last December. This site automatically collects all the vacatures that appear onTwitter, though now categorized and searchable on place name and branche.
As we speak there are already more than a hundred thousand jobs on this site, from job banks or directly from companies.
"Job searching and social media forms an integrated whole anno 2011."
Sunday afternoon, a perfect time to write my first message and post this on my blog. Went to a seven-course diner last evening, enjoyed the Italian kitchen and partied as real maffioso. Crawled to bed and slept till noon and treated myself with a delicious 'tosti Thomas' at Brandpunt (if you never tried it, I stronly suggest you to). And now, after a refreshing shower, here we are.
I am Evelien, a student at Tilburg University (NL). I am studying Corporate Communication and Digital Media and for the course 'Business Information Technologies' I had to make this Blog. It is about the use of Media in daily live and especially the use of information technologies by companies.
Advertising is no longer the main way to introduce new products and services to the audience, companies swift more and more to other interactive ways to sell their products. Ways whereby (potential) customers can decide for themselves whether they want to read/see it. Social Media, like Facebook and Hyves, have become popular mediums to 'advertise' because people maintain their social life on these sites and through word-of-mouth (still the strongest way to sell your products) a wide range of people can be approached.
In this Blog I will post facts, news and other talk about these Media phenomenons. Funny, interesting, fascinating, eye opening and informative subjects!
