Business Proposal

Industry: small, up and coming publishing company, with only a handful of best sellers so far.

Proposal:

Dear Boss,

People like to read specific genres nowadays and join blogging communities to discuss the books they’ve read and what they thought about it. It would be in our best interest to create a blog for our company that could advertise the different books that we have available for the public.

For one thing, we can highlight certain books that have not really been selling in order to get them to sell. We can do this by seeing how the best sellers that we have compare to the other non-selling books in plot and characters, and advertise them together.

Also, by getting more popularity, we can encourage other authors to want to publish with us. At the same time, by getting a name for ourselves out there, more people would want to work for us.

Not only would it be beneficial to us to have our own blog, but could then have a social presence on other blogs. This would help us get more readership and business if we feature on blogs that are often read and visited.

While it may take a bit more work to maintain a blog and a presence in the blogosphere, the potential revenue that would increase is priceless.

 

Anonymous Blogs and Reading

When I read an anonymous blog, I usually get mixed feelings. Mix feelings because I do not know who is writing the things I am reading and because I may agree with what he or she is writing.  I don’t know what type of person is blogging about certain topics, thus creating a large distance. I like to be able to relate to the person who is writing the things that I am reading. It gives me a chance to understand the person and find a reference point. It makes it easier to understand the position being talked about. Meaning that when I know who is writing, implicitly I learn a lot about that person. I can read what he or she says and still get a feel for the personality of the blogger.

On the other hand, reading an anonymous blog gives the chance to get an opinion from someone without letting the actual blogger influence you. When people blog anonymously, they can give more of their point of view and opinions without fearing about the repercussions. While this could be a potential positive and negative, it is still something that I consider when dealing with blogs. These bloggers could find that pressures do not prevent them from stating what is on their minds. However, there is a possibility that they could take it too far. It is when that happens that I feel the most discomfort about reading an anonymous blog. There needs to be a good balance, that no toes get stepped on.

An example that I would like to use about anonymous blogging may not really be about blogging but more anonymous posting. Take the Craig’s List site. One section has to do with missed connections. There countless people talk about the people they see and the situations they saw them in. Some of them are romantic while others are platonic. Either way, they are able to go on a site that allows them to state what they felt about the meetings they had with each other anonymously, and sometimes reach out to the person who they are talking about. Being anonymous in this case is pretty cool.

On the other hand, anonymous blogging to spread hate and slander is not cool in my book at all. I don’t remember the name of the site, but there was one that allowed people to talk about their cheating lovers in whatever way they want, uncensored. More than that, they are allowed to say whatever and post whatever they want, including images. Things like this can affect the person they are talking about on the professional level.

To me anonymous blogging is fine as long as no one’s right to live a comfortable life is threatened. As soon as someone says something that can get a person fired from their job, personal things that have no business being aired out for every one to see, that is when I find anonymous blogging to be very discomforting and appalling to read.

Piscataway Gazette

People of Piscataway:

-mostly commuters, using the trains (Edison Train Station or New Brunswick);

-mostly people who work in the city and/or affiliated with Rutgers (mostly Livingston);

-mix of middle/working class;

-since people have other places to be, kind of lacks the community unity, place to stay but go some where else.

 

Population of Piscataway:

-As of 2010, 56,044 people.

 

Who lives there:

-A good mix of people

-Diverse ethnicities and nationalities

-Mostly families

-Varied ages; senior day-care center, senior communities, Board Ed. building with recreational activities

-Spread out

 

Blog Design:

-Current events (town hall meetings, etc)

-Advertisements

-Rutgers

-Commuter news

-Family orientated news

-Construction page

-Weekly highlights

-Open Forum section

• where people can suggest topics associated with Piscataway and interact with each other
• people can ask questions and get other people of the community to answer it
• spark a community feeling by helping each other and getting each others’ opinions about Piscatway

-Popular places

• Places that should be visited by popular opinion
• Reviews of places in Piscataway

-FAQs

 

**image heavy, so you know what the town looks like.

**Header, no endless scrolling, like the barista blog with the pages on the top.

**User friendly for every age

Live blogging

The existence of live blogging could change the way I think about something that I am passionate about by the fact that I can experience the thing instantaneously second hand. Meaning, if I was too busy or unable to experience an event or pay attention to something, a live blog could help me catch up to what is going on.

A semi recent example I can think about is the Summer Olympics. Despite it being summer and I did not have any classes, I was still very busy and was unable to catch any of what was going on. The five hour time difference from New Jersey, USA and London, Britain, did not help matters in anyway. Therefore, while I was working at my summer job, I had an internet tab open that gave me live-updates about the events that were taking place. It gave me scores, ratings, and placings of the athletes who just performed. Moreover, it gave updated standings as to what country won which medals. Furthermore, even with live blogging, it gave a different perspective to the events that I was unable to see. Since these live blogs had to be under a certain amount of characters, or that they had to be quick in updates so they get the information across while it is still relevant, it gave a different picture than actual live television or radio coverage of the events may have given.

Live blogging possesses both positives and negatives, like much of anything in life. The positives I associate with live blogging can be turned to negatives depending on the way someone looks at it. Also depending on the extent someone may take live blogging and read live blogging to the extreme.

Positives associated with live blogging: get quick updates, get a different point of view of events, additional commentary on something that you are passionate about is present, have a clue as to what is going on in the topic that is being live blogged, etc.

Negatives associated with live blogging: not care to experience the thing being live blogged first hand, being to obsessed with finding out more and more about the thing being live blogged, becomes distracting if reading live blogging posts during school or work time, get misinformed about certain things because of inadequate amount of information, need to keep scrolling if there is a lot being talked about, get bored easily, etc.

An example of a negative consequence during the Summer Olympics was how the place where I was working had its internet down because everyone kept on checking what was going in the events taking place. The people at the business were more involved with wanting to know what was happening than helping the customers that wanted to buy fabric (I was working at a textile company in New York City that summer).

An example of a positive consequence during the Summer Olympics was how I was able to talk to other people who had actually seen the events on television about who won and participate in conversations that had to do with the important details because I had read live blogs about the events.

In conclusion, live blogging to me is a two-sided coin that has both negatives and positives associated with it. However, it can’t be denied that it brings some interest in what is being live blogged, at least in the beginning anyway.

What is Social Media?

To me social media is any form of content that gets information across to a large group of people. While that may seem to include a lot of different things, I feel that social media is more interactive in a way. Interactive meaning that people are able to get the information they can from a source and add to it themselves. Due to the different types of social media platforms there are in the world today, each way an individual can impact or change information transfer in a large variety of ways. Moreover, the fact that individuals can impact or change information transfer in so many different ways is crucial in understanding the importance of social media.

Additionally, that ends up making someone wonder if a blog could be considered as being social media. In my opinion, I feel as though blogging should count as being considered as social media. That is because blogs are visited and read by others, all of whom follow a type of blog for some particular reason. The information presented on these blogs must be important for that individual. At the same time, taking the blogger’s point of view, they are able to get information they want across to a large population of people. Something they would not have been able to do otherwise, or at least not as easily. The transfer of information works smoothly in this case, and the people who blog and the people who read blogs can interact with each other. And since my claim is that social media is any form of content that gets information across to a large group of people in an interactive way, blogging definitely falls under that umbrella.