Social Gaming

Social gaming, in simple terms, is a game that uses competition, or gaming, to encouragers social reactions between users. on the internet social gaming comes in many forms, the most apparent and popular can be found on Facebook, Tagged, and many other social networking sites. Today the top social games are on have been established on facebook: Farmville : 61 million,
Mafia Wars : 25.8 million. These games bring masses of people together on the internet. How do they do it? These games, on facebook, encourage interactions by exposing it as much as they can to people. On facebook, in my news feed, i can see all the people who have been participating in the game "mafia wars". Facebook: "Your friend just trespassed on your turf, do you want to get a bat?".

Form here i can choose to participate or not, most of the time i dont. but i have explored this phenomena. Social gaming is a great way to get masses of people together. But in terms of creating actual social interactions, theses games are very inefficient. These social interactions are based mostly on yes or no responses, these responses that "feeling" of an actual interactions First the reaction is simply based on, yes or no reactions, and encouraged through advertising.

True social gamin, i believe can be experienced on games like, "World of Warcraft", "Call of duty" and networks such as xboxlive, or playstation online. While on the surface "these are just games" thought comes to mind. That is just the surface, these games encourage live interactions with people on line. They allow me to socialize with a profile, taglines, thoughts and even a live avatar. This is a great way to get people to socialize. on these networks i can have a live chat room with friends and people that i have just met in the game. These reactons tend to be very social, and have just as many participants. in fact xbox has over 40 million Xbox 360 consoles worldwide. While it may not be as many total participants, the social interaction is much stronger based allowing participants to essentially have an alternate life completely, socially and privately. to me this embodies the idea of "social gaming" and has better more efficient potential.

Social Media: The Future

Social media, has certainly had an impact on our lives today. In such a short time, it has taken off like a wild fire, and does not seem to be slowing. With this in mind, what does the future of social networking hold? How can it possibly become any better, or worse than it already is. Some people suggest, that devices will be able to read your mind, allowing you to interact with your phone, twiter, facebook, and email, extremely hands free. While this may be a stretch, actual advances in social networking have been underway. One of the most important advances social networking has lead to is natural language processing. Imagine you are talking to someone on AIM of Fbook chat. If that person speaks a different language the conversation may be a little difficult to track. With natural language processing, you will be able to communicate to different people, no matter what language they speak. Your computer will translate your type into the language that the other person speaks, and vice versa.

While social media, thus far, has had a very large impact. It is still in the beginning stages. Social media has shown its ability to be a valuable resource, as well as its ability to waste time. if done correctly, social media can lead to the connecting of the whole world. i guess all we can do now is wait, and see

Popularity Optimization

With the rise of the internet, business' have hit a point of adaptation. The internet as well as internet marketing has added a whole new facet to business. The internet is a medium itself for marketing and exposure for an limitless amount of products and services. As such market researchers, and marketing departments have stepped up their game in the internet marketing department. But as broad as it is, there are key things you can do to further separate your product or service from the others on the web. Enter search engine optimization, and web analyitics.

As you already may know, analytics measure web traffic through clicks and trackbacks to specific url's. These have been growing ever more important web business. the information provided by web analyitics is critical to exposure. Businesses can further define and target their specific market though the use of analytics. have you ever noticed that as you cruse through google and search various terms, ads soon start to pop up for a specific good or service related to your web searches? This is because businesses analyze popular searches on there internet, or key words connected to their products that attract the most web traffic.

But is your product as popular as it can be? Search engine optimization might as well be called popularity optimization. Is your product as popular as it can be? if you go to google and simply type one letter, google reveals the most popular searches that come up for that letter. Optimization of this popularity, can truly set your business apart. As such businesses should pay close attention to such a resource. Optimization can lead to further exposure to consumers and increased sales. This is why businesses invest millions of dollars in marketing every year. it has been seen that the top advertised brands are at the same time the most recognized as well as the most sought after. The genius of search engine optimization, is that it is free. It does not cost millions of dollars, but it has the power an make a million dollar difference.

Networking, Profession of Substance

We have all heard it, in this world of expanding connections, "it's not what you know, but who you know". Today social networks all over the internet are allowing us to expand the aspect of who we know. And even more amazing is the ease at which I can do this. Short-lived are the days in which professionals have to put on their sunday best, and attend the local chamber of commerce meeting, to establish meaning full business connections. Social Media, and social networking alike, make connecting to people EASY to say the least. A quick visit to linkedin.com, will reveal that it takes less information than a job application to become part of a vast community of professionals. Just fill in your first and last name, email, a brief password and some other basic info and, bingo your in. now you can search for professionals that you might already know, or even professionals that you wish to meet, it's all there.

Now with such ease at our fingertips it can be very easy to get carried away, requesting and connecting to anyone that I can. Yes , the phrase "it's who you know" does still carry weight today, but it is really who you know of who you know. What does that mean? lets take for example facebook, a social networking titan. On face book i have 5oo friends, give or take of those 500 I have probably seen 450, talked to 300, and actually consider 100 to be my friends.

In todays world connections are made everyday. I can go down a list of hundreds of people and tell you who they are, but knowing them is a different story. In todays world, especially the business corporate world, it is imperative that you separate yourself from everybody else. It can be done by answering one question that you have heard since your days on the playground..."What makes you so special". Used then as a way to make you feel like an out cast, the answer to this question is essential when it comes to networking. Know who you are and what you have to offer, and let it show when you meet other people. Of the people that you know (using the term "know" very lightly), who is it that knows who you are in return, and even more importantly would be willing to do something for you.

Each connection that is made, is much like a mini relationship. Of the people you know, work to establish a relationship, with the ones that you know the least, and maintain the relationships you currently have. This way you can truly expand who you know. Social media makes padding the stats easy, but in todays world, it is the substance, not the stats that you want. while sites like linked in are great resources, do not get carried away, use it for what it is and refine it for what you need specifically.

It's Here...

After reviewing some of the articles, I've come to think that we are already well into our mobile social agenda. Since the publishing of most of the articles; the phones that have recently been introduced into the market in 2H 2009 have all been outfitted with the latest technologies and applications meant to allow for faster communications with other people. Coupled with expiring contracts, both new and old customers are upgrading to these phones and using the applications that allow them to, map directions to a restaurant, find a business number, make purchases, take a picture and post it directly to Facebook. The list goes on so far for what can be done on a phone (thank you Apple, and home-brewers) that now parodies of what a phone can do are believable:

I think that a good example of the climb in mobile social networking, and all the communication that happens through phones is well illustrated with AT&T. After the huge surge in iPhone sales and subscribers, AT&T started to notice that their 3G network began to cripple and many calls were being dropped. This is due in part to all the data transmission happening with the iPhone users. The majority of iPhone owners are using their devices constantly to interact with the internet, Facebook, MMS, and app downloads. Now if users weren't doing this frequently AT&T wouldn't have much problem keeping available bandwidth open to everyone, but that is not the case. At any moment here in DC, you can have a group of tens of thousands of people sending an MMS to someone else, or another group of thousands interacting on Facebook, and another group downloading an app or playing an online game on their phone. When this happens all the bandwidth available from the towers drop and calls cannot be made or may be dropped. For AT&T this is a problem which they need to correct, but for mobile social media it's a sign that people want to interact as much as possible, whenever possible.

Crowdsourcing Hmmmmmm.

First i would like to apologize, I have been slacking lately on these blog posts.

"Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The

act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth."-Peter Drucker

This week in my readings a came across the very interesting subject: Crowdsourcing. Prior to this week I had never really heard of this whole idea of crowdsourcing. What is it, how did it come to fruition, and aren't these two words were all questions that I had started with. As i soon came to find out: crowdsourcing is a neologistic compound of Crowd and a short for Outsourcing, for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor,

and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an "open call" to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions (wikipedia.org/wiki/crowdsourcing). In other words crowdsourcing is the idea that tasks once performed by a company internally can now be "outsourced" to the crowd, which is more or less the general public.

With the internet now in its golden age, social networking, information, and connectivity have become a focal point for businesses. This idea of crowdsourcing is new unique, and wile i may not be 100% convinced it still seems to make a large amount of sense. As each day passes, technology get ever more influential, prominent, and advanced. Today alone I can name many computer programs that have taken the place of their human counterparts. I can find a program that does my tax return, will pay my bills, and will even teach me another language.

Now while this might not be crowdsourcing, it has, however, increased the prominence and idea of crowdsourcing. Computer programs like these allow for the average joe to do things that he/she would normally have to hire some one to do. What does this mean? People in todays world no longer have to be professionals. Instead all they have to do is....Learn a program. Take accounting for example. This is a profession that as everything to do with numbers, but there is one problem, humans make mistakes. So what do we do? We flawed humans that make mistakes, make programs to run on computers that NEVER make mistakes. Today, most of, if not all, accountants have digital ledgers and financial books to keep track of their businesses financial positions. One of the largest programs used by accountants is excel.

Lets take this just one step further. if i am a small business entrepreneur, my one goal is to limit my expenses. Now with this idea of crowdsourcing, instead of hiring an accountant, I can go to someone i know, or myself and use the various programs at my fingertips to complete a job that would have otherwise required a professional. This is just one way that crowdsourcing can work and it looks to be very promising in the future. Peter Drucker said "The purpose of a business is to create a customer", so who better to innovate a corporation than its customers?

Introduction

My Name is Evan Huggins, i have created this blog for the Social networking and business class at american university. I will be posting, weekly, my responses to the various articles and events that are related to social networking and buisness.

I Pledge "On my honor, all posts on this blog are my own".

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