Assignment 2

For this assignment I wanted to see Facebook do something radical to someone’s feed. I don’t use Facebook a lot so I watched my friend Kamou use his Facebook. He uses it more than anyone else I know and when I mentioned the possible experiments to him, he was fascinated. I never told him what the results of those experiments might be though, and I never explained the articles we read for class to him.

He really liked the idea of seeing what happened when he took a break from liking things, so we took that road. After the first few days he noticed that he was getting more updates from people rather than celebrity news, or sports. Here are a few more things we noticed.

• ·         Less post about brands
• ·         Less post about current news
• ·         More baby post, happy birthday post, and happy post from people he didn’t interact with
• ·         More overall post from people he interacted with

 He began to ask me, does how many times he visited a page a factor in this experiment. So he told me he would continue not liking things on Facebook, but he would visit only the sports pages daily. He didn’t comment or like any of the interesting post he came across, but he would click links to main articles.

In only a few days we began to see a few more sports post on his feed, or maybe we’re just overreacting. People he didn’t interact with popped up more often now, especially when they were talking about the cowboys, Adrian Peterson , ect. Here are a few thinks we noticed.

·         Slightly more post from the pages he visited more

• ·         Less post from people he interacted with
• ·         More post from people about topics on pages he visited the most
• ·         Less post about brands not featured on, or associated with the pages he visited the most

Today he liked a Worldstar Hip Hop post so that’s the end of our Facebook experiment. Tell me what you think.

Brent Christmas (@1angryunicorn) : Assignment 1

For this first assignment I decided to gather three tweets from three different verified accounts on twitter and give my opinion of each. These accounts are operated by influential individuals with considerable fan bases within social media. 
The first tweet to catch my attention while pursuing this assignment was delivered from the account of famous Astrophysicist and TV personality Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson). I've copied and pasted the tweet below:
"When a coincidence seems amazing, that's because the human mind isn’t wired to naturally comprehend probability & statistics."
 This tweet, like many of Tyson's tweets, has amassed at least 1000 re-tweets and favorites. I enjoy the way he entertains his followers with witty statements that pertain to many different aspects of our society. Many of Tyson's followers attempt to engage in conversation with him, usually to further support his theories. This is an example of twitter being used to entertain and inform the masses of ones factual knowledge and theories about specific subjects.
The second tweet I stumbled across is from Hip Hop artist and TV personality Riff Raff (@JODYHiGHROLLER). Riff Raff has established a loyal fan base by being extremely active on social media. This man, or those who represent his twitter account, have already posted almost 50,000 tweets since 2009. Recently he tweeted about a song he is about to release to attract attention to it. I've copied and pasted the tweet below:
" Dropping a NEW song with @ActionBronson Prod. by @Alchemist on @dash_radio w/ @djskee at 12:30 ET - get the free app: http://iTunes.com/dashradio "
Not only is Riff Raff attempting to attract attention to his song in this tweet, he is also attempting to attract attention to the artist and producer he collaborated with on the song by mentioning them in the tweet. Another thing Riff Raff does here is instruct his followers to invest in a free app, which is his suggested method of consuming this particular media. This is an example of how entertainers influence their fans to invest in their suggested brands.
The last tweet I examined for this assignment was posted by celebrity news website TMZ (@TMZ). TMZ has gained a large following by breaking very controversial and personal stories/rumors about individuals they consider celebrities. Recently they've tweeted about pop singer Britney Spears and her relationship status with her Ex boyfriend David Lucado.
"Britney Spears -- Ex-BF David Lucado BANNED From Contacting Her http://dlvr.it/6mBfjm "
Many of Britney's fans responded to the tweet as if they had developed a personal relationship with both parties, with some approving the decision. This is an example of social media being used to convince fans to invest in someones personal life in order to further promote the agenda of a specific brand. Although this may be an actual negative event in Britney's personal life many of her supporters and attackers ,who have not established a personal relationship with Britney, subconsciously recognize this as entertainment. 
Honestly I believe somebody somewhere benefits from every piece of media put on twitter , regardless of whether it's negative or positive according to "public opinion". 
Please comment and let me know what you think about my post.