Binh Tran

Do you have a blog? If you do, how often do you blog? Jesse L. wrote an interesting article about “How Bogging Can Help College Students”. In the article, he talked about the positive effects how blogging can help on students and even after graduation. He listed three main points in his article:

1. First and foremost, blogging can help students in the “writing practice” because blogging helps students know what they want to write and what type of audiences that they want to concentrate. It also helps them in the communication way of exchanging and interacting with the audiences. Especially, blogging will give students a chance to think of the object differently through the thoughts and become more confident in the professional way.
2. Believe it or not, blogging also improves your computer skills and internet communication. Since blogging requires the special skills of uploading the pictures, embedding the video, or even connecting the links to articles.
3. Lastly, blogging might help you get a job after college. It will pump up your LinkedIn profile and professional networking. Creating a blog and maintaining the good amount of audiences will give you the professional outlook and indicate who you want to be. Blogging helps you recognize the “real” person inside you and forces you to become that character.

A common question is how often you should write a blog? From my experience, you should maintain at least one topic a week. I have been blogging since I chose MIS as a minor; it took me some time to get familiar with WordPress and learning the techniques of blogging. I strongly encourage all students to start blogging during college because it will improve your communication and writing skills. Even better, MIS students have access to create free blogs via the community site. There is no need to go and search for a site to host your blog. Feel free to send me links to your blogs; I look forward to reading them!

Everyone knows about the power of social media and probably uses it everyday. Social media has become an essential part of our daily lives. People got familiar with Facebook because it allowed them to connect to old friends from high school and college. From there it just exploded to the giant that it is now. Twitter became a very popular social media tool and is even used by businesses in there Marketing/Sales/PR departments. People can also use it to keep track of news, current events, or even their favorite athlete.

Facebook and Twitter have become powerful social media platforms, but no one can imagine what would be next. According to Professor Steven Johnson of the Fox School Business Pinterest, the virtual social scraping site, is expected to take off in 2012.

Many of us probably never heard of Pinterst or have the slightest clue what it does. Pinterest is the new social networking platform where not only you can meet friends with similar likes, but also you can show your creative ideas by creating a virtual “pinboard” and pinning things to it. This is different from Facebook and Twitter because Pinterest focuses more on discovering people with similar ideas and thinking through the virtual “pinboards”.  It allows individuals to express their creative minds and personal tastes in a visually clean layout. From fashion ideas to photography, the possibility seems to be endless. I believe businesses will learn from the successful of using Twitter and Facebook and jump on fast.

It’s like the first virtual social scrapbooking; It’s not just about finding sources of info, it’s really about finding people you can trust that can sort through that information for you

-Professor Steven Johnson

This site right now is on the “invite mode” but that hasn’t stop the increasing numbers of members. From August of 2011 to November 2011, Pinterest’s user account has increased from 1.2 million to 4.5 million.

Below is a sample snapshot of the “pin” board:

What do you know about social media? Did you know that it can be used for more than just making friends? If the answer is no or if you are unsure, you should consider taking the social media class MIS3538 that the department is offering.

I have just completed MIS3538 this semester and I enjoyed what I have learned from Professor Johnson. I can honestly tell you it was one of the most useful courses I have taken at Temple so far. Many of the things I learned, I am able to apply to my daily life. Before taking this course, I did not even care about social media and I did not take full advantage of it. Now I am able to use all features of what I learned and created a personal blog. I am actively promoting my blog through social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This class was very fun and useful and I think you all should consider taking it in the future.

The use of social media in the workplace is growing dramatically; it has become so important that businesses are hiring people as social media professionals. Social media is not only used for the purpose of interacting with people, but companies also use these sites as Public Relations tools. For students, social media can serve as a way to promote and display your abilities. Sites like LinkedIn are widely used by companies to find new talent. If you are not taking advantage of these social media sites professionally, you may be at a disadvantage.

If you want to learn more about this course please click this link: Social Media Innovation – Prof. Johnson

On Monday, November 14 2011, a very fascinating discussion took place on TUTV Community Forum between a few of our MIS professors. Those professors were Munir Mandviwalla, Paul A. Pavlou, Sunil Wattal,  and Steven Johnson. It was really interesting debate regarding social media and how it affects many subjects. “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Social Media”, as it was titled, discussed many areas where social media is creating a stir. A few of these area are politics, electronic commerce, and small businesses as well.

 Social media will become the essential skill in the near future.

- Professor Steven Johnson

I won’t explain all the topics discussed but there were a few interesting points that I would like to share with the readers:

During the last election, there was a big push by the Obama party regarding the use of social media to gain voters, mainly the younger ones. Politics was one of the areas discussed by Professor Sunil. He explained the benefits in using social media for politics. It allowed the mass dissemination of information about the candidates while urging the voters to make a decision. Candidates were using social media as a strong tool to motivate the public to vote for them.  But they also mentioned some negative aspects about it. Issues like the integrity of the information found during discussion on social media sites was concerning for the candidates.

Professor Johnson has been researching about social media as a tool for sharing knowledge. According to him, people who come to social media love to share the information and help out the strangers, they love to talk about their knowledge and give others recommendations. Mr. Munir also mentioned the different types and levels of trusts about sharing knowledge online.  The source and the quality of information greatly affects the way people think and believe about the information shared.

Overall the discussion was very intriguing and I suggest all fellow MIS students should to go take a look at it. Even if you are not a MIS major, you should still take a few minutes to listen to the discussion. Social media is everywhere nowadays and it will only continue to grow as newer formats are discovered. From large companies to small business owners, everyone is embracing this media type. As Steven Johnson pointed out, “Social media will become the essential skill in the near future and no one will have any questions about how to use it. For example, people are using the telephone to communicate and interact with each other but no one mentions about how to use the telephone or any skill for obtaining the information.”

What do you think? Does Social media bring to us the good, the bad or the ugly? Let me hear about your opinion.

Below is the link to the website, I suggest you click on the link for more information about social media:

“The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Social Media” by Munir Mandviwalla