Tweet Me!

JamesCartee-author pen name.

JLCurleyIII-stage name.

It is official. I have now joined the cult known as Twitter. I have signed up with two accounts, and I am cordially following my fellow classmates in addition to having them follow me in my Social Media graduate class at Auburn University.

My first screen name is simply my name, JamesCartee. This summer I am attempting to write a book with the hopes that it will soon be published. My coauthor has agreed to cowrite with me this summer. His ability to write well is far superior to my own. He has a natural gift to just do it, and I believe he will be a valuable asset to the success of my book. With the attempt to take on such a challenge, I will launch a social media marketing campaign to get my name out there so that people keep up with progress that the book is making and perhaps progress I am making with book proposals. Twitter will be an intricate aspect of this social media marketing because so many people participate in Twitter’s social network these days. The use of Twitter will be strategic for those who like to Internet stalk their favorite celebs or latest on campus crushes.

JLCurley was a nickname I was given in high school for freestyle rapping. When I moved to Birmingham, Alabama after my freshman year of high school, I really did not have a lot of friends being the new kid on the block. I met three guys at the Summit Sixteen Theater who instantly became some of my best friends; their names were Fluff, Scoop, and J. B. They certainly knew how to have fun. There were never any doubts in my mind about that. With their tutelage and knowledge on the subject on this very important hobby, I learned to freestyle rap. I have recently talked with a few Hip Hop artists about recording some Christian rap music this summer. Now I really do not take this seriously. It is not my aspiration in life to be a famous rapper, but if for some reason I were to ever to be in the right spot at the right time to perhaps consider a new path in life, then I have the Twitter account set up.

Twitter is a device that is useful for establishing a following of groupies if you were to become a famous writer, Hip Hop star, or perhaps even some other type of celebrity. Businesses and PR campaigns use it as well to get the word out about various different projects that are occurring. One of the obvious advantages is that Twitter is instantaneous. If people want to know information about any subject imaginable, they have it right then and there before their own eyes. For my goals, Twitter will become another tool in Web 2.0 to connect all my relationships to simply let people know what’s up. When I do sign a contract, that will truly be something to celebrate, and because of Twitter, the world will certainly know about it.

While the above cartoon is indeed humorous, I do think that it highlights a flaw in the system of Social Media, including the use of Twitter. Let’s be honest. Social Media and Twitter specifically are addictive. It consumes hours of several people’s days every day. While I really do not have a huge problem with this, I would say that our dependency on Social Media and computers in general becomes dangerous when we rely on it so much that when it shuts down we also shut down. I think breaking up with anyone through Twitter or Facebook would be pathetic. I do think that social media gives people an excuse to not socialize in reality with other people face to face. While this might be convenient, it is hardly real. Face to face interaction is the most effective form of communication…when you can see the person, when you can hear them in actuality, and when you can observe the environment in with which you speak. Twitter is not an excuse to live inside a computer box. It perhaps serves as a reminder of how much we need to get out and speak with people on a word of mouth basis. This is genuine. This is real. And life is best experienced when the experience is felt in a first person manner.

“DROID” ….it is such a comforting sound!

Right now when I receive a text message or email my Motorola Droid says, “Droid,” and I find it humorous that while working in my internship office my boss always laughs because it sounds like some robotic voice off some outer space television program. In December, my mother approached me with the usual yearly question of “What would you like for Christmas?” I kind of rolled my eyes saying, “I don’t know. I guess a new phone would be nice.” At Christmas I sometimes have a hard time answering that question because I honestly do not know what I want when I already have so much to be thankful for right now.

Of course, my mother being the awesome mom she is goes to the closest Verizon Store where she happens to be traveling out of town to look into and research the new smart phones on the market. The Motorola Droid has literally just come out with all the Alien Google commercials that are surfing the channels daily on the television with the awareness marketing campaign. Perhaps this is supposedly the new latest and greatest of things for those who prefer open sourcing among all computer applications in the digital world which consistently appears to be the belief system of Google’s philosophy for technology’s availability to the world.

When I first got the Droid, it took me several days to learn how to use it especially in comparison to my Samsung where all I used it for was text messaging and calling people. The Droid did much more, and I must admit that I have come to grow very fond of its functionality. One obvious perk is the fact the phone contains GPS capabilities through Google Maps that according to the Popular Mechanics website caused TomTom and Garmin stocks to dive overnight once the phone hit the market. I have had tremendous success with the GPS when traveling even in some of the most obscure of places. While traveling to Sugar Mountain, North Carolina at the beginning of the semester for a ski trip, I encountered a large scale mountain traffic jam. I quickly used the Droid for an alternate route for avoid the catastrophic size accident. Just to give a comparison of how successful the alternate route was, the other carpool of friends arrived three to four hours later in their travel time to the same destination than the carpool I was driving. To say the least, I was happy with my new phone’s performance. PC Magazine claims that the Droid is indeed the best GPS phone on the market.

I myself have an application known as CardioTrainer, which I utilize during jogs around Auburn. It keeps track of my steps taken, the speed, calories, my location on campus, the speed, and so on. The application has a history that allows me to keep track of previous workouts as well. In addition to using the app, I bought a Rocketfish wireless headset that gives me the ability to listen to music while running in addition to answering telephone calls, even though most of the time I am too out of breath to do so. Nevertheless, it is nice to not have all those wires swinging everywhere while I am running as my previous headphones did with my IPOD. I also have another app known as MyTracks, which is a topographical application used for hiking, backpacking, and camping. Using GPS, it will inform you of your location in the mountains, including the elevation changes as if looking at an actual topographical map itself.

Sometimes I feel like there are so many applications and neat uses of the phone that I really not make enough time to play around with all of them. So I made some time in relation to this blog entry and assignment to find some new free apps that I thought might be useful in adding to my phone. I came across two that I just absolutely had to add to my phone and the practicality of my new technologically savvy lifestyle: KeyRing and GestureSearch. KeyRing is an Android app that puts your membership cards barcodes (like CVS or Kroger) into your Motorola Droid. Simply scan your various cards, including anything from gym memberships to drug store discount clubs. Key Ring will categorize them into a drop-down menu. GestureSearch allows an individual to search their phone by drawing letters on the screen of the phone. By doing so, the app works by identifying your on-screen gestures and using them to dig through your contacts, apps, bookmarks, and music. Smart phones are becoming more and more advanced. It will be interesting to see what the future brings in regards to more convenience, more function, and more tools these devices keep bringing into our everyday use.

The marketing campaigns have been interesting in comparison to its competition even more specifically with the IPhone. This following video is one of my favorite ones. Check it out. As I have realized with this blog entry and becoming a Droid fan, you may also begin to think that “Droid Does” whatever you truly intend for it to do.

What is a friend worth to you? A southern paradox…

I just got an email from a friend who I have not talked to in a very long time. He just so happens to email a list of friends with a sporadic update on how he is doing every now and then. He is very open about everything and anything in his life, but I was somewhat dismayed to find this message written in a very downtrodden tone. He mentioned that he was seeking counseling and that “I find myself restless and groveling in darkness.” Now I have been meaning to blog an entry of this kind for the last several days because this subject has been weighing on my mind as it often does. I have expressed in other entries that relationships are my number one priority in life. As a friend of mine put it the other day, “You are not going to take a U-Haul to heaven” when I mentioned how nice it would be to have all my nice materialistic possessions next to my hospital bed when I die. I was joking in the fact that I would rather have those hundreds of people that I care for dearly next to my hospital bed instead of a bunch of junk even though I do love a good Plasma HD big flat screen TV.

I honestly think the south is a great place including more specifically Auburn. There are great people here with great traditions and certainly fun times with memories to be made. Still as I grow older, I am surprised at how easily some individuals let go of relationships as if they mean nothing when perhaps the other party concerned thought such meant everything. Now please realize I am referring more to the friendship level with persons who have been friends for quite some time (perhaps of one, two, or more years). After a hard breakup, sometimes all you can do is let go of the other person who was once your best friend with the closeness of a significant other. That is just part of life…letting go of what you would prefer to hold dearly onto. I myself do not take giving up on a friendship lightly, and if so, it is usually at the point when I realize the other person will never care to the point of no return. But I have a challenging question for those who may act not to care: Why do you not care?

I think in the answer to such a question you will find a very selfish answer that includes all of us. We do not care because at times we care more about our own wellbeing than our fellow friends around us. As individualistic vessels of thinking and self-awareness, Americans at certain points in time naturally can sometimes be very self-righteous. We are so busy. We have so much to do. We have to pass Qualifiers, Comps, write papers, grade papers, graduate with a Masters at the top of our class while simply ignoring perhaps our fellow classmates and human beings around us. I write in terms of this example because this is the mindset that I currently get caught up in.

Southern hospitality is an honest observation on one hand while it is a mythical farce on the other. People in the South are hospitable. We open doors for each other. We go to church. We have the best food on the planet, and occasionally we treat those less fortunate than ourselves to such luxurious self cuisine. On the surface level, we are very nice people who are very nice to each other. On another level, sometimes the surface is all you get because we are southern, and we are proud of it. We are proud to the extent that we grew up in privileged families in proper ways where you go to college, you get married, you have babies, you collect stuff, you retire, and you look back at all the nice things you have (sometimes instead of all the nice things you have experienced). For some of us, our script is written for us before we decide to write it ourselves that this is the way it should be so we accept it as this is the way life is. Our southern pride does not come from our efforts to be hospitable; it comes from our efforts to live a scripted lifestyle that in itself is so hospitable to the eyes of those who gaze upon it. We forget that hospitability is really about serving others, and for those who enter the south without this paradigm understanding and enculturation (playing games and factitiously ignoring people even when saying, “Hello. How are you?” just to be polite even though we do not care about the answer) we come across as just rude, fake, and unauthentic in the fact that we too are human beings with real problems and imperfections. We ignore life and other people in achieving our own agendas in this mask disguise that living in the south is indeed the best way to live. Is it the best way? Or is it the best act of performance in self-deception that no wonder southern hospitality is more of a myth than a reality?

I write using “we” in the first person because I struggle with these things just as much as any southern person who recognizes the fact that they exist. I just hope that in my own self-acknowledgment I want to better myself in living as real as possible so that southern hospitality is not a mythic farce but rather that it becomes an addictive reality because the example that I set and give in servanthood (in a Christ-like manner) is so attractive that people recognize Southern hospitality and what to experience it for what it truly is.

I have written this entry to unnerve you, to make you uncomfortable, and the make you think (if you have perhaps never thought of it this way). I have written this entry to make you observe that other people around you may in fact be living in “restlessness and groveling in darkness.” Do you really want to be the individual that ignores such a need in another person when all it takes is a phone call to see how that person is doing? There honestly may be nothing you can do, but you can at least be there. When someone seeks to strengthen a friendship and actually puts forth the active effort to do so, those might be the type of friends worth having around when you realize you cannot take your U-Haul to a better place at the end of your journey. Those are the type of friends who stick by thick and thin, and those are the type of people that I myself am at least choosing not to let go so easily when a little bit of turbulence presents itself in the reality of our relationship.

Can a social epidemic be started through the use of an SMR? An academic response…

Social Media Releases (SMR) can be incorporated into a new field known as New Media in academic defined terms. Dyer (2007) informs that “An SMR does not exist in a vacuum; rather, it is used as a staging area for a broader effort to convey your message in multiple formats and locations, and includes the opportunity for discussion with your audiences” (p. 17). Like many areas of social media, a SMR encourages two way communications between the sender and the receiver instead of what use to be a traditional push for what might insinuate “Flameville” as Dyer puts it (p. 17). In other words, someone’s mouth whether written or verbally speaking through audio online can serve as a powerful weapon that may or may not have the potential to spread a social epidemic implementing word of mouth characteristics. Social media just happens to offer a faster and more effective method in doing so than just calling people or talking to them person to person. Social media adds a new dimension in the form of SMRs because a verbal epidemic can spread within seconds of news becoming news. Malcolm Gladwell (2002) in his book, The Tipping Point, analyzes this idea of a social epidemic in the fact that some people clearly affect and shift public opinion whereas others just happen to gently nudge the idea and its obvious existence among us in society. I think this idea is interesting in its relevance to Social Media and more specifically the abstract construction in the phenomenon of an SMR. Some of us have those natural personalities that effectively communicate pertinent information while others just cannot get the job done in this particular facet no matter how hard one tries.

People with active computer access can instantly access information for better or for worse in concerns to spreading the joy of good news or possibly in the moment of anger starting a fire that spreads more quickly than a brush fire on a dry day could even begin to compete with in a metaphorical sense. The same idea could maybe be applied to gossip. For instance, Gossip Junkie is a readily available application available through Apple in the App Store. When the latest gossip on any celebrity comes forth, you are the first to be informed on the latest and greatest E-True Hollywood story in the form of what some might argue as a miniature SMR. Maybe the Auburn Athletic Department should look into this….we could call it Gossip Aubie.

Anyway, Pitchengine is a very popular SMR service that several of the country’s most successful companies use to communicate with the general public. They specialize in implementing and strategically designing specific SMR layouts, formats, and iconic images to send forth specific intended messages to target audiences. PR practitioners such as this one are being hired for big bucks to produce the best delivery systems in information delivery…quite impressive for those who take advantage of such services!

While many will not deny the effectiveness of an SMR, Steyn et al. (2010) suggests that the medium is still too new to utilize or measure its true effectiveness in the field of Public Relations. The tool in relevance to spreading information especially on the level of a social online epidemic is still too early in its infancy in the fact that several bloggers still ask, “What is a SMR?” when the subject is mentioned in a questionnaire. An SMR has the potential to become an active weapon in the arsenal of PR tools, but it is far from a device that balances or imbalances the tipping points of social epidemics and word of mouth initiatives on the web. No one will deny the usefulness that this medium offers journalists and media in general. You automatically attain the ability to unify every Social Media device together onto one page in order to send a message but development wise awareness still has yet to form. Once awareness of this tool becomes more prevalent than it already is, information will not only become even more accessible. It may even perhaps become more influential in the new dynamics of interactive representation.

Dyer, P. (2007). Addressing Common concerns: The social media release defined. Public Relations Tactics, 14, 22. Retrieved April 1, 2010, from MasterFILE Premier database.

Gladwell, M. (2002). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

Steyn, P., Salehi-Sangari, E., Pitt, L., Parent, M., & Berthon, P. (2010). The Social Media Release as a public relations tool: Intentions to use among B2B bloggers. Public Relations Review, 36, 87-89. Retrieved April 1, 2010, from Academic Search Premier database.