Blog 6: Mobile App

Changing our lifestyles to healthier options is now at the forefront of our society, more and more people are embedding fitness regimes and healthier food choices into their everyday lifestyles. A recent discovery I made was a mobile applicationn called 'my fitness pal'. This application works by entering the food and drinks consumed to work out your daily calories intake, it also keeps a diary of any exercises and weighs up the calorie intake and allowance accordingly. 

This application and my recent visits to the gym made me think it would be great to have an interactive personal trainer. An idea for an application could be 'my personal trainer' whereby phones could be designed to project a digital 3D image through your phone which can train you in the comfort of your own home. 

The application could have features such as set timers to automatically make the trainer appear so that people do not get lazy and skip training sessions. Other personal features could be using celebrity 3D images to train with, personally a 'Bradley Cooper' or a 'Thierry Henry' personal trainer would really keep me motivated to train!! 

So maybe this could be thr future of health and fitness!

Blog 5: Mashups

What is a mashup?

Here is an article explaining in detail what a mashup is and showing some examples: http://bit.ly/ZgHjrL

Here is an example of how Google Street view, Twitter and Instagram is mixed together 'mashup' of information and data to create a new site.

http://bit.ly/UYUvBx

Blog 4: TripAdvisor User Generated Content

Trip Advisor User Generated Content:

Trip Advisor http://bit.ly/KP907 is the worlds largest travel review site which enables customers to review hotels, restaurants, flights and other traveling experiences. The website generates its $3 billion revenue through the number of clicks it gets. This revenue is also assisted by its parent company Expedia, which accounted for 36% of Trip Advisor's total revenue.

Trip Advisor also uses Facebook as a means of finding reviews, once a member is signed up, Trip Advisor searches through the members Facebook friends to find any restuarants etc they have 'liked' then uses this information to generate reviews on their own website.

It is interesting how Trip Advisor allows customers to add reviews in many forms, such as a rating scale, writing commments, uploading images and even dates when the review was written. Personally I have used Trip Advisor and it is really useful to see how recent the review is and this makes the review a more reliable source of information.

Trip Advisor really has utilised the method of user generated content effectively.

Blog 3: Social Networking and eWOM with Oreo Buscuits!

Here is a prime example of how eWOM has taken effect for the Oreo biscuit company. http://on.mash.to/ZIZ4CA Oreo has over 32 million fans over Facebook, more then 76,000 followers on Twitter and has even recently been introduced to Instagram which had a huge increased of 87,000 followers after Super Bowl game.

When an online debate began amongst fellow 'Social Networkers' over Facebook and Twitter, the online activity was monitored by the company which then encouraged an online Youtube campaign. The team responsible for advertising Oreo biscuits has used Youtube campaigns to encourage the brand name and to keep fans 'engaged and excited'.

This article is a brilliant example to show how all different types of social networking is embedded with eWOM, it appears that Facebook, Twitter, Instragram and Youtube have a powerful influence in the marketing industry. But there are also many questions raised, could it be that this is the new way for company's to carry out their advertising and marketing campaigns? And would the campaigns be just as powerful without using all of the social networking methods and perhaps only using one or two of them such as only Facebook and Youtube? Is the online marketing adding healthy competition within the industry? How sustainable is online marketing?

Oreo have really grasped the concept of using social networking as a form of marketing and found a fantastic way to engage with its fans and to also encourage non-fans to become fans too!

It is certain that companies have found a new way to monitor and interact with their fans and there are even more opportunities to ensure that companies find efficient ways to compete in the marketing industry, currently social networking certainly seems to be the way!

Can Gamification Save Our Broken Education System?

Earlier I saw my 9year old cousin playing on his iPad, and he told me it was an 'Educational Game' so I thought to myself, could it be that games are the new way of educating children? Surely, not?

However, I was wrong. Found this article on Forbes http://onforb.es/UOc1s1 which argues whether Gamification will be the new way to save the 'broken education system'.  It is a debatable topic whether video games provide the sufficient systems that the traditional method aims to provide. The traditional method of using games has always been a good way to motivate, test and encourage communication in the learning process, but this is now seen as outdated. It can be argued that advances in technology now make it possible to create video games that allow kids to feel motivated whilst still testing the appropriate skills at different levels. However using video games in forms of education could also isolate other skills such as human interaction and development of vital social skills. Whilst technology continues to grow it is inevitable that such systems will start to interact into every aspect of life, including the education system. The main problem is creating a sufficient balance between the two, video gaming with the traditional methods of education.... So is there a balance or will video gaming take over and will this be beneficial to the future generation?

First Blog

Hello World!