Final Reflective Blog :-(

Well it seems we've reached the end of our fall semester far faster than I could have guessed. Looking back on the past few months, I have gained an overwhelming amount of knowledge on many subjects I was not previoulsy familiar with (some much better than others!) This course, among others, indefinitely gave me insight to many concepts I hadn't considered.

To begin with, ask me 5 months ago what CMC was and I might have given you an answer about maybe a "country music concert." Sounds reasonable enough, but throughout this semester I have been exposed to many new forms of electronic communication, via the web and other sources. We dove into areas of business knowledge, such as linked-in, and we even checked out social resorts like Second-Life. While I may not agree with all of the ideas behind each of these websites, what is important is that I now understand why some people do.

Electronic communication surrounds us, whether in school, in jobs, or in our everyday lives. Some form of electronics is always in use, and most of this is based from the internet. To me the most miraculous part of this class was really looking into how much CMC has developed over the past few years, especially regarding sites like Facebook! When I came to college and got Facebook, it was just something to do, a way to meet other new students. Now Facebook consumes a great portion of the social networking community, and has advanced from just simply exchange of information to mass amounts of applications and a play-by-play mini feed for all your friends.

If there is one thing I hope I have taken from this class, it is to have an open mind about the way people choose to interact. Whether or not I may like to acknowledge it, many of these blog forums and even online dating sites, do meet the criteria for "communities" and many people feel extremely connected to them (no pun intended). In the future, I may come across an oppurtunity to really seize one of these social networks or communities for my own benefit, as sites such as linked-in do seem very resourcful. Luckily, this class has given me the ability to know how to utilize them. I only hope that the technology doesn't advance so much between now and then that my knowledge of them goes to waste! I guess only time will tell.

Have a wonderful Christmas break Everyone, :-)

Kissing into a new radio era

We recently devoted a couple of class periods to discussing example cases of businesses looking to enhance their production and output via the internet. Each group was given a different scenario to work with which they were to make a few recommendations for a way to increase their productivity and popularity to online sources. A majority of the groups proposed a possible contest where participants were able to win a prize by participating. For example, one idea was to have people comment on a photo or to respond to a comment as a possible way to win a prize, which would in turn get them looking at the pictures. As I was driving to work over Thanksgiving break, I actually encountered an example relevant to this exact idea.

I was tuned in to 96.1 KissFM, a Pittsburgh radio station. They were advertising the two 3rd row Pittsburgh Penguins tickets they had in the studio to give away to listeners. While most radio contests consist of calling in and being a certain number caller, this contest took a different approach. The station works diligently to advertise their website which provides forums, on demand music and videos, contests and giveaways, and even mass amounts of photo albums from events they participate in. This particular contest they were doing for the Pens tickets worked with the website to get individuals to look at the photo albums. To win the tickets, the first caller who could call in and tell them in detail what the 112th picture in the most recent album was would win the tickets. Low and behold, within minutes they had a caller who had gone onto the internet and found the picture and was able to tell them exactly what the picture was of.
I think this contest idea was a great way to incorporate both computer mediated communication with radio broadcasting. Because the internet has become such a popular way to access, well, anything really, this may be putting traditional TV and radio stations down in numbers. KissFM now streams their broadcast live over their website and uses contests such as the example above to get people involved with their website and browsing around. While I am sure the idea of incorporating TV and radio with the internet is becoming extremely popular, more stations should consider connecting the two rather than making it an either or. By doing so they are welcoming participants to engage in both of their productions in correlation with each other. This will bring increased attention to all aspects of their business and in turn increase their productivity greatly, as we had proposed in our class discussions.