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meerkat-periscope

Meerkat and Periscope: What’s the Hype?

Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock this past month has heard about Meerkat and Periscope, a competitor created by Twitter. As the “breakout app” of SXSW being used by Mashable’s Pete Cashmore on a selfie stick walking around Austin and Julia Louis Dreyfus during her VEEP panel, Meerkat was hard to ignore. Now Periscope pretty much does the same thing and has stolen all of Meerkat’s thunder. So what do these apps do actually?

Remember when Charlie Sheen went all crazy with #winning and strippers and held a Ustream of him ranting? I remember – I am ashamed to say that I watched. If Meerkat or Periscope were around back then, Charlie likely would have used that instead. It is the mobile version of Ustream, allowing its users to live stream on the go. So why then is it so ridiculously popular if there was already a similar service? Well, first off they’re integrated with Twitter (Periscope is obviously more so integrated). In a nutshell, when you start streaming, a Tweet goes out. With Periscope, you have the added ability to be able to see reactions to your stream from Twitter embedded in the app. Also, if you think about it, no one has really improved upon the ability to live stream until now. Improvement, you ask? Meerkat allows you to record and schedule your stream for a later time, while Periscope allows users to save videos to replay them later.

So what’s all the hype about? Well, if you’re an everyday person who isn’t a celebrity, politician, or reporter, you aren’t likely to have a big viewership with Meerkat or Periscope. No one really cares what you have to say in real time. If you do happen to fall into one of those popular people categories, it’s the compelling content that is going to keep followers coming back (or maybe not? Here’s a live stream of a fridge at the Washington Post that’s quite popular. Maybe it’s just the big brand that keeps people watching… or the novelty?).

A big challenge for both Meerkat and Periscope as I see it (if either or both stay alive), is that in order to succeed, they really have to encourage the top-level influencers to keep the everyday user tuned in. Periscope may be the present day cool-kid app (Sorry Meerkat), but it’s more time consuming than a simple tweet or Instagram. So if the influencers get bored and don’t use it, the everyday user is going to peace out.

While the live video concept of Meerkat and Periscope is compelling and dramatic, the apps can only continue if both the influencer continues to stream interesting content and the user is available to consume it.

My final thought that I just can’t get around when it comes to streaming-type apps like this is this – who has time to watch live programming anymore? Didn’t God invent the DVR to get around what these apps offer? Even if it’s programmed content (from Meerkat) or a stream that you can save to watch later (from Periscope), I’m still not compelled to tune in at a certain time to be able to view or save the content.

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Social Media and Journalism: A Match Made in Story-telling Heaven

When I first scored my internship at Everywhere, I assumed there was no way I could combine my journalistic abilities and the skills needed at a social media marketing firm. Without a doubt, I was mistaken.

For one, things are different here at Everywhere, you’re encouraged to share knowledge of your own while simultaneously absorbing everyone else’s, but in a good way. Simply put: you’re not expected to sit around looking pretty and making coffee runs. Though we do value our coffee, we have a great coffee machine right in the office and everyone is more than happy to make their own cup themselves.

It’s often around the coffee machine that we have conversations about how intertwined social media and journalism have become. Here are my three takeaways on the similarities between journalism and social media.

  1. Grammar is King (or Queen): To say that grammar is essential when writing a Facebook post or news article would be an understatement. Social media audiences expect the same level of professionalism from brands as they do their newspapers and news outlets. Just because it’s social media, doesn’t mean you can get away with rogue apostrophes or bizarre spellings of words. In fact, with the presence of social media, any grammatical blunders found are called out quickly and often publicly.
  1. Your Opinion Matters: At the end of any article, we usually see a “Comments” section where readers can sign into their desired social media account and voice their opinions. Similarly, domestic and international news articles are plastered on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Pew Research found that 3 in 10 adults get their news from Facebook. This number is sure to increase as Facebook has included a trending stream with relevant hashtags and trending topics on the right-hand side of the homepage.
  1. Limitations are Inevitable: Both news articles and social media platforms often battle with character/word limits. For example, Twitter’s 140-character rule is expected to be sufficient when answering the 5 W’s: who, what, when, where, and why. When the truth is, just the words “who, what, where, when and why” take up 27 of the 140 characters! Be it journalism or social media, being brief and being to the point are critical to delivering your message.

The truth is, journalism and social media have more in common than most people realize. It’s not just old media or new media; it’s just plain old media. As for me, I will continue to enjoy the best of both worlds here at Everywhere, with a delicious cup of coffee, of course.

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Social Media, Access Granted: The Transformation of Traditional Media

We’re proud of our social media internship at Everywhere. Every semester, two to three interns are chosen to work in our offices and gain experience in our arena. We ask each intern to submit a blog post as part of their training. The following blog post was penned by GSU student, Alair Hallman.

 

Each week Facebook users share more than 3.5 billion pieces of content (Digital Buzz blog). Who could have predicted the relevance of social media in today’s society? Arguably not Zuckerberg, Anderson and Dorsey, all celebrated social media innovators in their own rights. Social media has infiltrated every home and, in a sense, infected every human being. Step into a major board meeting, how many heads are down? Step inside a classroom, how many faces do you see glowing with the dim blue light shine from each student’s device of choice?

From journalism to television shows, social media has transformed how people tune into different fields of media.

Rather than tune into a favorite news radio or television station, consumers get the news instantly on their smart phones or laptops in real time — and can even contribute to the news cycle as citizen journalists.

In an article titled “Starting a Revolution,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone states, “Twitter purposefully allows everyone access, because information — both good and bad — should be allowed to flow freely [….] This idea that the open exchange of information can have a positive global impact is being proven over and over again around the world nearly on a daily basis.” (NPR 2011)

Twitter and other social media has transformed newsgathering and reporting, drastically changing the way in which telecommunication professionals and their audience operate. There are numerous examples of how social media has impacted news reporting. One fairly recent example includes the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. ABC News’ Olivia Katrandjian reports, “As has become the norm of such protests, this movement has been fueled by social media fire, with supporters taking to Twitter under the hashtag #occupywallstreet. The major hacking group Anonymous has also thrown in its support, live streaming the day’s events,” (ABC News).

The tweet that broke Osama bin Laden’s death also serves as an epic example of Twitter transforming breaking news — from Sohaib Athar, a.k.a. @ReallyVirtual inadvertently live-tweeting the raid in which bin Laden was killed to Keith Urban (@keithurban), chief of staff for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose tweet arguably broke the news of bin Laden’s death.

Social media has also greatly impacted television content. Programs have drastically changed to engage viewers, from GetGlue check-ins and badges to including tweets, hashtags, Facebook mentions. Just this past year, HBO launched the beginnings of a socially-driven experience to watching their programs, backed by project champion and the director of marketing and social media at HBO, Sabrina Caluori. HBO Connect, appropriately titled, aims for a more integrated connection with viewers through “Pulse, Feeds, Conversations, Visualizes, and Connections,” (Mashable).

I even caught an episode of the beloved animated series The Simpsons where Marge inspires Bart and Lisa to become foodies and start a food blog. I was tickled by this particular example — a show I grew up watching has become so current on their content, particularly when compared to those episodes debuting in 1989.

Does social media strengthen or strain relationships, particularly with the media? Let’s put this in perspective… What’s the next best thing to seeing Ann Curry’s smiling face NBC’s Today Show? How about getting the behind-the-scenes, inside scoop in her own voice and the ability to interact with her off-camera on Twitter @anncurry?

One study examining relationships between the audience and TV newscasters found that of those surveyed, more than half agreed that the newscasters are almost like friends you see every day (Dominick, Joseph, The Dynamics of Mass Communication, 2011). Not only do you have people who are genuinely interested in the news, but you also have a new audience who follow specifically because of the para-social relationships with news providers. This is true not only with legitimate news outlets, such as CNN, but also with bloggers, celebrities and anyone else providing newsworthy information.

Social media has expanded the way we interact with each other by breaking boundaries to create relationships. According to recent research, roughly two-thirds of social-media users say their major reason for using social media is to stay in touch with current friends and family members, while half say connecting with old friends they’ve lost touch with is a major reason behind their use (PEW Research via Digital Buzz Blog). Even if we never come to a solid conclusion on social media’s effect on relationships, one thing still remains — social media is everywhere. More than that, it’s changing every day.