Social Media Project

Allstate is the company that my group chose for the social media project. The link to the social media's Wiki is http://ism3004socialmedia.wikispaces.com/Allstate.

The social media project is a group project that allow us to do research on the social media policy and practice of a company. As we all know, the social media has transformed into the daily activities in our lives. It is important for all the companies to use different social medias to interact with their customers. Most of the companies now have Facebook, Twitter and an official website on the web. Companies can now get feedback faster and easier from their fans and customers by using these social media.

I can truly say that my group did a great job working with each others. Each group members were assigned with different part of the project. The project consists of research on the different social media that the company has. Each person then posted their work on the discussion board and have their work reviewed by other team members. At the end, everyone's works are post into the company's Wiki page.

Our project is based on Allstate, which is the second largest insurance company in the United States. Allstate is pretty good with their social media, they have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, official website, RSS, Google+ and a blog community. On their official website, all the social media has their own icon on webpage. Customers are have easy access through all the social media by clicking the icons.  

In conclusion, I think social medias are vital tools to today's business environment. If a business want to become successful, they will need to use social medias. 

Screen Capture by Yasmin Yuen, Allstate Official Website

Screen Capture by Yasmin Yuen, Allstate Twitter

Citation:
http://www.allstate.com/
http://www.allstate.com?cid=BAC-SN-Twitter

Week 13- Muddy: Social Media

In the week's lesson, the Metcalfe's Law was extremely hard to interpret. The Metcalfe's Law stated that "the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users (number of connections that can be made)." Most people think that the more people it has in the network, the more value it will have. But then it said "if a network that has too many users for the capacity can also have a much lower value since no one can access it." It was hard to understand the concept because it first stated that the value of a network is based on the number of the users, but it will also have a lower value with too many users.

So how do we use Metcalfe's Law to calculate the value of a network?

Some Rights Reserved by justin.wikinator- Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial- Share Alike

After searching for my answer online, I was able to understand the concept of the Metcalfe's Law with the help of the Wikipedia. Many people have misinterpreted the Metcalfe's Law. Instead of using the number of users to increase the value of a network, it is the connected devices that increasing the value of a network. For example, two cell phones can make one connection, five cell phones can make 10 connections, and twelves cell phones can make 66 connections.This law has led to the concept of the network effects, which is the effect of one user of a good and service has on the value of that good and services to other people.

The picture above is the Metcalfe wheel, it illustrates the fully connected world that we live in today. We are now able to connect to different people in the world by using computer, mobile devices and other social media. It is important for us to learn how this effect can impact our lives now and in the future.


Citation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law

Week 12- Clear: World Wide Web

"The World Wide Web (WWW or W3) is what the internet uses to share data and conduct business". Dr. Means explained to the class about the World Wide Web in this week's lesson. The World Wide Web is what we use in almost every day of our lives now. We need to understand how the World Wide Web, Internet, and Browsers work.

The Internet is a network of networks that connect computer to another computer. The World Wide Web can access information by using the Internet. The Browsers help us get to the webpage that we want to go by interpreting the address that we enter and displaying it after. We can go to a web page by entering the URL, a unique name of the page that consists of three parts. The three parts are the protocol, the domain name and the last part contains path & file name.

Web contents usually contain HTML language, CSS coding, graphics, pictures and videos. People use web pages because of different reasons, some use internet to trade, connect or feel. There are different types of websites that accommodate to different types of people.

© alles-schlumpf-Some Rights Reserved Creative Common

It is important for us to learn about the World Wide Web because we are surrounded by it everyday. In the future, we may need to use the World Wide Web to promote our businesses or even have our business on the web.

I found a old school video about the World Wide Web from YouTube. Enjoy!!

Week 11- Clear: Database Project Microsoft Access

By the end of this project, I felt comfortable with Microsoft Access. When I started doing the project, I thought I would never be able to finish it. With practice and research, Microsoft Access was becoming easier to use. I learned to use the basic skills for Microsoft Access, for example:  creating tables, queries, forms, and report. Creating a table was a bit challenging because we had to import a text document that needs to be import with special commands. Creating the query was a bit tough for me because I was stuck with one of the last 12 months returned data. It turns out that I did not pay attention to the field data types for the "left data" field. A lot of the functions in Microsoft Access required the user to pay attention and focus on the specific details.

 One way that I think Microsoft Access can do to enhance the functionality of this database is by having a training wheels function in the program. What I mean by training wheels is that every time when a beginner user starts to create a table, a query or a from, instructions will pop out of the program to help you with the function. Overall the program is a bit hard to use if you are a beginner user but like everything else, practice, practice, practice.

I think it is a great program to use because it is very organized. It can our business to growth because all the data for the company becomes easier to read and understand. Information and data can be organized in different forms and functions.