Facebook testimonies...in advertisements

This article from Chicago Breaking Business, attributed to Dow Jones Newswires, introduces Facebook's campaign for "sponsored stories," where targeted advertisements will not only contain businesses recommended, but "exact copies of the likes, comments and location check-ins that users post to their own walls and show up in their friends' home page news feeds."

While this information is public enough to be shared on Facebook, it's interesting that it was just now thought of to use the testimonies of others to push products. We learned in my marketing class last semester that comments and feedback on product websites make someone 40 percent more inclined to purchase an item. Therefore, seeing that you have your friends' approval and virtual recommendations helps products earn popularity to an extent.

What irritates me about this is how we no longer live in a world of independence, but one of peer pressure. If 100 of my (Facebook) friends like a nearby tattoo parlor in town, must I be encouraged to 'like' it too? And then proceed to see a special they have on my news feed, become tempted by it and get a tattoo? (Timeout: completely mythical and theoretical situation, I would never get a tattoo). But this is what I foresee happening with restaurants, clothing stores, books and additional products sold online.

We will see where this new innovation goes and slowly watch the price of Facebook's targeting advertisement rise as people listen to their friends' suggestions on what to buy, eat and order at a specific place. Facebook claims that the posts are not able to be edited when they show up in someone's news feed but "they can be flagged for offensive content." Which basically means they can be taken down and one will see only the positive comments about a proposed location. But does that make us an optimistic or deceiving society?

After Megabus cancelled its trip to Kansas City and Laura ended up spending an extra evening at my house and flying home, we both 'liked' Megabus on Facebook to tag it in our statuses. We wanted to tell the whole world that Megabus did this, and promote other modes of transportation for our friends' future travels. The Megabus public relations department is evidently very strong, because our posts did not even appear on its main page because the statuses had words like "sucks" and "fail." Although it's not edited, is it ethical to only have the ability to see the positive things and not the honest opinions?

We have hit the top, and I look forward to being a firsthand viewer of the success (or lack thereof?) of targeted advertisements through Facebook commentary.

News articles

One new tag I'd like to add to my blog is "News." As a journalism student who naturally craves news, exciting stories and up-to-date information, I must be aware of what's going on in the world (as told by reputable media sources).

My GoogleReader tablet which I now read daily follows publications from Chicago, New York and Columbia, Missouri as previously mentioned. Almost every day I'm reading or skimming the news, I stumble upon an article that fascinates me for one reason or another. Thus, any articles under the label/tag "News" will be an accumulation of news stories that stand out for either the subject or the way they are written. In addition, I will probably include an opinion I formulate on that particular subject.

To start the trend, here are two articles on the same subject from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Breaking Business. Both discuss how Chicago O'Hare airport will now sell advertising space through Clear Channel Communications on bathroom mirrors within one of the world's largest international airports. Not only will they be print advertisements or propaganda, as college and high school bathrooms thought of years ago in terms of advertising, but these will be video screens that can play still graphics of video commercials.

With the average American already viewing up to 3,000 advertisements a day, where can you go to get away from the influence of other and form independent thoughts and opinions? Whether your thoughts are formulated with or without the suggestions of others, this advertising begins to flood your mind and become the only thing you know if it is what you are constantly exposed to.

If O'Hare does this, will other airports begin to advertise in bathrooms? Will every local mall or restaurant have video advertising boards to sell companies' images? Besides expansion, what is next? These are all questions that I ponder.

Today's environment needs to have more places where people can go and enjoy the nature or utilize the purpose of the place they are at for no other reason but that. Public parks now have signs and advertisements around them, detracting from nature's beauty. Our bedroom walls are covered in photos and posters. Living rooms are full of artwork. The highway is lined with billboards; public places have advertisements everywhere. If a bathroom cannot even be a place where you cannot expect to be spoken to by the media, where can?

Leadership

At my sorority's executive board training, we read this poem. It will essentially be a motto for this semester. I just want to pass it along for some inspiration because it is 100 percent accurate and I respect the anonymous person who wrote it!

A Wish For Leaders

I sincerely wish you will have the experience of thinking up a new idea, planning it, organizing it, and following it to completion, then have it be magnificent successful. I also hope you go through the same process and have something fail terribly.

I wish you could know how it feels to run with all your heart and lose horribly.

I wish that you could achieve some great good for man and have nobody know about it except for you.

I wish you could find something so worthwhile that you deem it worthy of devoting your life.

I hope you become frustrated and dissatisfied enough to begin to push back the very barriers of your own personality limitations.

I hope you give so much of yourself that some days you wonder if it's worth it all.

I hope you make a stupid unethical mistake and get caught red handed and are big enough to say those magic words "I was wrong."

I wish for you a magnificent obsession that will give you a reason for living and purpose and direction and élan and life.

I wish for you the worst kind of criticism for everything you do because that makes you fight to achieve beyond what you normally would.

I wish for you the experience of leadership.

Birthday Week-Back to Mizzou!

Kathryn and I's "First Day of School" picture!

A midnight surprise birthday party from my friends Thursday morning that trekked over all the way in the snow to sing and eat cake!
Phi Mu girls: Stephanie, Kathryn, me, Emilia, Alex, Emily, Jen and Susan
The awkward picture tradition lives on: Andrew, Sherman and I

I have never until this week gained so much respect for the city and suburbs of Chicago, and their efficiency at plowing snow. Columbia received 8 inches of snow and the town shut down. My reservation for a birthday dinner was cancelled because the restaurant closed for the evening, the streets don't even get salted and nothing is ever entirely plowed until hours after it falls. This is probably due to funding and Missouri not being adjusted to getting so much snow, but I feel like such an emergency budget should be larger enough to protect our safety.

Image #1 of Missouri not knowing what to do in snow: Snow falling from outside my window. There's a baby sidewalk plow so students don't fall on their walks to class in the back right corner-area.

#2: This is 9th Street, a central street on campus, shoveling all of the snow into one pile in the middle of the street then somehow moving the pile later. Good job.

#3: This is someone's car in Greektown. Stinks for them.
We relocated my birthday dinner to a popular restaurant on Mizzou's campus called the Heidelberg, and it was nice to be with all of my friends!
Danielle and I, "Big-Little" sisters in Phi Mu, with the beautiful frame and scrapbook page she made me! As Shelley and Sherman said, "She passed the test as Katie's little."
The Twain loves: Kate, Andrew, Amy, Shaina, me, Sherman, Laura and Kathryn!
One of my gifts you can laugh at: a caffeine collection! Equipped with caffeinated soap (wake up during those 6 am showers and caffeinated lollipops, which will probably come in useful on days where I don't get a lot of sleep and need a boost. "Buzz Strong's" cookies are chocolate chip cookies where 4 cookies = 1 cup of coffee. The caffeine consumption is underrated because nobody would ever chug a cup of coffee in a minute, but eating 4 cookies in a minute gets you buzzed. Ha. The last thing is whiffable chocolate, so you can snort chocolate powder and feel like you ate an entire chocolate bar, but not receive the calories from doing it. Interesting collection, huh?!
Nouno Peter and Thea Lucy mailed me this sweatshirt, and at first glance, I didn't know why they sent it to me. I just saw the color and couldn't think of whose school colors those were, then the Connecticut part. But at second glance, you see STARS HOLLOW, CONNECTICUT. And LUKE'S, like Luke's Diner from my absolute favorite television show of all time, Gilmore Girls!! I'm SO excited to wear this!
The girls at Noodles and Company for Danielle (my little's) birthday dinner! Next observation: my hair stayed curly for two days. This is a difficult task to achieve, so it was pretty exciting.
Amy and I sitting in Zou Crew at the basketball game against Iowa State...7th row!
Twain love at a Jersey Party: Kathryn, me, Laura, Elizabeth and Danielle!

If this is just one week of the semester, what will the rest bring?! We will see!

Facebook rant, part 1

Every minute on Facebook....

• 510,404 comments are written
• 382,861 posts are liked
• 231,605 messages are sent
• 135,849 photos are added
• 98,604 friendships are approved
• 82,557 statuses are updated
• 79,364 wall posts are written
• 74,204 event invites are received
• 72,816 pages are liked
• 66,168 photos are tagged
• 55,304 links are shared

(Source: TIME Magazine graphic with information courtesy of Facebook)

Mark Zuckerberg fascinates me. It started with seeing The Social Network and learning some background information in fiction-movie form, and continued with a TIME Magazine article published in December. Zuckerberg was named TIME's "Person of the Year," so practically a novel was written about him as an article. He did, for the record, make probably the largest contribution to social media and society this decade, if not century. His invention did not even need to be advertised to spread the word in terms of popularity. My earliest memory of Facebook was being a 7th grader at my friend Michelle's house, watching her older brother who was a freshman at American University use the site. He said we could look forward to our college e-mail accounts for the sole purpose of using Facebook. And we did. Obviously, part of Mark's success.

Imagine creating something and watching every minute decision you make affect the entire world. It makes me cry of joy to see ideas I brought to the organizations I was in at GBN be carried on, but to see 550 million people discuss the ramifications of your decisions? It's phenomenal. One in every dozen people on the planet Earth has a Facebook. Seven hundred billion minutes are spent on Facebook each month. Two million websites are integrated with Facebook, and 10,000 new websites integrate with it each day. To be part of the team behind this massive societal shift would be amazing.

Mark is portrayed as a smart little boy throughout his Facebook article, for the most part on the nerdy rungs of the social ladder. His bar mitzvah was Star Wars themed, and for fun in his young years he performed some interesting computer tricks. He set his sister's computer saying that if she didn't come pick something up in 4 seconds, her computer would self-destruct. But he is the one whose decisions and daily work have been engrained in our heads throughout the past 7 years. I myself have had a Facebook profile since the summer before my sophomore year of high school, when Facebook was opened up to high school networks. As a centerspread for the Torch, my high school newspaper, I designed Facebook profiles for the graduating seniors and tried my hardest to mock the logo and the font. These small things have an effect on our everyday lives; we remember these decisions. Mark's thoughtless decision to create a blue and white logo was due to his color blindness to green and red, and now the world associates the faded shade of blue with Facebook. That's pretty impressive.

His most intelligent idea that has contributed to today's changes is as follows: "The fact that people yearned not to be liberated from their daily lives but to be more deeply embedded them is an extraordinary insight." Think about this statement. People are obsessed with themselves and their personal image. Instead of being free from stressful thoughts and relaxing, we would rather stress over placing emphasis and efforts on making ourselves appear great to others. It makes sense, because stressors can arise from being looked at the wrong way. But who thinks this much? Mark Zuckerberg. It is not the idea that he thinks this much, but that he did something about it by letting people control so many aspects of their "profiles." On today's Facebook (or at least the one I have right now, until the next change comes up), you can choose which of your information is on the side box on the left right when people click on your profile, and what only shows when they go out of their way to click "Info." For example, as a single lady (thanks Beyonce for forever keeping that song stuck in people's heads), I can choose to have Single on my front page in addition to a tab so people see it on their first quick glance. It sounds like a little, but can mean a lot in the long run. So it was a lot for Mark to think (even collaboratively) of such ideas of why people care about themselves so much.

The most photo uploads Facebook has had in one day so far was Halloween 2010 with 339 million photos. The day after, 305 million photos were uploaded. Why Halloween? This allows part of Facebook's target market, the YAYAs (MOJO advertising group's terms for youth and young adults) to show off their costumes, beauty, friends and social lives. So uploading these photos is a manner of investing time into making yourself look good to your network. I'm sure if you could count the number of times people just glance over their own profile, it would be infinite. People have endless options of to give off a very specific image about themselves, from the pages they like, to the photos they upload, to their status updates, to what they write on someone's wall to broadcast it rather than in a message.

Therefore, we as individuals are all contributing to these statistics. Facebook accounts for 10 percent of all internet visits and 25 percent of pageviews in the US (Source: USA Today), so we obviously care this much about how we appear to everyone else. Next time you log on Facebook, thing of your intent for signing in, its purpose. Are you checking information on someone's profile, using it for communication or impatiently waiting to tell the world something cool you did with a status? Maybe thinking of its purpose will help you get over this insane habit.

(More to come in Facebook rant, part 2)

Exploring Chicago

One joy of living in a big city over winter break is that when suburbia dies, you plan exciting adventures downtown with friends! What I have told everyone who visited this break is that if you don't want to pay for entertainment or walk through touristy sites, the only thing you can do is eat. And I still feel this is true.

Thankfully, my friends and I sought out fun things to do at low costs, such as the Art Institute's free weekdays, swimming and playing Just Dance 2 on the Wii. After spending seven of the past eight days downtown, here are just a few photos!

Meredith and I at Grand Lux Cafe for her birthday dinner

A Torch picture for old time's sake: Stephen, Kara, Austin, me and Mere!
Playing Just Dance 2 at Meredith's house, a video game where you hold the Wii-Mote and follow the moves of a character on the screen. Much better than Dance Dance Revolution, amusing pictures and solid exercise are results of a good game!
Thursday morning, Laura arrived on her overnight Megabus from Kansas City. After some productive work, we took the train to meet up with Kate at Art Institute. Took a pit stop at the Millenium Park bean, because what would Chicago do without Millennium Park?
I really liked this picture- Allegory of Peace and War, 1776. We spent a lot of time looking at European art and I have a newfound appreciation thanks to my friends :)
Three of our four suitemates from last year at Union Station, with an empty space to Photoshop Kathryn in. The legend of Mark Twain 518-519 will live on!

The Golden Birthday Celebration

In anticipation of my 20th birthday this January 20, I planned a Golden Birthday party since I finally have my golden birthday! Gold accessories and outfits were worn, and below is most of the group at Maggiano's for dinner!
Mizzou friends in Chicago: Laura, Shaina, me and Andrew at the hotel
Friends that could make it at the Embassy Suites Lakefront!
After swimming

The next morning, while a group took the Metra back to Northbrook, Hannah and our Mizzou crew stayed downtown to make the most of our parking fee in the city. We walked to Navy Pier, people watched as a girls club cheerleading competition took place at Navy Pier's Festival Hall, observed mothers vicariously living through their daughters and took some fun photos! Before all of this, we obviously needed a nap, so we stayed at the hotel moments until check out time. Hannah had the best sleeping spot, the windowsill, with a view of not only the Trump Building, but the Sears (Willis) Tower!

This picture from Navy Pier cracks me up!

Endorsement

Attention all journalism students, people who like to read and information-hungry citizens:

I have a solution for how to keep yourself updated on current events without necessarily Twitter, Facebook or a social networking aspect. It's called Google Reader.

A friend (shoutout Kara!) has used this for awhile now, but I tried it out at the beginning of winter break. I follow the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Columbia Missourian, Columbia Tribune and blogs of choice--such as the Missouri Journalism School, MOJO Advertising Agency, my sorority and the blogs of my close friends. It's been very effective and allows you to read not only the headlines, but essentially the nut graf and most important part of the story. When I'm at school, I will feel more informed about what is going on at home, without having to put in the additional effort to read through Chicago publications' website.

Living in a world where people prefer brief updates rather than lengthy stories, it is a perfect tool to get the headlines but read more if you are interested. Comparison and various viewpoints can be analyzed by scanning and reading multiple articles on the same news story, such as the recent Arizona shooting. I've read news and opinion pieces on safety of citizens, what this means for politicians and the story itself of what happened, and have never felt more knowledgable about one simple occurrence.

It is also a much better use of my time than reading Facebook, because it immerses you in what's going on in the world rather than the complaints, postings, feelings and photos of your Facebook network. Thus, I endorse Google Reader and highly recommend that all of my fellow Mizzou journalism students use their Gmail accounts to start a page for current event quizzes and more!

Some of break thus far

Winter Break

Given an entire month of break, I like to maximize my time by traveling, seeing as many of my friends as possible and relaxing and enjoying people's company at the same time. While there have been some hectic moments, here's a recap of the past week or so with some photos to show!

This is a late photo Kathryn took while leaving Columbia to head back to Chicago, dropping her off at the STL airport on the way. Here's how packed our car was...not including bags on people's laps. Who ever said girls overpack?

Lena and I celebrating Christmas!
Becca, Jessie and I went sledding with the great amount of snow we got on Christmas! We even went two evenings in a row so thank goodness there was something to do before the snow melted on New Years!
College Conference

College Conference is an annual event held for Orthodox Christian college students across the country to reunite and give college students an opportunity to discuss faith through programs and meeting new people. I stayed at Antiochian Village in Bolivar, Pennsylvania, slightly outside of Pittsburgh, which is one of the most beautiful campgrounds and retreat centers I have been to. Besides the camp area which we mostly stayed off of, it has the Sts. Peter & Paul Chapel where we held services each morning and night, a dining hall that looks more like a banquet hall with good food, a large room for speakers that looks like a fellowship hall, an auditorium, three floors of hotel-like rooms with room service and a two lounges and/or game rooms on each floor to hang out in. Football, soccer fields and basketball courts were snowed over, but the Pennsylvania hills and sleds provided allowed for some fun sledding late at night.

Originally, the Project Mexico interns planned to meet at College Conference as a reunion to see each other, but in addition to this, we all met so many new people and brought our friends together. With the four interns that attended being from Long Island, New York, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Charlotte, North Carolina and Chicago—we all had connections and friends there, but made more. I became a lot closer with the other Chicagoans there, and especially the other attendees that flew into Pittsburgh instead of driving to Bolivar. This group of approximately 30 people spent 7 hours together waiting at the airport and driving to Antiochian Village in traffic, so it was great to meet such a variety of people.

Some of my observations from the conference:

• Chanting differences in the services and Greek and Antiochian singing styles--it's interesting to see how different a liturgy can be when the same hymns are sung with different wordings, languages and paces. It's nice to hear a variety, but almost makes me appreciate the Greek church's style more
• The Greeks and Arabs (or Greeks and any ethnic group for that matter) create everything into a competition of some sort. A Greek-Arab soccer game, general gossiping around the retreat center, and dances are a competition of who is better.
• One of my favorite things to do is bring my friends together. I’ve done this in the past by having a birthday party with both Mizzou friends and Northbrook friends, but the retreat allowed for all of my Greek Orthodox friends to meet each other in a nice environment. Seeing Yianni and Gregg from Mizzou OCF sitting with Nick and Dean from Sts. Peter & Paul, hanging out with Anna, Emily and Sotiri from Mexico, joining the St. John’s Des Plaines group, with Penelope from Fanari, along with other miscellaneous priest’s children and friends we met along the way is just fascinating to me. There’s no reason to have a non-unified group so I am thankful to know people who are easygoing enough to meet other people I consider friends and get along so well.
• This was partially intended, but the conference really inspires you to improve your college's OCF (Orthodox Christian Fellowship) chapter and encourages involvement in religious events while living the busy life of a college student. I was inspired to apply for the Student Advisory Board to build this program across the country and will hopefully fulfill this goal!
• Participants get to attend four breakout sessions on a variety of topics, mostly revolving around sacraments. Besides "Building your OCF," I went to a speaker on why we value teh sacrament of confession, why baptism is important and Orthodox Christian marriage, all which taught me valuable lessons the topics in a forum of other Orthodox Christians who were interested in hearing the information.
• The keynote speaker was a Northwestern professor Dr. Gayle who discussed the impact technology has on today's society in relation to the Orthodox Christian faith. She raised points such as effects genetic traits have, and if traits are genetic, what it says about sin. As a medical expert, she talked a lot about technology that prolongs, delays or ends life. We also discussed invetrofertilization, and I had a lot of respect for Dr. Gayle because of her well-roundedness and superb intelligence not only in the medical field, but about the Orthodox faith, hierarchs and membership of archdiocese groups that support philanthropies and missions. She is one of those women that serves on multiple committees because it gives her something to do, which is obviously something I envy. While starting off slow, her presentation definitely picked up and I enjoyed hearing what she had to say.

Photos!

Greek dancing in the airport
Some of our friends going sledding
The Antiochian Village Retreat Center

The people I hung out with: a combination of Project Mexico interns/participants, Chicagoans, PKs and friends
Arab and Greek dancing
PK (priest's kids) photo...we're special
Beautiful sunset from the campgrounds!

Our group at the banquet

Sts. Peter & Paul Chapel
New Year's Eve and Chicago trip

Anna had her car at the conference, and offered to drive us home for a vacation to spend time with the Mexico interns and see family and friends in the Chicago area. We made excellent time out of Pennsylvania, and decided to spend New Years in Crown Point, Indiana where our friend Jiori lives. Our New Years Eve consisted of the Wii game Just Dance 2, looking at photos from our past four days together, learning and practicing our Greek and Arab dancing skills and a lot of food.

Here's us dancing in Jiori's kitchen!
We drove into Chicago on New Years Day in the afternoon and continued our social circle from College Conference at a party the next evening! Here's Sotiri, me, Anna and Emily at a friend's birthday party!
After attempting to get some sleep, going to church and filling our stomachs at Pinstripes, we began our downtown adventure by shopping, roaming the streets and walking to Millennium Park. Our reflections looked awesome and we got some great photos!

Anna and I posing at the bean

If brunch wasn't filling enough, Emily's relatives own the restaurant Greek Islands in Greektown so we had a phenomenal dinner there, so much that I probably won't go to another restaurant in Greektown except there ever again. Emily even went back to lunch with her family there the next day, and we explored the city more since Anna and Sotiri had to leave to drive home. We probably walked about eight miles throughout the day between Greektown to Navy Pier, Navy Pier to the car, and around in general. Here's us on the pier!

2010 in numbers

When I returned from school, my dad looked at the car for his usual inspection. He was ready to take my CRV for an oil change, car wash and more random things that help the car function that I can't even understand and would not do alone. But he noticed something alarming.

The Honda has 6,200 more miles on it than it did when I left for school in August. "You could have driven from New York to California, and back," my dad said. This shocks me even more because I do not lend my car to others. Due to its standard transmission, I am the only one that drives it, and it shocks me that I have spent 103.3 hours in the car (assuming I drive at 60 miles per hour, a good assumption considering street and highway driving combinations). "That's four straight days, plus some," Laura adds from my room right now. All of this lost time!

While some people believe in paying cabs, trains and airplanes for the time they receive by sitting on them and not driving, I evidently do not always vouch for this tactic. Where did I go in these 6,200 miles?

• From Chicago to Columbia and Columbia to Chicago two times each (beginning of the school year, winter break, back and forth in October)
• New Buffalo, Mich. to Chicago the day before I left for school to go to the Michigan Dunes
• Chicago to Cincinnati and back to pick up Yiayia for Christmas
• Columbia, Mo. to Ames, Ia. and back to visit Helen

That's at least half of it, and some travel at school. But I haven't taken any spontaneous rides to St. Louis or Kansas City to waste miles. Incidentals apparently take this much of my time. So I thought, how else can I define my year in numbers? It describes a variety of aspects of my life, but let's see!

14 states visited this year, of 16 vacation destinations

• Mexico and Washington D.C. as destinations
• States= Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia (cheater: only drove through it), Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Kansas, California

6 one-way flights booked this year and 8 one-way tickets total

• Including flights from Chicago to Pittsburgh, San Diego, Washington D.C., Kansas City, Boston, and out of St. Louis
• Buses and trains from Cincinnati to Chicago and D.C. to Newark, New Jersey on the Amtrak

2000 minutes average I spend talking on the phone per month

4000 text messages sent in the month of November (this is pathetic, I know), a record

104 blog posts since Lent when I started this blog

1928 friends on Facebook

2379 tagged photos

6108 photos on my iPhoto library from 2010

97 Facebook photo albums, 23 of them published this year

73 followers on Twitter, with 96 pages I follow

5 school activities- Phi Mu, MSF, AAF, Relay For Life and OCF

2 conferences attended- College Conference and the Leadership Academy

I think this is pretty fun to keep track of so at the end of next year, I can compare them! I don't regret how I have spent my time, but seeing the numbers themselves definitely makes you think about things.