Social Media Paper

I wrote my paper over Mr. Tharp’s company that I happen to work for called the Lion and Rose pub in San Antonio. Mr. Tharp is using lots of great social media websites to get the word out about his growing company, including Yelp, UrbanSpoon, Twitter, and Facebook. I learned a lot while writing this paper about what all it takes to get your own, made from scratch, company out there in the spotlight and for people to want to come to your restaurant. There are hundreds of social media websites out there for you to use, but choosing the ones that are best for you and your company are the hardest part.

Bagpipers Video!

At Lion & Rose we do a very traditional St. Patrick’s Day celebration! Here are the bagpipers that performed this year in their traditonal garbs!

Lion & Rose Slideshow!

Here’s my Lion & Rose slideshow!

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Future of online business models

“Anything Google does, we can do better.” I love this newfound and rapidly rising attitude that Facebook has now acquired. Although Google has the bigger name in the internet world, I love that Facebook, who kind of started out as the “underdog,” is one of the fastest growing internet sites and names in the world. I truly believe that while Google is going nowhere, Facebook surely isn’t either.  Facebook has the user’s wants & needs down to an art. Their “social graph” has become something Google really strives to become but I feel it might be a little too late in the game. FAcebook has some of the most personalized information about people just open to the public. Google would love to get some of the personal information pie but hasn’t even begun baking in the kitchen yet. Their goal to “organize the world’s info” is unobtainable at this time, while Facebook already has it! Hobbies, email addresses, real user names, interests, games, Facebook has it. And it will be a huge race to see which internet big shot will get their grubby hands and money on it.  Although Google is the bigger name, Facebook is not far behind and will only continue to grow.

I believe the opportunities offered by online business is reaching to a mass audience in a easier, and maybe cheaper and efficient way. By reaching one online, you reach thousands or more. Since it’s a vast network of people on one site, take Facebook for example, you’re making a niche including all it’s users. You’re having access to millions of users, instead of a few here and there. Anyone, meaning Microsoft, who gets to dip into the vast pond of Facebook users, will have no trouble getting plenty to come across their ads or words. By simply tapping into the pool of social sites, you’re tapping into never-ending resources. Endless profiles and members giving and using their personal information while you as a company reap the benefits. Social networking as exploded onto the internet scene in the past 5 years, and I think this is just the beginning. In a world where we all want to have our voices heard, these social sites give us the chance to do that, most of the time for free.

Big shots like Google and Yahoo are now trying to expand their names and reach into your social sites by adding their name to search engines and advertising. They have realized the untapped remarkable numbers of users simply sharing the information they have been craving for us to share for years now. Google’s new Friend Connect, Yahoo’s new Yahoo Chat applications, Flock, and Ning are just a few of the new innovations for closing the gap between search engines and social networking.

“The social networks’ greatest achievement has been to bring humanity into a place that was once cold and technological,” says Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group, a consulting firm. I love this quote!!!! It rings true today and even more so with these big wigs fighting for rights to the sites.  All the ways we’re communicating today truly is mass communication. Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and more are keeping people from all ages, races, cultures, and countries together by the click of a mouse, and the big companies definetly want a piece of the action.  But will these sites stay around for the long haul, or simply be another trend to disappear? “They need to prove to the world that they are here to stay. They must demonstrate that they are capable of generating the returns that justify the lofty valuations investors have given them. And they need to do all this while also reassuring users that their privacy will not be violated in the pursuit of profit.” These sites are very careful when attaching their names to the names of the profit-seeking companies that some have come to despise. These companies whom are looking to attach their names and money should also be attaching some innovative new thing to bring to the table that will shield their names to the suspecting eye.

“Social networks are more robust than their critics think, though not every site will prosper, and that social-networking technologies are creating considerable benefits for the businesses that embrace them, whatever their size. Lastly, it will contend that this is just the beginning of an exciting new era of global interconnectedness that will spread ideas and innovations around the world faster than ever before.”

“IPhone App”

This is my parking app I came up with. Since parking is such an issue here at Texas State University, I thought how cool would it be if there were an app that showed you where available parking spots are on on around campus for commuters? With this app, you can simply push the area you would like to look for a spot & the app shows you (with microchips on each spot) which spots are available. This app works so fast as to keep you updated so that you don’t drive to that particular spot and find you were too slow to get it. This app would revolutionize student’s lives. No longer would students drive around for 20-30 minutes looking for a parking spot. Now students who have downloaded the app have the leg up on the rest of the students driving around looking for spots. Students would never be late or pay tickets again.

And for those students who were impatient, this app even includes a screen where with a touch of the screen, you can pay off your parking tickets. Hope you like my idea!!!

Ireland

Today is the great Guinness toast at 10 pm! It was first brewed in 1759 by Sir Arthur Guinness! I love beer! And I love that my ancestors were the inventors of such cool stuff! It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the biggest worldwide toast! Guinness drinkers call themselves 1759 Society Drinkers, meaning they’re cool enough to be in a society for what they drink. Tonight at my work, the Lion & Rose, we have a great Guinness toast. The Guinness rep girls come in & pass out fun beads & free pints as we all toast to the marvelous-ness of Irish people & their beloved beer

Ireland is just an amazing place to come from and some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. I cannot wait to travel there one day & see where I came from. I want to drink a pint in a real pub with people who share the same blood and backgrounds as me! I plan on going there as soon as I graduate college! Ireland look out here I come!

Gates vs. Jobs

“Steve Jobs, the creator of Apple, is a hands-on manager, who studied even the minutest details of his products, with the heart and eye of an artist. His insistence on high-quality, good-looking products struck a chord with many people who appreciated the beauty of Apple products, resulting in such fabulous successes as the Macintosh computer and the iPod portable music system. These successes often reshaped how consumers viewed technology and also reshaped the technology itself. Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates are the two people most often credited with the development of the mass-market personal computer, perhaps decades before it might otherwise have evolved. He wisely surrounded himself with top-notch executives in all the key corporate positions, and he held on to them rather than driving them away. Almost by willing it, he transformed the corporate culture into one in which employees wanted to come to work and where they saw themselves as part of a great company that had a mission to change the world for the better. Moreover, Jobs, the hobbyist of old, brought the fun back into tinkering with electronics. ” (http://www.answers.com/topic/steve-jobs)

“The need for predictability and understanding rules out companies like Microsoft. Gates, even before he nearly missed the Internet boat, saw clearly that the technology has a mind of its own. His own titanic success, however, has been built on controlling the technology. By making MS-DOS and Windows the universal, all but inescapable entry into personal computing, Gates created a degree of market control that, until the Internet arrived, gave Microsoft’s business a very high degree of predictability (and profit). Control is basic to Gates’s nature and his management practice. He has an obsession with detail. ” (http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/management/management-styles.php)

It seems to me that Gates is more of the typical corporation, no trust in other people, just out to make money, while Jobs is truly all about the artisitic value of the company & making a better quality product for the consumer. Both are highly influential people of our decade.

The Internet

The video we watched in class today was like traveling in a time machine! I couldn’t get my mind around the concept of a computer being the size of a room and using a computer for just typing up documents, not surfing the web. It’s great how far we have come and how revolutionized the internet now is. Hearing the dial-up sound in the movie was a trip! I remember hearing that dreadful noise in late elementary school, early middle school. Ugh! That has to be THE most annoying sound in the world!

P.S. I know  how late this is! And I do apologize!

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