Youtube: Paid subscriptions and the end of plain old TVs?

A look into the growing trend towards online tv channels

By Lory Martinez

YOUTUBE TV

Youtube, a site whose content varies from cat videos to educational how-to clips, will now be charging for subscriptions to some of the most exclusive channels it hosts .

This is in light of the current popularity of online streaming streaming sites such as HuluPlus and Projectfreetv.

I mean, as a college student, I might have a shared television set in my suite’s common area, but when I think about how much it’s actually used for watching TV shows, it’s kind of useless.  My suitemates and I use our TV as an external display for our laptops. I know others who use their Xboxes to stream Netflix. Even Netflix has added its own series of straight-to-online shows such as “House of Cards,” to join the growing trend toward instant web content.

It seems to be a very different world for programming these days. Gone are the days when you had to be home at exactly 8 p.m. each night to catch your favorite shows in prime-time.  Now that users can access so much of  that same content online, they don’t need their tv sets as much.

But when you can see your favorite shows and videos online, where does the revenue come from?

Enter Youtube subscriptions which allow creators of content from exclusive youtube channels of live networks like National Geographic  to expand thier audience online, at a small price.

Only time will tell if this well end up being better or worse for content creators, who could benefit or suffer from the fees to be put in place.

Related articles

• YouTube Paid Subscriptions Could Launch This Week, $1.99 Monthly Service Takes on Netflix (latinospost.com)
• New Netflix, YouTube Features Continue TV-Less Trend (newsy.com)
• YouTube launches subscription fees (bbc.co.uk)

The Startup Culture: “20-Somethings” dream big

A look into Generation Y and its affinity for web start-ups and iced coffee

by Lory Martinez

The Startup Guys, complete with smart-phones and energy drinks.

Popular comedy site, College Humor, on the Web Start up Culture:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6507690/hardly-working-start-up-guys

This parody isn’t too far from the truth. Generation Y ( 18-29 -year-olds), or as they’ve come to be called, “20-somethings,” are growing up and driving the internet economy.  As such, it isn’t too uncommon to hear about a youth fresh out of college joining or even starting a  brand-new social media or technology company.

In fact, there are so many startups these days, it’s hard to keep up. Some immediately gain popularity, like Facebook and Pintrest but, all too often, others die down as quickly as it takes for a user to close out their browser.

It’s easy to make fun of these 20-somethings who have made a name for themselves through websites that range from Kloff, the app for pet-lovers to Triggermail, a personalized email site for  e-commerce. But the truth is, with all their fancy offices and user-friendly interfaces, they are a major part of the media business.

Unconventional office space: check.

Dreams that their grandparents would never have imagined having at all are now possible. In that sense, generation Y is proof positive that if given the chance, young people can create just about anything.

Related articles

• 8 Biggest Career Mistakes That 20-Somethings Make (huffingtonpost.com)
• Silicon Alley Insider: The 20 Hottest Startups From The World’s 2nd-Biggest Startup Factory – Israel (businessinsider.com)
• How Startups Can Identify Their Core Values (nibletz.com)

Online Profile: Spring Cleaning for Job Seekers

A look into online profiles and how much they affect employers’ decisions in choosing new hires.

by Lory Martinez

Spring Cleaning your online presence

This week we’ve done a number of stories on online profiles. And now, as graduation and the real world fast approach, it’s time to clean up,( If you haven’t already) that online persona.  Warning: A virtual suit and tie may be required.

According to a recent study, up to 37 percent of employers check social networking sites before even considering an employee for an interview. Up to 90 percent  of employers are hiring through social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and even, Facebook.

In my recent interview with avid social media enthusiast, Jessie Rubin, we both noted that social media is who we are. As the generation that both created and produced the social media boom, we are indeed defined by our presence on the internet.  Ten years ago, email and instant messaging had only just begun to flourish, slowly collecting a kind of cyberhistory that has evolved and expanded into the myriad of platforms we use to communicate and express ourselves today.

Remember AOL instant messenger? Myspace? Remember the days of funny email addresses we made up for those accounts?

Aol Screenames circa 2002: chatingchuck, and any cat variations thereof

Now as kids grow up in this  “living yearbook” world, they have to be careful, because, in the same way an embarrassing photo from high school can come back to haunt our parents once they are found in the attic somewhere, our  “YOLO” moments can come back to bite us. And those are way easier to find.

So here are a few tips I’ve collected throughout my own years of experience with social media. Special thanks to those who have given me this professional advice and much more over the years.

How to clean up the digital you:

• Check your privacy settings on all social platforms. Make sure you have to approve things before anyone can post them in association with you. We all ignore those emails from Facebook about updated privacy settings, but be sure to at least check your own settings
• Google + is a useful tool. Even though a lot of people say it will never become popular in terms of social networking, you can at least help employers easily find you via Google search, and with a comprehensive profile, you can even direct them to your work.
• Get a LinkedIn, if you don’t already have one. Even if all your connections are classmates, they will soon have jobs in the real world, just like you, and can help you later on.
• Look through your photos you’re tagged in, make sure the photos represent the best version of you, the one that would make an employer think, “Yeah, I would definitely trust him/her with important tasks.”
• Have a fancy profile photo or two. You should have a photo in a nice outfit  for your  job search profiles including Google + and LinkedIn. Keep it casual and fun for your other profiles, but maybe leave the beer can out, at your discretion.
• Opinions are opinions are opinions. Yes, your opinion matters. Yes, it’s just as valid as any other. But be weary of ranting in public. The internet is vast like the ocean but it can also be as tiny as a small puritan town. Don’t be Hester Prynne. Gossip travels fast and so do viral posts, so make sure you don’t end up like this guy.
• Don’t over-do it. Don’t go deleting your entire profile history and consider starting from scratch. Starting over is fine, but if there are no photos, or posts of you from before last week, it will be as if you never existed before last week. Don’t lose yourself, or your “digital” self in the process. It’s about cleaning up what’s there, not replacing it entirely. As the saying goes, “Work with what you’ve got.”

That’s about it folks. Have fun Spring Cleaning!

Related articles

• LinkedIn: Revolutionizing recruiting [infographic] (holykaw.alltop.com)
• The Media Review plays the number game: LinkedIn Job Stats (themediareviewonwhrw.wordpress.com)
• LinkedIn is Not Only a Social Network, but an Invaluable Business Tool, and Here Study Breaks College Media Provides Must-Read Tips for Best Optimizing LinkedIn Profiles (prweb.com)
• LinkedIn / Your Profile When You’re Unemployed (jobmarketmonitor.com)
• Social Media and Job Hunting (savingnspending.com)

The Media Review plays the number game: LinkedIn Job Stats

LinkedIn (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A look into how LinkedIn works

Image via CrunchBase

By Alex Baer

LinkedIn recently celebrated its 10th birthday last Sunday. LinkedIn, sometimes referred to as “the Facebook of networking,” allows people to network with those they have worked with before, or those they would like to work with in the future.

It also allows users to build an online resume, easily accessible to potential recruiters. There is also a premium account offered. Users can pay for a different facet of LinkedIn: Business, for business professionals, Talent for recruiters, JobSeeker for the unemployed (or the curious employed), andSales for sales professionals. There are over 200 million LinkedIn users worldwide.

In July 2011, LinkedIn launched a new feature to the website: posting job openings directly on their website, and allowing users to apply from LinkedIn, linking their LinkedIn resume to their application.

Forbes once called it  “far and away, the most advantageous social networking tool available to job seekers and business professionals today.”

But enough with all the glitz and glamour. What does the data say? Perfect data is a little hard to find, as LinkedIn hasn’t traditionally published much about hiring statistics. Let’s parse through what we can:

-Back in 2010, a report was released that found that 50% of Fortune 500 Companies use LinkedIn.

-LinkedIn gets almost six times the number of job views than Twitter, and almost 12 times that of Facebook. LinkedIn also gets more than 8 times the job applications than Facebook, and 3 times more than Twitter.

–Roughly half of LinkedIn users have anywhere from 0 to 500 1st degree connections, but the average LinkedIn recruiter has around 616, and 28% of LinkedIn recruiters have over a thousand connections!

-Of recruiters who use social networks to find potential employees, 48% use only LinkedIn, but only 1% solely use Facebook or Twitter.

-Potential growth is also a factor in networking. To double one’s network on Twitter, it takes only 2.7 months, or roughly 81 days.For LinkedIn, 7.6 months. For Facebook, a whopping 33.9 months (or just under three years).

– Traditionally, the most successful job postings and hirings seem to be sales. As of August 2011, there were about 6.1 million active members on LinkedIn who identified as working in sales. Academics, administrators, engineers, and IT specialists trail in the 4 to 5 million range.

-LinkedIn does have a number of immediately obvious advantages over Facebook and Twitter; namely, no teenage-angst, there’s little spam (as users are trying to create a likable persona), no vague relationship statuses, no birthdays to remember, changes to the user interface are fluid and appealing, but, most importantly, no Pokes.

-It also would appear to lend itself very well to the newest generation of job hunters: us. Having grown up with social networking as much a part of our lives as the duck and cover method was to the Baby Boomers. Sure, for every suave, future New Yorker columnist, there are half a dozen duck-facers, but growing up with “the game” from AOL Instant Messenger to Google Plus, but we seem to have a distinct advantage over the previous generation. As we mature, we learn how to conduct ourselves in the “real world,” but we also draw upon what we have learned.

Related articles

• How To Get The Most Out Of Your LinkedIn Network (businessinsider.com)
• Exercising Caution on the Use of LinkedIn’s “Mention Feature” (business2community.com)
• LinkedIn is 10 years old : Now a personal CRM system for lawyers (kevin.lexblog.com)
• What LinkedIn Looked Like When It Started 10 Years Ago (LNKD) (embargozone.com)
• Happy 10th Birthday, LinkedIn! (mashable.com)

Online resumes: LinkedIn and the Job Search

Image via CrunchBase

A look into the job search of 2013

By Lory Martinez

It’s May, and with it comes the end of another semester here at Binghamton. However, that by no means signifies an end to work. Today we’ll be talking about things to keep in mind for seniors who are in the midst of the job search.

For this show, I conducted a special interview with Jessie Rubin, a graduating senior  who has done a number of internships over the course of her college career. She hopes to work in journalism after graduation and has worked for quite a few “big-name” places. I spoke with her about how much her online presence in social media affected her in her job and internship search.

Be sure to check it out at 4 pm on whrwfm.org or, if you’re in the Binghamton area, on 90.5fm Binghamton.

*Full interview will be posted later this evening.

Related articles

• Improve Your Job Search With Social Media Tools (foxct.com)
• 10 Key Job Search Tips For New Graduates (money.usnews.com)
• Social Media and Job Hunting (savingnspending.com)
• LinkedIn is Not Only a Social Network, but an Invaluable Business Tool, and Here Study Breaks College Media Provides Must-Read Tips for Best Optimizing LinkedIn Profiles (prweb.com)

Cybersecurity: Fear the Hackers! Fear Them!

A look into Cybersecurity in light of the most recent security breaches on Twitter

by Alex Baer

credit: pehub.com

“Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”

It took less than half of a 140-character tweet for a mischievous hacker to send major news outlets scrambling, stocks plummeting, and just plain make a mess last Tuesday. Rest assured, the leader of the free world is alive and well, minus some on-the-job stress, the New York Stock Exchange has largely rebounded to where it was before the tweet, and the Associated Press has regained control of the account.

With that, cybersecurity is no longer a curiosity for Wired, the butt of a joke on Facebook, or the basis of a scene from a Christopher Nolan Batman movie- it’s in everyone’s mind, and its intent comes across as downright malicious. Hacking is nothing new; it took off in the early 80s, and hasn’t slowed down much since then. It certainly lends itself well to simple pranking, political activism and even high-level military operations (read up on the Stuxnet worm- which we haven’t the time for- as it’s a fascinating read!).

Attacks like the one that befell the Associated Press Twitter account, unfortunately, are starting to become more and more common. Back in May 2011, hackers took control of PBS Online, and published a report stating that Tupac had been found “alive and well” in New Zealand. British tabloid The Sun was hacked a few months later by hacker group Lulzsec; their home page read that media mogul Rupert Murdoch had been found dead of an apparent drug overdose.

The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed responsibility for the attack, tweeting from the @AP_Mobile Twitter handle that “Syrian Electronic Army was here.” The SEA also appears to have included other big media accounts in what seems to be a coordinated attack, not the least of which is British newspaper giant The Guardian. Both the Twitter account for CBS’ 60 Minutes and CBS Denver were hacked, and tweeted statements supporting the Assad regime in Syria, criticizing Obama for “trying to take away your guns” and supporting “terrorist” rebels.

Twitter has announced that they are working on a two part authentication system to solve their hacking woes, but have yet to release it to the public. In a statement released a few days ago, Twitter warns “We believe that these attacks will continue, and that news and media organizations will continue to be high value targets to hackers.” Later on in the memo, Twitter also urges its users to take necessary precautions with their cybersecurity.

Though it might just seem like a bunch of hot air, or the same BS you’ve heard many times before,  it really goes to show that

we really don’t do enough to stay safe online. No, I’m not talking about locking up your computer cabinet, or resetting every one of your passwords… though the latter might be the case if you still use “password1” to log in to Facebook. Don’t send your password to anybody online; do it in person, or with a paper trail if you need to.

Notes on the AP Twitter Hacking Scandal

A look into just how the Associated Press Twitter page was the host of one of the most retweeted posts in the short history of Twitter

By Lory Martinez

This is how we read the news in 2013: click “Refresh feed.”

It’s no surprise that when the Associated Press Twitter page was hacked this afternoon, the fake news went viral with over 4,000 retweets before it was taken down.

A number of tweets concerning a fictional white-house bombing in which the president was badly injured were posted around 1 p.m. today resulting in a temporary market plunge and a lot of tension in newsrooms across the country. 

Twitter suspended the account once it was clear the wire had been hacked.

Over 2 million people subscribe to the AP Twitter page. In what has been called the”New age of Journalism,”news organizations have used Twitter as a way to provide readers with live, up-to-the-minute information. 

The fact that people retweeted this and spread false news to the degree that the markets were affected is a frightening thing. One can imagine what would have happened if the White House Twitter page was hacked as well. We would be in chaos! People would be running around like chickens with their heads cut off. All because someone, somewhere hacked Twitter to cause mischief.

It’ll certainly be something to keep an eye on in coming years,

In the meantime I imagine books will be written about this phenomenon…”The effects of social media on the events of human history” or “The internet, and other things that almost killed us in the 2010s…” I’d  definitely read those.

Some food for thought from The Media Review.

Don’t forget to check out WHRWfm.org at 4 p.m. tomorrow for some more media chatter.

 

 

This week: Online Education and Degrees in Social Media

A look into education in 2013

by Lory Martinez

This is a classroom in 1950:

photo credit: “Leave it to Beaver”

Students are all attention. Not an ebook in sight.

This is a classroom in 2013:

photo credit: collegiatetimes.com

Students “diligently” taking notes during a lecture course.

The second image looks familiar doesn’t it?

As a college student, I know this picture far too well. It’s a 300-person class. Lectures are posted on Blackboard. Attendance isn’t taken. The logic is, you can afford to tune out, minimize a mostly blank word doc, and log into Facebook.

But here’s the thing. The student pictured above might actually be doing homework. On Facebook.

Being “social-media savvy” is becoming increasingly valuable to businesses trying to expand their clientbases.

As a result, colleges across the country are beginning to recognize that incorporating this marketable skill in a degree might be the ‘biggest thing since sliced-bread’.

Here’s one of a few programs we will be discussing on this week’s The Media Review

Only on whrwfm.org

Tune in at 4p.m. Wednesday for an much-anticipated discussion on Online Learning.

Related articles

• Bloxx’s eBook on Social Media in Education Helps Schools Set Social Media Policies to Enhance Online Safety (prweb.com)
• Preparing for a Communications Career: Thoughts From a Student (us.cision.com)
• Tips For Making An Impact On Social Media (stirringtrouble.wordpress.com)

Newspeak: Let’s talk about Radio Accents

A look into radio accents in the digital age.

by Lory Martinez

Have you listened to the radio lately? I’m talking “talk radio” not “top 40” here. Well, if you have, you may have noticed that hosts all speak a certain way on air.

From the classic transatlantic accent circa 40:

(Excerpt from “His Girl Friday,” a film about the news business during the 40s)

To  National Pubic Radio’s successful radio programs like This American Life and Radio Lab:

(Talk Radio host Glenn Reynolds at WNOX 100.3 discussing the “NPR voice”)

We hear what is called, “the news accent.” Journalists the world over are trained in this accent before broadcasting. After years of listening to radio broadcasts and noticing this accent,I decided to take a look at this universal “news accent” and how it came to be.

From transatlantic accents to what people call the “NPR voice”, this week’s show highlights the evolution of broadcast accents.

A side note for those of you who listen to our radio broadcasts on Wednesdays at 4 pm on whrwfm.org or 90.5 FM Binghamton:

We’ve been off-air for a little over a week now because of technological troubles. The good news is that this coming week we’ll finally be able to do our show on accents. So tune in!

Related articles

• The Technology Behind Timeless Radio Voices (tested.com)
• When Hip Hop Meets Talk Radio (flowofwisdom.com)
• Why did old-time announcers talk that way