Welcome to the “Power Friending” Blog

Thus begins the blog about the book named “Power Friending” by Amber Mac, for which purpose I have become a part of this blogging site.

This is my first experience blogging. I do not have high expectations of readership, and I have no desire to have a large amount of readers. I am writing this blog for the sole purpose of a project for an Intro to Computers class which I am taking at Briercrest College & Seminary. This blog is an alternative project to writing an analysis paper on the same book, and I thought it would be interesting to take a different route.

Thus, although you are welcome to read it, this blog is intended to be written for the eyes of the professor of my class.

The Future (Chapter 9)

It was interesting to get Mac’s take on the future with technology. I understand her views, but at the same time, I can’t say that I agree with them. While I have a deep affection for just about anything to do with modern technology, I also hold a firm view that it is created by flawed humans, and is thus flawed. The future is not bright for humanity – no matter how good our technology gets; it will never be able to save us from destroying ourselves. For our salvation, we must to to Jesus Christ.

Maybe it seems that I have gone off topic with this, but I feel like it needs to be addressed, since Mac and I are working off of two completely different views of how the world works. While she wasn’t explicit in what she puts her hope in for the future, it seems implicit that she sees that future in what mankind can achieve or create for itself – through better technology. It is also clear that she is all-in for more capitalistic endeavours since she is teaching and coaching those in businesses how to reach the masses in order to make more money.

Aside from taking a philosophical assessment of a book that was not written with the purpose of proposing a philosophy, I would say that this book does what it sets out to do: educate those that are in business about why and how to use social media in order to be more effective. I think that DCUO has been effective in their use of social media, but I think that their effectiveness is also slowly grinding to a halt the less that they use it. Of course, I am also speaking with full knowledge that I myself have not been consistent enough in my own blog posts to point the finger at DCUO’s inconsistency; but nevertheless, it is what it is.

Thus concludes my blog on the relation of the concepts of Power Friending to the Sony Online Entertainment project of DC Universe Online. Thank you for reading!

The Successes (Chapter 8)

This chapter was virtually the opposite of the last – providing positive examples to follow instead of negative examples to avoid.

While Mac has been doing both positive and negative examples of how companies have used social media in the past throughout all of her book, she further expounds on a greater collection of examples in this chapter, and the previous one as well.

Throughout the past two chapters, Mac reiterates how important it is to follow the ABC’s of social media – Authenticity, Bravery, and Consistency.

I have been following the development of DC Universe Online ever since it was announced at Comic Con in July of 2008. Initially, there was very little news until about a year ago when the project started to use social media as a means to reach its potential customers. This gave me (and tens of thousands of other DC Comics geeks) the ability to closely track the progress of the game until its release.

The project was fairly consistent on all of their forms of social media until their release date for the game (Jan. 11, 2011). It was shortly after this point, aside from some random Twitter and facebook messages apologizing for the servers being down, and promising for their quick repairs, that they began to neglect the social media tool. Perhaps it was mainly thought upon to stir up initial interest in the game, and is not really thought of as a way to measure customer satisfaction (one of the things that Mac stresses it can – and should – be used for). So it was initially consistent, but is now lacking some consistency (they are still a presence, but a dwindling one).

As far as authenticity goes, the project has been authentic in the sense that they haven’t made the same kind of attempts to come across as something that they’re not, like the previous chapter warns about.

And bravery… I wouldn’t say that they have been too brave in their use of social media – in that they don’t seem to have been thinking outside of the box too much. This doesn’t mean that they haven’t been adhering to the same strategies that Mac suggests for companies to use in reaching their customers through social media.

But in the MMO world, World of Warcraft reigns supreme (with something like 13 million subscribers paying $15 a month, and it’s been running since 2005), and any company seeking to make a game to go up against that Goliath of a game is definitely brave in my books, considering the amount of money that has to be funneled into an MMO (MMO’s are the biggest games ever – for instance, in order to run from the northern end of a continent [called Azeroth] in World of Warcraft to the southern end would most likely take multiple hours – they had to introduce horses and gryphons in order to get from one place to another faster), and considering the fact that most MMO’s are popular for a month, and then almost everyone goes back to World of Warcraft for the long term.

The Failures (Chapter 7)

This chapter was an interesting read, and I can see how it would be helpful for those that are seeking to promote their company; a kind of “learn from the mistakes of others” strategy which is extremely important. A company would look twice as bad as the first company who made the mistake if they made the same one.

In this chapter, Mac uses a couple of Sony products as examples, and I realize that I am also using a Sony product as an example for my analysis for the project… I hope that the product I am using is different enough from the ones that Mac used to not be too much of a problem. If I had known earlier which companies she analyzed herself, I would not have picked a Sony product… but since I am so far in at this point, it does not seem wise to turn back and change the product and re-do the whole project.

The Execution (Chapter 6)

In this chapter, Mac goes through the various ways of actually utilizing social media; she gets into how to use the various social media tools. This is honestly what I’ve been waiting for, to be able to use all of the things that she’s been talking about.

I learned about a great deal of tools that I knew existed, but didn’t know much about; tools like Google Alerts, Summize, Technorati, TweetBeep, and many others – all with the purpose of tracking the activity of internet users to determine how people are reacting to products or ideas. There was even a mention of a service that makes sure there are only positive results at the top of a search done about a company… which shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

This was the most fascinating chapter of the book for me, since I learned the most from it. But the book was written to cater to those with less knowledge of social media than I have.

It was hard to apply a lot of the things in this chapter to DCUO though, since I am unaware of whether they use any tools for data gathering (they most likely do), but I was able to analyze some of their promotional videos of them answering questions (like I included in the last post) in the terms of how they set up for their videos and how they probably addressed sound issues and editing, etc. – which was done, seemingly, to all of the recommendations of Mac.

 

The Strategy (Chapter 5)

After laying the ground of why to use social media in the last chapter (and really all of the book up until this point), Mac new seeks to set a strategic direction for the use of the social media for businesses.

While this chapter is still sort of dealing with the ‘why’ question, it is also offering a variety of purposes for which the social media could be used; often showing examples of the purposes of other companies.

Mac does reach back a bit to chapter three, and she refreshes in the readers mind some of the rules of social media, but she also adds some more rules – often revolving around catering to customers in different ways.

The Tools (Chapter 4)

Once again, I apologize for my inconsistency in posts; I became distracted by other papers and assignments for other classes for the past couple of weeks.

This chapter was interesting in how it taught about the various tools of social media. I am fairly unfamiliar with the world of Twitter, and it was interesting to see its usefulness in this chapter (although Mac doesn’t really get into how to use the tools at this point, but she accurately describes why to use them through a series of case studies.

But there wasn’t really anything that I could apply to the focus of the project, in regards to how accurately DCUO has been utilizing these features, other than the fact that they are. Although, there have been a few times that Mac has pointed out the use of social media to respond to complaints or issues that customers have had with various companies, and their responses to them – something that I haven’t seen DCUO do through social media on a personal and timely basis, other than answering questions that people had about the game before its release through monthly series of informational and promotional videos (the first of ten [so far] is posted below).

The Rules (Chapter 3)

This chapter gave me some more things to grapple with as far as the new focus of this blog goes. In this chapter, Amber Mac focuses in on what she says are the three core rules to marketing through social media – ABC – Authenticity, Bravery, and Consistency; these rules are rules that are very tangible that I can apply to the ways that DCUO is interacting with their fan base/customers.

It was also extremely interesting to read about how some companies have made mistakes, and how some have owned up to them – and to learn about how the speed at which a company owns up to their mistakes makes all the difference.

I often found myself agreeing with a lot of what Mac says about the rules; for instance, I found that I am a lot like many people when it comes to whether a company is authentic or not. I think that my generation (and younger ones) are more prone to detecting whether or not an organization is being authentic or not, and also more skeptical of all organizations as a whole that are trying to project authenticity.

But at the same time, authenticity can work alongside the bravery aspect of admitting the wrongs that you have done – the combination of these things can make a business authentic.

The Fears (Chapter 2)

I found this a somewhat interesting chapter. With my new focus, the book is becoming more and more relevant; I am currently attributing my previous skepticism to this.

It was interesting to understand some of the fears that companies have towards social media, and to see Amber Mac easily refute each one of them.

Although it was a short chapter, and I suppose necessary in some ways, one of the states that Mac listed near the end of the chapter made me wonder why it was in the book: “95% of businesses say they plan to use social media” (p. 34). If 95% of businesses say they plan to use it, is this chapter dedicated to the other 5%?

As far as it pertaining to DCUO, this chapter did not seem to be directly relevant from my perspective; but I can definitely see the organization/project struggling with some of the very fears  that Mac described – even if it is an organization that is based in technology and seeks to market mainly to technology users.

 

A More Purposeful Direction

A lot more time has passed that I had realized since my last post. For this I apologize; I will endeavour to be more timely with my posts in the future.

Before I proceed with my interaction with the book, I wanted to point out my purpose for the blog from this point on. I will interact with each chapter with its own separate blog post, since the book deals with a different topic and focus for each chapter, and there are nine chapters, which fulfills the quota of eight blog posts before the due date.

Also, I have chosen to go with this choice for the assignment:

Using an outside organization as your starting point, explore this organization’s use of social media in communication with its customers, or members and the effectiveness of their approach in light of what Amber Mac says, and your own experiences.  You will also need to cite five additional sources (academic or web-based) that help support your evaluation.  Note that if you choose an organization other than Briercrest, you will need to ensure that it is NOT one of those to which Amber refers in her book.

In light of choosing this direction for the assignment, I have decided to explore a specific joint project of SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) and Warner Bros Games; one that I have been following and exploring for over a year now – but without the knowledge of the book effecting my perception of the project.

The specific project is a video game that I have been looking forward to for years – ever since they announced plans for it to come into being. This game is called DC Universe Online (DCUO), and is a massively multi-player online game (MMO), which is based in the world of DC comics (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc are all under the banner of DC Comics).

This video game was created by a joint project – but also by an organization that has formed because of the project. This organization has utilized social media to promote their game in various ways, and seems to have effectively reached the masses with the information that they intended to get across. But, I will be discovering just how effectively they did this as I read further into Amber Mac’s book.

I will be exploring DCUO’s use of facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Superman in DC Universe Online

Blog for Week #1

After reading the introduction of the book, and the first chapter, I have to admit that I am currently struggling on how to apply what I am reading to the subject matter in the course.

I realize that the purpose of reading the book is to understand the motives and the strategies of companies that use (or fail to use) facebook, but I have yet to come across information that has helped me to learn… well… anything relevant to this purpose, to be honest. I have high hopes that this initial reaction is not a recurring one though.

On a more positive note, I did enjoy learning about the history of the internet (p. 16-21), and the progression of early types of social networking. The earliest that I myself had contact with was the BBS system (p. 16), which I learned about through my brother-in-law who used it to talk with friends when he was a kid in the late 80′s and early 90′s.

A lot of the other systems & websites I was oblivious to – perhaps friendster being the most surprising to me, as I seem to have been fairly fluent in new social networking fads as they cropped up.

It was interesting to read about Amber Mac’s view of friends. She reserves the category of “best friends” for her real life best friends, and everyone else that has some kind of contact or acquaintance with her is included in her list of “friends.” This kind of reminds me of when I have spoken to some Chinese people, and how they often use the word “friend” in every correspondence they send, even if it is they have never met or had any contact (through the internet or otherwise) with you. I have to admit that I like the idea of calling someone a friend that I hardly know – it has this potential to show your friendliness towards that person, and to perhaps show them that you’d like to be actual friends.

Nevertheless, it seems somewhat obvious that there is some deep desire within me that wants to maintain the pre-social networking definition of friend. The friend that you see in person; the one that is there physically to help you move in to your new place; the one that you can go for coffee with. There is something about actually being physically near someone that you don’t get when you talk over the internet. Admittedly, Skype has helped with this issue, but there is still something missing. Something that our materialistic worldview can’t account for – something beyond our material world that we can never account for with all the technology that we come up with…