Tuesday

Social Network Frenzy

Research, done by the American National School Boards Association (NSBA), shows us that 96 percent of the American students are using social networks. The students claim to use these social networks mostly to discuss schools subjects. These research findings are particularly strange because most of the schools deny access to these social networks.

Is the rapport reliable, or did the students who entered the online test, take the test knowing that they should put social networking in a positive daylight?

Michael Wesch of the Kansas State University made a short movie about the most important characteristics of the 20th century student. The film starts with a quote of Marshall McLuhan from 1967. If you watch this film it will give you a far more interesting view into the heads of students.

Wednesday

You can’t handle a bigger logo!

Virals are no longer just commercials for companies. Nowadays anyone can create a viral (short movie) to make a statement or just to open up a discussion about something. With the coming of uploading and watching online video-content comes the possibility to visualise your ideas to other people.

Marketingfacts has a weekly poll where they search for the top ten virals of the week. This week a funny voice-over made it to third place. The viral tells us something about branding and the importance of ads. The movie which has been modified is: A few good men. I am not very likely to be intrigued by a voice-over with a serious undertone, but this one deserves to be highlighted. (Pay attention to the accuracy in the voice of Jack Nicholson)

Thursday

Wie O What?

There is a new search engine called wieowie.nl. It is a website which searches through websites such as google, youtube and Hyves for the name you enter. If you want to know where a specific person has an account, you can fill in the name of that person and you will find results from major community websites.

I thought: Well this is interesting, let's do some usability testing.
I wanted to try it out with Rita Verdonk. I set out to eventually find the explanation for the name of her new political organisation. For some particular reason she called her new organisation “Trots” (proud), so I wanted to see if I could find other information next to personal information about this subject.

I typed in her name and got lots of results. On the image you can see that she has got Hyves and that there are lots of tags which are attached to her name.



In the end I could not find a good link to a website, so for searching other information then personal information I would always use Google. Unless you are looking for a specific person, wieowie is not very functional for finding information on the web. When trying to locate an old friend wieowie is the perfect outcome.

Tuesday

The Level of HBO Education

Two weeks ago field research was done on HBO students and teachers, to establish the level of education. The enquirers wanted to know if the level of education being taught was at a high enough standard to proceed on with being a HBO education.

As a senior year student this cannot affect the level of my diploma, but nevertheless I started to think about how this can affect my chances on the market. It is no icebreaker to solicit at a company, saying you graduated at a school which is dropped from an HBO to a MBO level.

I started to do some research on the Web, to see if there are more schools with similar problems. On Molblog.nl I saw a post on how many HBO educations cannot cope with the speed of developments in the Multimedia world.

According to some teachers it is difficult to teach students about the new developments. When a development submerges, there is no telling if this development is going to last, or if it will fail. It is very hard to give an exam about a development, which has not yet proven to be successful. The only thing teachers can do is discuss these new developments in an objective way, so you can judge for yourself whether the development will be successful or not.

The post on Molblog.nl led to quite a discussion about the way that a HBO student should work. Some say that the education gives you a basis from which you are accepted to watch out for new developments and learn about them yourself. Others believe that there are flaws in the education, preventing the students from developing to an HBO level.

I for one believe that the education does give you a good basis. They teach you to do a lot of research and watch the market for any new developments. Although it happens, that a student has to explain something to a teacher, we must not forget that an HBO education is all about self-reliance and learning to deal with the problems you encounter.

Dove Against Fake Beaty.

Making a product or brand successful is not following the competition, but being unique and choosing your own path. A brand that does this very well is Dove. In 2004 Dove started a campaign called: Campaign for real beauty. In this campaign they try to reset the image of what the industry believes us to be beautiful and focus on the bigger group of people who do not fit in to that category.

Dove makes a clear statement towards these people. Do not try to change, because you are already beautiful in your own way. This is a daring thing to do, living in a world of plastic surgery and a longing to be as beautiful as the people in the ads. Dove try’s to tell people that the image set by the beauty industry is a fake one.

The commercial where they show how an average model turns in to a supermodel by make up and Photoshop has done well and has opened a discussion about true beauty. Media is a very strong and convincing way to get people to listen to you. It is a shame that these ads still assure great sales numbers, when there are many girls getting low self esteem often followed by anorexia or even plastic surgery by watching these commercials

The question of course still is; Do we want to see beautiful women in commercials. Men will often say yes, but men are not the target group of these commercials. Women are and where some women idolise them, many women get low self esteem and will buy the products just to make them feel better.

The latest commercial Dove has made features a young girl and the changes the industry can make to her when she grows up. The slogan is: Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.