My night with Strombo.

Social media works.

I was at school this past Saturday night when, in a moment of procrastination, I logged onto Facebook to see what was up and happening that night whilst I slaved away at an ad campaign. This caught my attention:

Hmmm. I decided to investigate this claim by going over to Twitter to see if anyone could confirm this.

It was then I saw this tweet from none other than George Stroumboulopoulos himself:

The rumours must have been true considering that place looked awfully like the King's Head Pub. I felt as though I needed to offer Strombo some sound advice about the pub:

Minutes later, I received one new tweet:

Huzzah, an @mention from Strombo himself. I felt blessed and burdened. Burdened by the question he posed me. Unsure of myself, I posted the question as my status on Facebook. Within seconds I received 14 responses. Here are some of my personal favorites:





Using my better judgement I decided to reply with this:

Playing it cool, I decided to leave it at that and return to my campaign. After getting nothing accomplished, I felt faint and parched. The cure? A beer at the King's Head. While I was there, I might as well peek around to see if George did in fact take my advice, right?

I strode over a street and entered the overflowing King's Head. Surely this wasn't because of George. Alas, it wasn't. Some band was playing. Anyways, I went up to the bar, purchased a beer, and poked my head around the corner. Strombo and friends. Wait, what? Those are my friends! As I stood, dumbfounded by this coincidence, Esther, Jamie and Liz waved me over to sit. Uh, yes.

"Hey man, are you Mike Choi?" is the first thing he said to me. I watch Strombo Tonight and listen to his radio show whenever I get the chance, so it didn't surprise me that he knew my name without me having told him. A telltale sign of a prepared and professional interviewer: knowing everything about the person you're about to talk to. Turns out they had just returned from an adventure in Churchill, and had one night to kill in Winnipeg before returning home to do the show Sunday.

We chatted about how Twitter was a great communication tool, and the effectiveness of social media in general. He then offered insights to professional relationships and how keeping a positive and cooperative attitude in any work place benefits you in the long run. He also told me that he had touched some polar bears.

I then had an opportunity to speak with Darby Wheeler, producer and video journalist extraordinaire. He was very warm and amiable as well, telling me about his career experiences and offering some great advice. I also learned that he recently broke his tailbone from an incident with his bike which led to him having to sit on a donut at a friend's wedding.

From Twitter mention to having a beer, this story proves that social media works.

Cheers boys!

George Stroumboulopoulos:

Twitter

Website

Darby Wheeler:

Twitter

YouTube

UPDATE: He read my blog

Big Brother is watching YOU

You are safe from no one.

(Compliments of PostSecret)

You know how you've been trying to get people to stop tagging you in pictures? Especially the ones of you passed out in an oversized birdcage with the remnants of a bacon cheeseburger on your face which you don't remember eating, but must have or else how did it get there...? (Oh God, I'm a vegetarian! How did it get there?!)

More and more people are setting their Facebook accounts to 'private' so that only people they accept as friends can see their pictures from the weekend. On one of the first days of Creative Communications, they told us from the get-go to not post anything on the internet that we wouldn't want any future employers to see.

This makes "creeping" people on Facebook so much harder. ("Creeping" is a term used to describe going on Facebook and looking up a cute girl you met at a party and spending hours going through her pictures)

Now my Facebook profile is set on private, under a crafty internet moniker. (Try to find me now. Ha!)

But after reading that secret on Sunday, it illuminated the fact that others in your life may be using Facebook to creep YOU! The dentist asks you why you have a chipped tooth. You say because of hockey. He looks at you strangely because he doesn't believe you, because you look like you haven't played a single sport in your life. He goes home after work and searches you on Facebook. He finds your profile and goes through your pictures. He finds out that you actually lost your tooth by trying to make a save in hockey by catching it in between your teeth. He goes to the store to buy an apology card because he assumed falsely. You do, in fact, play hockey.

But the biggest point here is, should pictures of you having fun on the weekend, on your own time, really be a judge of character? Of course, if you're doing something completely inappropriate or unlawful, then yes. But should one's overindulgence from time to time be a determining factor of their worth ethic and capabilities? How important is professionalism in your private life?

Twitbook/Facetter

The biggest names of social media in the history in the entire world are "Facebook" and "Twitter". This is partly because Web 2.0 devices have only been around for a couple years but the number of users that are involved with them are increase exponentially.

Even though they are on the same medium, there are benefits that one has that the other does not.



Facebook has many more options and features than Twitter, but this also make it easier for messages and information someone wants to send, to get buried under all the clutter. People always complain about wasting time on Facebook and never getting work done, and I think this because you go on to update your status, or send a message to a friend, but you see a revealing picture of a girl you went to high school with, or you just remembered you need to harvest your crops in Farmville or Barn Buddy.

The focus of Facebook is to bring everyone together regardless of where in the world they are, and this is true, to some extent, but how effective is it really? It's not only a communication tool but also an arcade. It's a outlet for emotions and feelings through notes and rants. You can draw, you can take pictures and you can creep on people you don't know.

It is, effective in the PR world because it allows you to make yourself unique with what groups you join, what people and causes you support and what events you say you're going to or not going to. This pre-segregates the critical mass of Facebook users into smaller and smaller communities which, in turn, makes it easier for organizations to target specific groups.

Also, because Facebook has so many capabilities other than messaging, you can pile on as many extra features you think people you want to target would enjoy, giving them more of what they and making things more personal and customized for them.



If Facebook is the articles, crosswords and personals, Twitter is the front page. Now, we have to establish something first. Yeah sure, you follow 5628 people and almost as many follow you but you're doing more harm to yourself than good. You want a front page that is convenient and readable. You only want to see the things you want to see and will follow whatever interests you.

You have to weed out everyone who's tweets are just that. Tweets. You need to cut down your follow list to people and organizations that have a message and information in everything they post. You might feel bad not follow Timmy, but he'll get over it. If you do this, everything that appears on your feed will be relevant to your interests and if they tweeter is serious, their messages will be of value.

My sister an I had an argument about the effectiveness of Twitter. The thing I noticed is that the only people she mentioned was Ashton Kutcher, Perez Hilton and some other celebrity. This proved my point. Most people follow people because they're famous or their friends, and this isn't effective use. (Except Sarah Silverman, she's too funny)

Now, you might think it's not a powerful tool because of the 140 character limit. This is true in some cases, but in other cases, not. You can always link the follower to the Facebook page or somewhere else. The tweet is simply to get their attention so they go to the bigger thing. It's the headline, it's the lead, it's the melted peanut butter on the toast. Once you get them to click on the link, you've got them. They've already invested their time into that click, so there's a greater chance they'll at least read a bit of whatever you linked than just close the window right away. Sure, all the cool things you have to show aren't on Twitter, but it's easy enough to show them the way to get there.

If people who send messages and people who receive them use social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, use them properly, effectively and remove all unneeded clutter, their message can remain focused and be received as it should.

For everyone else, I hope your harvest in Farmville was better than last year's.

The FOO.

Last night, Oct. 30/09, the Foo Fighters played a live show from Studio 606 streaming live on Facebook.

IT WAS AWWWWWWESOME! CHICKA-YE-YE-CHICKA-POW-WOO!

I've loved 'the Foo' since I was a kid and they're one of the bands I have stuck by through and through. It's cool to have seen them progress through the years and go through all the musical changes. One thing that has remained constant is Dave Grohl's awesome power of rocking and being a great guy.

They've been around for 14 years or so now and they're finally releasing a greatest hits compilation on Nov. 3/09.



This was a GREAT move on the Foo's part and Facebook's! First off, everyone around the world got a free 2 1/2 hour concert from the comfort of their own home. I was in my kitchen in my underwear eating popcorn and rocking out. You just can't do that at the MTS Centre. They played songs from their entire repertoire which meant long time fans got to hear the oldies. The event was very intimate and unplanned so you got to hear a lot of funny banter from the band and that made it much more than a concert.

People could also update their Facebook statuses which would then show up onscreen for everyone who was watching could see. The band would also see this and be able to take requests and answer questions. The interaction between band and viewers made the experience that much better.

Seeing the band in a relaxed atmosphere, joking around with each other and the viewers, playing songs from their entire discography, and interacting with us while a thousand miles away shows people that their a great band and great people. Who wouldn't wanna buy a CD from someone that shows us that? On top of that, they also played a couple new songs!

It puts the band in a good light and makes us want to go buy the CD. And who knows, maybe someone came across it and was turned into a fan. Who knows!

You can watch it replay here:

PREPARE TO ROCK!



This is good on Facebook's part because they are offering users extra services and show they want to give people more than just the social networking. People will stick around with FB to see if they're going to put more events like these on and if they keep doing it, people will. While watching, I think I saw the amount of viewers peak at 20,000. One broadcast brought in 20,000 people in at once. This doesn't include the people that are just on FB chatting etc. FB is also playing the replay for people who missed it to catch it again. Or for people like me who are watching it again.

U2 played a live concert on YouTube not too long ago. The Foo are obviously borrowing that idea because it was so successful. But, I think online concerts to promote CD's or tours will become a lot popular in the near future! It's reach is worldwide and easily accessible.

I'm sorry, this post is all over the place. I keep going back to my other window to watch it. I think I'm just going to leave it here. You get the point though, right?

1) Foo Fighters promoting their new Greatest Hits album by providing free concert for everyone in the world to see. Awesome.
2) Performance is live and intimate. You don't only get to see the great music but the great personalities of Dave, Taylor, Chris and Nate.
3) Everything is low key and relaxed. it's not a big production. It's not that difficult to put it on.
4) FB gets props for providing this to everyone.
5) People will look forward for FB doing more.
6) People buy their new album and people go on FB more.
7) This paves the way for more things like this!

Anyways, off to go watch the rest of it. I suggest you do too! Let's see if events like these happen more!