First Wikipedia Edit for Forever 21

I added just one sentence to the Forever 21 Wikipedia article. It lists Forever 21, Forever XXI, and For Love 21 as other store names of the Forever 21 chain. I worked there over break and I remember when I was filling out the application there were more names than that at the top of the sheet for other Forever 21 stores in the chain. I looked it up on a job opportunity site for Forever 21 and found that Heritage 1981 and Gadzooks are two other stores in the chain. So I added this to the article, "Heritage 1981 and Gadzooks are also parts of the Forever 21 chain." Not a huge contribution to the article, but I am sure people might find this interesting. There is a Gadzooks in the Christiana Mall right near us and some people might wonder if it is owned by the same company because the clothes and accessories look like Forever 21 things. Now they can go to Wikipedia and look at the Forever 21 article and find out for themselves!

Slashdot Article Comment

As soon as I read the title, Internet Curfew for College Students? ,I knew I wanted to comment on that. Just the title is ridiculous. The article talks about a prestigious Indian engineering school, IIT Bombay, which decided to block students living in the dorm from Internet access at night. They said that the Internet is hurting their "academic performance, personality development, and extra curricular activities." They feel that if students do not have access to the Internet at night they can use that time to study, socialize in person with others, and join in on extra curricular activities. Also the real reason may be that the Internet is being used by students more for gaming and talking online and not for research like it is intended to be used for.

I just cannot believe this. An Internet curfew for students is just silly to me. I could not imagine if the Internet was disconnected at night. I do not think this is right. For one thing I sometimes do things last minute because I have a busy schedule. If I had to research something online to write a paper or something that was due the next day I would hate it if I had to finish it by a certain time at night. I would feel too pressured by the time limit and would be nervous that my Internet would turn off as I am in the middle of my paper. Also many people do use the Internet to socialize and talk to people through instant messenger. Sometimes conversations go so well that they continue late and night and it would be a shame if the Internet shut down in the middle of it. Another thing is that the Internet makes it possible for people around the world to connect and communicate. There are different time zones everywhere and what if a student's family members lived somewhere where talking online at 2am was convenient for them. That is not fair and you could say they could call them but the Internet is way cheaper than telephone calls. Additionally if they want students to interact in person and not at their computers why not disconnect their phone usage. That is still not in person and you could spend all night talking on the phone, so why not disconnect that too?

I could go on forever with more reasons why this is ridiculous. If you have technology available you should not limit its use. These students are smart which is proven by the fact that they have gone through an extremely competitive process in order to attend this school. They are also smart enough to budget their time wisely. They probably are doing so much work during the day that they deserve to have some fun at night. Cutting off the Internet to them does not seem like a fair or reasonable solution at all to me. Finally, during the day the students will probably play games and talk online instead of doing work because they were not able to do this at night. This may be because when things are taken away from people they tend to go overboard with them when they get a hold of them again, kind of like the same effect prohibition had on people. So overall I think this is a horrible idea!

Comment on Andrea's Blog

So I was reading Andrea's blog and the article on Subliminal Advertising caught my eye. I also have taken other courses here in which we discussed subliminal advertising. The whole idea of it seems to be very dishonest and manipulative. I agree with Andrea in that people want to be in control of their own lives and an advertising technique like this would probably only appear to be a good idea to the companies using it and not to the prospective consumers. I do not know of anyone who would appreciate someone secretly sending information to their brain that they are not aware of and that may affect decisions they make.

While many people have done studies and researched this technique, some proved it to be effective and others proved it to be only a little effective or not effective at all. The example I learned in my Buyer Behavior class is that let's say you were really thirsty for some soda. You like Coke and Pepsi equally and do not have a preference for one or the other. If there was a Coke vending machine right next to a Pepsi vending machine and each was the same price then subliminal advertising might work. If you had been exposed to subliminal advertising urging you to buy and drink Coke then you probably would choose Coke in this situation. If this is true and that is the most effective subliminal advertising can be than I would not really have a problem with this technique. In this case it would only be an issue for the two competing companies, not us the consumers because they have something to gain or lose but we did not care if we were drinking Coke or Pepsi because they were equally good decisions for us. So great article, Andrea, I enjoyed elaborating on it!

VALS Survey

I just took the VALS online survey. The results were that I am a striver/experiencer. These types were described with words such as trendy, fun loving, young, enthusiastic. Some of these are true, but then it also said that I spent too much time and spend all my money on shopping, which is totally not true. It also says that I lack skills and focus to get ahead which I also do not think is true. I never really believed surveys like this. I look at them as being like reading horoscopes. They put some stuff in there for each type that could characterize any personality. This survey was very easy to take. Just a few clicks of a mouse and it was done, but like we mentioned in class it has some set backs to the paper type. With the paper type I could have asked the proctor to clarify some questions which may have helped me to not be evaluated incorrectly. On the other hand, the online type is very quick and easy and also cheap. I probably would not have taken that survey if I had to go to some place to take it, but it was convenient to take on my own computer. I have also taken surveys for classes through Survey Monkey which I would have never done if I had to take them in person because that is just not convenient. So, in my opinion, online surveys are very good and useful innovations in technology.

1st Wikipedia Edit for Villa Maria Academy

I wanted to add my own Wikipedia article for Villa Maria Academy since one did not exist already. I went to high school there and thought it would be a good idea to create my own article for it. It was just as easy to create a whole new article as it is to edit a previous one. I started the article small and put general information on it so I am able to edit it later. I started by saying, "Villa Maria Academy is an all-girls Catholic college preparatory high school located in Malvern, Pennsylvania. The school was formed and carried out by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Growth and development is key to this institution whether it be spiritually or intellectually." Then I just listed some aspects of the school like music and athletics and things like that. Then i just added some more brief information saying, "Villa Maria's 44 acre campus includes two academic buildings and another building with the gymnasium and a connected auditorium. It specifically can be found at l370 Old Lincoln Highway Malvern, PA 19355. Contact Information phone number: 610-644-2551." I also added a link to Malvern's Wikipedia article. Then i added an external link to the official website and a website with the directions.


[edit] External Links
Official Website

1st Wikipedia Edit for Fuze

I just edited the Wikipedia article for Fuze beverages. This article does not contain much information and does not get updated frequently. There is a new line of drinks called Vitalize so I added that plus the ingredients of Vitamin A, C, and E and the links to the Wikipedia articles for the vitamins. I also saw that they list the website as www.fuzebev.com but when I searched Fuze on Google I was directed to the website called www.drinkfuze.com which actually is the same site. I just added that website link and said that it was another name for the official website so people did not get confused. You can follow this link to the full article.

Engagement/Free Marketing example

As suggested by Professor Brown I researched engagement marketing to try to find examples. I had a small idea of what it actually was and I found that it is basically a new form of marketing in which you get the consumers involved. It is more of a two-way system instead of the traditional one-way method. Companies utilize techniques to encourage the consumer to contribute and form a community of interested consumers in things like company blogs and chat rooms. I found a very interesting website related to this which shows a negative side of free marketing or engagement marketing for consumers. The website is called Blogsvertise. This website pays bloggers to positively talk about products and services of participating websites. Simply mentioning the product in your blog can earn you money through pay pal because it give them publicity and exposure from the "consumer" who people look more favorably to when considering purchasing a product. This seems very wrong to me. This idea basically is to manipulate the public's attitudes. Whether the blogger likes the product or not they talk highly about it. I think this is actually quite unethical. Consumers usually trust the other consumers more than the companies selling the product because the consider other consumers to be honest. This site makes me think that almost no opinions can be trusted anymore because they may be speaking on behalf of the company or website in their favor. They realize that word of mouth Marketing and two-way Marketing are more effective, but they are taking it too far and taking advantage of that which I think is very deceitful.

ClickZ article comment

I was looking through bloglines and I went to ClickZ Network's site. I came across an article by Dorian Sweet called Is User-Generated Video Poised to Flame Out?. I read this one because it talked about YouTube which has been mentioned in class a couple times. He firsts begins by talking about how YouTube is now going to pay people for the number of views that their videos get. Sweet is very cynical and does not believe that paying the people would make it better because there is still a greedy major force who is making a huge majority of the money. He uses a great analogy describing his thoughts saying "I never knew an art gallery to go big time unless its artists became hyper-famous."

He then goes into talking about how he thinks that some videos on YouTube may not actually be user-generated but may be made by the competitors. He uses the example of how he found a video bashing PlayStation3. This may have been from a competitor as a type of online marketing and not created by a user. Sweet makes sure to mention that this type of medium can be very useful and successful like Craigslist.org. He thinks that the YouTube trend may die down a little bit showing that having users be the marketing tool may not be the best idea. Sweet ends by warning online advertisers to be cautious and use their gut instinct when dealing with personal media.

I thought this was a very interesting article and I agree with him and I don't think it is fair that the owner's of YouTube are making money off of everyone contributing to their site. Compensating them for their videos seems like it will work as long as they follow through with that announcement. I also agree with how some videos may have been planted on the Internet by competitors as a form of advertising so I think it is important to not always believe what you see when you're not exactly who the source of something is.