Rottentomatoes.com, for people who have opinions on movies.

The website RottenTomatoes.com has arguably become the Internet’s best way to decide whether a movie is good or not. Moderators pull movie reviews from newspapers from around the country and post them on the site. From there a consensus is determined as to whether a movie is Rotten (bad), which means the movie received 60 percent or less negative reviews or Fresh (good), which means 75 percent or better positive reviews. There are 40 critics that are designated “top critics” because of their frequency and quality of reviews. These are the critics that appear on the front page of each movie’s page when it is searched for.

Rottentomatoes.com has really become the movie-buff’s dream site. On one site there are trailers, photos, synopsis’, interviews, and forum and of course tons of movie reviews. But the site has gone even further. It has become interactive. There is now an entire social networking aspect to the site.

It is called “The Vine.” On this FREE network (I signed up, it took 30 seconds) users are given a Journal and ability to make “friends.” There are many more forums here than in the Forum section on the site and reviews from other user’s journals. The journals are primarily used for personal reviews of particular movies. At “The Vine” there are also groups created for users how have similar tastes in movies or actors.

I was really impressed with the usability of the site and the relaxed atmosphere. It really felt like it was designed for the average movie-goer who cared about what they are about to see. “The Vine” was created for the more serious film enthusiasts who really want to find a group of like-minded individuals. RT does a great job of creating an environment that is interactive and simple.

Rottentomatoes.com recently celebrated it’s ten year anniversary and created a satirical video about how the site’s creators view the site.

Is Twitter messing with your emotions?

A recent study by neuroscientists led by Antonio Damasio from the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California believes that Twitter and other immediate response social networking tools suggest that these tools are better suited for some mental processes and worse for others.

One of the study’s authors, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, explains that for moral decision-making concerning other people more time is needed to contemplate and think through situations. Admiration and compassion take much more time for the brain to process than the split seconds it takes to recognize pain in others. The age group that was most effected by tests in the study were adolescents.

The conclusions of the study were applied to the media. Viewers are constantly having tons of information thrown at them all at once through television, online news feeds and now Twitter and Facebook. This overload of information is not allowing people, especially adolescents, to have adequate time to feel compassion or admiration for others because the next piece of information is being thrown at them before they can process the information. This, in turn effects people’s morals.

Social experiences in the real world shape morals and values. When things are happening in real time, not digital time, there is more time for reflection and morals and values are formed. In a fast-paced digital environment there is no time for reflection.

Social media is not to blame for these issues, as in most things, it is not the tool that is the problem, it is how the tool is used. If social media tools are used in moderation there will be far less skewing of emotions than those who use excessively.

XBRL: Making meaning out of financial reports

After watching the XBRL in Plain English video I realized how static finance is if users are on different platforms. What is a financial report if the numbers do not have easy to find and understand meaning? The fact that many of the world’s accounting firms use different platforms to interpret data and analyze companies scares me. How can information be shared?

With XBRL more regulation from the Securities and Exchange Committee seems to be possible. Financial reports will be more informative and give a better picture of what is actually going on with a company or industry. The more information on a company that can be traced back to actual data, and not just the numbers on financial statements, the more realistic a company’s future is. With those facts in mind, stock brokers can make accurate projections on what stocks will perform well and be able to put more value on successful companies. The rise in stock prices will increase the value of the companies. This will improve the overall economy because companies will have more working capital at their disposal. Before you know it the economy could be booming again because XBRL was used to make financial information more accessible to all.

In this time of economic depression, that is the fault of greedy financial institutions, it is so important to have transparency and facts to prove all things financial in ways that can be understood by everyday citizens. The everyday citizen is the person being effected by the economic depression, not the high-paid CEO’s who created the problem.

Baby boomers and social networks, a love story.

Baby boomers, or post WWII babies, have apparently discovered social networking and many other online applications, according to a recent survey by Accenture. As reported by Junko Yushida in a EETIMES.com article,  the management consulting firm reported that  there has been a 67 percent increase in baby boomers reading blogs and podcasts and an increase of 59 percent in the use of social networking sites. Clearly these statistics show that a small amount of people were originally involved with these things and all of a sudden the number increased, which still shows that baby boomers are a fast growing contingent in the use of social media. The study claims that the reasons for the increase in use are staying up-to-date and remaining connected to family.

An article in USA Today by Marco R. della Cava quotes various baby boomers’ reasons for using social networks and other social media. One gentleman used social networks as a means of recovering his lost communication abilities because a stroke inhibited his ability to speak. Other common reasons included sharing unique interests (Nascar, BBQ, moms raising teens) with a wider audience than would be possible without social networking. Of course the most common reason for anyone to join a social network is to reconnect with old friends.

The older one gets, the more old friends one accumulates, social networking is the idea way to continue those friendships.

Social networking via wireless handheld devices (cellphones)

Social networking has become an addiction that has taken hold of the generation that grew up with the Internet. Posting pictures, videos and information about ourselves has become second nature, rarely do we question this everyday fact of life. It is natural for the trend to travel to the most common instrument of technology: the cellphone. You cannot leave home without it for fear of not being connected with the world. The major cellphone carriers now offered ways to keeps people even more connected! Applications for social networks!

Blackberry offers apps for Facebook, flickr, myspace.

iPhone offers 157 applications in the Social Networking category for application. The most Popular are Facebook, IM+ for Skype, eBuddy Lite Messenger.

Verizon wireless offers 16 applications in the Community and Sharing section of the products available for phones. The most popular applications are designed to share photos.

These applications have been modified to fit the smaller screens but still function in the exact same manner as on computers.

Here is an interview with a programmer that aggregates social networks on cell phones at CES 2009.

IBM blogging, guidelines and such.

The articleby Justin Allen, “IBM’s blogging policy increases engagement” was delivered to me by my subscription to Ragan Headlines! Thanks Ragan!

This article was particularly interesting because IBM is an enormous technology company, having been one of the original computer companies it has expanded into every aspect of the Internet and computer technology. As such a huge company it is very difficult for employees to communicate with each other and their bosses because of the structure of the company and the multitudes of offices around the world.

Ethan McCarty, the editor in chief of IBM’s intranet wanted to hear more from employees so he set up a wiki with the employees that he already know blogged and asked them to help set up guidelines for blogging. The employees obliged and a set of guidelines was created and sent to employees in every sector of the company so they could have the opportunity to blog. It worked. Using these guidelines the company has started conversations throughout the company that have been productive.

1. Blogs, wikis and other forms of online discourse are individual interactions, not corporate communications.

2. Identify yourself

3. If you publish a blog or post to a blog outside of IBM

4. Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.

5. Don’t provide IBM’s or another’s confidential or other proprietary information.

6. Don’t cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval.

7. Respect your audience.

8. Find out who else is blogging on the topic and cite them.

9. Don’t pick fights,

10. Try to add value.

IBM bloggers are all available in the IBM blog directory for reading within the organization and for the public.

In this video, Ethan McCarty further discusses IBM’s blogging policy and how it has benefited the company.

Have you BBM’d today?

The phenomenon of having instant messaging specifically designed for the Blackberry platform has taken cellphone interactivity to the next level. Blackberry BBMs are conversations in Realtime.

Urban Dictionary defines BBM as “Black berry messenger (noun)
To black berry message (verb) can be used “to bbm”
An instant messaging application on blackberries where you can see if the message has been delivered, when it was delivered and if the person has read it.

The example of how a BBM is used in conversation is:

Alissa: Hey I bbmed you yesterday and you never answered!
Me: Oh, I never got your bbms.
Alissa: Yes you did! Don’t lie, I saw on our conversation that you received them.
Me: Darn, I wish I didn’t open that bbm!

Blackberry users can connect with other Blackberries by exchanging pin numbers. The network is different from the traditional network used by text messages.

The BBM is the evolution of the text message. The text message was the evolution of the instant message. The instant message was the evolution of the email. The question becomes, what is next? As technology allows more interactivity it is fun to wonder what can possibly evolve from instantaneous conversation.

Banks get interactive

Now that the economy has officially tanked, with much blame placed on the banking sector, banks are beginning to rebuild. They are doing so by rebuilding the relationships that were destroyed with the failure of the subprime mortgages. The loss of houses and real estate has put banks in a very bad position. So what are they going to do?

Banks are beginning to use the easiest and most effective tools to date to create interactive relationships with customers. Social Media!

Banks in the Asian Pacific have begun a three-step plan to entire more young people to use these new, forward-thinking banks, according to the article “APAC banks tap new tech for Gen Y” in ZD Net Asia. A study by IDC’s Financial Insights saw that there will be much more focus on online and mobile banking that will include aspects of social networking, blogs and podcasts.

ING Direct has created an entire social network for first time home buyers, which will presumably be used by the younger generation that actively participates in social networks. The site is set up around forums and advice columns. This is all reported in the article, “Banks target social networks like Facebook.“

Micheal Aranta, a senior manager at Financial Insights Asia-Pacific stated how the banking industry must think to gain the trust of the younger generations: “Ultimately, banks should realize that the battle for the Gen Y segment can be won, not by simply building on top of traditional strategies, but by using innovation to respond to preferences that make the Generation Y unique from older generations.”

Those preferences can be summed up in one word: interactivity.

Searchles.com= Social bookmarking+social networking

Searchles.com is a community database containing topical popular articles that are commented on by subscribers. The selling point of the community is the comment tracker. Users can search in a variety of categories and see what the most popular news articles are and how many people have commented. Users can also create groups and post articles for group members to comment on. The idea is to engage in discussion about the topics.

According to PR Newswire in the article “Social Search vs. Social Networking — Searchles(R) Bridges the Gap; New Features Enable Users to Strengthen Their Connections With Others Based on Common or Conflicting Interests” Searchles has several characteristics that differentiate it from traditional social networking sites: ability to find friends based on comments, reject friends based on comments and keep up to date on what friends are commenting on as well as their comments. All of this is creating a community that is based on opinions and events that matter unlike FaceBook and MySpace.

This site came to my attention through an article on msnbc.com. The article was touting a new feature that Searchles recently added. A key word cloud was added to highlight which key words were receiving the most attention.

For the type of site that promotes discussion, a tag cloud is the ideal way to attract users to popular articles. I am a little surprised it took so long to recognize how useful a key word cloud would be. Having words in bold and larger based on popularity will surely encite curiousity, promoting interest and discussion.

Obama’s Web Guy, Macon Phillips

Macon Phillips was recently interviewed in The Chicago Tribune about his role in the Obama administration. His official title is Media Director, a position that was recently  created by a president who used social media very effectively to communicate his way into the Oval Office. As could be expected, Obama has continued his trend of using social media to his advantage. Macon Phillips is the man behind this advantage.

Mr. Phillips has no government experience, he worked for a political consultant group that specialized in new communication media. What he lacks in government experience he makes up for in technological know-how. He understands that through the Internet the government can become more transparent than previous administrations thought possible. This is outlined in his first post on the Whitehouse.gov blog. He breaks the new administration’s expectations down into three categories: transparency, communication, participation.

Participation is the most relevant category to this blog. Mr. Phillips states in his blog that “One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.” This is an unprecedented luxury for citizens of the United States. Citizens can voice their opinions directly to the government. No middlemen, no politicians, no writing letters. Social media is finally going to give the government an accurate view of what the people want. Obama has made a change, he has become interactive with the people that elected him.

All of this because Macon Phillips understands the power of social media.