Posted By: Jared Cook

Here is an article written by Galia Myron on Demodirt.com featuring Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing about television viewing becoming more individualistic.

Not Suitable for Family Viewing

Television viewing is becoming more individualistic, no more family viewing.

The days of the family gathering around the telly to take in an evening show after dinner are over, says a Swedish study that examined society’s ever-changing relationship with television. While trendwatchers have long reported that people are becoming more independent, “We are becoming more and more individualistic also in our choice of TV programs,” researcher Jakob Bjur wrote in a new dissertation from University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

“In 1999 social viewing, watching together, accounted for 45 percent, and in 2008 it was down to 37 percent. We are becoming more and more individualistic also in our TV choices, and I’m convinced that this trend will continue. We can no longer speak of TV as a social adhesive, a unifying force,” Bjur said publicly, adding that television is now a source of social fragmentation. There are other avenues for social interaction, he added, including the Internet.

(Read more)

Posted by: Jared Cook

I want to share a article from Allbusiness.com written by Barbara Goldberg, featuring Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing. The article focuses on the Susan G. Komen Facebook page and their recent viral public relations campaign.

A Little Viral Campaign Gets a Big Response

What good could possibly come of revealing to the world the color of your undergarments? Apparently, quite a lot.

Just 24 hours after a viral campaign tied to breast cancer awareness exploded on Facebook two weeks ago, more than 2,000 new fans — 10 times the usual number in that time period– joined the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Facebook page. It started when women around the world forwarded this e-mail to their friends:
“Some fun is going on . . . just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls, no men . . . It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status . . . Pass it on & do your breast self-exams!”

The viral campaign raised disease awareness by raising the curiosity of a few good men, sparking news coverage by ABCNews.com, the Associated Press, Good Morning America, and other major outlets. And it’s continued to grow.

(Read more)

Posted by; Xavier Loya

I would like to share some valuable online tips from Mashable staff writer Samuel Axom regarding the placement of closed captions on YouTube videos. In his tutorial he runs down the easy steps of applying captions to user videos, making the process almost “an absolute breeze.”

How to: add captions to your YouTube videos

YouTube has a global audience, so if you want to reach as many people as possible, you’ll have to make sure subtitles are available for your videos. You’ll want closed captioning to reach the deaf and hard of hearing, too. Thankfully, that process has shifted from relatively easy to an absolute breeze in recent months. Here’s how to make it happen.

Once you’ve uploaded a video to your YouTube (YouTube) account, you have two options for generating subtitles for the video: You can use the CaptionTube web app that Google (Google) has created, or you can upload a transcript you make yourself and use Google’s speech recognition technology to automatically assign the right times to each caption. In either case, you’ll end up with a text file that you can edit to make corrections if need be, and viewers will be able to either read the captions in their native language or translate them on the fly when watching your video.

CaptionTube

First, direct your browser to the CaptionTube website and you’ll find a well-realized web application for importing videos, adding and timing captions for them, and exporting the captions however you want them. You’ll have to sign in with your Google account. After you’ve done that, you’ll have two options for importing a video; you can either import a list of all the videos on your account, or you can specify the web address for a public video

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Posted By: Michelle Camber

Here is a list created by Lake Superior State University of the words banished for 2010 due to misuse, over use or general uselessness.

Lake Superior State University 2010 List of Banished Words

Word “czars” at Lake Superior State University “unfriended” 15 words and phrases and declared them “shovel-ready” for inclusion on the university’s 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

“The list this year is a ‘teachable moment’ conducted free of ‘tweets,’” said a Word Banishment spokesman who was “chillaxin’” for the holidays. “‘In these economic times’, purging our language of ‘toxic assets’ is a ‘stimulus’ effort that’s ‘too big to fail.’”

Former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and friends created “word banishment” in 1975 at a New Year’s Eve party and released the first list on New Year’s Day. Since then, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which includes words and phrases from marketing, media, education, technology and more.

Word-watchers may check the alphabetical “complete list” on the website before making their submissions.

For the 2010 list, read on: