Blogs I Love

One of my favorite Blogs has to be TheYBF.com (which stands for Young Black and Fabulous), a site that covers black celebrity news. Besides the fact that I love reading up on the "tea" of celeb gossip, I also love to follow this site because I began working with the creator early on in my career, just as she began her site and to see how far the brand has grown is amazing.
If I had one critique about the site, it would have to be the expanding ads withing the content. It's often flagged by my computer as spam and interrupts my browsing.
Otherwise, I love the site, it's content and layout.

Semester One

It's pretty hard to believe that I am almost finished with my very first semester of grad school and as I work on completing my final paper of the semester, I am intrigued to look back and realize how much as a communications professional we in every day life we take for granted some of the often overlooked aspects of communications.

From the skyscraper model to the understanding of digital convergence, my Introduction to Digital Communications course has left me yearning for more, eager to learn more and anticipating the endless possibilities of integrating these practices into my professional life.

The New Age of Advertisement

So one of the assignments for my most recent class involved researching advertisements and I came across what may have been the most genius ad campaign that I have seen to date.

Coke Zero partnered with Spotify to create this amazing interactive campaign that allowed consumers to not only interact with various types of ads, but also benefit from it and obtain free product. I could probably go on-and-on about how great this ad campaign was but the video speaks for itself!

Check it out here:

Internet Governance

There are in many ways that internet governance can be good and bad. In my class readings the material delved into the world of government regulation and it made me think a bit further to two examples of internet governance.

First is the governing of the internet by communist countries, which brought me to think about the idea of the digital gap. The inability of individuals to view the openness of the world wide web and broad ideas shared on the internet, simply puts individuals in those countries with strict and government regulated internet access on the cusp of the digital gap. Although they are not as left out as those who do not have access at all, they are missing the many opportunities to explore all the web has to offer.

Secondly, which hit closer to home is the idea of fantasy sports being regulated state by state here in the United States. As s player of fantasy sports I find it frustrating that government would take away my opportunity to partake in online fantasy sports.

What do you think about internet governance?

The future of Digital Journalism

In an ever evolving digital world it seems only logical that journalism, which is defined on google search as "the work and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society" would too become digital.

As society continues to rely more and more on the ease of digital mediums, my ultimate hope is that digital journalism, would no longer be looked at as less credible, but as a more reliable source. But, that is not without some necessary improvements including better vetting processes, or ways to better determine what is actual news, gossip, satire and fiction.

Big Data...

I have recently enlisted a client to do a large joint email campaign with a company, and as the company was telling me the requirements for participating I realized... Ahh haa! Data mining is what the infamous opt-in lists are!

The more emails a company has of customers the more valuable those lists become and as my partner organization explained to us that they would only work with lists the same size or better than their 300,000 member list I was flabbergasted.

These emails are important to businesses because it's a way to continuously keep in contact with your consumers while also tracking engagement with the brand, and continuity based on those who continue to opt-in and those who choose to remove themselves from the lists.

Private or not...

How private is really private on the internet?

In today's digital world we are now faced with the question of what is private when it comes to the internet and how much should we really share.
As the popularity of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram continue to grow more and more of our lives live online, but when you put your privacy settings do they really work?

When I first joined social media, I never second guessed what I put up and always thought when I deleted something it was gone, but now I knew I was wrong.

The internet is like a never ending diary, keeping all of your secrets somewhat private, but if someone wanted to find it with the right tool, and knowledge they surely could.

Digital Language

I recently watched this interesting video which discussed the status of language in a digital world, and the discussion made me realize how much in my own life I often opt for the new norm or text language rather than spell something out.

I used to be so against all of the abbreviated words like HBD (Happy Birthday Day) and BRB (Be Right Back, but absolutely loved LOL. (Crazy right?)

But now I catch myself in texts and emails to friends using LOL, WYD, IMU and more.



Whoa, how things have changed...

Are You Social or Not...

This past week in my Intro to Digital Communications class everyone presented a snapshot of social media platforms and it really got me thinking about just how much of our lives revolve around the idea of being "social" in the digital realm, so much so that it has become the norm to even obtain an advanced educational degree without stepping foot in a traditional classroom.

As I prepared for my presentation I initially selected Blackplanet because I was interested to do some research and find out how far it had come since it's first inception and popularity in the early 2000's. But after looking at Solis' Conversation Prism I became even more intrigued by TED, which was listed under the adapting video section.

 Now I'll be honest I'm obsessed with TED Talks, especially anything about feminism, women's empowerment, women in business, entertainment or African American issues including social justices, but how was it a social media platform? So I did my research and wow was I amazed to learn that from it''s humble beginnings as a conference for thought makers to this international platform for social innovation and the dissemination of ideas and discussions, I came to see that TED, was indeed a social media platform, utilizing other platforms to disseminated it's message along the way.

How Genius!!!

Here are two of my favorite TED Talks:

The Digital Age

It's so crazy to think that in my lifetime we have gone from internet really being a novelty to it now being an integral part or my day-to-day life.

My earliest memories of learning how to do book reports and projects always started with picking a topic and sitting down to look through an encyclopedia, combing through the many pages of the many books to figure out academic information to present. When I started middle school it became a big deal that the school had received a grant to put internet all throughout the building and also purchased new Apple computers in the classrooms and fully upgraded the computer lab.

Between the fifth and eight grade the computer and internet became my norm, at home and at school. At school we became more immersed in the interactive world playing Oregon Trail, learning to type proficiently and how to search the internet. As I grew older and more mature, so did the internet, becoming this bigger and better entity. By high school I couldn't imagine a world without cell phone, computer to check my new AOL email address and my leisure walk to the virtue game life with the SIMS. even my research evolved as I slowly stopped using the print encyclopedias and moved on the the also static but digital CD-Rom version.

Looking back at my evolution through the internet, I realized the big difference between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, the strides which have been a made and the growth possibilities of a digital age.

New Chapter-- New Year -- Not the Same ME!

Wowsers, it's really been a long time since I've blogged and now as it's a part of my newest endeavor I will surely be blogging a bit more (or at least once a week for the next 11 weeks).

A bit of a reintroduction-- (Yes all over)

I'm still a 20-something Brooklyn-Girl, back living in New York City, still working as a publicist (sports, non-profit and hospitality) but now a student at the Syracuse University's Communications @ Newhouse graduate program.

Over the next few weeks I will blog about my experiences as a graduate student as it pertains to my Introduction to Digital Communication class.

Fresh off the first class I have to be honest, my nerves haven't eased up as I've been out of school for almost over seven years- but my first experience as a grad school student wasn't as bad as I thought.

We began the discussion about digital convergence and as I write this post I chuckled knowing that it is because of digital convergence that I will be able to share this with so many people and they can all read it with ease, at their own leisure.

Tune in next week to hear more about my journey and learn more about the wide world of digital communications.

Till next time...

Ayana
The Brooklyn Girl