Dr. Ralston has prepared a summary of today's headlines on social media. It is fully accessible via the web. Find a story you like and click on the link to read the entire story. Save time and catch up on the news.
The headline story for April 24th features Google+ . . . check it out along with other stories, photos, and videos.
| | Other feature stories include Earth Day, Social Media & Boston Marathon bombings, Google+, Managing the Social Media Mix, and UNESCO Director-General deplores continuing destruction of ancient Aleppo, a World Heritage site. |
The supposed Castle Island in Dublin, Ireland is an image that is often pinned and repinned on Pinterest. It is making the rounds again.
I find it disappointing that so many people pin and repin fake images on Pinterest with statements that they hope to visit there someday. The truth is that they will never be able to visit it because it does not really exist. Someone created this image for a contest on www.worth1000.com. So perhaps if they see the two images that were combined to create the one that is misrepresented as a castle in Ireland, then they might at least realize that they cannot visit this location and see a castle atop a rock pillar in Ireland. 
Lichtenstein castle in Baden-Württemberg, Germany was originally built in 1200 but has been destroyed twice. Today it stands atop a rocky crag overlooking the Echaz Valley. The current castle was built in 1840-1842. The castle and the grounds are available to the public.
Ko Tapu island in Phang Nga Bay, Thailand
This beautiful photo is of the real location called Khao Phing Kan (Thai: เขาพิงกัน) or Ko Khao Phing Kan (เกาะเขาพิงกัน) which is a pair of islands off the west coast of Thailand in Phang Nga Bay (Andaman Sea).
Before 1974, the island was a little known paradise. The 1974 James Bond movie "The Man with the Golden Gun" featured the island as the hideout for the villain. Unfortunately, the sudden popularity of this indigenous area resulted in pollution and litter spoiling the scenic area. The government established the Ao Phang Nga Marine National Park in 1981. The park has many limestone and karst features alone the Andaman Sea. It is feared that Ko Tapu may collapse due to the weight of the island is supported by a 13 foot diameter (4 meters) at the water's edge. In an effort to protect Ko Tapu from erosion or damage due to tourist boats, the Thai government has outlawed access to the island.
The Chinese home grown social media channels that have sprouted up in the vacuum created by the Chinese Great Fire Wall challenges marketers to understand which channels might reach their target audience.
Douban is an open forum popular among college educated market for movie, music and book reviews. The majority of the content is accessible by unregistered users; therefore the 60 million+ registered users may be representative of a portion of its use.
Jiepang is a newcomer that is similar to FourSquare as a location based social media.
Momo is a recent entry in the Chinese social media landscape. Momo is a dating app.
QQ Instant Messaging service (800 million approximately) is popular with the under 18 target audience.
Qzone is a social networking site where users can write blogs, share photos, and listen to music. It is popular with the under 18 age group.
Sina Weibo: A cross between Twitter and Facebook, this microblogging platform allows users to include images and video, as well as longer comments. Weibo has more users than Twitter has world-wide. Approximately a quarter of Chinese citizens are members of Weibo.
Renren is considered China's Facebook is very popular with college students and the college educated market. Although there are 147 million registered users, only 31 million are active each month.
Wechat formerly known as Weixin is the up- and-coming social media channel to watch currently. As I walk around China it seems everyone has at least one cell phone. I won’t get into the differernces between the mobile market of USA versus China, but this — is a mobile voice and text app with social features like “friend discovery."
Youku and Tuduo are video sharing (aka YouTube) that merged last year. Interestingly, Youku is not constrained by copyright laws in China so they commonly have copyrighted feature films available to view in Mainland China.
According to a pin on Pinterest, you can use food coloring to create these colorful oranges. Really? Even if you injected the food coloring into the fruit, it would never result in such smooth and even coloring particularly on the skin of the fruit. Yet, this is repinned time and again . . . I sincerely hope no one destroys delicious oranges in an attempt to use food coloring to create this effect. I assure you that this was indeed digitally manipulated using Adobe PhotoShop.
In my previous post I asked why this was necessary with some of the images. Allow me to continue this discussion with the question "Where do we draw the ethical limits to photo manipulation?" How much is too much, how far is too far? Obviously, it depends on the purpose of your editing efforts. Many times, I rush to capture a photo of a bird before it flies off to parts unknown or attempt to capture a waterfall at sunset. The result may be a slight blur, underexposure or overexposure, or a crooked horizon. I am sure that we have all taken a photo of a child's first birthday and they close their eyes each time the flash occurs. I love taking photos of my pets and the result is the "red-eye effect." Things happen and Adobe Photoshop allows me to correct the errors without mis-representing an bird, animal, person, or destination. Anyone seeing the images will have a true representation of what is real.
What is the purpose when distributing an image that is not real? For example, the above image has been altered to add a shrine in the middle of a limestone pillar located in Zhangjiajie National Park in Hunan Province, China. Visiting Zhangjiajie was a wonderful experience. In fact, I have visited here 3 times and enjoyed it completely. When I first saw the image on Pinterest, I questioned if I had missed seeing it. So I sent it off to my friends at Zhangjiajie to see if they knew where this was located. They revealed that the shrine does not exist. Numerous pinners have pinned this image to their dream vacation boards, so I really hate to tell them that it does not really exist. Again, I am left with the question why? Why would someone intentionally distribute an image that does not accurately represent the destination?
When I teach my electronic marketing students how to use Photoshop, the first lessons are focused on creating aesthetics, such as following the rule of thirds, straightening the horizon, or sharpening the focus. When we move into the more artistic tools of Photoshop, the purpose is to create effective typography, combine images for advertisements, or create an original image. In order to ensure that we are truthful, I stress it is important to reveal to the viewer how the image was manipulated. This is essential when preparing marketing images and messages, for example when working with travel images. In my next blog post I will illustrate several manipulated travel related images. Will you be able to identify the real destination from the fake destination?
Do you have a Pinterest Account? You might want to check out the Pinterest Accounts for my students in Electronic Marketing.
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