Upon visiting TED, I browsed through a few videos before selecting one to watch and comment on. Mena Trott on Blogs was my final choice. How appropriate! Trott and her husband founded Six Apart in a spare bedroom of their house in 2002. Six Apart has been at the heart of social media and blogging since 2001! The company has many great blogging services including TypePad, Movable Type and Vox which help people connect with others and share their stories. Throughout her lecture Trott talks about how blogging gives regular everyday people the power to share their life’s journey online.
Although Trott mentions how blogging is changing the way we read news and receive media, CNN and other big networks have their own blogs used to update readers the moment breaking news happens, it is the personal stories that capture her heart. She talks about a blog titled Interplast, in which doctors travel to developing nations and preform plastic surgery on those who can’t afford it. The doctors document their travel and tell their story through this site. Another example she gives is of a man who had a son named Oden born at 25 weeks. The father took pictures of Oden and wrote updates daily. By day 96 when Oden was able to go home readers were cheering.. Trott makes it a point to say that these might not be stories that would be covered in a magazine or a newspaper, but they do pull at your heart. This made me think of our class blog and how although we discussed world issues we still made it feel personal with our senior send off, ILM week, and com studies week.
Trott also shows how blogs can be used for records. She discusses how she can only trace her family tree back a few generations and then it stops. Trott proposes that we can use blogs as a way to record our lives. Should her grandchildren or great grandchildren ever want to know what life was like for Mena Trott, they can look no further then her blog. Like Mena we have set up a blog for records. Every IMC-Hawk from here on out can look back at what we have accomplished this semester, Hopefully it will continue to keep building and there will be a long history of posts.
Through the blogging assignment in this class we as IMC-Hawks have had our eyes opened to the powerful messages blogs can send, the people they can reach and the footprints they can leave.
Jess Smith
I think the explosion of blogs is definitely a positive benefit in our society. The possibilities are literally endless. I like the comment you made about future generations being able to know what it was like to live in our time was like. They could definitely learn more about what it was like when we lived. When you look at the Diary of Anne Frank, you look at how many other powerful, moving stories we could undercover if everyone had a blog. History would have to be written differently with so many physical first hand accounts on what actually happened being spread worldwide. However, the issue that only 30% of the world has access to the internet needs to be addressed. More efforts should be put out to help those in impoverished nations and help eliminate hunger and disease, and as you mentioned, blogs could be able to help out with that.
In terms of communication for business, I think blogs can be incredibly useful. It’s a more relaxed and personal way to get your message out there really quickly. I know for me personally, I read more blogs than I do official websites, especially for sports.
I agree with Will on this. I Believe that blogs are more efficient because a consumer would feel more connected to the organization because it it is more personalized. It is raw information that is not streamed through the companies filters first. I also believe that it is a great way to navigate through a brand because you can see others responses and it creates an open communication portal for all. For example Twitchell refers to how levis have fell behind as a brand and if they had a blog back then they could have communicated with their current consumers and would have been much more effective in keeping up with the times.
I agree with Will on this. I Believe that blogs are more efficient because a consumer would feel more connected to the organization because it it is more personalized. It is raw information that is not streamed through the companies filters first. I also believe that it is a great way to navigate through a brand because you can see others responses and it creates an open communication portal for all. For example Twitchell refers to how levis have fell behind as a brand and if they had a blog back then they could have communicated with their current consumers and would have been much more effective in keeping up with the times.