Can I change the difficulty?

I never thought that managing a Facebook page would be so hard. When we first got the assignment at the beginning of the semester I knew I would have to put work into it but I still thought it would be fairly simple.

After inviting most (if not all) of my Facebook friends one to two times I finally was able to get 30 likes. Yes! I finally was able to see the pages insights but then soon forgot about the page and stopped updating it regularly.

I decided making a twitter page to help promote the Facebook page would be a good idea. It was easy to pick up several followers and I pointed them in the direction of my page. This got me a few more likes but not for very long. Now I barely get retweets and no one on Twitter ever seems to make it to my Facebook page anymore.

This was rather discouraging. I can't seem to get any more than 30 or so likes. The task of managing and updating a Facebook page is write daunting and difficult and I have learned that the hard way.

At this point I don't want to stop updating this page. It's fun and I enjoy it. Even after this class is over I still plan on updating the page and hopefully it can grow a little more.

So what's the game plan? Well, I have set up a separate blog completely dedicated to Final Fantasy XIV to go in junction with the Facebook page. I've learned that I love blogging and I hope that's an incentive to keep any followers up to date on anything to do with Final Fantasy.

Agriculture in Richmond, VA from a Social Media Standpoint

Richmond, Virginia has a lot of agricultural opportunities. Their whole department of agriculture has a Facebook page is which they inform people of current agricultural needs, etc. There are plenty of website for dedicated to urban farming and healthy livings.

The use of Facebook is implemented in many of these sites to help reach a wider audience. Most of the pages info is shared between both the site and the Facebook page.

The University of Richmond has been promoting the planting of trees both on campus and in the city.

Dominion Harvest, a Virginia local produce company, takes adequate if the use of a blog to help promote their products and urban farming through the use of social media.

Tricycle Gardens in Richmond, VA

Tricycle Gardens is a nonprofit organization that is in Richmond. The is an organization aspiring for urban farming. They (more or less) hire people for a position to take part in the organization. They use their website to promote all of their activities and members.

Sources

https://www.dominionharvest.com

http://tricyclegardens.org

https://www.facebook.com/pages/University-of-Richmond/112575802087538?fref=ts

http://www.victoryfarmsinc.com

https://m.facebook.com/VaAgriculture?id=273441272741528&_rdr

A Contextual Impact of Social Media

Government Shutdown

Recently when the government shut down everyone seemed to think it was the end of the world, though it has happened before. The last time the government “turned off” was in 1995 and, in the long run, it didn't really affect public opinion.

But this time around far more people are aware of its effects because of this new invention called “social media.” This form of communication wasn't quite widespread in 1995 as it is now, as I’m sure many of you are aware.

During the shutdown, government social media accounts went dark. This encouraged the enraged populace to turn to social media to vent their anger and frustrations (NBC). It became very apparent of what others were feeling—seeing tweets and posts about how “the shutdown has hurt my family” or “congress is so dumb and that’s why I don’t care about politics.”

There was much rage from all sorts of social networks, particularly Twitter. Twitter’s use of hashtags makes it quite easy to see what is trending. Many of Twitter’s trending topics revolved around the government shutdown. #DearCongress, #ShutdownPickupLines, #NoBudgetNoPants, and some even as simple as #GovernmentShutdown were among these trends (Klein).

Twitter wasn't the only network, of course. Statistics show that more than 17 million users generated about 45 million posts related to the shutdown, though most were from Facebook users between the ages of 55 and 65 (Addvocate). Reoccurring terms included congress, GOP, and ObamaCare (Lafferty).

People sharing their personal impacts from the government quickly turned into citizen journalism. Whether it was 140 characters or an entire blog dedicated to the matter, citizen journalism exploded. Some made jokes about, some made internet memes about it, but mostly it was the struggles that many people were experiencing.

A tweet from a user on twitter (Klein): .@KevinYoder as a constituent, I don’t agree w/ you putting 800K Americans’ ability to pay their bill at risk in the name of partisanship.

As time went on people became far more away of peoples problems and what opinions they had on the matter. From a local standpoint, Stephanie Clayton (a representative of Kansas State) actively uses her Twitter account to represent different parts of Johnson County (Klein). Clayton uses Twitter to communicate her decisions and receives feedback from constituents. “I use it because I believe that it makes me more transparent and accountable to my constituents,” Says Clayton. Though using social media makes you more vulnerable to public opinion, she finds it worth the risk.

Clayton is unsure of her influence on a broader level (Klein). In hopes to get congress to hear her messages, it is unlikely that they would change their minds on their positions. Though politicians always want to know the public's opinion, it sort of has a more indirect effect on certain matters, such as this.

Most said how much they disagreed with Congress and how there were many mistakes from both political parties. But others said how this was a good thing and how it’s helping our country by giving the government less power that it had. Many argued about that is was one political party’s fault over another. No one was right or wrong in this situation. In reality it was just one big “mess up spot” and no one could compromise until the very last moment.

Though the Government is now back up and running, I feel that social media played a huge role in this ordeal. Whether it helped Congress come to a decision or not, it made everyone aware of the hardships that friends, family, and/or co-workers were going through. Social media turned this whole event into one big conversation for you to voice your opinion. I think that helped get peoples points across and hopefully prevent any other incident similar to this from happening in the future.

Sources

Addvocate. "Government Shutdown Prompts Social Media Rage, and Instagram Ruins Your Appetite." Blog.addvocate.com. Addvocate, 9 Oct. 2013. Web. 8 Nov. 2013.

Klein, Kaitlyn. "Social Media Plays Role in Response to Government Shutdown."Kansan.com. The University Daily Kansan, 8 Oct. 2013. Web. 9 Nov. 2013.

Lafferty, Justin. "Facebook: 45M Interactions about Government Shutdown - Inside Facebook." Inside Facebook. Facebook, 3 Oct. 2013. Web. 9 Nov. 2013.

NBC News. "Frustration Over Federal Government Shutdown Hits Social Media."NBCWashington.com. National Broadcasting Company, 7 Oct. 2013. Web. 9 Nov. 2013.

The Power of Social Media

When I say the Power of Social Media I don't necessarily mean the power it can have on society or anything like that. I'm talking about the power that you "think" it can give you.

Recently I've had a sort of a dramatic "falling out" with a really good friend of mine. He has never really been too aware of other people's feelings but that's okay. All of us can be selfish at times. But whenever he got angry with me (which was very frequently) he wouldn't ever try to work out the issue with me in person. He wouldn't even tell me that there was a problem to begin with. He would wait until he got home and got on Facebook before he would rip me a new one. Most of the things that he would say were incredibly rude and I know he would never say in person, which baffled me.

After this I decided to pay more attention to how people act on different social media. I began to notice that many people act very differently than they do in real life. A lot of people are more rude than they normally are, but interestingly enough I saw some people were nicer than they normally are. This blew my mind! Social media must give us a feel of anonymity and we feel like we can have a different life. Perhaps the life that we would want to have. Some people do it just for fun and to have a good laugh.

I still don't really understand why but now I'm more aware of this and how it can affect many people. Does social media change who you are?

Digital Divide

When it comes to privacy on the internet I never really gave it much thought. Growing up all my friends had MySpace and I wanted me to join. I never did though because I just wasn't into that kind of stuff. Then as I got older parents and/or guardians would warn me to be careful about what I put on the internet and, again, I never really listened because it didn't apply to me.

When Facebook came out I was almost completely against it (until my friend made an account for me so I could befriend a certain girl I was liking at the time). And for a while I was careful about my personal information that I put on Facebook.

Not long after that I got a Twitter account. That's when I got carried away w with posting info. This was back before Twitter was popular so I posted things and just didn't care. One thing led to another, I now have an account on just about every social network (I even made an account for the New MySpace).

I haven't been concerned about putting my personal information out there for a while until last week when we talked about it in class. Ever since then I have been kind of paranoid.

At this point my stuff is already out there. There isn't much I can do about that. I've been thinking about it and now I just feel like I need to be more "aware" if what I put out there on the web.

Ideas for ads

Live the Fantasy.
Share the Fantasy.

Final Fantasy XIV.
Play the game, like the page.

Casual player or hardcore gamer;
join the Page of Eorzea.

Purpose of My Facebook Page

I've always been sort of a nerd. Things like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Final Fantasy have always been my forte.

Final Fantasy is a successful video game series that has been going for over 20 years. They just released a new MMO (massive multiplayer online) game called Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. With a game like this there are so many things to do and achieve. The purpose of my page is to bring players from this game together and to help each other with the game. Anyone is allowed to post to the page and share cool or interesting things they have found within or about the game. People can also seek help from others on the page. This will be helpful because the game is new and there are very little places to seek help about the game.

The game takes place in a world called Eorzea and the page is respectively called The Page of Eorzea. Here is a link to the page:

http://www.facebook.com/the.page.of.eorzea