bye bye books?

during nct lessons last week, there were 2 presentations. one about the future of books, by dexter’s group, and one on the future of the music industry, by my own group.

throughout the presentations, i realised that there was a similar trend in both books and the music industry.

first of all, both industries were moving towards a digital world. more books are now available in a digital format (e-books) and for the music industry, CD sales were going down while the sales on digital music stores were going up up up.

this spells danger for the book publishers and record companies. why? because people can get everything for free on the web. this may possibly affect sales of physical books drastically in the future, like how the music industry has seen the sales of CDs fall.

already in the music industry, artists like radiohead, lily allen and esmee denters, have fully harnessed the power of social media to their own benefit. they are showing that artistes can do without the record companies and still make themselves famous. they are the pioneers, and these are still relatively early days.

so will there be a need for publishing and record companies in the future?

it certainly looks bleak, for both industries. this just shows that technology is progressing so rapidly that you just have to catch up and stay in touch. or you too will become obsolete.

mum doesn’t always know best

i was flipping through today’s Today on the train and this headline grabbed my attention.

MUM ASKS ONLINE WHAT TO DO WITH DAUGHTER’S BODY

curious, i went on to read it. (read the full article here)

basically, this Taiwanese mother whose cousin had just beaten her 4-year-old daughter to death was at a loss. she didn’t know what to do with the corpse and how to dispose of it.

so after 4 days of keeping the body iced, she did what everyone else does. she Googled it. well, not exactly Googled it. she went on Yahoo instead. but you get the idea.

she asked, “How should you proceed with a dead four-year-old child? Urgent, please!”

if this isn’t over-dependence on search engines and the internet, i don’t know what is. i might also like to point out that she didn’t take into account that the internet is a public domain. so.. going on Yahoo with her million dollar question probably wasn’t the wisest course of action to take. she’d be better off asking her friendly neighbourhood assassin for tips.

the web vs the girlfriend

i was reading reuters, and found the result of this survey to be really disturbing.

“In a survey by German broadband association Bitkom around 84 percent of respondents aged 19-29 said they would rather do without their current partner or an automobile than forego their connection to the Web.”

why is there this great need for us to stay connected? how did staying online become more important than spending real “offline” time with people who are closest to you?

it’s scary. technology is eating into our privacy and now it could possibly be eating into our relationships.

okay, now to anyone reading this, it’s your turn.

if you had to go 1 full week without your significant other (or if you don’t have one, maybe your mum or whoever you love most)/connection to the web, which would you choose? be honest.

VOTE BY COMMENTING

it’s all in the timing

as of now, i have 30 tweets since day 1. i thought i was doing well. my fingers were fast, my tweets furious. surely i was at my tweeting best? i was dead wrong.

things move a lot quicker on the internet.

i got a shock in class today when ms kwa told me i haven’t been tweeting as much as i should. but then i went to take a look and i realised she was right! there i was, looking at the many @veratanpr, @colourrun and of course the ever-present @omgzam and i realised that @hazwanhazwan was nowhere to be seen.

so, i went to click on @hazwanhazwan, just to make me feel better.

after i felt better, i asked myself, “how can i be more visible on twitter?” then, an idea struck me. no, no. let me rephrase that. the word ‘idea’ doesn’t do it justice. i had an epiphany.

to make myself more visible, i have to tweet when there is maximum traffic on twitter! this gives my tweets the best chance of being seen by my followers. so… when is traffic on twitter actually at its peak?

only google knows.

the table below is from the first result on google: http://www.garymccaffrey.com/blog/2009/03/19/when-is-the-best-time-to-tweet-for-maximum-twitter-traffic-and-exposure/

Fig 1.1 Time of day : Visitors on GaryMccaffrey.com

so basically, Mr Mccaffrey used his Twitter to drive traffic to his website. smart dude. no wonder he has his own domain and i don’t. anyway, this was what he had to say.

As you can see, I got most of my referrals from twitter between 1pm and 2pm.

But going on this data, it looks as though posting any time from 9am to 3pm will give you the best chance of getting exposure and traffic from twitter.

The chart shows how you could be cutting your chances of getting exposure on twitter in half depending on when you post your tweets.

alright then! i shall take his expert advice and tweet about this blog post tomorrow and see if my blog gets higher traffic. the previous post got 16 (thank you to all those who read it!). i know that’s not much to be proud about, but i’m slowly getting there.

watch out, celebrity bloggers!

the middle of adventure, such a perfect place to start

right. hullo, hullo.

this is the third week of school and there’s supposed to be 3 posts already in this blog. i’m lagging behind the class! well, half of it at least, according to ms kwa.

and right this moment, the whole class is laughing at gary’s tweet: “Everybody! Tweetdeck is available for iphones #nct”
just because everyone knew that ages ago.

myself, i’m not very different from mr tan. i didn’t have a blog or a twitter account until NCT, i don’t have a tweetdeck and even on facebook i don’t sign in daily. <insert the mother of all gasps here> you must think i live under a rock.

thing is, i’ve never wanted anything to do with social media. it seems like a very public and very scary place. the whole world knows what you’re doing all the time and you’ve got to be really careful with your words because whatever you say cannot be fully retracted.

but i think an important lesson to take away from 3 weeks of NCT is, as emphasised time and again by ms kwa, the power of personal branding. we as graduates-to-be should start building a credible and unscandalous (if that’s the word for it) online image because our employers can and probably will google us the moment they read our cover letters. maybe in the future our facebook profiles will be just as important as our resumes.

that is the main reason why i sat up and took notice of the importance of social media. it is really a powerful tool that, if harnessed properly, can be massively beneficial for ourselves.

so i guess it’s time to come out of my shell.

and tweet.

now.. how do i tag this post?

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