"Having the worst day ever. All traffic lights I passed were green so I had to stop on the side of the road to read tweets."

Well before I walked into this class I never had a Twitter; I only created this account because of our Twitter project, I was always interested in seeing what the hype was about it, almost everyone I know has a Twitter account and talks about it quite often.  Facebook has always been the top social media site that I have used, so when we started using Twitter it took me a little bit too really get a hang of it and truly wrap my head around the concept of it. When I first started using I absolutely didn’t like it; I felt that it was just another way to lose all daily life interactions with false hope that a celebrity would tweet you back. It has a weird setup that was nothing like using Facebook; it’s hard to see where and when interactions are actually happening since the comments show up about the tweets. As soon as I started getting followers and not just my classmates, I started becoming more interested in the site. More things were happening and were easier to see how I could use it to my advantage.

My very first followers were my classmates from this class who had started their class Twitter account at the same time. Most of everyone in the class had a Twitter account already and were very familiar with the site. I remember when Twitter first became a big deal and all my friends were into. It's funny what kids would say on Twitter but in real life very quiet and keep to themselves, it was almost like they finally found their voice via the Internet. After using my new Twitter account for a few days I started following more people and organizations. It’s pretty cool that celebrities have their own personal accounts; the ability to follow a celebrity and see into their life almost makes you feel connected to them on a personal level. The first celebrity I started to follow was Ellen DeGeneres, she is by far one of my favorite comedians and talk show hosts, I enjoy following comedians, actors/actresses and musicians along with different organizations. Following well known people really makes you connected to them with the ability to feel that these people are actually human. Now days during television shows you can see the people from the show tweet things live; the trending topics was something that I newly discovered which engages you in conversation with many people around the world about the same topics. The more and more that I use Twitter I am beginning to enjoy it way more than I have before.

Twitter has been mostly used for socializing; but also used for marketing yourself to the people involved with the Twitter lifestyle. Twitter gives people more of an insight on your beliefs, what you are interested in, and gets your name out to people who don’t know who you are. Facebook gives an all-around package of a person; Twitter is probably more beneficial for politicians and marketing campaigns; it’s easy enough to get followers, follow people, send direct messages, and market a person to different companies by tweeting and re tweeting.

Twitter is a very convenient source for many journalists, newspapers, magazines, and news stations; it is extremely easy for a company or magazine to post a link to any article, or on someone's Twitter wall who is famous to instantly gain more followers and get a name out in the public. Some celebrities are paid large amounts of money to tweet about different things to help with promotion. For people who don’t watch the news or read the paper Twitter can help keep those people updated on different things they are interested in whether they are just around town or traveling the world; it’s easy enough to always stay connected.

If or when a socialite or politician uses twitter, it’s an easy and free experience to post any kind of link, articles, or any kind of picture to keep the public updated. Twitter is easy to use by everyone and very convenient, you can follow whoever you want and anybody else has the ability to follow you; unless your account is set to private anyone can see what you say or have on your page just by the click of the follow button. The last election was a big deal for most people on Twitter because they were able to follow both the candidates and keep up with every single update regularly.
Basically, all of the social media sites are connected and serve the same purpose; this purpose to be able to make communicating and staying in touch with people an easier process. The ability to directly connect with someone half way across the world is mind blowing; at this very moment while typing this blog I am talking to the family I will be staying with in Ireland; such an amazing thing to easily communicate with people who you can’t see every day. Web 2.0 has made it so everyone has the ability to directly connect with millions of people in more way than one through the availability of instantly using different websites to broadcast themselves.

Facebook gives everyone the ability to add friends to their page, the option to keep their page private is also a key factory, as well as having the ability to share all sorts of information, photos, telling people where they are at that moment, and posting statuses.  Facebook is an easy enough site that anyone could use not only for a personal/private account, but anyone can make a fan page, business page, and set up events.
Another social media site frequently used is LinkedIn; LinkedIn is an awesome way for businesses to stay connected, whether with other businesses or people. It is free for anyone to use and a good way to present you in a professional way and market yourself in the business field. You are able to post a photo of yourself and upload your resume.

Twitter is really starting to grow on me for a few reasons; I am able to post whatever I am thinking at any given time of the day which I am able to do with ease without having to go through the traffic on a Facebook wall or getting on other people's nerves with what I have to say. Twitter doesn’t have to be directed at anyone or anything; I am able to post my own thoughts and feelings without someone getting upset. Sometimes using 140 characters is rough since I have a lot to say.

Twitter is like the younger step sibling to Blogger; my first experience blogging was in our class, I personally have found a love for it. When I blog I feel as if I’m getting a lot off my chest and letting my feelings out in a more professional way. I have a lot of things to say about many topics and having a blog is a good way to reach out to people; having a blog is also good for future employers to see how you can write and what interests you and what opinions you have on different thing, as well as having people follow your blog and re-blog (almost the same as twitter when you tweet and re-tweet). Twitter now has to be my number one use of networking sites; I have become Twitter happy over the last couple days and tweeting everyone.

Twitter is here to stay!

"google before you tweet is the new think before you speak."

"A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads"

"There is no reason why challenging themes and engaging stories have to be mutually exclusive – in fact, each can fuel the other..." -Edward Zwick

 

Through the use of my iPhone and iMovie I was able to put together a short movie about myself and the separation I have in my life, the separation of me being a bartender and me also being a camp counselor. It was one of my first times using iMovie and playing around with the program, I wasn’t so much nervous about the project as much I was excited to jump into it and see what I could actually do with the program and see what kind of movie we could produce as a team. Having the experience to sit down and take the time to create something with iMovie was something that I really needed to learn and wanted to learn.

All the things that you can do to edit a movie and create something with this program is amazing. It was fun experiences watching everything come together and watching different parts of my footage bond together in way I didn’t even see at first. Even though I had to re do my movie at least 6 times because it constantly disappeared or didn’t save, and it was also a very tedious process with every single different option you could choose from along with remembering absolutely everything I did on the previous movie (putting in music, taking out background noise, putting in transitions, etc.) I feel as if I know the program very well now and any future projects I do will be done with no stress because of all the times I had to go back into my project and edit everything and re do everything more than once. I suppose practice does make perfect.

I went in to it this project with an open mind and not becoming too stressed out about it because I knew it was going to be something that I wasn’t familiar with so if I got myself all worked up about it then the whole learning experience would of been ruined. I’ve seen many other people in our class get all stressed and shut down because of the iMovie program or fed up with the computers. All that none sense affects the whole group there for setting the whole groups movie back because they couldn’t just finish their own part of it. Many aspects of this was difficult, from cutting the music to be perfect, to having the right amount of 1:20 on your video and exactly 5:30 as a whole, dragging and dropping different things, projects not saving, and not having abrupt endings. But without all the difficult things happening we would of never learned the program properly. Everything in life isn’t easy and I for sure didn’t expect this to be either.

I am very happy to of had the group I had and happy that this project is finally complete and we are now able to present everything everyone has been working on. It has been a fun ride and the outcome of mine and my team member’s work has been better than expected. My group was very open to everyone’s ideas and took everyone’s criticism very well; we all contributed ideas for different things and knew how to communicate in a professional manner without biting each others heads off. When it came down to the footage everyone did an awesome job at getting everything they needed together and on time and each had the right amount of work done to make the video 100% completely done.

I think that our topic of separation really fit in with our team. We all were extremely different from each other in many ways but for our movie we basically all did the separation of our jobs in some aspect. It was a pretty easy concept to grab on to and run with because we didn’t have to really show a traditional beginning or end to the movie since we were trying to reach separation anyways, we had a lot of freedom to do whatever we wanted with our own personal movies and the movie as a whole could stand out and be different. Everything fit together really nice with all the transitions separating our three different videos and the music that we used had good transitions. I personally think we did an amazing job portraying separation and the class watching will understand our topic. We used very minimal text and a few pictures to tye up the ending of the video. Being OCD about the movie really paid off because going in and fixing every detail to make sure it look exactly how I wanted it and how the group wanted it is really going to pay off in the end.

For never using this software or having to add music to anything I feel like I did a really good job cutting music to fit it in. In my own personal video I used two different songs where they would stop and one would start again and then in another area had to start back up at the same spot it ended. For that task alone I did the best I could with little knowledge that I had and it came out exactly how I wanted it and wasn’t choppy or abrupt. I do wish that maybe we spent one day learning about how to make it a little bit smoother but I love being hands on and teaching myself new things.

I love the aspect of being able to use video to convey a point or show anything at all, when I moved out my mom sent me videos of my dog everyday which I loved way more than just a picture because I could actually see him doing cute things like I was actually with him. Also, in most cases its much easier for someone to grasp something but seeing it and also people can pay more attention to something they are watching being done and not spoke at. Growing up I never read books as much as my mom tried to force me to read I just couldn’t get into a book, It didn’t have the same effect on me as other people. But, once books started being made into movies and I could see the book in "real life" that is when I started to appreciate what people could do with making movies and finally put those visions in my head, the same ones people got from reading.

Videos are a very positive tool that is used to grab a person’s attention and not let go. By having something be loud and eye grabbing with colors and text you can easily grab on to a person’s attention, describe what you want that person to know about and they are sold. Commercials are the best example, without eye grabbing commercials with catchy jingles companies wouldn’t be able to sell any of their product, the new mini iPad commercials they use a jingle that everyone knows and loves with a image of a iPad and someone playing a keyboard on it and that very moment you want to download that ap or go get a new iPad. Boom...sold.

 

YouTube has single handedly become one of the most popular video streaming sites on the web. People have become world famous because of YouTube whether it was because you were a singing sensation, or in my friend Jack's case he did a stupid stunt on his BMX bike and made a lot of money because he was put on Rob Dyrdeks show "Ridiculousness". Also if you get enough hits on your YouTube page YouTube starts paying you money and again I know many people who get checks every month for all the stupid shit that they do.

I have never used Vimeo or even looked at it before I came into this class. I have noticed that it is more for people who want to post videos of just themselves or videos that they have made (such as projects like the one we had to do). Everyone seems to have videos more on the creative side which is probably why they don’t use YouTube because knowing their luck it would probably be taken down and all their hard work gone to waste. YouTube is a place for people to do awful renditions of other people’s songs, post dumb pet videos, watch music videos and vent. Vimeo is a place where artists go to be creative. The community of Vimeo is large and filled with indie filmmakers and vast numbers of people with a passion for film; numerous popular entertainers have used Vimeo to host content, even the White House posts high-definition versions of its broadcasts to Vimeo.

YouTube has come a long way and has done amazing things for people and giving them the free opportunity to post whatever they want but within reason. People are getting noticed more and more because of YouTube, many famous singers that we know today had been discovered because of YouTube. There was a TV show called "Opening Act" where new opening acts for top notch performers such as Bon Jovi were only found because of using YouTube (mind blown). Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, VEVO, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.

But, in any case all good comes with bad. It’s amazing how people get the courage to post videos of them singing or playing an instrument or dancing and knowing that millions of people could see you but it’s also that chance that those millions of people could bad mouth and break you down into a million pieces. On YouTube there is this girl and her name is Nicole 337, my friends tear her apart with her daily videos of her singing off key and doing weird things. It’s sad because she definitely has some kind of autism but she still does what she does even though people leave her awful comments telling her to stop.

http://youtu.be/ioKPqVPC-eM <---Nicole337

 YouTube in the end still does an amazing job helping to spread awareness for different things and getting out certain important information with their ads and videos.

Vimeo vs Youtbe: The Ultimate Showdown

In this day and age everyone has grown accustomed to using Youtube for all their video watching and video uploading needs.  But, in the ultimate showdown between YouTube and Vimeo I have asked myself, will there ever be a winner between the two?  Both video hosting sites has its share of ups and downs along with many pros and cons. It all boils down to your own personal opinion and which service you feel satisfies your uploading needs.

Undoubtedly YouTube has a very large population of users along with followers. The name YouTube has become a household name that has reached 450 million visitors on a monthly basis. Due to YouTube being so popular it makes it more recognizable and reaches out to more people wanting to use a well-known video sharing site that help you embed items and view many things around the world. Vimeos viewing population is very small with only around 17 million visitors a month, but with that being said just because Vimeo doesn’t get a lot of traffic doesn’t mean it’s a bad site to use.

Yes, YouTube is very popular and well known by millions which allows more videos to obtain more exposure but sometimes that exposure can be a bad thing. The whole reason of getting people onto your channel and is make them stay there and continue watching what you have to put out there, but because at the end of every video they offer options to go watch videos with the same category YouTube is contributing to people being led away from pages more often.  This just makes it more likely that viewers are going to forget about your channel and forget about your vide. In this case Vimeo is a very personal site. People who use Vimeo are kept on the videos page when they are done watching it, so they get the opportunity to watch the video again or watch another one of your videos. The overall look of Viemo is much cleaner than YouTube which almost makes it more inviting. Youtube embeds their own link in very single video posted; this is very annoying and overbearing. Vimeo does not place their logo anywhere near the videos, but rather they give you the permission to embed your own logo and do your own personalizing.

Viemo is a great sharing site. It’s a better site used for any type of advertising or marketing, whether it be for you or a company. Vimeo is very personal and protected, Vimeo also a better choice due to it not leading people away from certain channels. Web 2.o is a constant of today’s aspects in today’s society. This all involves that way that YouTube and Vimeo operate. Due to Web. 2.0 we all have the ability to make anything ours wither personalizing, sharing, and interacting with many people. YouTube and Vimeo you are able to leave as much feedback as you would like underneath the videos and allows for any viewer to interact with anyone they choose. YouTube and Viemo both allow for students /viewers to interact and leave as much feedback as they would like.  They are able to post their opinions with people all over the world. Vimeo allows for the personalizing of your videos by adding your own choice of a logo onto your video.