Online Reputation: Nina Melissa Davis

    It has been my privilege to go online and find out as much as I could about Nina Melissa Davis. Nina, of course, knows I am writing this blog and hopefully will be very happy with her internet profile from different sources.

    The initial reaction to what type of a person Nina is comes from her Instagram. I've only interacted with Nina a few brief moments and so this was my first "getting to know you" experience with her. The things that are clear and Nina is happy to share with the world is... well... the WORLD! She loves the world's great beauty and freshness. Nina enjoys being outside and using her addiction to fresh air to encourage others to do the same.

   Nina just seems to love to share the things she loves with others. Her passion about Jesus Christ and His role in her life is obvious and frequent. She doesn't seem like the type that would back down in her beliefs and rightfully so because you can tell her beliefs are important to her and have definitely affected numerous positive outcomes in her life. That enjoyment she has received from this spiritual aspect of her life is something she wants other to see and feel.

   I don't want to make any huge assumptions with this next part but she does care about and like her hair. It's important to her! And heck, why wouldn't it be, she takes it with her everywhere she goes!

   My next stop on the Nina internet tour was Nina's Twitter account full of confirming tweets about her love of her religion and enjoying the great outdoors! New information that could've been picked up on in Instagram but became apparent in Twitter was her sense of humor and making others laugh. She seems to like giving a witty or clever or insightful post from time to time so her fellow tweeters can soak in the humor of her page.

On the final stop of this great online adventure I picked up on a theme in her Facebook wall that popped out to me and helped me understand another large portion of Nina's life. Nina loves people! I mentioned her love for the world but accompanying that love of the physical world comes a great love for the people in it. She is an advocate of diversity, ethnicity, knowing about and learning about cultures, helping those who don't have all of the easiest or simplest opportunities given to them, and those who have been adopted hold a very special place in her heart.

   Basically Nina is doing a great job of taking advantage of the internet. She is a good example to a lot of people using her social media resources in a positive way. And sure, there is the possibility you don't agree with everything Nina says, believes or does but it is clear that the goals she hopes to accomplish are becoming more and more of a reality through a smart and sober use of the world wide web.

   Nina, it was a pleasure getting to know your online self!

 

Legal, Policies, and Ethics

    Immanuel Kant the great philosopher made many great additions to the world's dialogue related to ethics. The idea, "a means to an end" will be a reoccurring debate on every TV drama until the internet eventually destroys TV, sitcoms become a footnote in history and daytime dramas will be the future bedtime stories of Generation Z 2.0. But that isn't my subject today. This means to an end might be interweaved into TV but is also making its way into the conversation of how social media develops and grows.

    The power of social media especially related to an individual's ethics isn't just an idea of the past anymore. In Chicago where gang wars are a very real and very scary issue, there are many of these gangs and gang members that communicate through Twitter. In an article by Ben Austen the idea of gang gaining power and being fueled by social media is becoming very apparent and in the Twitter conversations every day. If there was ever a situation where someone's ethic would be change, challenged or questioned it would be in gang related event.

   I personally am not closely affiliated anything close to those type of situations but through my super reliable grapevine that reaches me here in Utah I will make several assumptions and if anyone would like to correct my statements or help me to understand the reality I would gladly listen. The first assumption is that many gang have an initiation process. Some examples might include, stealing, fight, violence of some kind and a number of other possibilities. Assumption number two would be that the individuals had to change their regular ethical pattern upon going through that initiation. And assumption number three would be that their ethics, if not change by initiation, would definitely change after time with the group because their bonds and loyalties would grow stronger with other members than they had before.

   These powerful social situations aren't just things that happen on streets in Chicago, New York or who knows where else, these are influences that can be scene in our online social circles. And don't believe that the only ones being affected are us as users, it will be another assumption to say I could see high up executives of these very same social media companies have their ethics changed or challenged as they make their transactions.

    So you will one day be faced with a social media related ethical dilemma and in the words of Immanuel Kant, "Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end." 

Collaborative and Distance Communication

   There was this idea years and years that someone could through the power of science be able to communicate to another individual or group of individuals face to face while being in a different location. Maybe a different room, town, state or even country. But then the science movies got us thinking about face to face communication with people not even on planet earth. This is of course the science fiction in our pre-1950's discussion but then we hit this technological boom within a half century and the conversation became not only that of when it would happen but how could it become more effective and what would be the farthest reaches of these interactions?


    As of right now those communications are possible through a variety of sources and different media. In fact the most fascinating of recent communications amongst some of the millennials occurred during an episode of The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. In one of the bits that he did on the show he had one of the astronauts on the International Space Station read some of the cards or jokes they would be doing. How would they do this? Via Skype!

   At last, this crazy face to face communication is now possible! Obviously the technology isn't brand new, especially not to our generation but just imagine how amazing it would be to see this going on 50 or 60 years ago. The specific medium that is particularly impressive to me would be Skype itself. This is a platform that allows face to face calling on both a laptop or mobile device. Having a Skype is putting you at a few quick clicks away from anyone anywhere Earth's direct influence.

    Dean Anthony Gratton talked about additional powers Skype now offers as he listed five of the reasons Skype has become even more awesome in 2015 and one of the reasons was its new translator feature. Allowing an open dialogue between two parties and breaking that language barrier just opened a whole new world of connections and possibilities.

  Business Insider in an article related to the moment Microsoft took over Skype there was a small piece of the article that shared an interesting statistic. That about 40% of Skype usage is through video. Of course this article was written back in 2011 and they predicted that it would keep growing. The obvious assumption to be made would guess that number has since risen.

   While technology keeps growing those who will be able to access it will continue to grow and that is the beauty of a technological boom, most of us will get to take part in it one way or another.

Location based platforms

   

    There are so many great apps and websites and other technologies out there that connect us to people all across the world, other cities, states, countries and even continents are just seconds away, or less! There are amazing amounts of power to influence people whose face we may never even see.


  This is not the topic of my post today, I want to talk about the location based platforms we have out there and the one I specifically want to talk about doesn't have a ton to do with connecting people across the world, although it technically could, I am talking more about the very locals effects of our favorite online review platform, Google Reviews.


   It really is great, especially in a college town like the one I live in. What is so great? The ability to get very open opinions about all of the most popular places in town make your weekends, holidays, free time and crunch time all that much smoother and easier to handle. Google reviews seems to have at least one review for anywhere worth researching before going. When my wife and I are looking for a pizza place in town or in a different town we can connect to the people of that city or those who have visited that city with some great feedback and quick restaurant checking. After all the signs that claim their restaurant has the world's best pizza we start to catch onto the fact that not everyone can have the best pizza, but Google Reviews lets us know the better places in at least one town.


 The sad truth however is that it isn't the perfect system. As Tom Forrest mentions in his article there are a number of problems with Google Reviews and one of which is the idea of fake reviews. There could be countless reasons for these fake review but some of the biggest reasons are obvious. It would make sense to write a fake very positive review for my own company, and the smarter people wouldn't log in with their own name. Another might be wanting to give negative feedback to a competing company and starting rumors that otherwise wouldn't exist.

 Obviously the power or lack of power through Google Reviews in generally fluctuating depending on the individual, but how does it affect a small business on the flip side of the coin? It would make sense that all of this positive feedback could help a small business grow. There is a problem as pointed out by Olsy Sorokina writing about this same subject. The problem is that people are starting to trust their friends more that online reviews. There seems to be a problem Google... your move.

Most Used Platforms

     There are a lot of different forms of social media out there. Some are more popular and arguably more effective than others but they all pour into the same general purpose of being social through the media. Admittedly there are several media out there that are just completely boring or annoying. Obviously each person has their own preference and I have mine as well. My goal of this blog post is not to offend anyone of the users of the various media but since we are talking about social media I am pretty sure there exists an unwritten rule that someone must be offended or it wasn't a real post.


  My favorite social media option is Facebook. The reasons aren't very concrete other than it is what I have and therefore it is what I will continue to have. I talked about this Dallas Cowboys theory that I've been developing for years. It has other names in the academic world but I have decided to call it the Dallas Cowboys theory that way I can some day take credit for it and someone might pay me to get this idea in their book.

   The idea is simple. We all have our favorite sports team in the different sports we follow. We know their are teams that are disliked, there are teams that don't matter and the classic bandwagon team that is having an amazing season and so everyone becomes their "biggest fan." However, there is another bread of sports fans that all into the emotional rollercoaster of being a dedicated life long fan. It doesn't matter how the team is doing, who the coach is or what the players are like you are attached more deeply to that team than your first two marriages.

  I stumbled onto this idea while having a conversation with a friend. I asked what his favorite team was. He proudly responded THE DALLAS COWBOYS. Great. Why not? Actually... WHY? The Cowboys at the time of that conversation were terrible, Tony Romo couldn't have a successful season if the rest of the league had to play in flip flops and Terrell Owens complained more than Oprah Winfrey fans after they found out their cars weren't that free. But nonetheless he loved the Cowboys and will until the day he dies.

    In a less extreme sense that is my relationship with Facebook, I use it, I love it, but are there any REAL reasons why I keep coming back year after year? Nope, not really.

  Ok, maybe there are positives to Facebook that I genuinely like such as the fact (Jeff Bullas) that the majority of Facebook users are outside the U.S. I am easily connected to my friends in Mexico, Peru, Chile and other countries with just a few clicks. And I of course love that in 2012 (CNN Facts) Facebook bought Instagram, so now my wife can post all our cool pictures!




http://www.jeffbullas.com/2015/04/17/21-awesome-facebook-facts-and-statistics-you-need-to-check-out/

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/11/world/facebook-fast-facts/