Cultural Communication & Education » Social Networking Sites

The Online Muslim Community: Islam on the Internet

Admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:22:20 +0000

Today, social networking sites are becoming more popular than ever. People flock the Internet to see where they can belong, connect with friends, or share their thoughts. There are different reasons why people join online communities. But one thing is certain. Online community is there for anybody. And people from anywhere can join anytime they want.

Even the Islam world is not exempted from having social community. This is even more important because people with Islam background can already find people whom they can relate to. In the same way, they can share their thoughts and expect to be understood. And since this is an online Muslim community, people who have an Islam background can meet different Muslims around the world.

It is easy to join the online Muslim community. One just has to find a Muslim site like the Muslim Chat Site. Here, Muslims can meet their fellowmen. They can find dates or lifetime partners with assurance that they meet someone who is also into Islam. If not about finding a partner, it could be about finding a career or business opportunities. For others, simply having friends is enough for them to join in this online Muslim community.

Generally, Muslim will find it beneficial if they join the online Muslim community. Here are some people who can benefit from joining this site.

Those alone in a foreign land. When a Muslim is surrounded with non-Muslim, he would feel aloof. There is no one within his community who has the same mindset as he has. Also, it could be that he does not have the same culture with the people around him. For this reason, outlets like the online Muslim community would be a helpful way to get away from loneliness. In this community, he can share his thoughts and meet other people with the same struggle as his own. He will then be able to learn something from people in the online Muslim community while he provides a learning experience for others as well.

Those looking for career or business opportunities. The recent social networking sites do not only concern themselves to connecting with other people. It can also be used to promote businesses or job opportunities. Muslims who are looking for this opportunity could learn form the chat rooms, forums, or even news he joins in. There could be opportunities present there. If not, he could get those opportunities from friends that he connects to.

Those looking for long-time friends and relatives. A person may find long gone friends, classmates or relatives in the community site. He may find the person that he is looking for in the community site.

Those looking for dates and partners. For most, religion is a big factor in the relationship. For this reason, there is no better place to find a date or lifetime partner than in an online Muslim community. At least here, a person can be assured that he will find someone with the same belief, culture, and principle. They can meet in the chatrooms or forums.

Of course, there could also be other people who will find it necessary to join the online Muslim community. The fact is that these community sites are available. What is even more interesting about this is that a person can join the community for free.

By: Vikram kuamr

Marketing to the Hispanic Community

Admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:20:44 +0000

by Gillian Luce and Kimetha Hill

Today’s consumers are changing the way they accept advertisements. The Hispanic community is no different. While the present economic circumstances call for more creative and innovative advertising techniques, marketing to the Hispanic community proves to be an area that remains open for growth. Therefore, if you haven’t already introduced your brand to them, it’s time to do so.

The Hispanic demographic is the largest minority group in the US, according to Jupiter Research. It is important to note that Hispanics will experience the fastest population growth through 2013. Household size is estimated to grow from 13.1 million (in 2007) to 15.6 million (in 2013)[1]. And Jupiter Research forecasts online retail spending within this group will grow to $21.6 billion by 2011, representing the largest increase of all online ethnic groups[2].

Also important to note is that the Hispanic community is more than just one group. Within their demographic there are many smaller sub-divisions that must be researched. According to a Global Information, Inc. article, 90% of American-born Hispanics describe themselves as American, showing that group labels alone do not help marketing. This article goes on to describe that 34% of Hispanics prefer the term “Hispanic”, 13% prefer “Latino”, while 53% have no preference, reinforcing the idea that labels should not be the main focus. In the Hispanic demographic there are many non-English speaking Hispanics who represent a significant portion; therefore, marketing strategies should include bilingual tactics. Advertisers should break down their approach in recognizing the language barrier, and the many different countries of origin.

When considering a marketing strategy for this demographic it is also essential to take into account culture. While age may play a small part in that 58% of English-preferring Hispanics are 35 or younger and visit social networking sites; understanding the Hispanic culture is the strongest way to effectively market to them.

For Rent Media SolutionsTM offers these four tactics to toss into your marketing mix to expose your brand to the growing Hispanic community.

1. Internet & Online Video.

According to comScore, Inc., more than 49% of the 15.7 million Hispanic-American Internet users either prefer to speak Spanish only, or a mix of Spanish and English. In other words, while English language content can and does reach a large number of Hispanic-Americans, to fully reach the Hispanic online user, marketers must also provide Spanish-language content.

For Rent Media Solutions offers ParaRentar.com®, the companion site to ForRent.com®. By providing a fully-translated Spanish apartment listing Web site, For Rent Media Solutions is giving the Spanish-speaking apartment seeker the freedom to shop without language barriers. Offering more than 4,000 listings, ParaRentar.com is a leading resource in the multi-family housing industry for locating apartments for rent that cater to the Hispanic community. In 2008, ParaRentar.com received over 40,000 views on average monthly.

In “Online Video Killed the Radio Star”, published in Portada magazine, it is clear that 15% of U.S. born and 17% of foreign born Hispanics state that they focus more on online video than television advertisements. A recent study also offers that 17% of U.S. born and 26% of foreign born Hispanics feel more engaged with online video versus television advertisements. Advertisers should use a more personable approach in marketing to the Hispanic Community.

Also on ParaRentar.com you will see that we have our Community Theater® product extended to a Spanish translated video. The Community Theater product that For Rent Media Solutions offers is a professionally produced video that enhances the apartment shoppers experience by allowing users to view an apartment community’s most sought after units and amenities as well as the surrounding city it is located in.

2. Print.

Print is NOT dead! The Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 56% of Spanish-speakers are not on the Internet. This means that more than half of this important population is missing online.[3] Therefore, basic fundamentals are still needed in order to market apartments to this demographic.

Already, For Rent Media Solutions offer a variety of products that appeal to this diverse audience. Apartamentos Para Rentar® magazines are fully translated Spanish language apartment finding resources. With magazines in 14 metropolitan areas and over 2.4 million magazines published each year, the extensive database in Para Rentar’s magazines offer the freedom to shop without the challenges of a language barrier, along with a variety of resources to simplify the apartment search process. Something to note: word of mouth also plays an important role when advertising to the Hispanic demographic. Because 56% of Spanish-speaking Hispanics are not online, they will ask their trusted friends and family for resources. Therefore, maximizing your appearance online for those Hispanics using Internet and offline is the way to increase exposure of your brand.

3. Social Media.

Millions of people look to social media sites as their primary source of news, opinion and entertainment, including the Hispanic demographic. According to a study done by the Florida State University Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication comparing various cultural groups, 36% of English-preferring Hispanics visited social networking sites more than two or three times a month and were twice as likely to visit MySpace regularly than non-Hispanic Whites. The English-preferring Hispanics also chose to visit MySpace versus Facebook (44% to 18% respectively).

In order to promote an online social rapport with this community, your company needs to understand why Hispanic consumers are likely to use these sites. The central importance of family in Hispanic culture is well-documented and incisive marketers should try to reinforce this dynamic through their online activities. Apartment community managers need to brand their company as the perfect model of honesty, openness, and self-disclosure to establish a safe and trustworthy environment.

In addition to our already mentioned resources, ParaRentar.com is now embracing the social networking realm. There are several Para Rentar MySpace and MySpace Latino profiles, such as: Para Rentar Phoenix, Para Rentar Las Vegas and Para Rentar Houston that are dedicated to providing apartment searching information for the Hispanic consumers. Minorities are turning to social networks; companies must be open to engaging audiences with timely and relevant content that stimulates feedback and sharing. Joining the conversation and engaging is what fosters the sense of community necessary to build relationships.

4. Mobile Media.

Many Hispanics and other Spanish-speakers will first experience the Internet via their cell phones. According to comScore m:metrics, 71% of Hispanics consume content on cell phones compared to the market average of 48%. In addition, Hispanics tend to notice and respond well to ads on cell phones. Nielsen’s recent “Mobile Advertising Report” highlighted that Hispanic data users are more likely to recall seeing ads on mobile phones (41% compared with 30% of non-Hispanics) and more likely to have responded (22% vs. 13%).[4] Therefore, mobile marketing to the Hispanic demographic is a great way to promote your relevant content. For Rent Media Solutions is very proud of our mobile marketing initiatives.

Our text messaging product allows the apartment seeker to send a text message with the property’s unique keyword to the short code 47368 (4RENT). The property keywords can be seen on leasing banners, yard signs at the property, and in Apartamentos Para Rentar magazines. By texting the keyword apartment seekers would receive a response text message with information about the specific property. Property managers also use the service to send customized messages promoting specials to potential renters, as well as important messages and alerts to their current residents.

Your brand needs to adapt to this medium, or risk suffering a disadvantage compared with those brands that do take full advantage of the channel.

Bottom line-the Hispanic community is too large of a consumer group to ignore. As a media company, we continuously strive to improve our efforts in marketing to this demographic, using the latest emerging innovations and technologies. We encourage you to take your brand to these steps and beyond in 2009.

[1] US ONLINE POPULATION FORECAST,2008 TO 2013, Jupiter Research, Niki Scevak, Vikram Sehgal, and Andrew Peach[2] Hispanic Shoppers Online, 2007, Jupiter Research, Online Behavior & Demographics, June 12, 2007.[3] “Avoid Subtle Stereotypes To Maintain Campaign Effectiveness”, Patricia Graham and Jannet Torres, January 8, 2009. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=97962

[4] “Connecting Via Mobile: Speak Their ‘Edioma’”, Joseph Kutchera, January 15, 2009. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=98416

By: Gillian Luce

The Growing Potential of Online Communities

Admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:26:23 +0000

The cutting edge in technology has enabled cross-cultural communications with online communities gaining prevalence among the masses. The mediums which have been exploited to attract the online users are forums, blogs, podcasts, message boards, wikis and vlogs. The social networking sites which have promoted the growth of online communities and have gained the utmost attention are Orkut, MySpace and Facebook apart from the other social media clubs like SEMPO and DFWIMA. This has obviously led to the advantage of marketing experts to reap revenues out of the online conversions by adopting a definite strategy on one hand while on the other hand the increasing level of interaction between the users for knowledge, information sharing and to seek entertainment. The segment inherently attached to these networking sites is the today’s generation youngsters who share opinions and their experiences by building up the online community. No doubt that the use of words in a spoken form has been translated into a written textual form and these texts have occupied space in the online communities.

Building an online community requires tools and one of the tools which has replaced the traditional tools of communities is the latest Web 2.0 application which is considered as the most vibrant and potent tool today to build an online community. While building up the online community, extremely fine methods are taken into account in order to increase the participation of these community members.

Also called as e-community or virtual community, the online community offers the following benefits:

· Reduced costs of conducting meetings and other costs such as print materials to be sent as letters.

· Enables faster reach across the wide sections of society.

· Enables a larger customer base and also generates leads in the form of new target audience on a daily basis.

· Manifests the database of the participants or members on an immediate and regular basis and accessibility of these centralized data to all the members.

One starts wondering why this kind of community has not been utilized by the NGOs who can work out innumerable solutions to reach the underprivileged and the downtrodden. When there are communities from educationists to the musicians and the music lovers across multiple societies, the growth should been much faster. The users on the online communities create and share videos, seek web boards to have multiplayer online games, but all these are just restricted to entertainment and knowledge sharing uptil now.

Had this been for the betterment of society by the online groups through creating fund-raisers, it would have worked wonders. There are some religious groups who have created the social communities for their own interests around the world but they have not explored or realized the effectiveness of the online communities.

No doubt, the online communities have put off the technical barriers which was there before 1990. When these communities were being built up, expertise was required and the interest also needed to be generated among the ethnic groups. Never did anybody imagine that online community will grow up to such an extent that even the not so geeks can make use of it. AOL and Yahoo were the sites which gave rise to the groups formed under the online community with much less technical know-how.

Most of the IT pro organizations have developed their communities to facilitate the wide gamut of knowledge sharing and enable success in business. The online users can also have an access to the latest newsletters, latest product updates, new technology by participating on a shared platform.

One can seek professional as well as personal growth by becoming a member of online community.

What more, you can talk, create, blog, listen to music and play by actively participating in these online communities. From strangers to friends every thing has been possible.

The marketers have realized the importance and are making all efforts to reap the rewards on a commercial basis. Yahoo who created a special portal for the fandom of brands suggests the growing potential of these communities. These online communities have also brought relationship marketing to the fore.

By: jaya sinha

Putting the Participatory Culture to Work

Admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:18:56 +0000

The “participatory culture” has been defined as a ‘new way of life that lets people create and circulate self-made content such as video, audio, text, and images’. The culture has been taking shape in the form of popular social networking sites like facebook, flickr, and wikipedia, which have encouraged mass participation and collaboration. The participatory culture is changing the way people and the media communicate and engage.

This participation-effect it seems is also extending its influence into the enterprise. Many of us are finding we need to interact, form on-the-fly communities, and convey self-made content and contributions between ourselves, encouraging a participatory culture to develop making employees within teams work together in a new and different way. Teams in today’s modern workplace are being asked to deal with the pressures of ad-hoc projects, information overload, and high-performance. And the challenges are precipitating new technologies and communities to assist the participatory activity.

According to Gartner, the research firm, the participation-effect is here today as many firms are already considering or adopting new methods to collaborate and make employees more productive. The Participatory Culture is said to embrace communication, coordination, community, and social interaction as workers need tools to help them talk to one another, plan and coordinate projects and activities and work with like-minded individuals, or even interact socially.

The interest in collaboration has been escalating and demand for improved information sharing along business functions is driving solid growth. Through 2011, web conferencing and team collaboration software markets are expected to grow at a rate of 23% and 15.9%, respectively, says Gartner. By adopting collaboration firms will become truly agile say the experts. Companies able to make the most of the wherewithal, skills, knowledge and ideas of all staff can use collaborative technologies to vastly improve a businesses’ agility. Collaboration it would appear is an obvious choice but with most companies carrying vast amounts of dead weight in terms of processes and behaviours the trouble it seems is how we are going to instill a new set of values for productive collaboration.

These values will include empowerment; making every key team member – across all relevant functional areas and geographies – feel part of the strategic, planning, execution, and innovation process. How to prevent information being hidden away in silos. Individuals and teams need to have access to all important data, resources and creative ideas. And how to manage the communications and relationships within much larger, more complex teams of dozens or even hundreds of individuals – firms will need to adopt Enterprise 2.0 practices with the most advanced collaborative, web-based tools available to thrive.

Adopting the values will acclimatise firms to the culture change. For improved collaboration, organisations must specify the behaviours or actions required to move from a functional (silo-ed) approach to a cellular (node) approach. For example, requests for assistance from those nearby or internally should be treated as an external customer request – where individuals respond positively and within an acceptable response time.

Leveraging a business’s participatory culture also creates the “architectures of co-operation” avoiding the problems of traditional knowledge management (KM). The biggest asset of any enterprise is what people know and the problem has always been they keep going home with it.

Conventional KM has always attempted to create the infrastructure for knowledge sharing in the enterprise but its limits are the limits of understanding of the firm. KM assumed everybody was prepared to give up what they know.

Collaboration (like collaborative workplaces that anyone can edit) can overcome any reluctance to participate by identifying who is contributing the information and help; measure what that means to the company or to partners and customers; and reward it like any other contribution – which can be a big shift from current attitudes. Software can make businesses visible to themselves and collaboration networks can become the real structure of a company.

Making all this visible will mean that what should have been rewarded all along gets rewarded – and once you reward the right thing, individuals will hopefully get more of it.

Mark Levitt, Vice President for Collaborative Computing and the Enterprise Workplace at IDC, says that most organisations are still in the evaluation phase for next generation enterprise collaboration tools. Figuring out how these tools will improve the workplace and how they might fit into the existing technology infrastructure are the biggest challenges. But certain companies have already nurtured a work culture of innovation that encourages individuals to contribute to projects that would normally fall outside of their individual job descriptions.

Google for example asks its engineers to spend 20% of their time on personal projects and participate in small teams. IBM’s workers are encouraged to share ideas in company wide “jam” sessions held every year. Through daily interactions with the company’s social networking tools, IBM has encouraged its employees to think more about how to help the company perform rather than just helping the departments they belong to. This active emphasis on shifting cultures towards a more collaborative environment, combined with the right tools that make collaboration easy, are keys to successful innovation.

Mindjet, a company that delivers interactive knowledge sharing software in use by over 1 million individuals, also believes that the future of work will leverage the shared community.

Mindjet Connect, the next-generation release of MindManager software, allows teams to collaborate with a series of new web applications and online services that make mapping and team collaboration more powerful and accessible.

As a hosted software-as-a-service, teams can use Mindjet Connect to collaborate on maps in real time. With real-time editing work, processes and communications are streamlined i.e. no time-consuming versions of work being emailed back and forth and individuals are able store maps and any other documents in secure workspaces with version control and different access levels for various team members. From their map or workspace, individuals can then chat with other team members and launch web conferencing to present information, share their desktops, and record notes collaboratively in a dynamic, online whiteboard.

Like Google and IBM, Mindjet is also seeing firms and individuals embrace the participatory culture using mind-mapping software.

Jim McNeil, the world-famous Artic-explorer, used the software to plan the ‘Ice Warrior’ epic expedition to the Artic, which took place in March 2008.

The expedition led by McNeill attempted a polar journey that explored the North West Passage and saw him attempt to reach the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility in a crucial scientific exploration of the Arctic Ocean. The pole otherwise known as the Arctic Pole, had never before been reached and stands as the very last World First in Polar history. The planning for the journey started in 2003 with the use of MindManager and the software was used by the Ice Warrior team to plan all their logistics and critical contingency measures down to the minutest detail during preparations.

McNeill, Ice Warrior’s founder said, “These expeditions are logistically very complicated and visualisation software has been a revelation in planning for it. As a team we have used the tool to visualise and brainstorm different events that we might face in the Arctic; even the unexpected and highly-unlikely scenarios. MindManager is fantastic in that we can visualise any potential situation and plan for any contingency before we have even set off. My team has played out multiple scenarios in simulation and feel we are as well planned as we have ever been. When faced with a potentially life-threatening situation to the team, the responsibility of getting everyone home safely is imperative.”

While an extreme example, the Ice Warrior project serves to illustrate the capability of the collaborative-visualisation tool to capture and plan complex events in a software environment then safely execute that scenario in real-life, exactly what the software was invented to do.

Mindjet has worked across some of the world’s most ambitious projects. It was used by the Federal Aviation Administration, an organisation tasked with keeping airports – and air traffic flowing in Florida and Southeastern US during the onslaught of Hurricane Dennis, the only storm to be elevated to Category 4 status, which caused between $1 billion and $2.5 billion in insured losses. Mindjet helped track a million variables, from the status of each airport to equipment damage, facilities damage, and where response teams and equipment were. The ability to quickly access and understand a lot of very complicated, changing information is key to staying organised and efficient in the middle of a crisis.

All these projects illustrate that the concept of collaborative-visualisation and managing information on a complex scale and demonstrate the power of information if it can be collated and interpreted properly as well as keeping you on budget.

So why does it all matter? Why is harnessing the participatory culture so important?

Shifting the corporate culture towards collaboration fosters a more interactive, creative workforce that is engaged and motivated. Projects of any size can be handled more efficiently and effectively. Firms need to take advantage of the new tools and techniques to get more done. Putting the participatory culture into practice and embracing the applications, practices, and mindset will mean firms reaping the rewards.

By: Chris Harman

Online Communities : Reaping the Inherent Potential

Admin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:33:57 +0000

The cutting edge in technology has enabled cross-cultural communications with online communities gaining prevalence among the masses.

The mediums which have been exploited to attract the online users are forums, blogs, podcasts, message boards, wikis and vlogs.

The social networking sites which have promoted the growth of online communities and have gained the utmost attention are Orkut, MySpace and Facebook apart from the other social media clubs like SEMPO and DFWIMA.

This has obviously led to the advantage of marketing experts to reap revenues out of the online conversions by adopting a definite strategy on one hand while on the other hand the increasing level of interaction between the users for knowledge, information sharing and to seek entertainment.

The segment inherently attached to these networking sites is the today’s generation youngsters who share opinions and their experiences by building up the online community. No doubt that the use of words in a spoken form has been translated into a written textual form and these texts have occupied space in the online communities.

Building an online community requires tools and one of the tools which has replaced the traditional tools of communities is the latest Web 2.0 application which is considered as the most vibrant and potent tool today to build an online community. While building up the online community, extremely fine methods are taken into account in order to increase the participation of these community members.

Also called as e-community or virtual community, the online community offers the following benefits:

•   Reduced costs of conducting meetings and other costs such as print materials to be sent as letters.

•   Enables faster reach across the wide sections of society.

•   Enables a larger customer base and also generates leads in the form of new target audience on a daily basis.

•   Manifests the database of the participants or members on an immediate and regular basis and accessibility of these centralized data to all        the members.

One starts wondering why this kind of community has not been utilized by the NGOs who can work out innumerable solutions to reach the underprivileged and the downtrodden. When there are communities from educationists to the musicians and the music lovers across multiple societies, the growth should been much faster. The users on the online communities create and share videos, seek web boards to have multiplayer online games, but all these are just restricted to entertainment and knowledge sharing uptil now.

Had this been for the betterment of society by the online groups through creating fund-raisers, it would have worked wonders. There are some religious groups who have created the social communities for their own interests around the world but they have not explored or realized the effectiveness of the online communities.

No doubt, the online communities have put off the technical barriers which was there before 1990. When these communities were being built up, expertise was required and the interest also needed to be generated among the ethnic groups. Never did anybody imagine that online community will grow up to such an extent that even the not so geeks can make use of it.

AOL and Yahoo were the sites which gave rise to the groups formed under the online community with much less technical know-how.

Most of the IT pro organizations have developed their communities to facilitate the wide gamut of knowledge sharing and enable success in business. The online users can also have an access to the latest newsletters, latest product updates, new technology by participating on a shared platform.

One can seek professional as well as personal growth by becoming a member of online community.

What more, you can talk, create, blog, listen to music and play by actively participating in these online communities. From strangers to friends every thing has been possible.

The marketers have realized the importance and are making all efforts to reap the rewards on a commercial basis. Yahoo who created a special portal for the fandom of brands suggests the growing potential of these communities. These online communities have also brought relationship marketing to the fore.

By: jaya sinha