To produce an infotainment video about organizing an event using social media.
- Organizing a birthday party
- Looking for a place for the party
- Looking for DJ’s, catering
To compare the same actions without social media, using corporate Web sites and search engines
Benefits to the thesis- To learn about the possibilities of replacing corporate Web site with social media profiles
- Which possibilities does social media offer?
- How much is the potential of social media used by the companies?
- How much do the companies use the possibilities of social media?
The initial schedule showed the plans for implementing the project from February to May.
Feb 15 Defining the idea
Feb 22 Constructing a project plan
Mar 1 Reporting the process
Mar 7-13 Storyboarding
Mar 14-27 Research and Preparing the shootings
Mar 29 Reporting the process
Mar 28-Apr 3 Shooting
Apr 4-13 Overview of the material
Apr 14-24 Editing
Apr 25-May 1 Final overview and correction
May 3 Presentation of the project
The process
My video consists of actions done in Facebook. Although my initial idea was to involve also other social media like blogs and Youtube, it could be added to the video later.
The most difficult part was to stage the processes going on in Facebook. I had to find the suitable Facebook pages, talk to people who would help me with staging the situations and edit it all into one storyline.
Finally I chose one storyline which involved a person, who logged into Facebook, looked at her calendar application and discovered that her birthday is coming up. Then she uses the status update possibility to ask her friends whether they could suggest a place for the party. From the comment of her friend she starts to look for the place he recommended and finds that this place has a Facebook page. She likes what she sees on the page and uses its online booking system to book a place for her birthday party.
For screen recording I used Screenium software. For editing I used iMovie on my mac. These software were both rather easy to use and I could use them in my future works as well.
The reasons why my project turned out to be less than I had originally planned were that in the middle of March I found out that I am soon going to work somewhere else and therefore for a month, my workload in the old place as well as the new place got very intense. In addition it was the busiest time in school too, so my media project did not get as much attention as it would have needed.
Another thing was also that staging of those situations turned out to be more difficult then I imagined. There weren't so many applications available to use in the video. And putting these few together in one storyline was rather difficult.
But still there were lessons I learned from this process. Some which are also useful for my thesis and could be studied more.
Lessons learned
- It is possible to use a Facebook account instead of Web site - a company can add many functionalities and applications to its profile so that it could replace the same functionalities as its Web site
- Many applications missing - there could be much more and better applications available. For example I would miss an application for my Google calendar, also many companies who offer services could add a booking application of their site.
- Possibilities could be used more - companies can attract customers by creating a functional and good looking profile on Facebook. In Estonia it is not very actively done yet, so there is a possibility to be one of the first in this.
- Not easy to manage everything in social media yet - There are applications available but most of them are not good and create spam rather than are useful. Maybe that is one reason why the company pages have not taken advantage of them. Creating your own application costs. Maybe companies have not seen the reasons for paying for these services yet. Therefore it is not easy if you want to manage everything on Facebook for example without using Web sites.
- Peer recommendations - a good thing in social media are peer recommendations. Even a simple Facebook "like" gives a credibility to a certain thing liked.
- Not good search possibilities - Facebook at least has not a good searching and filtering possibilities. Trying to search for something does not work properly. Only if you know exactly what is the name of the thing you are searching for.
Media project was a good opportunity to look more into the integration of social media and corporate Web sites. It was useful to use the video recording and editing software as well.
Here are my final outcomes of the project:
The final outcome - infotainment video
