NATO's Use of the Internet

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/index.htm) is an alliance of 28 countries from North America and Europe committed to fulfilling the goal of the North Atlantic Treaty. A major goal of the organization deals with peacekeeping efforts in the Northern Region. NATO has built an exceptional website explaining what the organization does and who is involved in their efforts. The website contains nearly any information one could desire regarding NATO and their international actions. The website is easily navigated with links to articles published by NATO and news coverage of the organization. The site is available in several languages as it is an international organization and not all the sites users speak English. The site even provides information regarding potential employment with NATO. NATO has done an excellent job using the internet to supply those interested in their organization with nearly any information they could desire. The site provides excellent exposure of the goals and accomplishments of NATO.

PETA's Blog and Advertising

PETA, the non-profit organization concerned with the ethical treatment of animals has maintained an online blog for quite sometime. This blog is a tool the organization has used to supply information to members and those who may just be interested in their cause. The blog is also admittedly used as a marketing tool for PETA and is essentially just another venue the organization can use to spread their message as well as news and information regarding the organization its members and goals.
Recently PETA has decided to combine their blog efforts with advertising by holding a contest asking people to create their own blog ads and submit them. The winners ad will be placed on various PETA blogs and the winner will also receive a prize. PETA admits that this is a marketing tool for them that they are happy to utilize. A couple of submission have already been posted to the website to be voted on. This is a clever and innovative attempt to combine a blog with advertising efforts by a non-profit organization. I am certainly not one to side with PETA's ethical stance as I enjoy eating meat and feel that their tactics are a bit "over the top". However, despite my own feelings I do think that this is an interesting example of a non-profit utilizing blogs and advertising, and even combining the two (http://blog.peta.org/archives/blog_ads/).

Internet Policy Issue

The Federal Trade Commission has recently decided that they will begin to regulate product review bloggers. Essentially the FTC's new policy states that bloggers who are compensated in anyway for their review of a product must disclose the compensation in their blog. Many feel that these new guidelines are to prevent faulty reviews, as most bloggers are not backed by the same ethical standards as say a journalist. Also a person who is receiving payment for their review would logically be expected to give a positive review. Perhaps the group of bloggers who is most affected by these new FTC standards are those who review books. These people often receive their books for free from publishers or other sources in order to review them. There seems to be some logic behind these new FTC guidelines, however, many question their appropriateness.

I find it somewhat difficult to believe that these new FTC guidelines are appropriate. They seem to present a somewhat of a slippery slope. The internet and the thousands of bloggers that occupy it are functional in many ways based on the idea of allowing all or nothing. The internet should be an open venue for people to do with as they want. This is of course with some very serious exceptions. I would also point the FTC to the concept of Caveat emptor or buyer beware. Are we as consumers not capable of judging the validity of a bloggers' reviews for ourselves without FTC intervention? This is certainly an interesting new internet policy which is deserving of careful consideration.

PR online

The internet has become an essential venue for public relations and its importance should not be overlooked. When asked to give examples of effective and ineffective online PR attempts two examples came to mind almost immediately. In regard to what I would consider ineffective I would first point to http://www.joewilson.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=452&Itemid=80. This is a press release from Congressman Joe Wilson regarding him calling President Obama a liar during a televised address to congress. First of all I found this difficult to find on his site and in my opinion this may still represent Wilson's largest and most public mistake. The release itself also comes across as disingenuous and extremely brief. Instead of focusing on simply apologizing Wilson chooses to continue to bolster his disagreement with the president. While this may be what Wilson genuinely feels in terms of this PR attempt may not be effective to continue to voice.

In terms of an effective use of PR online I would cite http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/. This is a blog started by Paul Levy the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. This blog allows Levy to take part in what he describes as a transparent hospital community. In this sense both positive and negative actions of the hospital can be discussed. This gives the hospital as well as its publics an effective venue for at least some degree of two way communication. The blog has proved extremely effective in the hospitals defense of attacks from the SEIU and other union organizations who question the hospitals stance on allowing its employees to unionize. This blog has been praised as innovative and effective. For all these reasons I believe that it represents and excellent example of PR online.

Ineffective Website

The first website I examined was http://www.kingsnake.com/boapage/caresheets/boaconstrictorcare.html in staying with my own website topic of snake care. This website is extremely boring and consists mainly of text on a white background. This is a care sheet with only one link and not a single picture. While it may be effective for supplying information via text it is is not very engaging at all, and contains only one link.

The next website I found ineffective through personal experience is travelocity.com. This is for the most part a well built site, and has been very successful. My issues have been ease of use of their search functions as compared to other similar sites such as cheapair.com I have always thought that travelocity's date search function is inconvenient in that it does not offer a calendar to pick dates from like other similar sites do. I have also had problems with travelocity in that it often times will not return flight fares that other similar sites have. This site is very successful and could be made much more user friendly with some slight tweaks.

The final website I would call largerly ineffective is that of a newspaper from my hometown in norther virginia http://www2.insidenova.com/. I have always found this site to be very unappealing and for the most part boring in comparison to other newspaper's sites. This site lacks much color and seems jammed with advertising everywhere you look. The navigation seems quite confusing and almost randomly placed making the site very user unfriendly. Any buttons or links on the site are very small and dull. There is a decent amount of good content offered on the site, it just seems that after cutting through all the advertising and the complicated navigation that the content becomes almost not worth it.

Good Example of Photo Use on a Website

Since I have decided that the topic for my first website will be constrictors I have chosen http://www.redtailboas.com/general_care/general_care.html as an excellent example of a website which seems to make excellent use of photos in order to illustrate nearly every topic discussed on the page. I don't know that I would describe the photos as having descriptions on this site. I would be more inclined to say that the photos work as descriptions or illustrations for the text or information the site provides.

I felt that this was particularly useful as the topic of constrictor care is not something that people hold as common knowledge. In this sense it is useful to not only describe aspects of this topic but also to provide photo examples of what the author is discussing. This seems to be very effective for the website and much more informative then other similar websites I have viewed regarding the same information. For the most part if photos are included in other sites at all, they are essentially random and are not illustrating the exact topics being discussed.

Summary Facebook

Social Media has become a huge internet phenomenon of late. This technology is user friendly and in many ways a new form of interaction between not only individuals but organizations and consumers as well. Perhaps one of the most significant social media sites to date is Facebook. The site was conceived in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg as essentially a hobby project while he was attending Harvard University. The site quickly gained popularity at the University and its membership grew extremely quickly. It's initial growth was within the realm of ivy league colleges and eventually nearly all college students seemed to be on the site. Users can create profiles which may include a variety of things such as pictures, statuses, associates, groups, fan clubs and various other messages about themselves.
In 2005 Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to pursue his development of the site full time. Facebook has the second highest membership rate behind myspace. Facebook catered initially only to college students who used their college email address in order to obtain membership. Since then the site has opened up, welcoming all potential members. This has led to an increase the average age of members and has created a much larger network. Social Media has become perhaps one or most utilized aspect of the internet within the past five years and Facebook along with several others such as Myspace, Twitter, and Linkedin are leading their field in developing the various ways in which social media technology is utilized be it for personal use or more recently marketing efforts.