For Your Entertainment

Join me as I guide Nick through a day in social media.

Viggle: An App That Rewards Your TV Addiction

Viggle is a new app that insures “TV loves you back”.

“Viggle℠ is a loyalty program for television that gives people real rewards for checking into the television shows they’re watching. Available for Android and Apple devices, Viggle automatically identifies the television shows its users are watching and awards them points when they check-in. Viggle users can redeem their points in the app’s rewards catalogue for items such as movie tickets, music, gift cards or they can convert them into charitable donations.”

Viggle takes watching TV to a new level. You get to interact more with the show and receive awards for watching. Log in to the app from Facebook, Twitter, or an email and start logging your TV time. It’s super easy, while you are watching a show, simply hold up your device and click the check-in button. The app will listen to what you are watching and identify it. You get points depending on the time you logged into the show, how long you watched it, and what show it is. Some shows will be worth more due to the large audience. For example I received 366 points for watching The Oscars and another 228 for watching the Red Carpet before hand.

Me capturing an episode of Parks and Recreation on Viggle.

If you are a DIRECTV customer you can get an extra 5,000 points just by signing up for Viggle. 5,000 is a great starting point because the prizes range from gift cards to Starbucks to a Kindle Fire. Take a look at some more of the rewards here.

Watching TV is not the only way to earn points. Viggle is also an app that displays a lot of advertising. It is not the obnoxious kind that also gets in the way, but they are available for you to check out whenever you please. If you click on an ad and watch it, Viggle will give you a small amount of reward points. Every little bit counts.

Now you’re probably wondering why I would be writing about this, it doesn’t seem like a social network. Wrong. The smart creators of Viggle, added a social component to enhance the TV watching experience. When you check-in to a show there is a chat room created where viewers can discuss the show they are watching. You get the possibility of earning more reward points when you interact in the app. If you are like me, then you have your secret shows that you watch when no one is around (for example Dance Moms or Toddlers & Tiaras), but you still want to discuss the show with someone who gets you. That’s where the Viggle chatroom comes in handy. You find people with the same taste in TV shows as you, or people with a totally different insight that you might not have been thinking when watching the show. And maybe when you are chatting in the app you find someone who seems to watch a lot of the same shows or shares the same opinions and you can add them into your Viggle friend group.

This app is perfect for TV addicts like me, get the most from you shows and your time watching them.

Update: You can’t check-in to old shows you have recorded to get points. Tried it. Doesn’t work.

Top 5 Reasons To Go On Pinterest

Pinterest is a fairly new, but an increasingly popular site where you can scan through a bunch of images targeted to things you like all at one time. You can follow specific categories or people and save their images to your own Pin Board. It’s sort of like scanning through just the images of magazines, seeing something you like, cutting it out, and putting it on your cork board. Although it’s surprisingly popular with women, there are many reasons that everyone can benefit by going on Pinterest. Click on my favorite Pins and see the reasons why I go on Pinterest.

1) To Plan your wedding

Pinterest is the new way women (and men) can get a jump on their wedding planning, even if they are far from married. With the images linking to the purchasing site, it will make the planning for the big day that much easier. Fashion is all over Pinterest and you can find hundreds of different dresses and ideas to ease the planning stress. Go through and see other lay out ideas and color schemes to compare from so you know exactly what you want. It is a lot easier to just have a Pin board of all your ideas instead of having a giant binder of magazine clippings. Become your own wedding planner.

2) To find new recipes

In my personal life, it seems that more of my friend’s moms are on Pinterest than my friends themselves. Granted we all found the site before our moms, but thank goodness for moms being active on Pinterest and sharing their famous recipes. You can find recipes for the healthy new takes on classic foods or fancy new cocktails to serve at your next dinner party. With almost every picture you see on Pinterest, you can click to it’s source to learn how to make all the beautiful food. Guaranteed, if you haven’t it yet, you will begin to hear the phrase “I found it on Pinterest” all the time.

3) To sell your products

Because the Pins send the user to original source, businesses can take advantage and use Pinterest to sell their products. A lot of people connect their Pinterest to their Etsy account to drive in large Pinterest traffic. So if you’re looking to sell your stuff make sure you take pretty pictures of your product to attract the users so every time a picture is Pinned your site is getting that much more exposure.

Hey look it’s me! I’m a Pin!

4) DIY

Pinterest became an outlet for people to show how they made their fancy crafts. There are pins with directions on how to use old house hold objects to make new fun things, or how to update your old clothes, or to find out the perfect craft to make at your child’s next birthday. Picture collages of do it yourself projects add simplicity to something that you probably didn’t think was possible.

5) Cute Animals

Because it makes finding pictures of precious animals online a lot quicker.

LOOK AT THAT FACE.

Happy Pinning!

Are GIF Apps Going to Happen?

GIFs were a thing of the past, but now they want back in through social networking. 

To begin, I would like to settle a debate that has been bugging me for a while. The prounication of GIF. I have heard it pronounced with a hard g like “gift” and I have also heard it said with a soft g as like “jiffy”. GIF is actually an acroynm for Graphic Image File therefore making it a graphic. So stop making it sound like you’re looking at peanut butter online.

Anyway, I love GIFs. I love finding funny ones from TV shows, movies, music videos, and of cats doing silly things. They are simple mini video clips, usually a second or two long on loop that never ends. The best part is that Apple now allows GIFs to be sent over texting which has greatly enhanced my conversations with friends.

I took a photography class a few years ago and learned how to actually turn my pictures and videos into GIFs by using Photoshop. I sat down with the teacher that taught me how to do that recently.

“Oh I don’t teach that anymore, they’re awful” say Professor Brain Lawler of the Graphic Communications Program at Cal Poly.

“They have two benefits. One that that are small in file size and two they support animation.” GIF file types were the first of their kind to support transparency and motion, which was it’s immediate appeal. But with the invention of PNG files that support transparency and new types of video files, GIFs were pointless. According to Professor Lawler, GIFs peaked in the 90s and but he is curious to see how their return is going.

The GIF comeback would not have happened if wasn’t for social networks like Reddit and Tumblr. These sites are based on a platform that focuses on images. You can sit there for hours just scrolling without stopping. It’s really simple to get lost in these sites. GIF uses spand anywhere from reactions to other photos to images that bring us together. A perfect example of GIF success on the internet is the Tumblr How Do I Put This Gently. The titles of their posts are common situations and the reaction is a GIF that could be from just about anything. It’s hard to NOT relate to their posts.

With the success and the fun had on these sites with GIFs and the winner of Time’s Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year in 2012,  app creators saw it as an opportunity to market GIF in a new way.

Most people with cellphones can capture video, so why not make your videos into GIFs and share them in new mobile social networks. Top GIF apps include Gifboom, Cinemagram, and Gifture. I do have a Cinemagram account. I am not very popular, don’t have a lot of friends, and the only likes are from my 3 friends on it. But I am trying. I have only turned a few of my concert videos into GIFs.

Sexyback GIF taken by Me at the Hollywood Palladium at the Grammy After Party Concert

Everbody Talks GIF taken by me at the Jimmy Kimmel Show

Born This Way GIF taken by me at the Staples Center for the Born This Way Ball

I was attracted to its similarities to Instagram and the nifty effects you can do to your work. There are times in my daily life when I think “Wow I wish I had a GIF of that facial gesture that I could keep in my pocket forever.” With these new GIF creating programs, that can be a possibility. But from my personal experience and from the information gathered from friends, it’s having a rough start.

“I do think it will eventually catch on. Not many people know about the app, but once the word spreads then people will notice it is basically Instagram taken to a new level,” says Kayla Koczian, a member of Cinemagram. “I like that it has filters. Filters make the world go round.” JJ Jenkins says he joined Cinemagram because he “wanted an app that makes making GIFs easy and  likes the promoted posts for the most part.” “I found a really funny one of a dog that’s amazing.”

I think the hardest part about GIF social networking is that we always forget to capture something on video. Taking a picture is so much faster, easier, and doesn’t require a lot of thought. Video takes up much more space on your phone and it obviously takes more time to capture. We are not in the mindset yet to remember to capture our daily lives through video. We are still stuck in a highly photographical way of displaying our lives on social networking.

So will GIF social networking become as big as Facebook or Instagram? Right now as much as I wish it would, no. I think GIFs know their place on the internet and let’s face it, none of our homemade videos will be as good as the ones created on the web. They are hilarious tools used to reminisce about clips on a loop. I don’t think a social network will catch on because if the video is funny it will be sent to YouTube, the clip will be shortened, and then the GIF will end up somewhere on Tumblr. That’s how it works today and I think that’s the way it’s going to stay for a while.

So there’s my thoughts on the GIF Social Networking If you want to join the people that are trying to make GIF apps happen and see some of my own person GIFs follow me on Cinemagram @lindseyonline . Have a lovely day.

Snapchat: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

A new app for Android and iPhone adds a fun new twist to sending selfies. 

If you are like me, then you were probably curious as to why there has been a new trend that included people anywhere and everywhere taking pictures of themselves making weird faces. We can thank Snapchat for this new trend.

Snapchat is a new app designed to share little photo moments quickly with your friends. It’s a very simple concept.

1) Take a picture

2) Decided how long you want the photo to be viewed. (1-10 seconds)

3) Add some decoration or a caption

4) Send

Snapchat isn’t about capturing the traditional Kodak moment. It’s about communicating with the full range of human emotion — not just what appears to be pretty or perfect. Like when I think I’m good at imitating the face of astar-nosed mole, or if I want to show my friend the girl I have a crush on (it would be awkward if that got around), and when I’m away at college and miss my Mom…er…my friends. – Evan, Snapchat creator.

Snapchat has becoming a part of my daily social networking. I do it everywhere and take pictures of anything. I especially like to draw on top of my picture or video snaps with the paint tool. But with the good, comes the bad, and often times, the ugly.

The Good

Snapchat made picture sharing a lot easier. When I want to picture text someone, the picture I send saves to my cameral roll. When I go back through my photos, I don’t want to find my embarrassing selfies that I took to share with close friends. Snapchat eliminates this problem by essentially destroying the photo once it is viewed. You can’t even look back at what you sent. Once it’s sent, it’s sent. Done. Simple. Easy. Get’s the point across.

Sent this little gem to my friends

The Bad

A large majority of snaps are pictures of yourself. You’re going to use the front camera on your device and you’re going to make a weird face. It’s not the cutest thing to see when going through your daily life. Other people are going to see you. It is even weirder when someone catches you who doesn’t know what Snapchat is and then you have to explain why you are taking a picture of yourself making a duck face in the middle of the library. I decided to make up this game where where I catch people snapping. I love it because when you are in the act of snapping someone, you are in your own little world. It’s hilarious to see people go through the process of thinking of a pose, taking the photo (usually multiple times), and then laughing to themselves as they send it. Props to those who can make sending snaps as casual as possible. I strive to be you.

Here are some good snaps in action:

The Ugly

Let’s face it, no one looks good from the front camera. I can guarantee that 99% of my snaps are ugly pictures of my face and the other 1% is of food. I only send the ugly faces because I know they can only be seen for 10 seconds. You get the real me, usually without makeup and some insane hair.

Also there are some people who will send anything in Snapchat. And when I say anything, I mean ANYTHING. So there is that ugly to take in account as well.

But here is what my snaps commonly look like:

WARNINGWARNINGWARNING

When I first heard the rumors about this app, I heard “OMG it’s so cool, you send a picture and then it’s deleted”. K, cool that’s great. But we all have that lovely feature on our phones that let’s us screen shot. “Oh don’t worry Linds you can’t screen shot it’s not allowed”. False. You totally can screenshot. So beware! The person who sent the photo does get a notification telling them their photo had been screenshotted. But really how much does that actually help or do anything? You just get to know that someone decided to save the ugly picture of your face. Splendid.

To sum up; be cautious of the snaps you send and open up, who knows what could be in there. Also if you see someone taking selfies, let’s not make fun because in the inside we really all love sending and receiving Snapchats. Those selfie takers are just like us, no harm done. It’s ok everyone, I’m not judging you. Snap in class. I do it. Snap in the bathroom. That’s funny. But if it’s actual selfie, be prepared to be made fun of 🙂

Hope your day is filled with tons of fun and embarassing snaps!

Wait… I love the New MySpace

It seemed like Justin Timberlake took his role in The Social Network a little too seriously, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

We learned, back in fall of 2011, that Justin Timberlake bought a third of MySpace.com. I will be first to admit, I wasn’t sold on the idea of having another social networking site to keep up on. After trying the New MySpace, I will retract my previous thoughts and explain to you why MySpace is cool again.

Cruising around the MySpace site, I came to the conclusion that the developers decided to take the top features from the most popular social networking sites and utilize them to make one massive site.

• Spotify’s playlist sharing feature: On Spotify you can share your custom made playlists for others to listen to. With your MySpace profile you are able to create your own Mixes to listen to as you browse the site or to share with your connections. You can give your Mix a photo collection, a title, and a description of what the playlist is about.

• Pandora radio streaming and artist bio: Pandora usually is a tab we have open while going on the internet. We chose an artist and Pandora has a radio ready to play. On MySpace you go to specific artists and listen to their similar artist radio or listen to all of their songs they choose to post. You can listen freely without commercials and read their personal bios on their music page.

• Twitter trending topics and followers: When you create your account you can add certain things that describe yourself. For example, I checked that I was a writer and a fan. So in my trending part of my feed I can discover popular articles about music today. MySpace allows you to “connect” to anything. What you connect to is what shows up in your feed. Just like on Twitter, the people you follows tweets show on your feed.

• Facebook photo and personal information sharing: Just like any personal page, you can upload your own photos and post text. You can share specific songs to friends through the messaging feature. You can comment on artist’s and friend’s pictures, songs, and updates.

• Youtube video streaming : On each artist’s page, there is a section for videos. Easily scroll through all the music videos of each artists and stream them at your leisure.

• Old MySpace “Top 8” and profile song: “The most nostalgic thing about it was the different music people had on their page,” says UCSB student, Cecilia Mendez about Old MySpace. On your new profile you will be able to add a quote, show your location, a personal website, a song, and your “Top 8”. One of the features that caused the most drama between friends, but also was an honor to be a part of, was the “Top 8” friends on each page. New MySpace brought back that feature but this time you can add in your favorite musical acts.

Screen shot of my personal MySpace Profile

Still want more info, check out some tours on how to use MySpace to the fullest. Don’t feel intimidated by the intricate design or the fact that you scroll sideways instead of up and down.

This site’s goal is not based around connecting friends with friends. MySpace is aware that there is Facebook and Twitter for that. You can easily maintain this site without feeling obligated to share about yourself or talk to your friends on MySpace. “‘I don’t want Myspace to be who I was last night through a bunch of drunken pictures in a drunken stupor, and I don’t want it to be who I am right now on what I’m typing on the Internet,’ Timberlake said about his vision for his personal pages, clearly alluding to Myspace’s biggest competition, Facebook” in this MTV article.

Although, while I was browsing MySpace, I got a little emotional. Since I signed in using my old MySpace account, my old profile picture came along with it. It reminded me of the beginning popularity of social networking. “I liked that you could personalize your page and decorate it,” says Cal Poly student Dani Newton. Remember when we used to search for profile themes, usually a glitter based one, that we had to code into our settings. Those were the days. I think what I will miss the most about old MySpace is the one person who friended you first, Tom. If you miss Tom as much as I do, feel free to check out his Twitter and see what is up with our first friend on the web.

Tom Anderson’s profile picture on his public and verified Twitter page.

#WhyWeTweet

In my daily life, I have noticed that there is some backlash against Twitter users. There is often a negative connotation with tweeters. “What’s the point of tweeting?” “Why is it different from Facebook?”

Twitter is more than just a social networking site to connect with friends with. You can learn, search, discover, inspire, write, do anything on it. Twitter is what you make of it. People have many different uses for Twitter, but here are some of the reasons #WhyITweet

• I tweet because it’s simple. There’s only one rule, you can’t go over 140 characters. Say whatever you want just don’t go over the limit. The new integration with iPhone OS made it even easier to tweet. You log on your phone, see an article you think is cool and can tweet it right from Safari. There is no excuse for it being too difficult. Zack Hennessy (@zackofpotatoes) says he tweets “for quick responses to ideas and thought that I have at any moment in time” and “to understand other people by reading their connection from the real world to the Twitterverse,”.

Screen Shot by me 2013-01-24 at 10.39.12 AM

• I tweet because I have a lot to say, but don’t think Facebook is the place to share my thoughts. “No one cares what you say on Facebook anymore. That’s the glory of Twitter, you’re allowed to tweet about how you did on your test, what you’re doing, and what you will be doing,” says Zach Holmstrom (@zacoutloud), devoted tweeter since ’07. My friends don’t care about my terrible morning or the fact that I haven’t eaten in hours. But sometimes I just need to put it on the internet. On Twitter, we kind of forget who is even reading our tweets. We tweet for ourselves and not to show off like we do with our check-ins and pictures on Facebook. 

Screen Shot by Me2013-01-24 at 12.17.29 AM

• I tweet to share news and gather news first. I was the first in my feed to share the news that a hologram of Tupac was actually performing at Coachella, the minute it happened. Pretty soon the Twitter Feed was flooded with tweets about the festival and what was going on. I was getting text messages about if my tweet was true and what was happening. I felt that I was part of a breaking news story without even being a reporter. We are all reporters on Twitter, we can share the news and write about it, share our opinions. Some of the biggest news stories today are broke on Twitter. For example, the news of the death of Amy Whinehouse reached Twitter before it even reached her own father.

Screen Shot by Me 2013-01-24 at 12.12.38 AM

• I tweet to connect with celebrities. I am fascinated by the Hollywood world and the celebrity lifestyle. I wish I could be a part of it, maybe someday. Following celebrities makes me feel like I am a part of their world. You can “like” the celebrity on Facebook and occasionally see them pop up in your News Feed with a PR post or something regarding their career. This is why I like Twitter, for most celebrities, they control their own Twitter. It is not a PR job or way to gain followers and money. They do it because they are just like us. It’s also their outlet to share and spam our feeds with their random thoughts. When you see that blue check mark of verification it’s the real deal. Some of the most serious actors on television could display their true funny side with their tweets. It is nice to see that they really are just like us. Plus it is always a bonus to see fan interaction and appreciation on Twitter. One day, even with millions of followers and tweets a day, @justinbieber will mention me.

Screen Shot by Me 2013-01-24 at 12.23.38 AM

• I tweet to share. If there is a new song I’m listening to, a new book I’m reading, or just a trend I think should be watched, I will tweet about it. Most of the people who follow me have similar interests, so sharing is helping out the followers too. Professor Brady Teufel (@bradyteufel) of Cal Poly uses his Twitter account to share news with his students. He shares links to news stories on his page as a hint as to what will be on quizzes and seen great results. Students like the short burst of quick text that will reduce leisure time, which can explain why they are willing to read a few tweets as opposed to novels. Teufel’s main use for Twitter is to use it as a tool to steam and direct people to stories, even stories posted from his own students.  “It’s cool to be about to identify my students work that is exemplary and retweet it!,” say Teufel.

Screen Shot by Me 2013-01-24 at 2.01.03 AM

Looking back on old tweets, you can reminisce about old fads or things that were happening that the time. Twitter is like our own sharing time capsule. We put a tweet in the Twitterverse world and can come back years later relive old times. Feel free to share  some of the reasons #WhyITweet in the comment section.

–@lindseyyonline