Alaskans Top States in Facebook Use
While they’re hiking around Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America, or fishing in the colorful Yukon River watersheds, or sailing along the more than 33,000 miles of mainland and island shorelines, Alaskans aren’t too removed within their vast wilderness. They’re also widely enjoying the latest in social networking technologies. Alaska contains the most Facebook users per capita, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2011) and Facebook (2012). With all age groups considered, nearly three out of five residents (58 percent) of the northern state access Facebook. The following review of statistics demonstrates that social media is a powerful marketing tool for reaching people dispersed over remote areas. Continue reading
Study Says a Bad Experience Often Reaches 156,000 People
Before the mounting use of social media, marketing managers warned: if customers have a good experience they’ll tell one person; if they have a bad one, they’ll tell 10. According to a new Pew study, Facebook users who share with a “Friends of Friends” feature enabled will explain their consumer experiences to a mean average of 156,569 people (2012). The less inflated median average is also far reaching, spreading across a network of 31,170 people through friends of friends. The study, combining server logs and survey data, proves that people who allow lax privacy settings for two degrees of separation have a voice that could carry across a population the size of Springfield, Mass. And that’s just Facebook. Anyone invested in a company’s reputation must understand the power participatory media affords consumers. Continue reading
Offline Behaviors Online
Why do people do what they do, online?
There are numerous motivations behind the behaviors people exhibit in participatory media. Many follow long-held concepts that scientists recognize as common among all nations. In a survey of national cultures, sociologists in the mid 20th century highlighted three key issues imposing consequences on the integrity of societies (Inkeles & Levinson, 1997, pp. 45-51): relation to authority, conception of self, primary dilemmas and conflicts, and ways of dealing with them. Building on that milestone in culture-personality literature, Geert Hofstede published a highly-praised study that identified the values of people dealing with common problems, covering more than 50 countries. Hofstede’s conclusions were strikingly similar (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010, p. 30). I’ll review their central themes, as they relate to online behaviors. Continue reading
Reservists finish detainee operations in Afghanistan
FORT CARSON, Colo. — A company of Army Reservists stepped inside the Special Events Center at Fort Carson, Colo., Jan. 21, after completing a one-year deployment handling detainee operations in Afghanistan.
MPs Finish Detainee Operations in Afghanistan
Carson opens new center to improve training
FORT CARSON, Colo. — Fort Carson’s ability to ready soldiers for contingency operations expanded and improved this month with the opening of a new Training Support Center.
Each year, more than 75,000 soldiers meet with Fort Carson training coordinators to refine their basic warrior skills, said William January, branch chief of Training Aids, Devices, Simulators and Simulations. With more than four times the space now available for the Training Support Center, he expects that number to grow.
Costing almost $9 million, the new 80,000-square-foot Training Support Center is adjacent to the installation’s Digital Training Center, a short walk from the Medical Simulation Training Center, and a couple of hundred feet from a planned Battle Command Training Center — a training campus is emerging at the Mountain Post. Continue reading
Black Hawk pilots Give WLC a lift
FORT CARSON, Colo. — When soldiers attending the Fort Carson Warrior Leader Course rehearsed medevac requests Jan. 17, the Army’s latest in medical support aircraft responded.
A battlefield situational exercise concludes the multi-component WLC at Fort Carson, which is organized by the 168th Regiment, Regional Training Institute. New coordination efforts between the training regiment and Reserve aviators are helping WLC evaluators better assess the Army’s future leaders. Continue reading
TAPS Honors Soldiers for Mentoring
FORT CARSON, Colo. — Fifty soldiers were honored in the Fallen Heroes Family Center Jan. 13 for taking an extra, extraordinary step as soldiers.
The soldiers volunteered in October to mentor children during the 3rd Annual National Military Suicide Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp, offered by the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors at Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs. Each child had lost a loved one, a service member, to suicide.
While hundreds of people from across the nation spent three days sharing hardships, searching for answers and making connections, the soldiers offered children of all ages their support. Continue reading
Engineers return from Iraq, cut forces in Afghanistan
FORT CARSON, Colo. — Almost 200 soldiers from 4th Engineer Battalion redeployed in December, ending two one-year combat commitments in just four months.
Capt. Mike Custer, commander, 62nd Sapper Company, reported the return of the Army’s final combat unit in Iraq Dec. 22, during a ceremony surrounded by holiday decorations and cheer. Capt. John Kubeika, executive officer, 576th Engineer Company, returned from Afghanistan Dec. 30, with almost half of that unit’s soldiers. Continue reading
Carson breaks ground for shared shooting complex
FORT CARSON, Colo. – El Paso County, 4th Infantry Division and Fort Carson leadership broke ground Dec. 15 to begin building a massive outdoor shooting complex.
Fort Carson has allocated about 400 acres of range space for the construction of the Cheyenne Mountain Shooting Complex. Almost 100 firing points will open this summer, adjacent to Gate 20, near Interstate 25 and Mesa Ridge Parkway, to provide shooting lanes for public safety, according to Army officials. Continue reading
Social media: Globalized material culture
A growing number of people around the world are participating in online social media platforms, where floods of information are eroding barriers once imposed by national borders, religious convictions and governmental pressures. Nearly 4 out of 5 active Internet users visit online social networks and blogs, according to Nielsen (2011a). In business transactions, purchase decisions today rely more on consumer ratings and reviews than company sales pitches (Nielsen, 2011b). People are collaborating online about issues ranging from spending a dollar to the enforcement of policies. While sharing opinions in virtual venues, they’re rewriting definitions for socially acceptable beliefs, principles and activities. Mankind is distilling a kaleidoscope of data, discarding some elements, while debating and merging others. Controversial topics in online communities often explore concepts relevant to all of humanity, thereby programming minds with instructions formulated from a collective conscious. Social media is a participatory technology that’s rapidly consuming data, mixing ideas and homogenizing cultures. Continue reading
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Galleries
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Quotes
“Those who want to grow rich in a day live for a long time in great poverty.”
“I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is, ‘How do we make people pay for music?’ What if we started asking, ‘How do we let people pay for music?'”
Dustin Senger 