Online Reputation

Dustin, I looked you up online and found a lot of information on who you are. Or at least who the internet says you are.  Your LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media sites helped me to gather my information. Everything below is what I was able to learn.

I started off by looking for details in your professional life. What I found was interesting. First up was LinkedIn. Based on what I found you are an Intellectual Property Attorney at Superior IP located in Salt Lake City. You went to college at the University of Washington where you graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. Before then you graduated with your first degree, Biochemistry, at Brigham Young University. Also you graduated from the University of Maryland Baltimore with a Law degree. You are highly skilled at working with patents and trademarking which brings me to believe your specialty within law is patenting.  You are a very accomplished person for someone so young.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinlcall

Suspecting that this was not you I decided to check on your Twitter profile. What I found there was pretty intriguing. For starters I did not know you were bald. Based on your bio you are a “political professional”. Based on some of your retweets I gathered you are a Republican who lives in the Woodland/Sacramento area of California with your wife. There was a hyperlink attached to your bio that I clicked on which took me to your professional website. There I found out you earned the achievement of being able to call yourself an Eagle Scout. You studied political science with an emphasis in public service at the University of California Davis. You specialize in political campaigning, legislative operations, policy development and volunteer organizations. Currently you serve as Chairman of the Yolo County Republican Party and you are the youngest County Chairman in the state of California. That sounds like a great accomplishment to be able to tell people such a thing.

https://twitter.com/dustincall

http://www.dustincall.com/

It seemed like every link I clicked on, you were some form of an attorney or political affiliate. So I decided to take a different approach and started to add attributes with your name. The first one I added was Utah State and I finally found you. Your professional LinkedIn account was the first to show up. After reading it I was able to gather a little bit of information about you. You consider yourself to be an entrepreneur. Also, you currently work at Keepsake Cottage Home Interiors as a secretary. Based on that information I gathered you like fashion and being able to create decorations.

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=170151448&authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=O3Of&locale=en_US&srchid=2487664711424760996368&srchindex=1&srchtotal=10&trk=vsrp_people_res_name&trkInfo=VSRPsearchId%3A2487664711424760996368%2CVSRPtargetId%3A170151448%2CVSRPcmpt%3Aprimary

The last item I checked was Facebook.  This was by far the easiest way to find you, mainly because we have a shared group in common with one another. When I went to your profile I was not able to find too much about you due to your settings. Based on what I could see I was able to gather you enjoy traveling and being with your friends. A few years ago you were, and possibly still are, close to a girl name Keiyana. You and your mother have a close relationship with each other.

https://www.facebook.com/dustincall8

After researching you this is what I have come to conclude. You have a very common name so it can be rather difficult for people to find you online. The most looked up people with your name are political figures and attorneys. This also tells me something else. You do not bolster your life on social media. If you do, a person would have to know what attributes to search under your name. Based on your FaceBook page I gathered you are somewhat a private person who does not mind allowing people to see small aspects of your life. The downside of having such a common name is you need to have something to help you stand out from others with your name especially when someone is looking at your LinkedIn. So I would consider expanding more on your professional page. Remember the world is becoming more active on social media so make yourself easier to find.

Legal, Policies, and Ethics

There are many issues surrounding this topic and there are lots of research papers posted to the internet discussing these matters. There is a very fine line between social media, legal and ethics.

I looked at an article from the website “usatoday” and what I found from there was pretty interesting. One of the biggest topics that was discussed in this article is the ethical issue with social media being used for academic research.  Where the issue lies in this is private companies are gathering vast amounts of information from individuals’ private accounts. Through this mining of online communication it has aided in giving new insight into all aspects of everyday life. Personally, I think this instance is a good thing because these companies such as, Microsoft and Facebook, have been able to identify key items in people’s lives. Microsoft has used its data to help identify women who are at risk of postpartum depression and Facebook has been able to show how parents and kids interact. What they found is the interaction between them drops at the age of 13 until the child moves out. The argument to this is, is it ethical for a company to be able to store your information you have into their databases? I think if it is for research to help identify and find solutions to everyday life problems then yes. If not, then no because technically it is an invasion of privacy.

The next article I read discussed seven ethical dilemmas faced in content marketing. The list this article came up with were invasion of privacy, spamming, public bashing, dishonesty and distortions, distorted endorsements and improper anonymity, misuse of free expertise and contests, and opportunism. I found it intriguing that spamming was listed as unethical because it is such a common thing to happen to people that I do not really think about it. What makes it unethical is the manner in which messages are broadcasted. Usually users are deceived through a trail of twitter and Facebook posts. I know I have been a victim of this and I cannot stand when a post shows up on my “wall” of one thing then when I click on it, it takes me to a completely different link than what I was under the impression I was going to.

Is it okay for companies to gather data from the information you have put on your personal page? Is it right for a company to send you links that take you to a site that is not associated with the link? The simple answer is no. At the same time the web was created where anything goes and the rules don’t apply which has created numerous problems. These ethical issues will never go away so what can a person do to avoid this? Simply be aware and careful of what you decide you want others to see online.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/08/data-online-behavior-research/5781447/

http://blog.socialcontentmarketing.com/7-ethical-dilemmas-faced-in-social-media-marketing/

Collaborative and Distance Communication Platforms and Tools

In today’s society the idea of going an entire day without having a way to communicate other than face to face would have a person go insane. How can you blame them though? With how fast paced the world is needing a constant connection to everything is important. There are many distance communication platforms out there and the two I’m going to talk about are Oovoo and SnapChat.

I bet a vast of amount of the readers have not heard of Oovoo before so I will give a little history. Oovoo is a video chat service similar to Skype that began it services in the year 2007. In the first article I read it discusses how Oovoo became the teenager’s favorite way to video chat. I actually can agree with that statement. I say that because Oovoo was the first form of video chatting I did when the chat first went live. One of the biggest benefits I found was during that time Oovoo and skype were somewhat competing and Oovoo offered free conference calls with up to six people in a party and 12 if you had a subscription. In the article it talks about how Oovoo was never trying to target a young audience rather the company solely wanted to provide quality service to anyone. It caught on with teenagers because of the features that make it more fun to use. Now the company is ranked in the top twenty on the technology brands on FaceBook.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2012/02/01/how-oovoo-became-teenagers-favorite-way-to-video-chat/

The next platform is SnapChat. Ever since this photo and video sharing app surfaced I have been hooked.  I like to think of this company as the future “walkie-talkie” form of communication. I say that because to me the app symbolizes a walkie-talkie. Think about it, a person can have a full-on conversation with another person without ever having to directly seeing them. In the article I read it discusses why kids love to use SnapChat and the overall consensus came down to because it is not FaceBook. SnapChat has widely been known as the “sexting” app but only a small quantity of pictures and videos are related to that subject. One of the big reasons why people love the app so much is the ability to control how long a person can see your images and on top of that everything gets deleted after the time limit has expired. Having control over this form of media is It is a “trend worth following because it runs counter to the ways most tech companies are trying to monetize social media.” The idea that people have control of their data is considered to be new and for FaceBook it is at odds with its underlying paradigm. Since the users are in control SnapChat can keep up with the rate of change kids go through in social media.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/12/19/wait-a-minute-facebook-the-kids-like-snapchat-because-its-not-facebook/

Location Based Platforms

When I first looked at the assignment and saw we were to write on Location Based Platforms I was definitely at a loss for what any of those words meant. With a little bit of research I found some interesting items. In an article I read it talked about how the future of location based apps will shape the way we shop in stores. By now most of us know that many platforms/applications used involve having to turn on our location features on our phones. Imagine you are walking around Walmart trying to find some items. Only problem is you have no idea where to look and there are no customer service representatives. I bet it would be nice to have an app that can tell where to locate any item you might be looking for. That is exactly what a company named Aisle 411 on a smaller scale. This company has mapped out every Walgreens drugstore. All a person has to do is enable their location feature, type in what they are looking for and the app will tell you exactly where to find the item. As technology becomes more sophisticated I can see this happening on a broader scale like in Walmart.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2014/04/30/how-location-based-apps-will-shape-the-future-of-shopping/#.VNB4Vf54pcQ

There are some pretty nifty things that can come out of Location Based Services, but with good there is also bad. Personally, unless I need my location feature on for something specific I keep it off for a few reasons. It helps conserve my battery life and most importantly I like my privacy. In the scholarly article Time for a Privacy Check-in it states, “Depending upon the information and who learns it, the ramifications could range from annoying to embarrassing to downright dangerous. Robberies have been linked to location status updates and GPS technology already has been involved in a significant number of stalking cases.” This is a big issue with LBS. Location information can be gathered knowingly or unknowingly to the user and when this happens it can spell trouble because someone who is looking at the information not only can tell where you are, over time they can pick up what a possible routine is for the user. As long as the location feature is enabled information is constantly being transmitted and it is stored indefinitely. What scares me is in the article there is discussion on how LBS have the potential to compile a large quantity of history of where the user has been. Talk about invasion of privacy.

http://aclunc-tech.org/files/lbs-privacy-checkin.pdf

I think there are upsides and downsides to having such features as the LBS. There can be a lot of great uses like not being able to get lost. At the same time I feel there is a general concern for the amount of privacy lost by deciding to use it.