All Articles Tagged "blogs"
Rick Ross, the Maybach Music Group and Blogging the Revolution
(New York Times) — Rick Ross has old friends, and Rick Ross has new friends. The old friends are from the neighborhood: Mr. Ross’s first crew was Triple C’s, or Carol City Cartel, named after the rough neighborhood north of Miami that Mr. Ross and the other members — Gunplay, Young Breed, Torch — called home. Where did Mr. Ross meet his new friends, the members of Maybach Music Group? It’s 2011: he met them on the Internet. Well, maybe that’s not where he met them, but it’s where they’re from, more or less, where they’ve achieved their greatest notoriety outside their hometowns. The new crew members — Pill, Meek Mill, Wale, among others — with heavy presences on hip-hop blogs, exemplify the modern way of getting attention. Judging by the composition of Maybach Music Group, the speed with which it was assembled and the subsequent speed with which its album was released, it’s hard not to think that Mr. Ross used rap blogs as a scouting tool, as a virtual farm team, and also as an inspiration.
Making the Most of a Business Blog
(Inc.) — Social networking. The big corporations have bought into it. Smaller companies, too. Even independent consultants use Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to do business. It is a great way to get the word out about your product or service. It boosts brand awareness, it builds loyalty, and it attracts and retains customers. But more companies are exploring ways get a bigger pay off with social media. The next frontier of social networking and weblogging is social blogging. This ever-changing construct represents a way of communicating for people who like to inform each other about their daily activities and share common points of interest, according to Wikipedia authors Lambert M. Surhone, Mariam T. Tennoe, and Susan F. Henssonow. This is usually done through continual updates that often include text, pictures, audio, or video.
Analog Girl in a Digital World?
Whether the internet boom came well after you had entered adulthood or you know no other way of living, you can’t deny that the internet has changed virtually every level of our communication. While it can be a little nerve racking as we watch ourselves being swept away in the digital divide, it’s just better if we ride with the tide, checking our position every so often to ensure that we haven’t drifted to far from the analog shore. From our conversations, to our dating habits technology is affecting us. If you don’t believe me, see if you find yourself in any of these scenarios below…
1. Phone conversations are becoming increasingly difficult. They’re now reserved only for those who hold a special place in your heart; all other unrecognized numbers will be screened.
2. Winking — ok for the internet… creepy in real life
3. “Lol” no longer means laugh out loud? It’s now serves as punctuation or a means to let someone know your rude remark was not to be taken 100 percent seriously.
4. You spend 30 minutes trying to figure out a random new acronym. Finally you break down and ask a trusted friend so as not to seem out of the loop.
5. If you can’t find it online, it’s not a credible business.
6. A location without an internet connection is officially deemed uncivilized.
7. You feel a little dejected when no one “likes” your Facebook status or recent post. OR you smile inside when 10 people do “like” your Facebook status.
8. You went to YouTube to watch one 2 minute video and an hour later you realize it’s time to get back to work.
9. You check the online forum you commented on every ten minutes – to see if anyone has responded to, agreed with or insulted you.
10. You once swore off online dating but every year it becomes more and more appealing…
Any more? What types of internet behavior do you notice in yourself and others.
Student Tries on Multiple Ventures
(Black Voices) — Whether you call them Generation Y or “Millenials” or “The Internet Generation” the young adults of today are known for social networking, consumerism and their insatiable appetite for distraction. However, 21-year-old Phillip T. Annand is an example of the best of what these “plugged-in” young people have to offer. The Princeton, NJ native and Rutgers University student has already started his own successful street wear line and has launched a much talked about and groundbreaking lifestyle site called The Madbury Club. Recently BV spoke to this precocious and enterprising young man about his upbringing, motivation and how his identity informs what he does.
Let’s let everyone know who you are. State your name and what you do and what you represent: Phillip Toussaint Annand is my name I’m located out in Jersey, and I’ve done a few websites. I started doing street wear — I started with Award Tour doing a t-shirt line and that blew up got a nice little following — did some blogging for [lifestyle blog] Hypebeast and then branched off and started my own thing with Madbury Club and I’m kind of rolling with that right now.
Why Small Business Owners Need a Blog
(Businessweek) — If you’re a small business owner, you may have taken the plunge and put up a website. Unless you’re selling direct from the site, the chances are good that nothing much has changed on the site since it first went up. That’s not good because search engines like Google reward dynamic websites—that is, when they see fresh content on a consistent basis they will send more potential customers to you. Static websites just don’t cut it. The problem with a regular website is you probably need to pay a webmaster to make changes. It takes too much time and money, so you don’t bother.
Six Ways to Get More Exposure for Your Blog
(Entrepreneur) — One important way to make your marketing efforts on social media sites more effective is by automating the posting process. This means that once you post to your blog or to a social network, it can be re-posted automatically to all your other networks and sites. Automation gives you a greater amount of exposure without having to post your content to each social network individually. Some online tools like ping.fm allow you to automate your social networking sites. Others like tubemogul.com enable you to coordinate video postings. These sites can submit a link or post to one or two, or in some cases up to 60 sites that you’re using.
Blogging vs. Bootlegging: Why the Government Seizure of Rap Blogs is Wrong
(Black Voices) — When U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) seized hip-hop blogs OnSMASH.com and dajaz1.com last Thursday, we were left asking, “When did rap become a threat to national security?” For ICE it was a matter of copyright infringement, and the same way they’d crack down on a site for selling counterfeit goods, they were cracking down on blogs for posting music and videos. TheBVX contributor Kathy Iandoli points out the absurdity of equating blogs with bootleggers. Remember back in the day when bootleggers sold cassettes in the street? You could purchase one tape for $10, two for $15 or three for $25. The covers were photocopied versions of the original album art, and the images were always stretched, so a bootleg cover of Black Moon’s ’Enta Da Stage’ made Buckshot Shorty look 6-foot 2. Those were the days. Then we graduated to CDs, with spelling errors all over the place on the discs: Notorius BIG and 2Pak [sic]. (Maybe that’s how Fabolous got his name?) Now that was illegal, and many will recall the day their favorite bootlegger’s stand got shut down by the authorities.
Blogs Growing Up, Overlapping Mainstream, Embracing Brands
(Fast Company) — The enmity between blogging and traditional media is still alive and well, however, and it seems that while blogging is indeed getting more professional, that message hasn’t spread throughout all of the marketing and PR industries: 64% of bloggers noted they are treated “less professionally” by “brand representatives” than typically for traditional media representatives. And here’s a measure of how staple journalistic practices aren’t necessarily being lost in the new medium (a common statement trotted out by folk irked at the decline of the print industry): 59% of bloggers who knew about the FTC ruling on “brand endorsements” said it hadn’t had any effect on their blogging activities, and 42% of all bloggers said they wrote about brands they both love and hate.
Global Black Search Engine Launches
(PR Web) — Tired of struggling to find unique African, African American, Afro European and Caribbean blogs and websites online, Obi Linton, founder of the Annual Black Web Awards developed GatewayBlack.com, the global Black search engine. After viewing several lists of top 1,000 websites and not seeing any sites with Black content, Linton suspected that others worldwide also had similar challenges. He knew he was on to something after reviewing the daily results in his new engine’s crawlers, which turned up thousands of Black sites worldwide that he would never have found through a search in a major search engine.
Latoya Peterson: Media, Entrepreneurship and Birth of a New Nation
(Huffington Post) — At the intersection where social media and entrepreneurship meet technology and racial issues, you will find Latoya Peterson hard at work changing American society. The 27-year-old African American entrepreneur –who envisions new trans-media opportunities across Internet, TV, radio and print sectors amid a crumbling Old Guard corporate media infrastructure — presides over one of the most important ongoing national discussions in America: race relations. Peterson’s blog, Racialicious.com, sounds like a deliciously cynical spoonful of an issue most Americans find difficult to swallow. But it has grown rapidly since 2004, when it was created by original owner, Carmen Van Kerchkove. In 2008, Peterson was brought on as editor and eventually purchased the blog when Van Kerchkove decided to retire earlier this year. The 500 readers a day several years ago have ballooned to a current high of 10,000 … and the site is growing.
