Tamra's Blog

Social media is not just a plaything. The way information spreads across it, and how content can be created and served for it, makes it a fitting platform for advertising and other business presence. And with most social media sites being free, even small business can have an advantage if they have a strong strategy. On both the business and consumer side, businesses can provide information about themselves, their products and/or services, and information relevant to their brand and field. To give an example of such presence, I will take a look at Speedway's and BP's presence on both Twitter and FaceBook, and how they accentuate their public image, garner attention, and interact with their followers. For starters, both of them present their posts in a way representative of the business's image. Speedway is often seen as friendly and casual. Their social media accounts have many fun and colorful posts, with polls, [Inter]nation x Day celebrations, games, and comedic ad...

A few months ago, a friend of mine was talking to me about a mobile game that had become popular, called Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, released by Nintendo. Although they're most well-known for their consoles and portable devices, and the video games meant for them, they had been recently dabbling in mobile development and microtransaction systems. "The game being monetized just turned me off from it," they said, leading them to never play it. I had played it for a short while, however, and told tell them the game's monetization is the least of its problems. "It can't be that complicated," they responded, "to make a cashgrab like this. What other kinds of 'problems' can they run into?" I thought about it, and realized just how many factors go into monetized systems and mobile applications. Developers have to consider the vast myriad of devices, their specifications, and how the user engages with the app content. Although I'm no ex...