Media Tools: Widgets, Clouds and Pods

Instruction:  Choose three of the Social Media Tools presented on this website to try.
http://aids.gov/using-new-media/tools/index.html#tool-bookmarkingNew
Post links to your attempts. Share your thoughts about which new social media tools will reach audiences most effectively. Explain your rationale. 

***

My first choice was Social Bookmarking. I chose Pinterest because it seems to be the most popular. I entered my personal information and pressed OK; this brought me to a cover page, but I could not enter the site. It seemed to be a dead link to a fake page, or they were down for maintenance (I also asked a friend to see if I was just missing something, they could not access the site either).  I then saw that all I needed to do was press [PinIt] on the website itself when surfing -- it was too simple. Love it.

http://www.pinterest.com/


My second choice shortly after was for a Mashup.
http://aids.gov/using-new-media/tools/index.html#tool-mashups

The introduction at the website said:
"Creating your own mashup requires a certain level of understanding of software technology, but there are several online tools that do not require technical expertise. You can customize many ready-made mashups by using your own data." looked interesting but seemed a little daunting. Would find a tutorial online like Youtube Mashups for Dummies.

Here is an example of a Mashup:
http://pillbox.nlm.nih.gov/


Web and podcasts rock a page if done well.  Here WMLB embeds Bill Kovach speaking about his book -- BLUR:
http://1690wmlb.com/bill_kovach/

This is a nice addition to any webpage, especially if considering consumers with sight problems.


I then tried widgetbox, which is a pay-for-app and service site, with a free demo widgetmaker.
http://www.widgetbox.com/widgets/

After spending 30 minutes playing around with widgets, I could not find the widget I had made. I gave up. (I am fairly knowledgable about computers, but not tech-savy.)

http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/uploads-by-dynamicvewblog?share=1&newBlidget=true&__fsk=816947222


Flite is a cloud-based platform for covering many areas of advertising like webpages and managing traffic and other variables. It is a bit more than I need now, more aimed for larger business applications:
http://www.flite.com/about/


I also tried zeemaps, and could see this as a nice little addition, if you could invest the time in learning how to operate it efficiently. It could work well on an investigative project, or larger marketing tool.
https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=716646



My opinion is the easiest to learn and operate tools and apps will do best. Obviously social media sites like Facebook are being used by almost everyone these days as an alternative marketing site, from celebrities and authors to Fortune 500.

Social bookmarks linked to Tweets works well as a daily marketing ping to your readers, using two tools together for better time management. For larger audiences, a cloud-based app would be a good investment. These would be linked to a webpage or blog for non-profit or commercial business, personal marketing, or citizen journalism.

Video sharing sites are still number one for marketing, with Youtube far outperforming the other competitors. The statistics speak for themselves -- people love video. This medium may overtake the television and cable markets so it must be included as one of the three most important media tools today.