BuddyAbroad: a mobile application for international students in the Netherlands

In 2010, Tilburg University registered over 500 international students. Studying abroad implies arranging several practical issues such as housing, insurances and health care. In addition to these practical issues, international students also have to deal with “emotional” issues like encountering others and making friends.
 In order to help these international students in the Netherlands, me and my peer group created a mobile application to help international students meeting other students and sharing experiences with them.
Creating this mobile application is part of the course “User Interface Design” taught by Suleman Shahid. In this course, we learned to apply the theory of Norman in practice by going through  all steps of designing an interface. The fact that it was a real‐life assignment with real test users and that we were allowed to find a topic ourselves was very encouraging.

Curious to the mobile application? Please watch the film fragment below!

Lost or liberated?

Nowadays, we live in a world which can be considered as dominated by computer mediated communication. Accoring to December (1997), computer mediated communication is a process of human communication via computers, involving people, situated in particular contexts, engaging in processes to shape media for a variety of purposes. More straightforward, computer mediated communication is communication that takes place between two human beings via the instrumentality of computers and examples are, among others, MSN, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and datingsites.

In general, there are two perspectives about computer mediated communication. The first is the “lost perspective”which states that is it difficult to build a close relationship via computer mediated communication. As distinct from this, the “liberated perspective”states that close relationships can be build via computer mediated communication.

In the fragment below, Dr. Marjolein Antheunis talks about one of her latest studies. In this study, Marjolein Antheunis does research about the possibilites of having eye contact during computer mediated communication conversations by using an eye catcher. By using an eye catcher, computer mediated communication becomes more and more similar to face to face contact, which is, according to “lost perspective” supporters, still the best way to build a relationship.

Curious about the research design and the tentative results of the mentioned study? Please look at  the film fragment below. 

From monopoly to oligopoly

With seventeen buildings, spread over 135.000 square meter, Tilburg University can be considered as a large village. Untill recently, almost 12.000 students and 2.000 co-workers were provided with food and drinks by caterer Albron. However, given among others the considerable amount of exchange students, Tilburg University decided that it was time for a change in 2011.

In view of entrepreneurship and internationalization, Tilburg University decided to chose for several different caterers. A recent good example of this, is the recently launched halal counter and the “Topcrogue” sandwich and juice corner. In order to stimulate the necessary internal competition, “Doner Company” and a wok restaurant will be opened in the future.

Social media join their hands for Japan

Since Friday the 11^th , Japan has been stricked by disaster after disaster. First the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, which also caused a tsunami and now the people in Japan are struggling with a possible nuclear disaster and terrible cold. The authorities have identified 8,133 dead people and more than 12,000 people are still missing.

While the earthquake destroyed the electricity supplies and shut down two nuclear power plants, Internet availabilty stays practically unaffected. This allows victems of the earthquake to connect with friends and families by using social media to ensure their conditions and whereabouts.

Social media not only help the earthquake victems to connect with their family and friends, it is also a medium to raise money for the victems. Like my collegae Inge Haagmans mentioned, Groupon launched a special webpage where people can donate money to the Red Cross. 

Besides that Twitter is also used to inform the people in Japan about the latest developments. Wednesday, the Japanese prime minister opened a twitter account in English to inform people about evacuations, press conferences and other developments. In the first couple of hours, the account gathered 7,000 followers and at the moment, more than 15,000 tweeps are following @JPN_PMO, which translates tweets of the Japanese disaster information account @Kantei_Saigai.

I warn you!

As mentioned in one of the previous blogs “Are you addicted?”, a social media addiction does really exist. Besides an addiction, social media apparantly can cause another “disease” called a social media burn-out. According to Internet expert Jim Stolze, more and more people in their thirties are suffering from a social media burn-out. “As soon as you turn on your mobile phone, laptop or Ipad, the messages start to come in. This can be pleasant, but also very compulsory” according to Jim Stolze.

An example is Boele Ytsma, once called the Internet vicar. He believes that in his case his burn-out was caused due to the fact that his attention was so distracted by the social media. In order to recover, Ytsma discontinued his Twitter and Facebook accounts and nowadays he checks his email account only a few times a week.

Why people in their thirties? People who are younger are used to the fact that not all the information received is manageble but older people, who experience real letters and stamps can’t get used to the fact that they have to make a choice between all the informations flows.

This means that us youngsters don’t belong to the high-risk group but if you do get a social media burn-out in the future, you can’t say that I did’t warn you!

Please, start lovin my blog!

You might have noticed all the UvT students who started a blog at the beginning of February. As you could read in my first blog post, starting a blog is a compulsory assignment of the course Business Information Technology. Since I really like this assignment and I like to read all these blogs I would like to ask all the BIT bloggers to install the Bloglovin widget! Bloglovin is a tool which places the updates of your favorite blogs all in one overview. This can save you lots of time!

Bloglovin is founded by five Swedish guys who are in their twenties. Before they started Bloglovin, they already built websites. Even a fashion (!) community! Unfortunately, this wasn’t so easy as they thought so they asked the help of Carolina Engman from Fashion Squad. During on of their meetings, they saw Carolina checking all the blogs she liked for new updates. A few days later, Bloglovin was born!

Do you vist your favorite BIT blogs on an daily basis? Then I have found the perfect tool for you! Bloglovin!

In the video below, you can check for yourself how easy it is to start using Bloglovin.

Are you addicted?

“People who don’t have an e-mail account, don’t need to check their e-mail account”. A couple of years ago, this was a wise saying but recently, there are numerous social media networks who ask our attention 24/7.

“My name is Juliette and I am addicted to social media. Hi Juliette”. Can you imagine? Some kind of anonymous social media addicts, just like regular AA meetings.

It might sound silly but recent studies show us that there are people who are really addicted to social media! A study among 1000 Internet users shows us that almost 50% of the people check their Twitter and Facebook before they go to bed. Moreover, 42% of the people check their social networks immediately after they woke up and half of them is still in their bed when they do that! It is also striking that 40 per cent don’t mind to be disturbed by social media during other businesses, like during meal or, even more shocking, during lovemaking! That is the end of romance!

Are you addicted too? Please check the symptoms and the video below:

·         You answer your phone with your Twitter nickname

·         Your family and friends had to read on twitter that you are pregnant/ homeless/engaged/divorced

·         Instead of saying “goodbye” you say “send me a DM”

·         You don’t know your neighbours , but you know everything about your good “friends” in Canada, South Africa and India

Employees don’t want their boss on Facebook

“ Employees don’t want their boss on Facebook”. This was the head of an article on the website www.nu.nl from a while ago.  Although everyone likes to stay in good contact with their boss, almost nobody likes a connection on Facebook with him or her. Research showed us that people are still conservative in using social network sites with colleagues. 

Connections with colleagues on social network websites can cause complications. What should you do when the roles change? For example, what to do when your colleague becomes your bose? Should you “de-friend” him or her? Most people find it hard to decide what is wise.

Luckily for them, a few very clever Dutch entrepreneurs came up with a solution, called Whoopaa. With Whoopaa ,a worldwide online social platform, you can manage all your online social activities. With Whoopaa you can divide your personal and business communication. Besides the separation between personal and business communication, Whoopaa also provides one timeline, in which you can manage and receive all the updates form the networks you are involved in.

As a user on Whoopaa, you have the opportunity to create both a personal and a business profile with help of an install wizard. Then, it is possible to divide personal and business communication at only one platform. As a user, you have a dashboard with which you can control the linked social networks and you can switch between your profiles with just one click.

Does the above information trigger you, then you would like the video below about all the mentioned and other features of Whoopaa!

Pay with a tweet, a social payment system!

Lately, you see it more and more often: companies offering their services in exchange for a tweet. ‘Pay with a Tweet’ is the first social payment system, where people pay with the value of their social network. 'Pay with a Tweet' is hot and it works! People don’t mind to tweet about a service when they can use it for free.

This new business model is launched by an American company named “Innovative Thunder”. In my opinion, this new born business model is simple and brilliant at the same time! By using this new model, a company keeps the “benefits” of a free service and generates free publicity at once. Usually, a company tries to rely on word of mouth publicity but by using “pay with a tweet”  they can enforce it! In today's world the value of people talking about your product is sometimes higher than the money you would get for it.

In the below video, you can see for yourself how easy it is to pay with a tweet!

Dutch example
A Dutch academic publisher named "Eburon" already uses the service from “Innovative Thunder”.  In their webshop, a book called “De betere byte in de strijd om het gelijk” is sold for 35 euro’s. Instead of buying the printed book immediately people also can “buy” the e-book in exchange for a tweet.  According to Wiebe de Jager, director of Eburon, they uses this new business model to generate attention for this book, which has a small and specific target group. "When people have seen the free digital version, they might purchase the printed book more quickly!"

Source: Pay with a tweet

How to avoid expensive advertisement costs?

Television is a very powerfull medium to communicate your message to your target group. Unfortunately, it is also very pricey to advertise on television. Creating and broadcasting a commercial can cost you a lot. On top of that, every marketeer knows that repetition is essential when you advertise so all in all, it is an expensive business!

To avoid all these costs, you can use viral marketing. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message via social media. It is like word of mouth advertising strengthened by the Internet. By using viral marketing, a large group can be reached cheaply!

In the past couple of years, numerous companies have been using viral marketing succesfully to communicate with their target group. Below, some of my favorite virals: 

One of the most frequently watched Dutch virals ever (X-Travel "Boeing 737 lands on mediterranean sea", 2008).

This viral caused outrage, which led to the fact that  Ford claimed that they had never approved the virals’ release (Ford Ka "The Cat", 2006).

Almost everything seems to be resistant to the power of "the Force", however the new Passat clearly is not (Volkswagen "The Force", 2011).

Every advertiser should dream about the fact that his or her commercial goes abroad via the Internet, right?

 

Save time and money while shopping online?

Last week, my new semester started. This means exciting new courses and several new assignments. The assignment of one of my new courses, Business Information Technology is simple: “blog about something you learned in any of your courses at Tilburg University”.

Because we all have the same assignment and since my class is stuffed with clever and intelligent students, I need to come up with something special to stand out! Fortunately, online shopping becomes more and more social these days and because of that I can write about it on my blog!

Today I will tell you how you can save money and time during online shopping by using social shopping platforms and fashion portals. The first website I would like to tell you about, can save you a lot of time! I am talking about the fashion portal Shopscene. The launch of Shopscene implies that endless shopping sessions, in the high street or on the Internet, belong to the past. With just one click, all fashion collections are in arm’s reach! Who needs 10 different (web)shops to find the perfect little black dress when Shopscene can search for it in more than 40 web shops with over 6300 different brands at the same time? This website can save us busy students lots and lots of time!

Moreover, social shopping platforms can save us money! How? By using Stribe. Stribe brings people with the same brand and shop interests together.

At Stribe, people have the opportunity to become a fan of a certain brand or shop.  Shops happily reward “fans” with nice discounts. The more fans a brand or shop has, the higher the discount!

So people, shop till you drop!

PS. I am not responsible for unforeseen costs during or after reading this blog ;).