Organizations and E-Commerce

1. The topic of the week was organization and e-commerce. E-commerce is defined as the buying and selling of products over electronic systems such as the internet and other computer networks. This week the social media tool that we were introduced to was Flickr. Flickr allows people and organizations to manage photos and videos online. Flickr relates to the topic of the week because it is a social media tool that allows people to share and advertise their photos with others. Flickr can be used as an advertisement tool. In fact, many organizations and businesses have taken advantage of this and posted many advertisements to Flickr. In the description of the photos is usually a link to where the consumer can buy the product.

2. Flickr serves the function of allowing people, organizations, and businesses to share photos with each other. people can share their favorite photos with their friends, organizations can share photos that represent what they are doing, and businesses can share photos that show off their products. Currently, Flickr costs $6.95 a year for a premium subscription that allows unlimited photo and video posts. Flickr also serves as a very cost effective way for companies to advertise their products. Millions of people are subscribed to Flickr  and the opportunity for advertisement is great.

3. What I found most interesting about Flickr was its ease of use. Everything seemed very simple to use and, in fact, was. Searching for photo topics was awesome. You could find pictures about almost anything. uploading pictures was extremely simple. All that needed to be done was dragging the desired picture into the website. It is extremely simple for businesses to advertise their products and services on Flickr. If I was just starting a new business, then Flickr would be the place where I would start advertising. It is very cheap and can be very effective.

4. Flickr was mostly very easy to use except for finding groups. I found it rather difficult to find groups that actually seemed legitimate. During our in-class Flickr tutorial I could not find a good group that was related to hair salons. I tried searching for groups relating to other topics and came up with the same results. All of the groups that came up in the results had only a few members. Joining groups that only have a few members isn't a very good way to advertise your business effectively.

5. I believe that photos are one of the greatest ways to communicate. With that being said, I think that Flickr is a great tool that improves communication. Photos can be extremely symbolic and carry a lot of emotions. Flickr allows people to share their favorite photos with others. This can help people understand others better. Some people may not know how to express their emotions so they let their pictures do that for them.

6. I think that Flickr is a great social media tool. After using Flickr I found that other social media tools like Facebook are easier to use and do just about the same things. Facebook allows the sharing of photos and videos just like Flickr. I think that Facebook is just a better tool for sharing these things because so many more people use Facebook than Flickr. I don't think that I will be using Flickr to share my photos. I will just stick with Facebook for that.