In January of this year, I took part in an RMIT Study Tour with the College of Business to Brest, France. It was a great experience to study an intensive two subjects overseas and I thought I would share some of my experiences and reflections of my time overseas.
Let’s talk about Trump’s favourite phrase – fake news!
Whilst many of us would say social media is great for keeping in contact with friends or posting those Contiki photos, there is a dark side to these channels, with many social media sites facing a huge problem with the spread of disinformation and fake news.
Ever since I was a young kid, I wanted the opportunity to have the real ‘college experience,’ so going on an exchange to the USA was a no brainer for me. Little did I know just how enriching this experience would be; it was a lot more fulfilling than it is normally portrayed in the movies – attending frat parties and drinking from red cups.
In 2011, Head of TED, Chris Anderson, presented on the phenomenon Crowd Accelerated Innovation driven by the rise of web video.
Fast forward eight years and video is even more powerful in today’s digital landscape. With higher bandwidth speeds and the ability to capture high definition videos from the palm of our hands, it’s no wonder that over 5 billion videos on YouTube are viewed every day, and 300 hours of video content are uploaded every minute!
Over the past decade, digitally native companies have demonstrated the benefits of a ‘freemium’ business model.
Freemium: Music to my Ears
A combination of free and premium content, users can get basic
features at no cost and can access richer content for a subscription fee. If
you have ever streamed music on Spotify, watched a YouTube video, read a New York Times article, swiped right
on Tinder or made a connection on LinkedIn, you have been exposed to the freemium
business model whether you realised it or not.
When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on 12 March 1989, he changed the world forever. Now 30 years later, we are well and truly in the information economy, where social media, tech giants and digital media dominate our marketing resources, but at what cost to our marketing strategies?