How social media has changed travel

The world is a smaller place with social media and it’s increasingly changing how we vacation and travel. In the past, people used travel planners, brochures, word-of-mouth recommendations, paper road maps, and the “we’ll figure it out when we get there” method for their getaways. Today, it’s not so different but on social networking sites we have ways to openly share reviews, pictures and blog posts about our experiences away from home with our friends, family and the world. And based on what our friends and family do on their adventures, social media is changing how we plan our own vacations.

Social media sites are a way for people to get ideas, see photographs and read real recommendations from regular people who have travelled to a particular destination. According to an infographic by MDG Advertising, “52 percent of travelers use social media to find vacation inspiration.” Users most often turned to Facebook to post about their upcoming trip or to find out more information.

Image via SocialX

The photos your friends post on these sites can have a major impact on your own vacation. More than 52 percent of travelers said that seeing friends’ travel photos had inspired them to take a trip to the same place according to a poll by SkyScanner.com.

Our willingness to share online amplifies word-of-mouth communication. Since 3 out of 4 of social media users post their photos on social networks after their vacation is over, others can easily get an idea of what they can do on their own vacations. The impact of recommendations by others has led to new sites being created to merge the world of social media and travel.

Gogobot is one such site. It works by linking your account to Twitter and Facebook to find other Gogobot users. When you are looking for trip advice, you post a question to Facebook, Twitter, and Gogobot where other users can respond with their comments and reviews. The site also saves places you’ve been, so you can access restaurants, hotels and your travel history at a later date.

Even popular social networking websites such as Pinterest have gotten in on the action. In November 2013, Pinterest added a new feature called “Place Pins” which allow people to pin photos of their dream vacations on a map and create their own itineraries. Every day Pinterest users pin about 1.5 million places, and now there are more than 750 million destination pins on the site.

Travel industry businesses have created new and useful ways to use social media in order to make the booking and vacation experience more pleasant for their customers. Some companies allow booking payments via Twitter and Facebook and others have set up Twitter accounts for special travel offers and insider travel tips.

Travelers turn to sites such as Twitter to engage with hotels, airlines, cruise lines, restaurants and more to ask questions, learn information, book travel services and to make a complaint. Since the company accounts are public, there is pressure for immediacy and timely response. Problems with complaints can be handled quickly and others looking for the same information can find it easily.

Social media travel sites have changed the way we travel. They allow time-poor individuals a way to quickly find out what places to explore and what places aren’t worth our time. It creates new avenues to find travel deals, information, feedback and recommendations from people you know, which inspires us when planning our own vacations.

This was originally posted to the Eagle Strategies blog.

Why more schools should integrate social media into their curriculum

Image Credit: Concordia University

It’s no surprise that social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook play a large role in the lives of the younger crowd, especially those under 18. These sites have touched every aspect of our culture and are drastically changing world by the way we communicate and interact with each other.

Although most K-12 schools ban cell phones, a 2013 survey found that parents are buying cell phones for their children at a younger age. On average, kids get their first phone at 11, however, the study also found that one in 10 kids has a cell phone by the time they are five years old.

This technological impact also means that kids are also joining social media sites at younger ages. According to a 2012 Consumer Reports survey, 7.5 million children under the age of 13 were using Facebook, including more than five million under the age of 10. According to Social Media Today, three out of four students in the 7^th – 12^th grade have at least one social media profile.

Since 96% of students who go online use social media, K-12 schools can’t afford to sit back and ignore the prevalence of social media in the lives of their students. However, the question is how schools can incorporate social media lessons into their curriculums without compromising their safety or causing distractions. Schools are in a unique position to capitalize on how to teach students to navigate social media sites at a young age.

Social media creates a skill set that is needed in the 21^st century, as the development of social media sites has allowed access to information that we’ve never had before, making us more globally connected. According to Best Masters in Education, 46% of schools have students participate in online pen pal or other international programs. The fact that social media is hands-on provides opportunity for real-life learning, provides students greater access to research tools, strengthens communication and collaboration skills, and increases their confidence.

Students can gain information, insights, and skills needed for their future careers by interacting with people such as industry professionals, politicians, and other notable people on social media, whom they otherwise would not be able to interact with before.

But that’s not all; social media sites can help connect students with college recruiters, opening the door to more educational opportunities. A 2012 Kaplan survey found that 87% of colleges use Facebook for recruiting potential college students, 76% use Twitter, and 73% use YouTube.

Social media creates engagement and interactivity in the classroom, especially during lessons that might be lacking in particularly exciting material. The use of a class hash tag, allows interactions, free discussion of issues, and feedback. This creates a sense of community and fellowship among the students.

For students who are shy, social media allows them to collect their thoughts and say what they mean to say. More than one in four teens say that using their social networking site makes them feel less shy (29%) and more outgoing (28%), according to a 2012 study by Common Sense Media. This improves written communication skills in individuals, among students and their teachers.

Social media doesn’t even have to be used solely by students. Teachers can benefit from social media by the ability to post assignments online, send reminders, share learning material, answer questions about homework, and have the ability to connect with and inform parents in a more convenient way. School administrators can more easily announce important events and information, such as school closures.

Teachers and parents also have greater opportunities to address online issues at even younger ages, such as how to be safe online and give advice for students on what to do if they are involved in cyber bullying.

The importance of social media instruction in schools is even catching on with lawmakers. Earlier this month, the state of New Jersey passed a bill that would require school districts to teach middle school students about responsible use of social media. The bill is designed to teach middle schoolers about “cyber safety, cyber security, and cyber ethics” on social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Students will also be taught about cyber bullying and other negative online behaviors.

Social media instruction in K-12 schools provide benefits to not only the student, but to parents, teachers, and the entire school system by allowing students to have a more up-to-date view on our world while learning important life skills and how to use social media safely and properly online. Social media isn’t going away; students are already heavily using social media sites, now it’s just up to the schools to embrace it. Only time will tell if more schools adopt the use of social media in daily curriculum, but it’s clear that there’s a slow revolution already happening in schools: a social media revolution.

For more information about the impact of social media in schools, here is an informative infographic.

This was originally posted on the Eagle Strategies blog.

Is Social Media a Hack? How to Protect Yourself Online

It’s a startling reality that happens every day. You log on to your social media account to find that it has been disabled, that you have been locked out and your password changed – or worse, that your account information has been stolen or held hostage.

Image Credit: Bit Social Media

That is what happened to Naoki Hiroshima after hackers accessed his GoDaddy and PayPal accounts, resulting in his loss of a rare Twitter username.

The truth is that no one is safe from a data breach. Governments, companies and private individuals fall prey to hackers and scammers every day.

In January alone, Snapchat and Neiman Marcus fell to the hands of hackers, who stole private information from millions of users. Skype’s Twitter account was hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) and just this week, both Yahoo! Mail and arts & crafts retail chain, Michaels, were the latest victims of a data breach. Last December, encrypted data with PINs were removed from Target’s databases, and hackers also stole 2 million Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo passwords. 

We see this happening more and more, every day. We know the risks of being online, yet we’re sharing more and more of our private lives on social media with the world these days. There is no doubt that personal information is profitable for companies who use our personal information such as our shopping habits and health information for things like targeted advertising. Advertisers who message relevant content can result more attention from consumers and of course greater sales numbers, but the information used can be extremely damaging if it falls into the wrong hands. The most difficult part is that we can’t control what happens to the information companies have about us, but we can make it harder for them to get more information if we are conscious about what we are putting online and on our social media accounts. Here are some steps to protect your online privacy and social media accounts. A lot of these are common sense, but they could help you keep your accounts safe.

1.) Get better at choosing your online usernames and passwords.

• Don’t create a password from a word that can be found in a dictionary.
• Don’t use the same username and password for every site. This was something we learned in class, and a lot of people were very surprised to find that that’s exactly what they did and that they shouldn’t do.
• Some ways to come up with a password include using acronyms, or l33t speak. You can even use a sentence that’s easy to remember. According to this website, here are some ideas for generating a password based on an acronym:

Ihp,tmmc	I hate passwords, they make me crazy
TyIwl10#	This year I will lose 10 pounds
Mw&katb!	My wife and kids are the best!
Ilmd,M&S	I love my dogs, Max and Spot
Iwqsbikm	I will quit smoking before it kills me

• Also, you should use 8 or more characters, and include capital letters and symbols in your passwords. Examples include: ~ ; # *
• Do not use sequential numbers (ex: 123456).

2.) Secure your passwords and personal information.

• Use authenticators whenever you can. Google has 2-Step Verification to protect your linked Google accounts, and Facebook has a similar authenticator program.
• Don’t save your passwords in your browser and disable your browser auto-fill information if applicable.
• Change your passwords every 6 months (every month is better), especially for online bank accounts. It wouldn't hurt to change your PIN that often as well.
• If you use Google Chrome, you can work in an Incognito window (Ctrl+Shift+N (Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS, and ⌘-Shift-N for Mac) which will delete your cookies, browsing history, file download history and passwords. This is especially important if you're working on a public computer.
• If you can’t remember all of your passwords, use a password cloud storage service, such as PassPack (free), KeePass (free, open-source) and LastPass ($12/yr).
•  If you’re not comfortable with cloud-storing your passwords, consider writing them down and put them in a safe place, such as a protected or locked file box. Security experts have argued that writing your password down is a no-no, yet times are rapidly changing. The odds of getting hacked online or accidentally getting your computer infected with malware are almost a guarantee (1:3) versus getting your home burglarized, which is a 1:700 chance.
• While we’re at it, always password-protect your computer, tablets, and phones. You never know when they might fall into the wrong hands, and if your social media accounts are connected to those devices, it could lead to problems.
• Also, back up all of your data. A friend of mine recently had his Google account deleted, and he lost over ten years of important information that he will never be able to get back. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other social media sites allow you to easily download your data to back up.

3.) Think about the information you put online.

• Even though we can’t control all of the information about us online, don’t put anything out there that you wouldn’t be all right showing your family or an employer. The widespread availability of the Internet and therefore ease of access for online research these days are immense and could pose a security threat or it could damage your chances of landing a job. This stuff stays online for years, and even if you delete it, the information is still stored in a database somewhere.
• It’s common sense, but you should limit the amount of personal information you put online, especially if it is information that could help a potential hacker figure out your account credentials.
• Turn off location-based services, especially if you're away from home. If you’re going to post online and include your location (FourSquare, Twitter, Facebook), do it when you’re about to leave the area. However, it’s probably a good idea to just not do it at all.
• Change and update your privacy settings. We know how annoying it is that Facebook seems to tweak and change its privacy settings all the time, so you should be always vigilant about what apps you have connected and what you allow others to see. Here is how you can remove, edit your apps and limit tracking information on Facebook.
• Also, be careful whom you add as a friend, especially if you don’t know them. Even if it’s someone you know who said they made a new account, be wary. Distrustful people could be impersonating them in order to get information about you. You should probably ask the person in-person or via trusted online communication. In January, LinkedIn sued scammers over thousands of fake profiles that were created to gather information about LinkedIn members.

These aren’t the only reasons why you should be careful online. According to this article in Forbes, advertisers can use your personal information to make you pay higher prices than everyone else. What you put on your social media sites could also positively or negatively affect your credit score.

4.) Monitor your online activity and think before you click.

• Keep a close eye on your credit and debit card statements for questionable charges on a regular basis.
• Be careful whom you give your credit card information to, and don’t use your debit card as debit online, since it’s connected directly to your bank account. The information collected from Target’s databases included PINs, so why should we make it easy for criminals?
• When you’re logging into a website, make sure you’re logging in through a secure connection (https), and make sure the website is who it says it is.
• If you have a public Twitter, remove spammers from your followers list, just like we did in class.
• Keep track of your account activity on social media sites to ensure that no one is posting on your behalf without your permission.
• Don’t click on fishy links in emails or through direct messages, such as on Facebook and especially through direct messages on Twitter.
• You should install software updates to keep your computer up-to-date and run your anti-virus/malware software often. You don't want your computer to accidentally become part of a botnet, where your computer can perform automated tasks over the Internet without you ever knowing.

There is no denying the power that social media has with the ability to connect and help individuals across the world in ways that we never could before. The trick is how to keep us safe, while still allowing enough information out there to connect and socialize with others.

However, it comes down to the fact that if companies are interested in collecting, using, and/or profiting on consumer information, they should act more responsibly and securely with this private and sensitive data. Therefore, if companies aren’t responsibly handling information, it is ultimately up to the consumer to be vigilant and discreet with the majority of information they are putting online.

This was originally posted on the Eagle Strategies blog.