A Personal Update

Near the beginning of this academic term, I created a plan to tailor my usage of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to "learn about and develop my presence in tech communications to connect with public figures in the field." The plan contains a number of specific tactics to be used on each platform that would help me …

Why We Need Net Neutrality

This post is a bit of a departure from my normal posts in the sense that it is no more related to tech or public relations than it is to any industry or discipline. I recently wrote a research paper about how the past behavior of internet service providers justifies our need for net neutrality, …

3 Strategies for Successful Social Media Campaigns

This week, my public relations class had the honor of receiving a guest lecture from Dr. Karen Freberg about social media campaign strategy. Social media campaigns are essential for almost every brand today, so keeping up with the latest research and trends will help ensure that your work is as successful as possible. Below, I outline …

My Top 3 Infographic Design Tips

In the field of public relations, infographics are an increasingly popular form of owned media; a well-designed graphic can both stand out online and convey key messages in an engaging, easy-to-view format. This month, I created an infographic for Facebook—with which I am not affiliated—as part of a public relations course at University of Oregon. Throughout …

Tread Lightly, Google

  On the first day of Google's 2018 I/O developer conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai introduced Google Duplex, a new feature of Google Assistant that allows it to call real businesses to make appointments or reservations for users or gather holiday hours for Google's database. In an onstage demo, Google Assistant called a hair salon …

Twitter’s Responsible Crisis Management

Last week Twitter urged its users to change their account passwords after a bug caused an unspecified number of them to be stored in plain text on Twitter servers for a period of time. An internal investigation found no evidence of unauthorized access to or misuse of these passwords, but Twitter suggested that users update them anyways …

Apple Watch: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

In the past month, Apple Watch has been credited with saving the lives of a Florida teenager and a New York man. In each case, a notification of abnormally high resting heart rate urged the wearer to seek medical attention, which both wearers did. Deanna Recktenwald, 18, soon learned her kidneys were failing, and William Monzidelis, 32, found …

App History Repeats Itself

Do you remember that old Apple ad called "There's An App For That"? Well, a recent Mashable article by Rachel Kraus about the lack of good museum companion apps brought me back to July 2008, when the creation of the App Store led to an influx of so many useless and "cookie-cutter" apps that Apple had …

Lyft’s Carbon Neutrality Success

On April 22, 2018, Lyft announced that every ride it serves would immediately and indefinitely become carbon neutral. Lyft plans to purchase carbon offset credits from sustainability company 3Degrees, which will remove or prevent the release of as much carbon from the atmosphere as each Lyft ride adds. As some have explained, one problem with this …

Volvo, GM, and… Amazon?

If you've been following the news for the past couple days, you've probably heard about Amazon's new in-trunk delivery service. It's the first major update to Amazon Key since its October launch, when it allowed couriers to enter your home and drop off packages if you weren't there. While it was a cool proof-of-concept, I didn't …