The Effects of Social Media Networks in the Hospitality Industry

by Nur Akmal Binti Abd Hamid 2009974829


Nowadays the significant utilization of the social media network has been seen as the medium of transmitting a message was tremendous. Often seen as the new Agora for this millennium decade new media held the most power in connecting people around the world. However, the hospitality industry somehow has not seen this technological change as the opportunities in penetrating the new segment of market. The preference to use the traditional media as a medium of promotions made them left behind than most of the industries. The function of the social media is basically to the marketing of products and services for the hospitality industry.




What are the platform provide by the social media? And what will be the significant of using them? Social network offers media technologies that can facilitate online functionality and monitoring perspectives wherein the data gathered can be used to develop their services for customer satisfaction. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blog and Twitter was made to help in downy the progress of the marketing strategies to expose themselves to the massive audience of the social media users. The hospitality industry can market themselves in social media and networking.

 Hospitality industry can use social media to engage customers and clients in dialogue and recognize their needs. Through these networking sites, hospitality industry can interact with consumers before, during, and after the vacation experience. Social media is relatively new and the advantages are abundance such as it is affordable, it is viral and has the potential to spread brand awareness quickly and far and it is said to be able to develop link baits, attention and massive amounts of traffic. However, it may not be appropriate for all hotel chains.

Ergo, the social media networks behold gazillions of opportunities that need to be utilized by the hospitality industry. Whatever the decision made by the practitioners in order to post on net made a huge impact on the ROI of the organization. The setup of implementing the social media channel will benefit both parties and engaging your clients and customers for past, present and future purposes.

ROI- Return on Investment
Source: http://digitalcommons.library.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1694&context=thesesdissertations

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StockTwits Evolves, A Must for Investor Relations

By Estee Aina Huslan 2009381481
As new forms of social media change society, corporate investor relations teams are changing their communications strategies. Investor relations departments are getting more active in using social media as a way to reach investors. Social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have become increasingly important tools for investor relations departments.

Organization use social media tools for marketing, branding purposes and customer communications, in addition to investor relations. In general, social media applications that target the investment community tend to be far less advanced compared with communication intended for a company’s customers.Early users of social media for investor relations have known other social media sites that don’t quite meet their business needs. But that is about change as StockTwits introduces the world’s first set of social IR services built especially for public companies.




StockTwits is one of the new of social media tools made for investor relations. The purpose of StockTwits was to let investors follow news and discussion about companies that originated on Twitter. StockTwits is gaining thrust within the investor relations community by encouraging companies to originate their tweets on their service, not on Twitter. One benefit is that messages originated on StockTwits are not only picked up automatically by Twitter but also by other prominent investor websites such as Yahoo Finance, CNN Money and Bing Finance. This helps resolve concerns about limited disclosure of information that is distributed through Twitter.


Investor relations departments at major corporations including Ford, Dell and HP have embraced StockTwits, especially since StockTwits began earlier this year to offer companies verified accounts, meaning that investors can know with certainty that messages are coming directly from official company sources. “StockTwits is now the world’s largest social network specifically for investors,” said Chris Bullock, StockTwits’ vice president of corporate solutions, in an April 2011 interview with the author. “We say Facebook is for friends but StockTwits is for investors.”

Like Twitter, companies use StockTwits to communicate earnings results, merger and acquisition news, and other corporate events. Since the audience is investor-specific, StockTwits works well for companies that wish to share information about speaking at investor conferences, hosting events at their headquarters or sharing results in near real-time from annual shareholders’ meetings.

In conclusion, internet plays an important role in investor relations. Besides assisting the practitioner in daily task or job it also helps to build strong relationship between the organization and the investors. According to Patel (2000), in a world of constant information flow where investors expect a reply within the next few seconds rather than the next few days, public companies have to go beyond the sporadic press release and quarterly earnings call to adequately meet investors’ needs for information. Two benefits StockTwits offer IROs are the opportunity to monitor what investors are saying about their companies and a channel for engaging in two-way conversation with investors that is in the open, unlike private email and phone messaging.

Reference: http://irwebreport.com/20110608/social-ir-dashboard-stocktwit/

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Revolutions without Social Media

by Mardiha Adzrina Binti Mat Rasid 2009541781
Social media and mobile technology has become one of permanent daily component in daily lives. As we go through our Twitter timeline everyday, tweet funny things and update our Facebook status can be difficult for some to understand the power that these social platforms seize as it being blamed for causing the riots in the United Kingdom and other flash mod in other parts of the world, including United States.

It is known that chain messages on Twitter, Blackberry messaging and Facebook are the fastest way to spread the information. It immediately gather people together and it appears to have been widely used to organize and motivate interest group of rioters firstly in London and then further spread to other cities in UK.

Source from Bloomberg says that the U.K’s intellectual property minister had declared for a temporary end to BlackBerry services a day after the riot as to prevent rioters from messaging for planning and organizing riot events. Thereupon, should the government somehow revoke the access to these services to avoid similar thing happened again in the future?

Even before the birth of social media and Blackberry chat people have been throwing stones and rioting. Hence prove revolutions don’t require social media to arise in any parts of the world. For example in countries like Egypt, only 5% of the people are on Facebook and less than 1% on Twitter out of 85 millions of it population for coup d’état to occur.

In the 1800's and in the 1970's United Kingdom had faced with massive riots, American Revolution and the French Revolution happened without any form of social media help such as Twitter, Facebook or BlackBerry messaging. Thus, taking into account for censorship and attempting to control communication is not an advisable action for the authority to act upon.

Taken from Washington Post article stated by a new technologies researcher and UCLA associates, describe on what happened in Egypt or Tunisia doesn’t start from Social Media, but from people’s rage. What is happening in London is not coming from Social Media, but from people’s rage.

Although that Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger are said use as the medium to cause riots, it is undeniable that Social Media are an awesome step forward for mankind. They are not enough to tell millions of people to start a revolution. Overall, was social media's role in the riots is a positive or a negative one?



Source: http://www.youngdigitallab.net/social-media/dear-social-media-its-your-fault/
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/08/10/london-police-struggle-to-master-social-media-in-clamping-down-on-riots/
http://technology.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979951273
http://millionsofnerds.com/featured/how-social-media-broke-and-then-fixed-london/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/28/uk-riots-twitter-facebook

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Public Relations and Social Media

Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows. -John Milton
by Noor Kamalia Abd Hamid 2009987351
Based on (Holton, 2009), social media present challenges, not the least because they break traditional categories of audience’s employees, customers, shareholders. The public and worldwide nature of social media means all audiences can read communications proposed for any one viewer. One can no longer classify audiences and messages. Matrices of targets and themes have become a blob with indeterminate relations and gaps.

However, to make the challenges more difficult, practitioners cannot assume importance in any one social medium will reach everyone. Social media are so patchy that an individual may or may not see information in a blog, on a Face book page or in a Tweet. Consequently a practitioner is challenged with getting the mass of an audience via media that a majority hypothetically can entrée but in reality might not view. In one way, this is no different than distribution of information in traditional media such as newspapers. Just because a story is in a newspaper doesn’t mean everyone in a planned audience has read it or even seen it. However, since there are less traditional media, the possibility any one individual has seen a story in a newspaper is higher precisely than considering the same story in one of a million blogs.

Yet, there’s still a challenges need to be considered:

Although the challenges may seem difficult for PR practitioners, there are rewards for penetrating social media successfully. You can reach these self-identified audiences with a laser-like focus to communicate client messages successfully and professionally. Successful bloggers, had build audiences of like minds and interests. The misuse that attends so much of media is largely eliminated if one is able to hit into groups that have a self-identified interest in the topics and messages you throw. There is as well a viral part to reaching the right group. They mix your messages on their own without your prompting thereby achievement a much superior audience than mainly planned for.

But, what are social media?
According to (Grunig, 1984), social media defined as user generated and published information. However, users often republish information they have discovered elsewhere, so user generation is loosely defined. Besides that, social media also considered as multimedia tools such as blogs, podcasts, video, photos, forums, internet messaging, and texting. The internet subsumes all audiovisual and print media because it can convey them cited by (McQuail, 1994). Social media, by extension makes use of all media forms. There is even a growing possibility of broad communication.

In a broader viewpoint, there is little difference between traditional media relations and social media relations. In traditional media relations, practitioners recognize reporters and editors and build relationships with them in order to get client news distributed. In social media, practitioners recognize important participants and build relationships with them in order to get client news disseminated. It is more difficult in social media because there are more participants and there is less clearness in shaping who are the audiences. If the past is a guide, over time influentials will unite within social media, and practitioners will have a clearer viewpoint on where to go. That is happening, but there are still large areas of social media open to examine.

References: Grunig, J. E., & Hunt, T. (1984). Managing public relations. New York: NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
McQuail, D. (1994). Mass communication theory. London: Sage.
James L.Holton (20019). Public Relations And Social Media
http://gigaom.com/2006/10/09/the-future-of-social-networks-communication/

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Success of New Media and Government vision

by Mohamad Khairul Azril 2009557759

The beginning of the advertising campaign using the 1Malaysia concept throughout the new media has been described as having profitably met its targets. Thus developments of new media in Malaysia were no longer rare news. It is very much reflect effort that been taken by the government where almost all the department in the government office and services using the new media as the portal and the medium to interact. Normally the use of the FaceBook, tweeter and blogs became very popular among them. It is very easy to interact with the customers (us) using the new media approach. This is suiting the vision of the Prime minister itself “People First Performance Now”.


According to Datuk Seri Kamaruddin Siaraf, there are three reason that been describe as a back bone of the successful of the new media and its technology. The first one would be the introduction of the Multimedia Super Corridor MSC in Malaysia. It is the biggest reason because its open a new path of the technology in Malaysia, which is indirectly give advantages for Malaysian.

Then second reason is second reason was the rise in political awareness between Malaysians, with a mounting number of Malaysians viewing a keen significance in democracy, human rights and good governance. It is very helpful using the new media as a part of the governance even it also have a pros and contras.

Last but least his talk about about the loss of trustworthiness among the traditional media due to press self-censorship. He believes that the readers nowadays are more particular when it comes to information and source. They are more to use the internet in order to get the information as well as news.

Reference: http://mynewshub.my/2011/07/21/success-of-internet-new-media-in-malaysia/

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New Media functional In Public Affairs Field

by Mohd Azim bin Zainalalam 2009740247

The scope of public relations works been divided into many section. Media relations, Crisis Management, Public Relation Plans, Event Management, Government Relations and many more. With the ongoing globalization era now days, the communications tools has been easier with the enhancing of new media. This advantages should been use wisely in public relations field in planning their objective and strategy to reach their target audience. Currently, there are many types of new media like you tube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Blog and Website that can be medium of strategy that must be understand first their purpose of function. After their function been understood, the public relation practitioner can do their task precisely.



One of the well known subject that public relation practitioner must master is Public Affairs. Many definition that been given by scholar regarding the meaning Of Public Affairs. According to Rebecca Pearston, Public affairs is Public relations efforts of a firm that associated with government agencies, mass media, public interest and pressure groups. Obviously, Public Affairs practice creates programs to influence public opinion, promote regulatory and legislative initiatives, build reputations, position litigation and manage issues.

Usually the task in Public affairs is dealing with such a program of political campaign. In dealing with political and social movement campaign, public relation practitioners start with planning strategies and tactics by influencing policy through any medium that can reach their target audience. After the process of influences done, public relations practitioners will shape public opinion, raise awareness and change attitudes, promote social and policy initiatives, manage issues and build reputations. In this whole process new media function will offers a way to track and monitor conversations, and develop grassroots movement among like-minded peoples.



Although the public affairs scopes of work seem very similar toward government relation, it still showed comparison between both of them. Public affairs is associated with all the stakeholder and related subject but government relation is more detail on influencing government policy at all level like state, federal and publics. Maybe New Media will be very useful in both of them but in certain area this medium unsuitable to functional. Based on Malaysia scenario in regarding both of subject, the process to influence public by using new media might be useful but to amendment the government policy and law must be in the right procedures for instant bring it to parliament, tried in court and get agreement from the highest legislation.

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Malaysian Government Website Being Hack

by Sallehuddin Bin Saad 2010244566

A group referring themselves as anonymous have put a major threat to the Malaysian government website and some other corporate websites in the world where this group of hackers are mostly belong to an activist organization demanding on opposing threat or may even start an act of war between countries.

The anonymous group has succeed to breach the wall of Malaysian ministry website for duration of one day and gain access to restricted information by posting their organization poster telling that the website is under their control. The main truth about these government portal attacks is due to the censorship by the Malaysian government into gaining access in blocking the file sharing website such as Pirate Bay that might be their source of income

The Anonymous group call it as “Operation Malaysia” and urge members in Malaysia to join this group as an act to gain the freedom of speech while on the other hand it is also means you are against the government. To stop against the illegal hacking threats, the Malaysian government must construct a commission specialize in monitoring the hacking access by any individuals or organization because it concerns on the matter of national security.

To apprehend this threat, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission or MCMC should bring up the primary concern of preventing the misuse of new media by recommending special programs upon bringing the awareness to Malaysian and cooperate with the authority in detaining all the suspects involve in cybercrime. Moreover, website hacking is commonly happen on the internet nowadays as a censorship of access on websites are the government policies to ensure that Malaysia is safe from any outsource threat. Prevention access by anonymous person can be assured if a system that enables to detect from where the threats came from. In other words, the cooperation between countries into solving the issues are positive start to detect and detain the individuals who involve in the crime and bring forward to the court of justice.

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Tired of Reading? Let’s Enjoy The Star, First Talking Newspaper

by Mohd Norehsan Mohamad 2009167297

"If young readers abandon newspapers and newspapers abandon young readers, democratic society will be diminished. It's a serious issue that must be addressed," - Aralynn McMane (2011)

Running a newspaper is not an easy task, especially in today's globalised and digital world, where events are constantly changing. Like any other business, one must move with the times to stay relevant to serve society and help the nation move to a higher level of achievement. Thus, the media industry is undergoing a major transformation by embracing digital technologies.

Credits to The Star one of Malaysia’s English newspaper for projecting The Star ePaper which makes timely content available to consumers in a simple and meaningful way. With great interactivity, fun, innovative and different it is the surest way to engage with tomorrow’s readers and provide today’s subscribers with a wide range of options.



The Star ePaper are replicating the printed version of The Star newspaper by delivering the full 100 percent content of the publication as well as it segments. Besides, The Star ePaper subscribers are giving the opportunities to choose the two new ways to read the paper in way they preferred. Subscribers can access it through online via the Web or downloaded to a PC, smartphone (iPhone and Android), or tablet (iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab).

The most exciting about The Star ePaper are when your hands and eyes may be busy, you can just tab on the listen icon in the text view format and the audio reader can read the news for you. Besides, you can even access to the missed edition of The Star and shares it with your family and friends via Facebook, Twitter or e-mail. Moreover, if the text is too small then you can enjoy view it bigger by zooming on the page as The Star epaper providing high resolution of images. Therefore, don’t hesitate to experience and subscribe for The Stars ePaper, an experience reading in a whole new way.

Sources: http://www.prweb.com/releases/newspaperdirect/star-malaysia/prweb9381914.htm
http://thestar.com.my/subscribe/about.html

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