LiketoKnowIt app

The other day I was informed that my roommates older brother was the creator of the app Liketoknowit. I had never heard of the app before because it is in the fashion industry. That is not my area of expertise in any way. The more I read about the app the more genius I thought it was. I also found out that it was recently mentioned in a post by the Wall Street Journal. I think that is a mark of a successful business. This app is based off of the social media app Instagram. When I brought up this app in class, multiple girls immediately started talking about how great the app is.

Liketoknowit is an app where you can look at the products that girls are wearing on instagram pictures. If you like a picture and use the #liketoknowit or send like it, the app will then send you an email about the products in the pictures. It is all about convenience. It is an easy way for girls to shop for products on social media. If you see a picture of something you like, while using this app, you can find out the necessary information to purchase those clothing items online within minutes. Once you like or comment on the specific Instagram post, you get an email instantly from Liketoknowit.

I think this is a genius app. It makes shopping easy for girls. There are a ton of products and it makes finding those products easy. I can see this app taking off. I think it could be big in this fashion industry. I have heard that the majority of the apps consumers consists of fashion bloggers and females. I was interested in the app when I heard about it, and while I don't think that I will use it, I see how it will be very successful.

Celebrity All Star Game

This weekend was the weekend of the NBA all-stars. While in most sports that includes just a game of the leagues best competing in what is usually a joke, the NBA all star weekend is just that, a weekend. I am very bias and believe that the MLB is the only major professional sport that does the all star game the right way. They have all of the best players and the game actually has some sort of meaning. That is the only game where the end of the game has an influence and the athletes put forth their most sincere effort. While the NBA all star game may not live up to the high level of play that baseball has, it wins as a weekend in whole. The saturday of the weekend was talked about for weeks. It was not the day of the game, but it was the skills challenges day. While the dunk contest has lost a lot of its intrigue because of the lack of star participation, the 3 point contest was arguably the best ever. The lineup was incredible and filled with the most even playing field the event has ever seen. While this all was great the event that I am talking about today is the event that occurred on friday night. That was the celebrity all star game.

I am not talking about this event because of how fascinating it was. It was not the best thing on TV this weekend. It was probably not even the best thing on in that time slot. What it was, was pure entertainment. The game is filled with stars from all corners of the entertainment spectrum. It had musicians, athletes, actors, owners, and politicians. You get to see people bond over something that they all love, basketball. Kevin Hart is an always entertaining presence at this event. He loves basketball, and surprisingly while he is very small in stature, he is not a bad player. His matchup with the newly famous little league star Mone Davis was the one that was talked about the most. While she had the play of the night he out-shined her and the rest of the field and won his 4th MVP of this game. This goes back to a main topic of social media today and that is engagement. The MVP is based on audience voting. That is how this event could see how many people were watching and engaged in this game. I watched the entire game and I don't think based on play that Kevin Hart should have won again, but he is very popular and got the people to vote. He is a pure entertainer and he definitely engaged the audience in the game. This is a great weekend that overall does a great job engaging its audience with the events.

Stephen Curry tweet at Tiger

Athletes these days have been changed by social media. At first it never seemed like a big deal, but now athletes in every sport use social media outlets (especially twitter) as a way to create content and get their opinions out in the public view. They have millions of followers (especially the star athletes) and everything that they post is heavily scrutinized. Tons of athletes and owners have been getting in trouble because things that they have posted on twitter. Some of it is justified but other times it is just the media trying to make something out of nothing. A week ago one of the top high school recruits de-committed from a school via twitter. Social media is an outlet that college coaches and recruiters have to look at now these days before offering a kid a scholarship. Who would have thought that ones twitter account could be the reason you are not offered a scholarship?! Sadly that is the case.

This past week one of the rising stars of the NBA Stephen Curry trolled the PGA superstar Tiger Woods on twitter. This past weekend Tiger Woods once again withdrew from a PGA tournament. He has failed to finish 3 of his last 8 tournaments. One might think that Tiger never will be back because he is now too old and injury prone. This past weeks injury was an unusual one. He said that "he could not activate his glutes" and that was leading to some back pain. He said that he tried to activate them but couldn't and he had to withdraw. Maybe that was an excuse for is poor performance and he just didn't want to finish.Who knows. This monday before the Golden State Warriors game (the team Stephen Curry plays for) he went to twitter and tweeted #glutesactivated. The social media world exploded and called that shots fired at Tiger. People had all sorts of reactions to this tweet by Curry. I personally think it was just a joke. I think this is one of the cases of the media making something out of nothing, but who knows. This is just one of the many cases that show how twitter has changed the sports world. 

Snapchat News Update

Snapchat has been the source of some great controversy over its relatively short lifespan. The CEO was under some huge scrutiny when he turned down multiple 3+ billion dollar buyout offers. Personally I thought that he should have sold it and tried to keep a little bit of equity so he could still have a say in his business. At the time of those offers Snapchat also had made 0 dollars in profits because they had not sold any advertisements. What Snapchat recently did in its latest update me and I could finally see how they could reach there really high profit goals that their IPO suggested. A few months ago Snapchat created a thing called snapcash where you can pay your friends through the snapchat app. I did not think that was going to be successful, but their newest update was (in my opinion) brilliant.

Snapchat is now a news source. It is not only for sending outrageous pictures to your friends. Credible news sources like ESPN and CNN are now working with Snapchat to publish 5-10 interesting news related articles/pieces a day. Tons of other companies are already doing this too. Some of the other companies that are participating in this are Comedy Central, Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, the Food Network, and several others. All of these articles are easily accessible on Snapchat under the "Discover" section of the app.

The great think of this new update is the revenue it will bring to the app. Snapchat and whatever company has editors producing content (CNN, etc.) will split the revenue from the advertisements they have 50/50. The fact that Snapchat is so hot right now and has billions of users makes those advertisement spots very valuable. I think with this change Snapchat will finally start to make a bunch of money and it will be an interesting thing to follow.