Travis

http://www.adidas.com/us/homepage.asp The product I picked was adidas. It was a very interesting site when it comes to using new media. The first time I ever went to the web site the first thing that came to mind was all the options. It has a puzzle aspect to it. When you would scroll over the pieces they would show a link to those sports own web sites. This was a good use of new media because it had interesting pictures and it made the visitor interested in what all the different pieces had to offer. But the second time the site was completely different. Instead of having all the company branches featured, the site only had one picture of Dwight Howard. This was very interesting because it showed that they were focusing on selling one sports product. Which shows that they make most of there money from basketball in the winter. But what shocked me the most was the fact that when I visited it a third time it was back to the way the site was set up in the first place. One thing is the same in all the different versions of the Adidas website. There isn’t a strong presence of twitter or facebook. There is no button to click to become a fan of Adidas on facebook or fallow them on twitter besides on the soccer Adidas website. This caught my attention because most major companies have facebook and twitter as part of there website but Adidas only has it for one sport. The only other thing on there website that was similar to twitter was Google friend connect which was on there blog but I have never heard of it. However, after doing more research I realized that Adidas had both twitter and facebook pages. This is very interesting and makes you think why wouldn’t they advertize this on there website. The only conclusion I could come up with was that Adidas does not need to advertize because they are so well known. It seems like Adidas did not get all caught up with new media besides the opening page there site is pretty straight forward. This makes it very easy to find what you are looking for. To summarize the websites use of new media I would only have one word and that was flash. The best part of the website is the opening page. After that most of the websites although they have videos are pretty straight forward.

http://www.pandora.com/ Pandora is a fairly new site and it shows. When you first login to Pandora you see icons for twitter, facebook and email. This shows that facebook and twitter are big parts of Pandora’s success. When you click the facebook button it a box comes up asking you if you want to post the song and artist on your wall with the Pandora link.. The same thing happens when you click the twitter button. This is a good use on these other websites because it will bring more traffic to there site. After doing looking into Pandora on facebook more I realized that you can become a fan of Pandora on facebook and Pandora has over 45,000 fans. There is also a facebook application for facebook so you can listen to music while creeping on your friends profiles. Since Pandora is a free internet radio website the way they make there money is through ads. This is very obvious when you look at the site. About half of the site is ads and the other is your music. But the music part is very interesting. When a song comes up it not only shows what song is playing but it shows a picture of the album cover. This is a good use of technology because if you really like that song you may go out and buy the album. The Pandora website is very user friendly. You can set up your profile with all different stations on music that you like. The user can also blog about music. Another cool part about Pandora is an application that I happen to have on my blackberry. Which is mobile Pandora. It is pretty much the exact same thing as the website but it is on your phone and it has no ads. This is awesome because you can always have music that you like. All in all Pandora is a very basic site that is used for one purpose, and that is playing music. Yes is uses facebook and twitter but the site is not based on that it is bases on trying to let everyone listen to music they enjoy.

http://hurricanesports.cstv.com/ The University of Miami website is pretty much just like every other college website. It shows you all the options the school has to offer but is very bland. Unlike like most colleges though you can not fallow Miami on twitter. You also can not become a fan of UM on facebook. But once you go to the athletics website it is a whole new ball game. When you look at the athletic website you see a slide show of multiple sports pictures. Then as you slide down you see the whole fall athletics schedule. The athletics site is just so much more colorful and interactive then the normal academic site. One of the things that stands out the most is how they try to get you to buy there cloths and tickets. In the middle of the site there is a box that says but men’s basketball season tickets. Right below that is a picture of a very nice sweatshirt. When you click it you go straight to the school store where you can buy anything you can think of but with a university of Miami logo on it. But when it comes to new media it terms of facebook, twitter and interactive aspects there is not much. There is no facebook or twitter anywhere on the athletics website. I think this because UM is known for it’s sports