Thursday, May 10, 2012

Moms in Publishing: Creating a New Language


ONCEKids Publishing is active in social media to spread ideas to our followers and fellow Mompreneurs. For those who are not active within social media websites, such as Facebook or Twitter, hearing about how it works can feel like hearing a different language- and in many ways it is. 

This new language has become the language of the web. A recent update of the Oxford English Dictionary has altered its lexicon to include words such as "LOL", meaning laugh out loud, and "OMG", which stands  for oh my god. Facebook has created terms such as "friending" someone, which is the act of accepting or requesting someone to be part of your social network page. The term "to google" has even been established as a verb used when someone is trying to describe looking something up on the web. Coming up with names and terms that sticks may be just as important to a company as the site design itself.

To learn more about Asian themes, please visit Fujimini Island, find Fujimini Island on Facebook, follow Fujimini Island on Twitter.

An example of a site that has created its own language with incredible results is Twitter. Words such as "tweet" or "follow" have been established to mean message and subscribing to someone's twitter page with great success. Even symbols such as @, denoting an online name, and #, a hashtag denoting a topic, have been popularized throughout the site, as well as the entire web. Even many people who do not participate in Twitter understand what these terms and symbols mean

Other companies are trying to coin words that become as popular as Facebook, Twitter, and Google's words, sometimes with great success, other times with little success. Microsoft's efforts to popularize the phrase "Bing it!", even paying the popular show  "Gossip Girl" to use it during the show, was met with ridicule by others on the web. However, sites such as Pinterest , a site that allows people to create virtual inboards or bulletin boards, have found success with the phrase to "pin" favorite images. 

To learn more about the author of this article Eileen Wacker and her acclaimed book series,  visit ONCEKids, ONCEKids on Facebook ONCEKids on Twitter.
The secret seems to be that the successful ones appear more naturally occurring, even if the creation is entirely artificial. 

ONCEKids Publishing is proud of its very active social media presence with a blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest.  Be sure to follow us for more information on childrens books, literacy, education, diversity, Modern Moms.

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