Learning VR Game Design through Udacity's VR Developer Program

Udacity’s Puzzler Project

By

Fritz Templin

This is my puzzler project for Udacity’s VR developer program. The main focus of this project is game design and the game design process.  In this short article I will show you how I approached the game design process for this project. Enjoy!

First here is a quick video of the finished game project.

In the game design process it is important right from the beginning to know for who, and why you are designing the application. For this project I created a persona, and used this as my typical VR game user for this application. In a real development application research into the actual market and user that you are trying to connect with will be essential to the success of your project. Creating an awesome game that no one is interested in will not bring much more than your self satisfaction for completing it. 

Meet Michael.

Name: Michael,

Age: 13 – 45

Occupation: Do I really need a job to play games?

Quote: Get your game on!

VR Experience level: New to VR just starting to experiment with mobile VR applications.

This game player will like to solve puzzles and challenges. They will most likely be using a smart phone in combination with a VR head set. Performance and lightweight resource overhead will be major considerations to insure a high level of functionality for the targeted devices.

Next I needed a rough sketch of the application that I would be making. It is important that the technique used to create the sketch allows for quick creations. You will likely need to make a number of changes as you iterate through your project with user feedback and test runs.

Your first sketch should give you a general idea and layout details will be added through iteration.

Sketching new ideas or changes as you come to them.

Adding sketches for more detail to objects or scenes. 

With your sketches completed you can begin your build using the sketches as blue prints to work from.

As you build continual iteration and improvements are made such as changing the name, text instructions or highlighting buttons on gaze as was done on the panels above. While game testing and from user feedback see through panel aesthetic were discovered to look better than the original solid panel did.

User testing and feedback is essential to creating and interesting and compelling application. It is also important in VR application to help avoid simulator sickness and create natural feeling movements and comfortable game ergonomics.

Asking open ended questions that encourage insightful and non-directed input from the testers is important.  One of the questions I used for this game development was, “Please describe the environment and the mood you are feeling from it. “. One of the responses to this question was “a simple stone room with two doors that feels rustic and gloomy, with a strange light shining on some floating balls”.  With follow up questions on key parts of the test users response I was able to deduce that improvement was need in the lighting of the orbs, the complexity of the room and enhancement of the environment with fog.

 Adding a layer of fog and some fire animations to the surrounding mountain terrain helped to enhance the mysterious and ominous feel of the environment.

Adding the fire animation on the torches added complexity and movement to the interior scene.

Adding individual spot lights improved the glowing appearance I was going for on the orbs

Later tester responses like this one, “I feel like I am in a spooky torch lit dungeon with glowing spheres floating in the room.”, showed me that the changes I made were moving the game feel in the intended direction.

Currently the game is still a simple VR experience that can be enjoyed and tested by users who are new to the VR environment. It is also a solid building block and concept piece that could be added to and enhanced to become a deep and interesting game application. I will expand by adding new rooms with different and more challenging puzzles that users can work their way through and become immersed in the game.

If you are interested in down loading the project please feel free to visit my Github account to get it.

Github account

Week 15: Social media and its place in busines.s

Social Media and its Place in Business.

I have learned a lot about social media and its place in business today. It has been very insightful to have looked at all the different platforms and their place in the business world.  For many businesses social media can be a very useful tool. For me I have found some great ideas and hope to continue to improve and expand my use of the social media platforms. It is an exciting time in both digital media and the business environment. With all of the new technological changes come some very good opportunities for people to capitalize on. New business models based on the digital world are showing up every day. I hope that I am able to benefit from some of the strategies that we have learned about in this class over the last weeks. The low cost and availability of the social media platforms allows us to hone our marketing skills and test our theories. It is up to us to grasp these opportunities and make something of them. This seems to me to be the most access we have had to information and communication as a society ever. It will only take our own determination and application of skill to make use of it and reap the benefits and rewards. I feel like I have been made aware of all the tools that are there for me to use and now it is simply up to me to put them to use. I hope that you can find your voice and success in social media as well.

Week 14: Online Strategy

On Target - Online Strategy

Creating a strategy is like laying out your road map and often your success will depend greatly on the accuracy, detail and execution of that planned strategy. For my goal of creating a multi-platform news and educational collection online content will be the backbone. this will mean dedicating time each week to create new content and build the available library of useful information that followers will search out. Since this is not my main enterprise and will have to be done in my spare time. I will plan on a slow but continuous growth.

I will need time to find, research and deliver new topics each week. Thankfully finding and researching these projects can correlate to my studies for my full time job in IT and my continued study as I pursue my higher educational degrees. I believe that if I can dedicate one half hour a day
twice a week to creating a post on Facebook, which is linked to Twitter, that will be sufficient for now. I will also need to use one hour once a week to create a rich textual and visual blog post each week. This blog post will also be linked to Facebook and Twitter. Along with the previous mentioned platforms I estimate that I will

need one and a half hours each week to create a new educational video for my YouTube channel. By applying this strategy over the next six months I will be able to build a small library of content that I can use to measure my followers interest statistically.

After analyzing this data I would hope to gain a better understanding of the specific types of content that followers are interested in and the level of interest as the have as well. I should be able to deduce the desire or, lack there of, for the amount of content I am posting and adjust that as well. I realize that there are great tools at my disposal but their effectiveness will depend on my ability and determination to use them.

Week 14: Class Blog Comments.

Here are the blogs that I commented on this week.

Chris Deddo

Gjonbalaj,Leslie

Johnson,Angie

Rojas,Miguel

Stager,Melissa

Week 14: The Right Social Media for Me.

The Right Social Media Platforms for Me.

Over the past fourteen weeks I have experimented with and investigated different social media platforms. The experience has given me some valuable insight into which ones I prefer to use and the capabilities of some that I did not know about. I have found that some are easier than others and some allow you to provide a richer content. Overall I have enjoyed getting to know more about the platforms and the potential they hold for business. I will continue to test and investigate new platforms and changes made to existing ones, because in this media change is constant. For now the social media platforms that I have decided to focus on are the following.

Facebook is an easy platform to use and access, with a huge user base. The easy ability to create posts even on mobile devices is very enticing. The amount of analytic data regarding your  content performance is also outstanding and should allow anyone the ability to refine their content and delivery to achieve the best effectiveness quickly. It would be tough not to include Facebook in any social media strategy.

Twitter was not a social media that I had used a lot before this class, but I have really grown to like and respect it. Twitter has a constant flow of great information, if you set up who you follow correctly. I have been surprised by the amount of interaction on this platform. I have found that by linking content posts from my other media platforms that it is easy to keep a flow of posts going to Twitter. I have often found more reader response on twitter than the other platforms. For me Twitter is a keeper. 

YouTube for teaching or demonstrating is by far my favorite choice. A good video to me is the best way for someone to really see what you are trying to show them. The size of the reach for YouTube is enormous and hard to compete with. In my opinion YouTube is another must have media for an online strategy. I definitely need to work on my reluctance to create videos. And then create more content for this platform regularly.

Blogger is an easy to use format, and I have become more comfortable with it the more I use it. To me your blog is the place that allows you to create mixed visual and textual content that can be rich and in depth. Writing for me does not always come easy and so it is a bit of a struggle to get my self to create the posts on a regular schedule. I am hoping that with time that will change and it will be good practice for me to continue to blog. I will try to keep a blog as part of my online presence.

Week13: Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights is a very comprehensions and powerful collection of data about your Facebook business or fan page. This information can be used to show you the path to creating content that your followers like and interact with. It is so in depth that you can compare how your posts do at different times of the day for each day of the week and if your followers disapprove of the post.

For my page insights look I can see that overall my like count increased at a modest rate, mostly due to classmates from my social media class. Thank you guys for that. The rest of the news on my pages statistics is not very good I can see that my Reach  and my Engagement have both decreased by a significant amount.  As I researched why I can see that this is partly because of the lack of posts for this time period.

The ability to compare individual posts is a great way to judge what type of content and delivery approach is most likely to have the best results. Creating and posting content in a scientific or systematic way will help me to narrow down the most effective content and styles. I can also review the posts to see content that I have already touched on and also content that may warrant follow up. The "boost post" button is always an option and in this format it is easy to analyze which content would be best for choosing this action.

Facebook Insights also gives you the ability to compare your page to similar pages and see how you stack up. This was pretty overwhelming for me at first glance. Their are some pages that have very impressive stats and it is hard to imagine actually competing with them. That being said it is a great tool if you compare it statistically and adjust for size. You can gain an idea of the total potential for people interested in your subject matter and set goals for activity and growth. Once you get past the initial shock you can just look at it as a long term road map. I think it is definitely worth using and intend to put more time into it myself. 

Overall I think that my first priority regarding my page is to keep up with the content posts. I can see that the lack of posts is my biggest weakness, so far. Thanks for reading and good luck with your Facebook pages.

Week 13: Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Google analytic is a powerful tool that can help you analyze your blog or website. It provides data on many different aspects of your site and user interaction. You can see how many new users have visited or how many return users you have. You can see what devices and which browser they are using. you can see what pages they are viewing , how many they are viewing, and how long they are viewing them. There are many more analytic aspects that you should look at yourself. 

Some of the ones that I find to be most important to me are new users, session duration, and returning visitors. I like these because they give me a good idea of how my site is growing and if my viewers are reading the content. New users is important to see if you are expanding your reach and gaining new followers. You can also dig into this to see where they are coming from and what they are using.

Returning users I think is very important also. You want your returning users to grow as a percentage of your new users. Watching this percentage of returning users compared to your new users can be a helpful tool for modifying content. The higher percentage of returning users should be an indicator that more of your visitors are interested by your content. Session duration is an important to monitor because it will tell you if your visitors are actually viewing content or just bouncing through. A growing session duration can be a good indicator of the quality a of your content and your followers level of interest in it.

Even if you don't use Google Analytics, you should use some measurement tool to see how your site is doing in several of these aspects. If you can see what is working and what is not you have no way of fixing it. 

Week 12, Using Feedly and Google+

Getting Started with Feedly and Google +

In this article I am presenting some of the ways that I have set up Feedly and Google + to incorporate them into my online presence and become useful tools. 

For Google + I have set up my profile page to be similar to my other social media sites. I utilized the same background photo and similar introductory information. I think this is important to have a consistent look and feel throughout your social media sites. This helps promote your personal brand and creates familiarity followers will quickly recognize is your content. I believe it is also important that your content information be consistent across platforms so there is no conflict or confusion in your delivery. 

Google+ also has a great way to follow content that you are interested in this will allow you to find new topics for your articles and keep up on your subject matter. The google+ communities are easy to follow and and have handy in one place like an RSS feed. It can also be used to spread your influence and reach through these communities as well.  If you get to the point that you are ready you can even create your own community and direct the focus of it.

Another nice feature that Google+ has is the event feature. this allows you to view events and join them if you are interested. Like the other features you can sort this by the area of interest and keep it focused on the subject that you are looking for. Also with events you can create your own event either online or at a physical location. I think this is a great way to get your message out and grow your local following as well as your online following.


Feedly is a a nice tool to find bloggers that you re interested in following and have them organized in a central location that is easy for you to find. Feedly has a nice app for mobile devices also so that
you can quickly access the content that you want to read anytime. This type of an RSS basically allows you to create your own magazine or channel of content. I use it to stay informed on technology and the style of delivery the bloggers are using. 

Week 12: Additional Online Tools

Tools and Sites to Strengthen Your Presence.

This week I investigated some sites and tools that I think will help me to strengthen my online presence. These tools will also enable me to find and manage better content for my readers and followers. With the integration of these tools into my existing online architecture I will be able to create a rich network of content with a multifaceted presentation stream for my audiences.

The first site that I am going to utilize more is LinkedIn, Fritz Templin on LinkedIn. This will make my professional background easily available, so that my audience can get to know who I am and my professional experience level. I will also add this as an outlet for posts or articles that would resonate with my professional network. In all I think that it will tie in nicely with the other channels that I am using and broaden my content reach.

The second tool that I think would be useful to implement more is google +. I like the structure of grouping my connections in circles on google+. I believe that this will be helpful not only in better
content distribution, but also in gathering new topics and knowledge for creating content. I have had a google+ account for a long time but have never really used it. I will have to see how many contacts I have that are using it and work to build more of a network on google+.

The third tool that I found and think will help me greatly is feedly. This is a program application that allows you to collect a number of blog feed updates in one place. I think this is great

to keep up on the blogs that I follow in my industry. It saves me time and increases the amount of new content that I can find to write about. This is a must have app for people who read multiple blogs or want to create a news feed for themselves.

Week 11: Social Media Low or No Cost for Business.

Using Social Media for Business.

Social media can be a great low cost or no cost advertising solution for businesses. Creating interaction with your followers and giving them exclusive access to promotional events. Social media used in the right way can grow your business and let you measure what is working with just your time as the investment.

Creating posts that encourage followers interaction can be a great way to engage and measure your followers with your content. It is always a little bit of a journey to find the final mix that most engages people, but if you stay with it and measure your results along the way it is worth it. I believe that one of the most important parts of an engagement approach is to make sure that you stay engaged as well. When followers do respond make sure to acknowledge it and keep the conversation going and let them know you appreciate their participation..



Another low cost and effective way to build business is through
promotional events on social media. If you offer you followers and customers, discounts or special promotions on a regular basis they will begin to follow you more closely. This type event does have a cost usually in the give away items, but it will almost always generate more interest as followers share the great deals with friends.






Creating participation events such as work shops and webinars is also a great way to promote your business and grow it. This can be labor intensive and take some work to figure out what your
followers are willing to invest their time in, but again well worth it once you find that level of interest.



In the end I believe that for anything to work well you need to be consistent with your approach and commitment, but for businesses using social media to connect and engage their customer base it can be lowest cost and highest effectiveness.

Blogs that I commented on. Week 11

This week I commented on the following peoples blogs, Connor, Leslie, Maranda, and Marilyn.

http://oceansidemarilyn.blogspot.com/2015/04/week-eleven-online-advertising.html


http://connorpenguinsblogs.blogspot.com/2015/04/week-11-ads.html

http://marandasclassblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/week-11-online-advertising.html

http://lesliegjon.blogspot.com/2015/03/facebook-scheduled-content.html
( I thought this was a new post, when I made the link I realized it was an older post. Oh well comment made.)

Week 11: Social Media Advertising! CSIT 155

Social Media Advertising!

Social media is a very important advertising and customer interaction tool. The ability to measure and precisely target your efforts is supremely valuable. I think that the chapters 14 and 15 of "Likeable social media by Dave Kerpen" explain the beneficial and important advertising strategies that should be used and implemented by most companies today. The one thing that I thought was of most importance was the statement made in the book " So before yo spend lots of time and money on likeable social media, you've got to make sure you have likeable customer service, likeable salespeople, likeable products, and likeable processes." . I truly believe that too many companies concentrate more on the marketing aspect looking for new customers than they do the operation and customer service to insure the customers that they already have are satisfied. The worst thing that could happen would be to have a spectacularly successful marketing campaign to bring in new customers then provide horrendous service and sour all those new customers. It is almost always easier and less costly to keep existing customers than it is to find new ones. Also customers who have a bad experience are much more likely to share their dislike over a bad experience and this is not the type of word of mouth advertising you want.

Facebook offers a great way to advertise and a number of good ways to do it. The ability to focus your add by location, job title, interests, and friends of connections are some that I think are the best. On top of that you have the option to structure the cost based on pay per view and pay per click allowing you do judge the amount and type of exposure you think gives you the best return. Personally I think that in most cases I would use pay per click as it would give you a better idea of the effectiveness of your advertisement. I really like and would consider using the friends of connections first. this ad with its built in recommendation attribute I think would be the most effective. Maybe using this with an interest filter would be even more precisely targeted and effective.

What You Need to Know About Mobile Security.

Our Mobile Life

Mobile devices have become an integrated and important part of many of our lives today and that will likely increase rather than decrease. What we do with our devices, where we do it, and how we do it can put our privacy or security at risk. A few simple rules can greatly diminish the chance of you becoming a victim to the all too common cyber attack today.

First, make sure that your device is locked with a pass code, or even better, a biologic input like a finger print scanner. This will not completely secure the device but will slow someone down if they find it or steal it. Also make sure that you have a remote wipe program installed. This will allow you to remove your data or at least make it more difficult to recover if you lose the device.

Second, when we talk about installing apps on the device consider these things. The more apps you have on the device the more areas you are creating for vulnerabilities open to attack. Only install apps that you really need, and if you have apps that you have stopped using remove them. In security this is called reducing your vulnerability foot print. Another rule for apps is to only download apps from trusted vendors. Generally stick to the app stores for your product. This is not a sure fire way of protecting yourself but these vendors do conduct some control measures to evaluate if an app has a vulnerability or malware. Also if you are using an android device be aware of what the app is asking to have access to. For example a flashlight app should not need your location or contacts.

Third, be careful of using your device's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functions. Operating your device on an unsecure Wi-Fi can give access to potential criminals that are in the area. Leaving your device's Bluetooth on can also create an open door for hackers to access your device. Only use your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on trusted networks, and when you are not using these functions, shut them off. This can be an inconvenience sometimes but consider it the same as locking your car when you leave it.
  

The last rule is don't keep highly sensitive data on your device. This would mean not keeping a list of passwords, bank account information, employee identification, or social security numbers. If it is necessary to have sensitive information on the device, it should be encrypted.

These devices allow us to improve our lives in great ways, but we just need to use them with some awareness and responsibility.    

Week 10: Email Marketing

I do believe that in most cases Email newsletters are a great tool to stay in touch with your customers. I also think that it is extremely important to not over do it, and that your content must be considered valuable by the recipients. If you send too often and don't have much new content they can have a negative effect and drive customers away quickly.

For Tech by Templin I would consider using a news letter possibly on a weekly or monthly basis. I would include a list of the topics and teasers for the posts I made in that period. It is always good to try and refresh the connection with customers especially in today's busy and highly competitive atmosphere. Holidays are great to send personal greeting and well wishes and try to build a sincere caring connection with my followers.

I do think that people that have already subscribed to your media channels get a sort of news update with each post. I wonder if adding that with another contact might become too much?

Week:9 Using categories to organize content for your audience.

Using categories on my blog would be helpful to organize the content into areas that would fit different types of readers. The categories that I would likely use would be personal computing, enterprise systems, and leading edge technologies. Using these categories would allow me to offer a wider range of content and increase the size of the potential audience. Writing content in these categories would also offer some variety that readers could transition through or easily find similar topic content. The more organized and easy the content is to find the more likely I will be to have readers who return and enjoy the blog. I visit lots of sites that are a mess of mixed content that I have to search though endlessly to find what I want. These are site that I generally do not visit unless I have too. Categories or labels if used correctly can also help potential readers to find your article if it has been indexed for those key words or phrases. If I categorize articles it will also let me see easily what types of content are most popular and concentrate my energy in those areas.

How personal should your Blog be!, Week 9

I think this question would be different for every person and business that is blogging. For me and the type of blog I have created, adding some of my personal feelings or experiences into the blog is a good idea. I think that it allows people to gain a sense of my character and better evaluate if their character aligns with mine. It helps to open the way for building trust, and when giving advice or teaching there must be trust.

I think that it also can keep the content delivery interesting and unique to your style. This will help to set you apart from others who are similar and competing with you for audience. I think that care must be taken so that my style of personal touch does not diminish the professionalism that some topics I will be posting about require. I also think that it would be wise to balance the personal interjection so as to not project a bias or distract from the focus of my content. Whenever I write or speak, I let it carry some of my personality and style because I always want to be like me not like a machine devoid of personality or personal feeling.  But, hey, that is just me, and I always say "too each their own."

Week8, Twitter to educate yourself and expand your reach.

This week I used Twitter to find people and companies that I wanted to follow. I followed companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Bromium, and Palo Alto Networks because they always have news about leading security and technology issues. I will use this to help me stay up to date on the these issues and be able to pass the information along to my blog readers. I also placed the accounts that I followed into lists so that I can quickly look for the subject feeds that I want. I made lists for educational users, product manufacturers, and technology writers. It will allow me to share me tweets with certain groups as well to better match my audience with the content.

Finding the right people to follow was an educational exercise. There are a so many users out there and reading their tweets gave me a better idea of who I was really looking for. I think that this will be a continually evolving list at least for awhile. I already notice that it is important for me to limit the users I follow to avoid being overwhelmed by tweets.

Finding the best time for posting tweets will be hard for me to determine until I have more followers. As I continue to grow the sphere that I am touching I will look for those most effective tweet times.

I was able to link my Facebook page to Twitter and this will be very helpful in reducing the amount of work needed to post to both media channels.

How do you remember all your passwords and keep them secure?

Having a strong and unique password for each account you have is an important security measure you should take. I know many people who are frustrated by trying to remember all of the different passwords they need to have. Some people give up and use one or two passwords for all their accounts. Or they make a list of their passwords and keep them on their phone, computer or written down in their wallet. Each one of these is a serious security weakness and can allow one breach of security to compromise all, or a number of your accounts.

If you are in this group I have a suggestion that will help. First, creating a strong password is important. It should never be a dictionary word, or sequential numbers or letters, and you should not use anything based from your personal data, like your birth-date. You should also have a unique address for each account. So with these simple criteria in mind here is a way that you can create strong passwords that are unique and that you can remember.

First we know that most passwords today require a mixture of letters and numbers and are generally between 6 to 10 characters long. With this in mind we can start to create a system for our passwords. Let's assume you need a pass word for Gmail. A simple way to create a unique password for this account would be to use four letters from Gmail and for numbers that you choose.





For example: gLmi3971  This system is the first letter, last letter(capitalized), second letter, fourth letter, then a set of numbers that you can use for each account. If I had a Yahoo account the password would be "yOao3971". This is a simple system that will give you a unique password for each account and all you have to do is remember your system for creating them. This is definitely better than using a single password or a dictionary word.

To increase the level of security you can increase the complexity of your system or vary it for different types of accounts. For example you might have one system for non-sensitive accounts and a different one for more sensitive accounts like bank accounts.

Week 7, 2nd post: Social Media and My Business Model.

The three businesses that I found that are using visual social media are “Krebsonsecurity”,”TheNewBoston”, “EliTheComputerGuy”.

The first of these is Krebs on Security. He uses Twitter, Facebook, and a blog. Most of the things he posts have pictures for visual, but not much in the way of video.  He seems to be using Twitter and Facebook to expand his exposure for his articles. Often they are simply links to his posts. I would say that for Krebs on Security visual media is not a priority and is mostly used to enhance his textual articles.

The second business that I looked at was The New Boston. This is a pretty different type of approach and visual is the mainstay. He uses YouTube and his website. He has used Twitter and a blog but seems to have abandoned them or uses them very little now. His website is mainly an organizational portal for his YouTube channel. The focus of his content is teaching, and videos lend themselves very strongly to this. He is extremely effective with this style of content delivery.

The last business that I examined was Eli the Computer Guy. He uses a website, YouTube, Twitter, and a blog built into his website. Eli has created his media channel around teaching videos and it has worked very well for him. He does use YouTube to make commentary type episodes. This also seems to work well and they have high viewing numbers.

I think that visual media channels have a definite usefulness in instructional and commentary content delivery businesses. It can be used in differing styles and amounts as shown by these three businesses. I think the successful use of visual social media would really depend on the personality of the person, as well as, the type and depth of content. I will try to use visual social media to be both a supporting role in expanding the touch of my content, and in a primary role when it serves as the best media to convey the content.

Krebs On Security

http://krebsonsecurity.com/

twitter, facebook, Blog/website

The New Boston

http://thenewboston.blogspot.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/TheNewBoston/

https://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston

https://twitter.com/bucky_roberts

Eli the computer guy

https://www.youtube.com/user/elithecomputerguy

http://www.elithecomputerguy.com/

http://www.elithecomputerguy.com/blog-posts/

https://twitter.com/elicomputerguy

Week 7, Post #1: Business and Visual Social Media.

Is visual social media right for my business? It is easy to find statistics that show that people’s attention spans for advertisements and interests are generally shrinking. There is also strong evidence that people in general are more interested in pictures and learn more from them. Also the fact the leading social media platforms are either visually based or are putting a great deal of effort into making their platform more visual based, would suggest that visual is the way to go. It is true that not all businesses lend themselves strongly to straight visual content. Although almost all business content can be enhanced or improved with some visuals added.

The four leading visual networks for business are:

#1 YouTube: It is almost completely visually based. If you believe the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words than a one minute video could be worth nine hundred thousand words. This is estimated at fifteen frames per second for sixty seconds. For the majority of people, showing them what you have or what you want them to do is almost always more effective than telling them. Another strength of the YouTube platform is the longevity of the effectiveness of its videos. One video may continue to be visited for several years. For these reasons and the fact that YouTube has one of the largest user bases. I believe it is the number 1 visual platform.

#2 Facebook: Facebook has the largest active user base of all the platforms. A lot of users check Facebook many times a day and there are statistics that show pictures or visual posts get more circulation than straight textual posts. Facebook offers business the ability to measure the effectiveness of their posts and accurately direct it toward their target market. Marketing can be a great expense for businesses. The more efficient you can be, with the funds you have available, increases your chance of success. With Facebook's large user base and tools for measuring and directing your marketing, I believe that it is the second best social platform for visual content.

#3 Twitter: The Twitter platform has recently started allowing visual content and it has quickly grown to be widely used in most tweets. Although Twitter's user base is a third or less the size of the previous two platforms, It is still one of the largest user bases in social media. The culture and format lend itself well to the business presence and for that matter I have ranked it as the third best choice. Twitter is also a social platform that a lot of users check many times a day or are even continually notified of new content. This makes it a good choice for timely notifications to your target market.

#4 Pinterest: This platform has a much smaller user base, but they seem to be very loyal. I like the ability that you have to create boards and groups to expand your content exposure. Also I like the long life of the content and its ability to be seen long after you have posted it. Pinterest has a good format to use visual leaders to direct traffic back to you main media bases. I don’t think that Pinterest is for everyone, but for unique styled products or services Pinterest could work well.

Of these four platforms I think that along with my blog, Facebook and YouTube will be the best for me. I think that for now concentrating on a few areas and doing a good job with those will allow me to continue to provide valuable content and not burn out. Once I have mastered posting and creating content for these platforms, I will likely be able to expand to using the other platforms as well.