I’m evolving…

And so is this blog!
As I’m in the process of expanding the focus of this blog to other aspects of society than media, please bear with the changes and stay tuned for posts about food, music, film and philosophy as well as media and the news. Thank you!

Social Media Headlines: July 18-22

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Social Media is Morphing into Social Business (The Huffington Post) 

If the Huffington Post would return my phone calls, I’d ask them how it feels to be the last one at the party.

Report: Facebook is Most Hated Social Media Company (Inc.)

The release of this new research has coincided with the launch of Google+. Perhaps Facebook will have to take user suggestions more seriously now that they have such staunch competition. Well, let’s not get carried away. As cute as Google+ is and as exciting as it is for them to have reached more than 20 million users in under a month, it isn’t Facebook. What’s the difference,  you ask? The difference is 3/4 of a billion people. Yeah. So come talk to me when Google+ gains 730 million more users.

Pentagon Set to Track Social Media (Social Times)

DARPA, or The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, identifies four major goals of this new “tracking”:

“1. Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive messaging and misinformation.

2. Recognize persuasion campaign structures and influence operations across social media sites and communities.

3. Identify participants and intent, and measure effects of persuasion campaigns.

4. Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.”

Orwell, anyone?

Asking Twitter to Commit Suicide with a Google+ Dagger (Tech Crunch)

Um.. Tech Crunch? I think you might want to have some of your writers assessed by a mental health professional.

The Evolution of Social Media: 2001-2011

This morning I was reading MSNBC‘s list of the most interesting additions to the Guinness Book of World Records for 2011. Yes, it was fun. There was the “loudest purr” record awarded to a cat whose owner likened his purr to a vacuum cleaner. There was the “shortest living man” record that went to an 18-year-old man in the Philippines measuring in at 23.5 inches. And then there was the “longest cigar” record that went to a cigar the length of a football field. Where? You guessed it! Cuba.

So while I was enjoying a cup of tea with some light reading, I found myself struck by something in this list of World Record winners. Many of them could not have existed 10 years ago. For example, Lady Gaga is given the honor of having the world’s most Twitter followers at just more than 10 million. 85-year-old John Bates won the record for most perfect games of Wii bowling. I guess they didn’t visit my 87-year-old grandmother, who is a Wii bowling expert. But the point here is neither Gaga’s fame nor my Grandma’s agility, but rather the amount in which our society has changed over the last decade. More specifically, how technology has influenced that change.

It’s 2001: Wikipedia has just been launched. Google is still in its infancy; Gmail hasn’t even been developed yet. There is no YouTube, no Skype, no Iphone. Ten years ago you would not be reading this because WordPress did not exist yet. Ten years ago if someone said, “I’m following you,” it would have been cause for a restraining order. Today, it’s flattery.

Furthermore, if this were 2001, no one would understand you if you uttered any of the following:

“Facebook me,”

“YouTube it,”

“Actually, the term is ‘tweeting’,”

“No, it’s not an Iphone. It’s an android,”

“If you don’t have an Iphone, you don’t have an Iphone,”

“Can we make it Facebook-official?”

“TY for the RT,”

“I have an app for that,”

“Why am I not in your top 8?” <– admittedly, this one has already come and gone. Sorry, MySpace, but it does prove an excellent point about the fleeting nature of social media and technology.

My advice: Don’t get too attached to any of the current technology and don’t be discouraged if you’ve yet to figure it out. Either way, it’s all going to change.

If you have other fun “show me the money” type phrases for this decade, feel free to post them in the comments section.