The various social media websites on the Internet have completely changed the way we interact with each other, businesses and
our leaders. Sort of. I've said this time and again, but this too shall pass. There are fine prospects in the social media arena
that may hold ground longer, but in the end it will only be those sites that enhance and flesh-and-bone experience of life
that will prevail. Human interaction is key to the success of any brand; creating billions of stalkers is not the way to
ensure longevity and relevance.
All that being said, tools like Twitter and Facebook allow people and brands to interact with consumers where they interact.
This has been especially useful for political campaigns and other organizations. For those of us in the business whose job it is
to craft messages and disseminate information, these two tools provide the most direct route to the eyes and ears of the electorate.
But only if we create relevant content. The problem with this notion is that in order to be heard, more outrageous claims and
statements are required to capture attention. When we self-edit the content we consume, we only read information that supports
our particular viewpoint. As a result, reasoned, well-thought-out responses are not eye-catching or headline-grabbing. And that's
all most consumers want right now. Something outrageous or frivolous in 140 characters or less.
Even though I'm a recovering social media addict, I still have a presence on various sites:
 
Digg.com is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere
on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. It's a helpful tool to share your favorite news items with friends.
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Facebook.com is the world's largest social networking site. Originally developed so that
friends at Harvard could share photos—much like the paper-bound "face books" many colleges distribute
to their incoming freshman class. Facebook has grown and expanded rapidly to over 300 million users. More messages are sent on Facebook than emails are sent on the entire web.
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Flickr.com is the premiere photo-sharing site on the web. Owned by Yahoo
and compatible with your universal Yahoo account ID, it's easy to upload and share images with the web. I use Flickr is my main
online gallery for design and photography work. Flickr allows me the flexibility to share images without putting a huge burden on my servers.
Plus it allows other users who would not normally find my site the ability to view, comment and enjoy my work.
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LinkedIn.com is a business-oriented professional networking website. Think of it as a social network for your resume.
Focused mostly around professional contacts, LinkedIn is an excellent tool for recruiters and prospective
employers. If you have a LinkedIn.com profile it is important to make sure that your profile matches your resume, or else that will lead to serious
questions by a prospective employer. LinkedIn is also a great place to make and receive recommendations of people with whom you have worked, and
you can network with college buddies and coworkers from previous employers.
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MySpace.com, a subsidiary of News Corporation (Fox), is a social networking website that was once the most dominant and promising
player on the social media landscape. It lost market dominance to Facebook in 2008 and has been steadily losing membership since. While Facebook has
staked it's claim as the social network of choice, MySpace carved out its own niche as the place to experience music. I have to agree
that when it comes to music, MySpace ranks much higher in my mind than Facebook. Check out one of my favorite young new artists
Kala Hawker.
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StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web
pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles. I go back and forth between
StumbleUpon and Digg, which are competing services in many ways.
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Tumblr is a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio
to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users are able to "follow" other users and see their posts together on their dashboard, and they can like or reblog other
blogs on the site. The service emphasizes customizability and ease of use. I use Tumblr as another place to feed my various web content into one place. Tumblr
also serves as a valuable tool in search engine optimization.
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Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read
messages known as tweets, text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers
who are known as followers. "Tweeting" is all the rage right now. Even Martha Stewart, John McCain and Ashton Kutcher are doing it. In its simplest form, Twitter is
a massive feed of Facebook-like status updates. Twitter is a valuable tool to connect directly with fans or consumers. I receive most
of my up-to-the-minute news alerts on Twitter from BBC News, CNN
and the Huffington Post.
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Vimeo is a video-centric social network site similar to YouTube, that in my opinion is far superior.
The clean, simple design and easy-to-use interface makes it a much better choice for hosting original content than YouTube. I like Vimeo especially
for political campaign videos, and other marketing content because competing media is less intrusive.
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Yelp is a social networking, user review, and local search web site with over 25 million
active monthly users. Rarely do I go to a restaurant, bar or lounge without first checking the reviews on this Yelp. That being said, Yelp is not a
well-edited website in how the site administrators manages reviews. Basically if you pay to advertise on the site you will see more positive reviews for your business.
There is a pay-to-play element that I think delegitimizes the democratizing nature of a user-submitted review site.
There doesn't seem to be any reasonable editorial oversight of the website leading to false, defamatory and/or inaccurate reviews remaining on the site
while other reviews surreptitiously removed. I take each review with a grain of salt. Having had my own battle with the site, I know that
not all negative reviews are accurate, nor are all the positive ones. I hope one day Yelp will institute a more rigorous screening policy for its reviewers
or at the very least create more distinct categories of reviewers. Yelp's imperfect but when it comes to food and restaurants there's no better place to turn.
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YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. It is by far the
biggest monolith in the video sharing arena, garnering 1 Billion visitors a day—a staggering number if you ask me. But I think the overall design of YouTube
has improved little over time, and the site is riddled with distracting and irrelevant advertisements that ruin a rich media experience. Will I stop
using it? Of course not. There are too many crazy, silly people out there posting useless content for me to devour.
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