Honestly, I would agree with that statement, except for a little small birdy. Rather a very large “bird” platform that goes by the name of Twitter. It’s been the recent trend for over a year to tweet opinions, shocking facts, revelations, and complaints during TV shows among many generations (I think The Bachelor provides the biggest boom among my followers). Add in Hashtags and everyone wants to be retweeted, Favorited, or trending. Honestly, I am guilty of this especially during the horrible-yet irresistible  ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars.

The trick with social media is that it is all in the now, happening instantaneously. Tweet about something after a commercial break passes and you’re old news. To be hip with this trend of show-Twittering and sharing about shows on platforms, you have to be watching live and in the moment. Hence, a newer boom of watching shows together. You also don’t want to scroll through your feed the next morning with the plan to watch the newest Revenge with your morning coffee and see an older (once-current) Tweet about who Emily targeted and succeeded/failed at this week.

Taking a step back, this gives more hope to advertisers and stations, who were struggling in getting back dwindling viewers and ratings with new easier forms of watching favorite shows at an easier time. Some shows have even started including contests or follow along social media updates throughout the show, so if a person doesn’t want that week’s shock factor spoiled and ruined in their newsfeed or other platforms, they better watch it live with the other social media hungry Americans.

With almost 10 million views on YouTube, that video has spurred numerous spin offs, such as Sh*t guys say, Sh*t White girls say, Sh*t single girls say, and many other amateur quality ones of fans from home.

According to Mashable, the video aired first in mid-December, prompted by a popular Twitter handle, @ShitGirlsSay, whose idea came from the origina @Shitmydadsays.

My favorite one so far is Sh*t Nobody Says (some of my favorite excerpts: “My Bazooka gum still has its flavor!” “Touch my computer screen!”

Enjoy!

I’m sure I’ll have many inspired blog posts over the course of the read, which is where today’s post comes from! I have only read through the introduction but it noted that people of the Web 2.0 generation think they are the most important thing to hit the web. With enablers like Facebook Status, Tweets, four-square check ins, and the ability to link those all together onto each platform, I’m not surprised people’s egos are inflated.

People now strive to be the newest, funniest thing in the feeds and strive for recognition from others for their cleverness (likes, favorites, retweets, comments, you name it). Recently someone created a Twitter parody account for Blue Ivy (the 4-day old offspring of Beyonce and Jay-Z) and received widespread attention from other Tweeters, Entertainment blogs, and even other celebrities. All that attention, simply because they thought of the idea and signed up for the handle first (there have been MANY parody accounts that come and go with the latest hot topic).

The thing the book mentioned about getting internet fame, is that with easily made tweets and posts, one’s 15-minutes-of-fame can happen over and over again. Just think of the cleverest hashtag, make the newest Sh*t _____(insert stereotyped person here)___ Say video for YouTube, or get a group going on Facebook from all your friends.

The downside of this ability to see and receive online validation is that people think they are the best thing ever online. Seriously. I may be guilty of this too, but people sometimes try too hard to make a funny status or make the “best pun” on the Casey Anthony trial (slash whatever is the new news of today). I saw somewhere online that said if you can not post something online, then don’t. Only update your status or Twitter if you MUST MUST MUST inform the world about this. Many of my friends even have self-rules for how often they can Tweet (ex. no sooner than 5 hours since their last Tweet, no more than 3 in a day). Self-regulating like this will prevent overcrowding others’ feeds and also not making you look so desperate for the online validation.

We learned in class yesterday the ongoing struggle to define a journalist from a legal standpoint in privilege and First Amendment cases due to the increase of online blogging. Some bloggers may not have a title or badge from a newspaper or magazine but conduct just the same investigative research (depending on their specialty). Honestly I think this is a great way of spreading ideas and sharing cool facts, how-tos, and tidbits on public interest matters. In reality, the Market Place of Ideas grew infinitely with the first mention of the internet.

Just don’t “tweet” your own horn too loudly.

*As a side note, I’ve been trying reading before bed for a bit instead of aimless internet browsing after reading a study that the blue light in our computer screens prevents us from producing sleep instructions to our brain (obviously not the most scientific way of saying it). I’ve been surprised at how well it works and normally I’ve been putting the book down and falling asleep within 20 minutes. Of course last night I started this new one, and being the social media geek that I am, read for an additional 45 minutes!

Understanding these new techinical innovations, the State Department is offering new ways to get in touch and keep up to date with the month’s news and developments. They will answer questions via Twitter with the hashtag #AskState. They are also increasing conversations with others in the world, such as having American Ambassadors using social media to engage youth in Zimbabwe. As any organization should with their online coherency, the Department will also be updating their platforms and asking for feedback. Read an overview pf the month’s activities here.

“To meet these 21^st century challenges, we need to use the tools, the new 21^st century statecraft. …we find ourselves living at a moment in human history when we have the potential to engage in these new and innovative forms of diplomacy and to also use them to help individuals be empowered for their own development.”
–Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

Want to participate? Tweet at any one of the 10 official Twitter handles listed below with #AskState as a hashtag. During the month of January, the Department will answer them at the podium each Friday following the Daily Press Briefing.

State Department Twitter Accounts: @StateDept (English), @USAbilAraby (Arabic), @USAdarFarsi (Farsi), @USAenEspanol (Spanish), @USAenFrancais (French), @USAemPortugues (Portuguese), @USApoRusski (Russian), @USA_Zhongwen (Chinese), @USAUrdu (Urdu), @USAHindiMein (Hindi)

Pinterest is basically an online personalized bulletin board that you can share with friends. Currently Invite-Online (I was angst-filled in my 2 week wait), the platform allows users to make and title different boards and follow friends from Facebook, Twitter, and “similar to them” Pinners. The pins are just pictures or quotes that can link to different websites (many are food-blog or how-to-sites).

To me, this is the next best thing to StumbleUpon. Maybe better. It is also my newest form of procrastination (currently my favorite boards are My Future Walk in Closet, Weddings, and For the Home). Pinterest has even found a way to begin using it’s platform for promoting/marketing, as there is a gift section, with prices of online goods, mostly from Etsy, as well as many books/movies that people like and pin (which in turn could be linked to promotional material from the producers/publishers).

With the help and ideas from Stephanie Buck’s article on Mashable, I’ve created a list of 8 helpful Pinterest hints to make your experience (even more) enjoyable…once you get an invite that is.

1. Don’t follow all your Facebook or Twitter friends. Pinterest allows this as an easy option when setting up your account. Really though don’t. There are so many people and honestly I don’t agree/like some of the boards of even close friends I follow. Follow all will make your home page too crowded to browse through and find things you would like to repin.
2. Be friends with the search toolbar. I’ve done some pretty silly searches (v-neck wedding dresses) but found some quality pins. Searching for pins also makes you more original of a pinner to your friends’ home pages (instead of re-pinning something 12 other sorority sisters already have).
3. Polyvore. Try it. Search it. Make new outfits and wish you had the money to buy them. It’s like an online shopping cart for every story in the world.
4. Don’t be afraid to Unfollow someone. I’ve done this for certain boards for friends. Sometimes I’m just not interested in horses or educational crafts. It’s not a “diss” to them and honestly they won’t even notice.
5. Be proud to be re-pinned (it’s not creepy). During finals in the fall, I uploaded a creation of my own from Polyvore (see #3) and over the course of the next two hours, I received 40+ repins from other users just from having the pin show up on the recent/popular generic Pinterest page. I did let it get to my head a bit, but I felt like I had some effect on the internet even for just a few hours.
6. Categorize your boards! This will help others see your pins in the appropriate category/theme when they are browsing, as well as help create “pinners you should follow” suggestions.
7. Work on a few, dense boards. Pinners are more likely to check in and follow up with boards that are immense with pins of that category. It’s daunting when you first start out and you seem obsessed in trying to fill your boards. Keep up with it little by little and you’ll have a few going that have a decent scroll length.
8. Be picky. You don’t have to re-pin something just because it gives you a giggle. I’ve created high standards for what get re-pinned (don’t want to have lame boards!), but I also take advantage of the “Like” feature. Liking a pin doesn’t put it on your boards or your follower’s homepages, but files it into your likes. I think of it as a bookmark of something you’d like to look back at later but don’t want to be directly connected to you.

Hope these helped and good luck pinning!

At the beginning of the internet fad, I think the biggest issue in online disputes and rants was defaming and false information being posted maliciously that caused these known events. In today’s time, the internet has become even more instant and attainable (3G, 4G, iPads, Phones, Laptops, Tablets…etc.) and there’s a bigger issue: Instant Mistakes Online.

These are when someone tweets an embarrassing fact or photo (Weiner), rants on a blog to a platform about a current hot topic (name anyone really), accidental leaks of nude photos (Scarlet Johanson). Books can be shredded, letters can be burned, but the internet is forever. With a simple thing known as Ctrl-Alt-3, anyone can take a screenshot of an image or text online and save it/share it within their own storage space and network. There’s no way to erase anything completely from the internet or view nowadays. Cease and Desist letters could need to be sent to well over 1,000 different users or accounts. Postings on the internet can happen so quickly and last forever. With that said, it’s obvious that you need to be careful with what you post, where you post, and how you post (even wholesome Luke Bryan had an inebriated Twitter feed going for a while).

But with those wise words of wisdom, of course we are all pop-culture focused Americans, so I’ll leave you with a list from Mashable of the Top 15 Most Shocking Media Disasters of 2011. Let’s hope their publicists got a good holiday bonus this year!

Personally, I am dreading my account’s change over to Timeline however. To me it is creepy and gives out too much information.

I won’t lie that in the middle school and high school trends of Xanga, MySpace, and early Facebook I jumped on the bandwagon and, with my mother’s worry, posted things like “going away for the weekend!” and my hometown, etc. In the past five years I’ve become wiser and attempted to t ake out all personal information that could threaten my security, both online or in person (due to recent hackers and violent acts motivated by online information).

Some say that Timeline is a great way to look back and show your life thus far. However, to me, Facebook is a platform to network and keep in touch. I already know when I got my first dog Charlie and when I moved from California, so that information posted on the infamous blue and white site is not for my benefit. Timeline takes stalking to a whole new level.

I read a quote on Pinterest the other day that said “Do not underestimate a woman’s ability to find something online.” It’s almost second nature now to go home and vritually “stalk/creep on” a person after having a class, going on a date, or seeing them across campus. I find it unsettling now that with Timeline you could now also find out when that particular hottie lost their first tooth, where they went for Spring Break in 1995, or that they transferred high schools in ninth grade. In sum, it is just too much personal information to be posting online.

Showing another side,  Gerrit Hall wrote for Mashable that Timeline is a good tool to make an online resume, either for life or career, in the article, Facebook Timeline is Basically Your Digital Resume. I agree that it could be a good tool, but even as I’m training to be a social media guru, I do not think that Facebook is the best platform to market yourself in the work force.  Hall does suggest ways to personalize Timeline to individualize yourself on the market (such as using the cover photo as a personal statement and creating lists of who can see what information posted). I would still people to first create a coherent online presence on sites like LinkedIn, personal blogs, Twitter, websites, and other specialty sites like Flickr before resorting to Facebook as the new business card.

Although I don’t agree that users should focus on Timeline as their main online representation of them in getting a job, I do agree that users need to be careful on how they appear. I will not be posting minute details of my life on the Timeline, but I will make sure (especially with changing Privacy terms from Facebook) that my profile is presentable to possible future employers searching for me before or after an interview. But honestly, that is an ongoing social media issue for young professionals who leave the tags from their friends of “photos you wouldn’t show grandma” from the “crazy night before.” You need to find a balance of having a fun online platform to keep up with friends, using safe internet protocol in posting information, and keeping in mind how you look to someone who knows how to use google (aka the world).

I also wanted to share my five New Years Resolutions (perhaps just as a way to keep myself accountable not that it is on the interwebs).

1. Post a blog post each week day on a new article or idea on social media
2. Watch one video from TED per day (I think I can spare a few minutes of Facebook creeping for that)
3. Go Gluten Free!
4. Read one book per month (being abroad and traveling made me realize I can read for fun and manage coursework!)
5. Drink 3, 8 oz glasses of water before noon. (Now that I have my camelbak and tervis back in my open arms, this shouldn’t be an issue!)

To get me more motivated on my first resolution, I also got my own domain for this blog for Christmas! It can now be reached by hannahbernice.com as well as the original hannahbernice.wordpress.com!

While perusing Mashable (hashtag strategic comm major problems?), I found an article from Lance Ulanoff: I resolve: My Top 5 New Year Tech Resolutions. In summary his five were:

1. Respond fully to emails (no one-word answers)
2. Look up from his ever distracting technology
3. Double his Twitter audience
4. Combine and recover all his data from different (older) forms of computers and storage
5. Fill out the details of the Facebook Timeline

Obviously all of them are within the technology realm in some aspect, but they will give Ulanoff a great, wide range of improvements (i.e. better networking and personal connections for #1; more influence online for #3; more consistent and transparent profile for friends for #5).

I find it interesting that there are so many facets and platforms for social media, that five equally important, yet such diverse resolutions can come together to enhance someone’s online presence. In this growing online world of the cloud, maybe more people should work on their online appearance for the New Years’ resolution, rather than the over-used “go to the gym,” “get abs,” “finally get rid of my pooch,” type of unfulfilled, post-holiday-gained-weight wishes. With telecommuting on the rise, telephone interviews across the country, and being able to post from anywhere, your online appearance (across platforms)  could take you to the new level of connections and networking!

Regardless of what you call my semester of “study” abroad, I am returning stateside within two weeks and back to Elon by New Years Eve! Although junior year is one of the most dreaded academically, I could not be excited to be back in the “bubble” and get involved all across campus. Hannah, over-commited? No…. But of course silly that’s basically my middle name!

In the spring, I am very excited for my classes: Strategic Campaigns, Corporate Publishing, Intro to Management, and Intro to Finance. This Winter Term for January, I will also be taking Media Law and History (aka getting it out of the way in 3 short, tough weeks). I’ve gotten most of my electives out of the way so I made room for half-major, half-minor classes to delve into the “hard stuff.” Being abroad hasn’t given me much options for completing courses for my degree, but I guess I can’t complain and should see it as a feat that I took a full course load and completed an internship all in German!

Here’s more of what I will be doing in the spring:

• Continuing my undergraduate research from a German studies perspective, working with Dr. Windham, my German mentor and another Elon German Studies minor graduate using data and research from my article this summer. Speaking of:
• Working on submitting and publishing my article I wrote with Dr. Gallagher this summer through SURE.
• Live Oak Communications: I applied for the next position up from Account Executive after two years and am happy to say that I will be a Team Leader in the spring! That means I’ll be the direct liason between my client and a team of 3 account executives.
• PRSSA: I just found out I was offered Vice President of Elon’s chapter of Public Relations Student Society of America. I can’t wait to delve in and get more involved with the chapter, meet and network professionals in preparation for our monthly meetings, and getting to know the rest of the Exec Board (presumably com-crazy, driven students like myself)
• Sigma Kappa: For the coming slate from spring to fall I got Vice President of Scholarship! I basically award sisters for good academic achievement and plan the Scholarship Banquet and Professor Ice Cream social. I will also be an active member on our Executive Board.

It doesn’t seem right to say “That’s All” since that basically was a lot, on top of 18 credits. But I am determined to succeed and honestly just couldn’t be happier to be back on Elon’s most beautiful campus soon! I won’t even mind if I spend all my nights in Belk library, I’ve missed that place! Until the new year, be sure to keep up with my Germany blog, Hannah in Heidelberg, for my last week+ here in Deutschland :)

Until sometime in the near future,

Hannah B.