Twitter: Jill's Favorite Past-time is a Social Media!

That's right...Twitter. After we've all figured out how to work the infamous micro-blogging, I googled "Social Media"...and it was pretty much everything I thought it was.

"So what EXACTLY is Social Media?" You might be asking? Well, it's basically when a regular person starts up a social, interacting, data and information sharing place on the web.
Things like Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Linkedin, Twitter (..oh joy), and even our Blogger accounts are all classified under the social media category.

The list goes on and on considering picture and music sharing, like Photobucket and LimeWire.

The Craze
This new industry has gotten to be so popular that I actually found a website, that I'm sure many other people will have on their blogs, that helps people figure out how to use the new social medias to their advantage...SocialMedia.biz. This website has helpul videos and strategies that discuss bringing a specific company a new online community to draw in a diferent kind of business to them. The website even discusses setting up a customized Web 2.0

Social media, in essence, can really help or hurt a company that's promoting itself within the internet.
A perfect example would be from this website, discussing how Dominoes had their business hurting after a video put on YouTube about a Dominoes employee sneezing and farting on a sandwich. The video recieved over 500,000 views. It's no longer avalianble on YouTube, but is accessible for visiting that website.

The Negative to Social Media
Now, don't get me wrong, I love social media as much as the next person. I have a Facebook, Myspace, and even a Twitter now (thanks to this class). But part of using social media is knowing when to stop using it, and come back to the "real world". Places like Twitter and Facebook and even instant messaging (yup, it's social media) are seen as almost sources of evil by parents with young teenagers. According to this other website, news reports linked Facebook to the main cause of poor grades and Twitter is "accused of putting morality itself at risk".
Which leads me to wonder...

Is Social Media ever going to really stop? No. It's pretty safe to say that.
Is it going to start dictating our lives though? Isn't it already dictating most of our lives?
It seems so strange to me that something so fun and recreational can also be used for business, but I suppose that's just a characteristic for Gen Y to have developed.

Now, it might seem like this whole blog I've written so far has been about the negative affects about our growing social media, but in reality, it's just the scary truth that could possibly happen.
But Social Media overall has been a positive experience for everyone. It's connecting us all in ways I'm sure people before us never thought to imagine...or at least didn't think it was coming so fast. Social Media has a power all it's own and is now a force to be reckoned with.

Jill asked us to post our favorite YouTube videos. Here's two:


If you don't know, I work at a Renaissance Faire. I took this video :)


This is one of my favorite shows, Man and Wife!