Tag Archives: Latest Trends
The Muscle Behind the Trayvon Martin Movement
It’s no surprise anymore that social media has become the outlet for people to discuss hot topics going on around the world. Whether it be a political debate, or a sporting event, people turn to social media as a way to personally get involved and express their opinions.
The recent killing of Trayvon Martin, a Florida teen who stepped out to get some Skittles, is no different. There is plenty of outrage and angered emotions surrounding the situation, and people have taken to the social media streets. To catch any of you up who haven’t heard, Trayvon was a 17-year-old boy who had gone out wearing a hoodie to get some Iced Tea and Skittles and was shot and killed when he was deemed a threat by a neighbor.
Between the legal implications of this case and the emotional outpour that we have seen, social media has become the center of communications for Trayvon mourners and supporters. Petitions have been created, circulated, signed and then blasted out through social networks. Trayvon’s own parents created a petition that is now the fastest growing petition in the history of change.org due mainly in part to social sharing.
The idea that people can exercise their social responsibility in a forum that they are already using is empowering and exciting. In order to become a part of the movement to help Trayvon’s family see justice, all people need to do is log on to Facebook or Twitter or click to sign petitions on Change.org. While many people have heard about what is going on, the social aspect has added a whole new level of engagement and participation.
While hailing a cab in Austin during SxSW might be a daunting task, there certainly is no shortage of interesting new technologies to be explored. For a developer like me, it’s chock-full of panels and presentations discussing everything from techniques to tools for creating exciting new digital experiences.
There were the typical talks revolving around new ways to utilize “today’s” technologies like HTML5 and CSS3 as one would expect. However, one of the more interesting topics I was delighted and surprised to see given so much attention was WebGL. I was surprised because WebGL is so bleeding edge, we may not see mainstream implementations until 2014.
And there was no lack of talent at SxSW waiting to talk about the latest developments of WebGL. We had industry rock stars like the creator of the most popular WebGL JavaScript libary Mr. Doob, Creative Director from Google Aaron Koblin, Luz Caballero of Opera Software and Nicolas Garcia Belmonte of Sencha there to teach us all about the power and application of WebGL.
The attention given to WebGL was well-deserved — it’s going to open up some stunning new channels and opportunities developers and designers have been craving for years.
Today’s guest post comes from Nina Kester, a Social Media Associate Producer for the Peanuts brand and cast of characters (via the Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates group). She will also be joining our “Confessions of a Community Moderator” panel Tuesday 3/13 at SXSW.
When did Pinterest become a powerhouse? How long has everyone but you known that Facebook’s Timeline for Pages is out? What new social trend or upheaval lies just over the horizon?
Trying to stay ahead of or just with social media trends and changes can feel like a rat race. From a native user, millennial and social media professional here are five tips to dominate social media changes:
1. The Social Media Post Delivered to Your RSS
There are tons of noteworthy news sites dedicated to tracking the latest in online social developments for you. The biggest one that comes to mind is Mashable.com. Articles are short and sweet with great takeaways and everyone from a newbie to a seasoned pro can get value out of their reporting.
TechCrunch.com, SocialMediaExaminer.com, SocialMediaInfluence.com, and VentureBeat.com are a few more to start with.
To Do:
Set up an RSS feed of your favorite social news sites. Then set aside 15 min to an hour each day to read them. Choose two to peruse every day or focus on a different one for each day of the week.
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Industry Reacts To Facebook Marketing Conference News
The big social news this week came from none other than the folks at Facebook. On Wednesday, they held their “Facebook Marketing Conference” and unveiled some new features and ideas. As always, the announcements shook up how brands and individuals will interact on Facebook, and again as always, there have been plenty of opinions on the changes in the aftermath.
One of the biggest changes is that brand pages will now be upgrading to Timelines, similar to the Timelines that were released to individuals earlier this year. While there have been plenty of mixed reactions to this new feature (many are featured in the above article), this has potential to be an awesome new feature for brands. Brand pages can now be more visually enticing, without sacrificing any content.
Last week, a friend invited me to be part of his marriage proposal.
(My trendy contribution. Buzzfeed post)
The friend was Len Kendall (one of the founders of the3six5.com). First, he mobilized hundreds of people by inviting them to a Facebook event. This was his venue to explain his plan to propose to his fiance, Katie, using an internet meme. The FB event also opened up a venue for discussion (and a little trash talk) among contributors.
Wednesday morning, Buzzfeed let Len take over their homepage for the day. (They loved the idea when he approached them with it two weeks ago.)
On Len’s proposal post, anybody could post their contributions through a meme generator embedded in the comment tool. Buzzfeed created this tool just for the occasion. With it, users simply uploaded a background image, positioned the picture layer of Len proposing, and added their own message. Hundreds of us added to the “meme” and shared the posts to their social networks. Len even directed contributors to include the hashtag #SayYesKatie when sharing.
At about noon that day, Len posted an update – Katie said yes!
Scott Lamb, BuzzFeed’s managing editor, says this meme has been “one of the biggest and fastest growing community reaction posts we’ve ever done.” Jack Shepherd at Buzzfeed even posted a Best-of #SayYesKatie post.
So the story traveled, as good stories often do.
#SayYesKatie appeared on MSNBC, The Chicago Tribune, and Mashable, among other outlets.
Measuring influence online: A Q&A with Klout’s CEO
Klout, now in its fourth year of existence, has made quite a significant splash in the world of social media influence measurement. The Web service will tell you how influential you are and what you are influential about based on your Twitter, Facebook and Google+ interactions.
Ever since its launch, Klout has gotten a ton of recognition and has now assigned a Klout score to over 100 million people. Joe Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of Klout, has some theories on why people should care about their scores and explains, “[a]s the Web grows more massive all the time, it’s becoming increasingly important to quickly assess what Internet users are influential about and how they are influenced in order to make more informed decisions.”
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