What can the Swine Flu teach us about social media?
via youtube.com
Hilarious. Thanks @baratunde.
My name is Conrad Lisco, and this is my blog, where I post odds and ends, things and thoughts.
I work at R/GA in the Mobile & Emerging Platforms group. I'm most interested in the intersection of technology and culture. Addicted to location-based services. Live in Chinatown and love sneakers and street art.
Opinions are my own.
Last Friday, I spoke at the University of Texas in Austin to a group of graduate students. The topic? New media, of course. As expected, there were some skeptics. They questioned the role of social media and whether it is just another passing fad. However, the majority of them were very excited about the promise of social media and it’s implications not only on the marketing mix but also on human behavior. There were a lot of great questions, and some that got me thinking too. The one questions that really struck a chord with me was about information – and lot’s of it. His concern was “information overload,” as he put it, “what do it do with it all? How do I manage it?” Then, this morning, this tweet from @bastholm:
It appears this student isn’t the only one trying to figure out how to separate the signal from the noise. I explained that you don’t have to read or respond to everything, and that there are tools to help – Twitter Lists, TweetDeck, etc. I think Lars (@bastholm) and Clay Shirky (@cshirky) are right. There is most definitely a filtering failure. But I also think that newbies suffer from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). They are so excited about their recent discovery (e.g. Twitter) that they want to dive in head first. This is where they get overwhelmed. They discover that there’s an infinite stream of links and things to see and do. And they want to see and do them. This is definitely overload, and overwhelming. 
We’re starting to see ads for nearly everything include logos and mentions of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Ads for hi-def TV’s are touting connectivity to your most precious photos on Flickr. It’s amazing how things are evolving.
Fail whale. Tattoo #fail.
This does show how the Internets are spilling into the "real world" and pervading every single part of culture, replacing rituals and the inspiration for damn near everything.
Ordinarily, I'm not a huge fan of titles like "ways to get retweeted." However, stick "scientifically proven" in front and I'll bite. This article looks at a host of ways to rethink your tweets. The list goes:
1. Link Up (But Don't Use TinyURLs)
2. Beggars Can Be Choosers
3. Avoid Idle Chit-Chat
4. Don't Be Stupid
5. Semicolons = Satan
6. Break News
7. Use Proper Nouns Properly
8. Bottle Those Emotions
9. Tweet at 4 p.m. on Friday
