Anyone Can Be a Someone

When the Today Show picks up your wedding video and then The Office recreates it --- you know you've made it!



Communication is no longer a one way street. Top down messaging is away of the past. With web 2.0 and social networking, consumers get their voice heard.

Actually, it goes beyond just getting their voice heard, consumers, now get an equal say. Who's in control of the message now?

Jill and Kevin got their message all the way to the NBC executives... controlling the media cycle for a brief moment in time (more time than many companies get with their products).

Companies need to be part of this conversational marketing. They must react to what the consumers want, but at the same time be apart of the message through social networking.

Companies cannot afford to not have a social media strategy, now that anyone can control the message.

Everyone has a voice on the web. Anyone can be a someone.

The Empty Office

I am fascinated by this term "crowdsourcing" coined by Jeff Howe.

A community is no longer about being in a single location at the same time. The virtual world is making it possible for people with common interests to come together, to partner, to collaborate without every meeting - changing business as usual.

Mr. Howe uses the example of stock photography in his you tube video. He examples how stock photography, once an expensive rare commodity, has become abundant and cheap and can be done by amateurs.

Is this idea of crowdsourcing going to mean we no longer get hired by a company, sit at a desk, and work our 9 to 5 p.m. jobs?

Will careers be virtual, an open call?

Honestly, I'm a little nervous about this concept.

Will we lose face-to-face communication and in person communities altogether?

Improving your ability... to feed us more personal information

I recently had a conversation with someone about the value of Facebook as a company. The website itself is probably worth very little, the value however, lies in the sheer billions of data people eagerly and freely supply about themselves and their friends each day through posts, photos, and profile updates. Given that this was on my mind, I was excited to read a blog post by Mark Zuckberg, founder of the popular social networking site titled "Improving your ability to share and connect."

"Sharing information..." is that just a fancy way of them saying, please supply us with even more personal data that we can one day sell? Before I even read the blog entry, I decided to do a search for the word "private." It came up once in the first paragraph.

It's amazing what Facebook did in terms of connecting people, allowing them to share things for free and interact with friends in this online space. Once the focus shifted to "news feeds," I got worried. Why do we care so much about what someone is doing every second of the day? Or care to share that information ourselves? I personally think posting sonograms is crossing the line...

I worry about privacy and the volumes of data under the control of Mark Zuckberg, yet, like all other facebook users, I freely post my photos and check update status at least 10 times a day and tell people what I'm up to.

Today, it's all about connectivity. I'm not sure I would be as close with all my friends that have moved away over the years if it weren't for social networking. It's making the world a lot smaller and Facebook is leading the way through the mapping of these connections.

Will this data dumping and over sharing on social networking sites become detrimental to our society?

T-minus 10 months

Ten months from today I'm getting married and changing my last name. If you think this blog will be about my wedding planning or changing my last name, sorry...

Social networking, social media, and web 2.0 - will be the real focus of this blog. Follow my journey as I complete my MBA coursework and hopefully provide insight into the interesting world of new media.

On my honor, all posts on this blog are my own.