If you're confused about all this tweeting nonsense, read on.

1. Twitter is a place for people and/or celebrities to tweet about their lives and is, therefore, a general waste of time

While tweeters are meant to answer the question “What’s happening?” most users don’t use their account solely for Facebook-like status updates. Twitter is a vehicle for information and links. You have to watch our for spammers and those who are just trying to gain web traffic, but otherwise, there are a lot of interesting things to learn.

For instance, do you care about  the environment? You can follow tweeple dedicated to posting on that topic. I am interested in a career in publishing, so I follow professionals from the industry. You can follow fashion websites who post amazing sales. You can follow your favourite news sites, or local organizations in your hometown/school area. Seriously! Anything you can think of, or want to be informed about, is most likely available to you on Twitter. If it isn’t seek it out and tweet about it yourself!

Be careful though, or else you will look up from the screen and notice that hours of tweeting have flown by.

2. You can’t connect with strangers on Twitter

Twitter is more of a free-for-all in terms of following and re-tweeting, and the account isn’t designed to be as private or personal as Facebook. However, I have met and shared private messages with people I have only met online. Re-tweeting someone else’s message usually results in them politely thanking you. Meeting someone in real life and then reconnecting with them via their Twitter is also very helpful and a way to get to know someone’s interests. I met social media expert Amber Mac at a conference in my hometown, and now I follow her updates knowing what she does and what her thoughts on social media are.

Plus, hey, maybe a celebrity will respond to your @reply!

3. No matter what the career centre says Twitter will not help me get a job

Not with that attitude it won’t!  While not every company is tech savvy, Gen Y is expected to be able to use social media, and it’s important to show that you are connected. I’ve managed to land a job interview based on the fact that I had followed a company on Twitter and told the story of my interaction with the head of their PR department in my resume. It has also helped me to reconnect with people I used to work with.

Last night, I participated in a Twitter chat with the Intern Queen and Heather Huhman on how to increase your chances of receiving an internship. There was no travel, no prior networking necessary to gain an invite, and no need for me to even get out of my pajamas if I didn’t want to, to get free career advice from experts. It may have been a bit clunky to do on Twitter, but using other tools, such as Tweetdeck, makes the process of twitter “chatting” much smoother if you know how to use it. I also made some new twitter friends afterwards.

If a company you want to work with isn’t using their account wisely (and perhaps they’ve only created it to protect their online identity and prevent others from claiming to be them), you could offer them suggestions as to how they can use it to increase traffic to their websites or promote their events. Which brings my next point…

4. Twitter is supposed to be this revolutionary marketing tool…but I think it’s dumb and I don’t get it

Twitter is an interesting way to disseminate knowledge, product information and is sometimes even used for customer service. While it can be useful for marketers, one misconception should be cleared up that I discussed in a previous blog: Most Twitter users are males in their 30′s, not the young 18-24 MTV demographic marketers assume is consuming social media. If someone wants to use Twitter as a vehicle for marketing, they have to research very carefully where their audience is and how Twitter is going to help them to reach it. If you ever find yourself working on a social media marketing strategy, don’t promise your employer the world on a silver platter via Twitter, but be realistic in your analysis of the possibilities.

A lot of internships are actually going virtual, meaning that one can work from home for an organization, but being tech-savvy is generally a job requirement. In this article, Heather Huhman, an online HR guru helping students find meaningful job opportunities, discusses what good and bad virtual internships look like.

Armed with this knowledge, I ask you not to give up on the “old school” ways of connecting (because a thank you card is better than an email, and meeting in person is better than a phone call), but to use Twitter wisely as a tool for sharing knowledge, sharing your blog posts and tweeting about more than what you ate for breakfast. It won’t land you a job by itself, but it could lead to a new connection or an interview! After that, your real life personality is needed to seal the deal.

To learn the ins and outs of Twitter, read Mashable’s guidebook.

What are your thoughts on a virtual workspace?

The video is weird and I don’t understand what all-female jails and mass homicide have to do with not wanting to answer your phone in a club, but such is the creative inner workings of Lady Gaga. The script for the video is supposed to be written by Gaga herself, who  likes to take a lot of creative control over her music and image (which is good). She said in an interview with AngryApe that she wanted to make the video “high art” and “take a decidedly pop song, which on the surface has a quite shallow meaning, and turn it into something deeper.”

What she ended up getting was a 10 minute commercial from a song that is only 3 minutes and 40 seconds long.

Her tame looking sunglasses in the fight scene are Chanel. The aluminum cans in her hair are Diet Coke. The phone she grabs as she rubs the crotch of her ambiguously gendered jail mate is Virgin Mobile. The female cop surfs for a date on PlentyofFish.com. Lady Gaga makes sandwiches from Wonderbread and Miracle Whip (Every healthy mom’s nightmare, how badass). For some reason a random Polaroid photo booth is featured as well. Beyonce and Gaga drive, and rub all over, the “Pussy Wagon” SS Silverado (from the Kill Bill movie). Apparently “Pussy Wagon” key chains are also available on the web (featured in the video as well).

This need to advertise to produce such expensive music videos overrides the artistic capabilities of writers. Not only do they need to create opportunities in the videos to feature brands, when they pitch such music videos they must prove how a video will help sell these products, either through product placements or merchandising. With a video called “Telephone” I’m sure many phone companies were clamoring with their chequebooks to be the one Lady Gaga and Beyonce would use.

From the giant media conglomerate that owns Gaga’s record label, down to YouTube, no one truly cares about quality or artistry when it comes to music (and films, etc). Even Advertising Age suggests that these not so subtle product placements are more noteworthy than Gaga’s partial nudity and girl-on-girl kiss, which I have to agree with. If Gaga wanted people to notice her art, they couldn’t see it through the limited edition laptops and designer labels.

Interestingly enough, if you watch the video on MTV, certain brands do not appear in the video (They are either fuzzed or cut out). Any theories? Make it into a game!

Visit Nerve.com to see their  list of top ten blatant product placements in film.

Chile: The forgotten earthquake?

We’ve been discussing the use of social media in emergency situations a lot in class. I just stumbled upon this blog post at physorg.com (Thanks to Paisley Schwager’s Twitter Stream) which describes Twitter’s “People Finder” in Chile. Much like the Google Maps used post-Katrina (which was mentioned in my group’s seminar last week), it allows for people to share information about missing people or request news.

However, I have to ask why Chile hasn’t received the same media (social included) attention that Haiti has. The counry was hit with an 8.8 earthquake and scientists feared it would be on par with the South Asia tsunamis from a few years ago. Yet in comparison, I feel as though the media has gone silent and tumbleweeds are slowly rolling by.

Are we “reliefed” out? What is going on? Do you believe social media has the ability to truly help and raise awareness? I’m starting to doubt. Was it because the Olympic hockey finals were the next day? I don’t have any answers.

Filled with somewhat meaningless statistics (25 million Twitter accounts, a ton of which are bots and spammers or inactive), the focus was mostly on how companies could use social media to improve their products. I understand it was supposed to be somewhat basic, but most of what I’ve seen isn’t all that informative, interesting, or more than common sense. Follow a few social media blogs and try out social media yourself for a few weeks, and you too could catch on just as quickly. I think a band of tweeting tweens or our social media class could have offered insight on par with this.

Even he can't keep his eyes open...and he's ceramic!

In sum, it seemed to be a lot of buzzwords, not a lot of substance.

However, they did note that they could not survey users under the age of 18, but they expected that those number of users had doubled.   The speaker made it sound like 18 and under to 25 was the largest age groups consulting social media sites, and grouped the 30 year olds with 45 year olds. Yet, as far as I have learned, the largest group of internet users is not youths, but those in their 30′s (and this was reported last summer on Mashable as well). I do seem to recall my brother’s best friend’s step-father whooping all of them in online RPG’s…

The only interesting quote I have found on the blogs is this one from LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman:

“All these concerns about privacy tend to be old people issues. ”

This actually had me thinking about a recent project I undertook to learn about my ancestry. So, the first thing I did was Google family member’s names that I was looking for. I discovered the marriage certificate of my great grandmother and grandfather (although his name is mispelled) and the census that noted my great grand mother who lived in the Algoma Region in 1901 with her husband and children.

Wait a minute…these people are dead. Yet I can find their documents, histories and marriage certificates online? They certainly didn’t give permission to ancestry.com to make them findable. If privacy issues are old people issues, our my family members rolling over in their grave? Or is this a great tool so that we can all discover out heritage?

I can only imagine the digital imprint my grand children will find of me online…Hopefully computers will be obsolete by then and we will all live in a world of virtual reality via surrogates.

Are privacy issues “old people” issues, or do the old not even have a say of what we can find out online? When does my birth/marriage/death certificate go up there?

(If you want to learn more, forumblog.org has pretty much cornered the market on bringing together all the resources you can find on the session.)

The Jewish Student’s Association at Laurier helped to promote OneMatch being on our campus. I stumbled across the event, read up on all of the information (which was provided for by the OneMatch Facebook page), and decided to visit the booth and get swabbed. I knew from the event that I didn’t need my health card (which was good, because I forgot it) and the process was quick and painless.

Now my information is stored in a database for stem cell and marrow network in case anyone is a match with me. Did you know “Fewer than 30 per cent of patients who need stem cell transplants find a compatible donor within their own families.” OneMatch will contact you if you are a match for anyone needing your tissue type.

One day it could possibly save a life!

Much like those email forwards of the late 90′s that weren’t actually going to send a nickel to that starving boy in Africa with no legs, no arms, no parents and no goats for every time the message was forwarded, these types of online gestures are mostly fueled by Western feelings of guilt, and I don’t believe most of them actually help the people or organizations they mean to. This phenomenon has also been known as “slacktivism”:

“Examples of activities labeled as “slacktivist” include signing internet petitions, the wearing of wristbands (“awareness bracelets“) with political messages, putting a ribbon magnet on a vehicle, joining a Facebook group, posting issue-oriented YouTube videos, altering one’s personal data or avatar on social network services, or taking part in short-term boycotts such as Buy Nothing Day or Earth Hour.”

This idea of doing good with the click of a button is a bit silly. However, I have to say I’m disappointed Wikipedia includes Buy Nothing Day and Earth Hour as slacktivism. These activities actually cause a change in our daily activities and make us to pause and think about how consumer society functions.  It may not be building wells in South America, but I believe that a lot of people making little changes can lead to good (even if that includes me turning off all electronics for an hour). Joining a group online is more or less a cop out that requires no further action.

Facebook will up her confidence ten-fold!

One movement I was invited to on Facebook was the “Tell Her She’s Beautiful” event. Participants must tell everyone they meet that day that they are beautiful, in an attempt to combat low self esteem. However, if anyone comes up to me that day and tells me I’m pretty, I’ll basically know it’s a load of crap (but a very nice gesture).

I think a better way to use the internet to combat discourses of beauty would be online petitions that ask magazines and advertisers to use healthier looking models, or posting webinars from conferences on the subject, so that larger audiences can learn and engage in the conversation.

While I do see a problem with the ways in which we as a society  describe successful women, and focus on their looks, I don’t think joining a Facebook event will ever come close to impacting our perceptions of what is beautiful. The Subo’s of the world should remain true to themselves, but it is difficult to do when one then has to look at everyone’s profile pictures, each shot meticulously  chosen because of how attractive it makes the user seem.

I won’t be “attending” Tell Her She’s Beautiful day.

Where do you fall on the pessimism scale of such online activities? Do you join the groups or decline the invite?

Both are technically news sites, but because one is considered “gossip,” and the other reports “facts,” one is “valuable” and one is not. Yet how do blogs that aren’t about news function if no one reads them or subscribes to them?

Oh wait, they do.

For instance, College Candy is a blog focused of women college students and the issues that affect them. It’s not all “safe sex” and “responsible drinking” blog posts; The site also includes humour columns and relationship advice. I’m not saying all of the stories written interest the average college girl, but the fact that these are considered valuable to this group is interesting. Despite seeming like the Cosmopolitan of the blog world, College Candy isn’t afraid to mock the women’s tome for it’s content. This wide variety of topics and the frank women’s writing is what makes it enjoyable.

I just don’t see why people consider the National Post as a more reputable source (What with its blatant biases and garbage opinion pieces) than “13 Beauty Myths Busted.” At least busting beauty myths could prevent some readers from buying more expensive creams that can’t actually minimize our pores (truth, according to the article). Although a lot of scientific facts later come to be refuted this article indeed seems based in “verifiable facts,” and is a 3rd party contributing to the record, as Rebecca Blood would suggest is necessary for something to be termed journalism.

What one person consider “facts,” or important information,  depends on their version of reality. Cultural studies theorists see the value in studying the tribes that read, comment on, and/or follow certain blogs, and we should as well. This doesn’t mean questioning their legitimacy (because they are clearly worthwhile to someone) but to ask what important messages are held in the content (consciously and subconsciously) and how it may affect readers and non-readers alike.

And if that happens to include a blog about the minute details of someone’s life, then so be it. Rosen did argue for a free press, and limiting what is valuable based on the opinion of the majority hinders that from occurring.

I doubt one would expect to find such poignant arguments in  national publications or newscasts,  because criticizing large corporations upsets advertisers, who fund our media. Subscriptions to newspapers and your cable bill isn’t enough to promise accurate and informative reporting. However, with a small amount of money for a host, and a bit of ingenuity one person can express themselves to the world online. The video has already been translated to other languages.

It’s not a long blog post because I’d rather you watch the video than hear me blathering on about the state of the world. Let me know what you think about the potential for movements like this to take place online. I don’t think it will completely solve the problem of apathy, but it’s certainly a great way to become informed.

(My personal favourite is The Story of Cap and Trade!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQfZRnqQr-k&feature=player_embedded

(Hope this doesn’t remind anyone of an incident at Laurier’s Winter Carnival involving KFC buckets a few years back. Yes, you can find it on Youtube).

KFC’s response to the allegations? There is no mention of the fiasco on their American website and ads from the campaign are still running on their Australian website.

Chow.com reports that KFC’s response has been that the commercial was  “a light-hearted reference to the West Indian cricket team” and that it wasn’t meant for North American audiences. While I’m sure someone at KFC wasn’t thinking too clearly when they wrote this one, whether or not they intended to offend, the fact remains that this ad is inherently racist to pretty much any educated viewer (Disclosure: I’ve never lived in Australia or attended a cricket match).

What KFC should have realized years ago was that social media and blogs break down international barriers and speed up the process of communications ten-fold. That means that when Kanye steals the microphone from Taylor Swift, millions of people can watch minutes after it occurs live. And when you make an online video only meant for Australian audiences, don’t be surprised if your North American customers are upset.

I guess the real test of whether or not KFC takes these concerns seriously is if all of the Youtube versions being to disappear. However, any day now a new internet scandal will occur, a new trending topic will ride to the top, and people will go back to watching cats and dogs cuddle on Youtube. Such is the short lived life of internet news/blogs/and videos. It’s impermanence is astounding. Watch it while it lasts!