Winning Mark

Did you know that the average American teen sends approximately 2,272 text messages a month? Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod did, and statistics like that are why they started producing the “Did You Know” videos about the influence of social media on our lives back in 2006. Back when there were only 106 million users on MySpace. (There are now approximately 200 million.)

But what does that mean for us? For me, it means learning how to stay up-to-speed in an online-based world. For you, it probably means your job is changing. For Winning Mark, it means long hours in front of the computer. Is it worth it?
I think most people would say, without reservation, yes. The amount of information available to us, instantly, right now is impressive. As Fisch and McLeod point out, Americans have access to 1 trillion web pages! During the 2008 presidential election, candidates (and their savvy campaign teams) used social media in unprecedented ways. Every one of them had a Facebook and MySpace page. I still receive Twitter updates from Barack Obama! News is able to be broken instantly, from around the world and anyone with an internet connection is able to access it. Talk about building a global community.

There are, of course, negatives to this. The print industry is in decline (“dying” as one of my favorite journalism professors liked to say), there’s a hunger for something new all the time and there is contention that people are even becoming addicted to the internet. Surely, our global community spends less time face-to-face with other community members.

Fisch and McLeod want to educate the population about the growing availability of social media. I want to know how to use it all and employ it in a way that helps me reach other people. You will have to answer what it means for you.

Video after the jump

Posted by Megan Ingram on September 21, 2009 in Featured, Home Page, Social Media, Web