Social Media

Our Tuesday topic is Social Media.

What is social media? For starters, this simple "Social Media in Plain English" video on YouTube
illustrates the concept.

The micro-blogging site Twitter is the latest player in the Social Media world. Facebook and MySpace are the other Big Boys of Social Media. There are many other players in this environment, of course.

Since it is the most novel, much of our discussion will center around Twitter. Most major media outlets and personalities use Twitter as another distribution mechanism to get news to readers. Twitter can also be used to find story ideas, collect new information and connect with readers and sources.

Some features of Twitter are similar to trademarks of the journalism profession. Ann Handley even writes about how everything she needs to know about Twitter she learned in journalism school. Leah Betancourt, meanwhile, provides us with the Journalists' Guide to Twitter.

Not everyone in news is as enthusiastic about its potential. Newspaper executives are still debating just what their employees should tweet about. The New York Observer, for example, wrote about the twitter culture wars at the Old Gray Lady.

Twitter is not just used by journalists and regular folks.

Celebrities are known to use Twitter. Ashton Kutcher had a Twitter war with CNN to see who could reach 1 million followers first. Oprah joined Twitter and brought many of her legions of loyal followers to the site. Shaquille O'Neal is a regular Twitterer. Late Night host Jimmy Fallon regularly uses Twitter to connect with his audience, while his predecesor Conan O'Brien, the new host of the Tonight Show, poked fun at the site and celebs' trivial tweets through an amusing segment called "Twitter Tracker."

While poking fun at Twitter can be easy, fun and funny, Twitter and other social media sites do offer more meaningful uses. That frightens some world leaders.

Not every country, for example, likes the potential power that publics can harness through social media. China, for example, shut down access to sites like Twitter and YouTube before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, as shared on social media sites and also reported by mainstream news outlets like Reuters.



And just this week a "Twitter Revolution" is taking place in Iran in the wake of the alleged landslide re-election of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.