The Power of Social Media

We live in a time when anyone can find out information about anything or anyone. We live in a time where the world has become compressed due to the internet with its’ blogs and many social media sites. News that used to take years, months, days, weeks or hours to spread to other areas of the world now is instantaneous through new forms of media like Twitter and Facebook. We used to rely on newspapers and libraries for information where we now have access to information through various websites be it online versions of newspapers or books or through blogs. We used to have to rely on mainstream journalists for the news. Now everyone can share the news as it happens or even their own opinions through blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc..

With this ability to access information anywhere and any time, people need to know that what they say online can (and probably will) be seen by anyone at any time after it is posted. It may not be read right after it is posted but it is available to read anytime…even years into the future. You have to be aware of that. If it is on the internet it is there for everyone to read.

A couple of items piqued my interest this week when it came to the power of social media. First off there was a blog in Edmonton that received a nasty response from an Artistic Director/Actor of a local theatre company. An attempt to resolve the issue privately failed as another blogger was basically told the same thing. I won’t go into the details of the whole thing as you can read them at the links in this paragraph. The second blogger decided to write a post responding to the initial and subsequent nasty responses and posted this on his blog. He then sent a tweet out to announce his blog post as he always does.

This tweet was re-tweeted over 100 times and who knows how many times after that it was re-tweeted or the link to the posts tweeted or added to other blogs. The first blogger also wrote a response which also received much attention. Between the 2 blogs there were over 230 comments left by others wanting to leave their opinion on the matter.

The blog posts ended up going far and wide as people from various regions of Canada and the USA along with Australia ended up commenting with their thoughts on the matter. In addition, the Edmonton Journal, The Globe and Mail and iNews 880 in Edmonton all did a piece on the whole thing. There are even notes on the actor’s Wikipedia page detailing the controversy. So from a local blog post with someone’s opinions we have people around the world participating. This is social media at work…at its’ best and worst.

Also during the week I was shown an article about how a teacher in the Boston area lost her job because she posted something about the parents/students of her school on Facebook that she thought was private. Imagine her shock to find out that parents read what she posted and brought it to the schools attention. Needless to say it cost her her teaching job at that school and it will be something that future employers will look at before she is hired again.

So what do we get from this? We have found out the power of this new media. We have found out that anyone can find anything if it is posted online. We have found out that it is very easy for information to reach around the world. And most importantly…once it is out there for the world to see it is out there forever.

Erin Bury’s quote above speaks volumes about how people need to be aware of what they post online. If you have an opinion on a topic, there will be thousands more with their own opinions and many are willing to share those opinions. The best advice in addition to Erin’s that I have heard about your online presence is you have to make sure that you wouldn’t say or do anything online that you wouldn’t want your mom to see or read.