Social Media Mania Blog

Today starts a new weekly addition to my blog! Every Wednesday I will be doing a blog about a different social media site. I'll provide a little background about the site, who uses it and how it can best be used (especially for journalists). 

I'll start with the big ones. Eventually I'll probably even touch on some of the sites that have died down since their climax.

Now, let's begin.

FACEBOOK

Well, most of us know about it already. If you don't use it I'm sure you've heard plenty about it.
This social media craze was founded nearly eight years ago. It was started by college students and those were the only people who used it for a few years. Since then, it has taken over and in a way created the social media phenomenon we live in now. 

From posting your own status about anything you want, to creeping on pictures of an old high school classmate to seeing what comments are being made about pretty much any topic in the world - Facebook captured the attention of students, adults, professionals, businesses and worldwide corporations. 

It connects people who are far from each other and allows men and women to choose to let others invade his/her privacy. 

However, it has become an immensely important tool in the journalism field. That became a big statement last year with the Tunisia and Egypt revolutions and the uprising that Facebook created during those times. 

Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim told CNN after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down that he credits Facebook with the success of the Egyptian people's uprising.


"I want to meet Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him [...] I'm talking on behalf of Egypt. [...] This revolution started online. This revolution started on Facebook. This revolution started [...] in June 2010 when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians started collaborating content. We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I've always said that if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet."- Ghonim in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer

Wild, right? It's remarkable really.

Now, back here at The News-Herald, and at every news source across the country, we're using it to promote our stories.

The "sharing" tool moved that right along. By posting a story on Facebook, it can be comment on with ease while people are scrolling through the news feed. It can simply be "liked" or it can be "shared." When it's shared, it posts onto the person's Facebook wall who shared it. Then that gives the story more opportunities to be read than if it just on one wall.

We gain a significant amount of viewers when we post stories on Facebook. 

It's also a great way to communicate with readers, crowdsource and gather an idea of what a majority of our readers are thinking/feeling.

Facebook has been the social media hit for the last several years. However, it has mentioned talk of advertising showing up in news feed, which will immediately turn people off from it.

How long will Facebook be the King of Social Media? No one can really say. But, there's no doubt that it has held the crown for years and changed the way we communicate, relate and - in a way - how we live.