You Are What You Read

"'Facebook Friend #384' read 'My Parents Turned Down Harry Potter Role: Daniel Radcliffe' on Washington Post Social Reader"

"'Facebook Friend #1276' read 'The World Mourns the Death of Dippin' Dots' on Yahoo!"

You may have seen similar postings to these popping up on your Facebook News Feed over the past couple of months. And, if you have lots of current events gurus as friends, you might be getting a little annoyed at seeing everything they read.

However, according to Facebook, this "frictionless sharing" is helping news organizations reach many new readers.

Jeff Sonderman from Poynter.com shares some lessons that Facebook and news organizations have learned since implementing these news apps in September.

First, early statistics show that these "frictionless sharing" apps have increased traffic to news sites from Facebook referrals. Yahoo News has 10 million app users on Facebook and its referrals from the social media site have increased 600 percent. The Washington Post and The Guardian are also seeing strong success with 3.5 and 4 million monthly users respectively.

Second, the struggle with finding young readers may be decreasing. According to Facebook, 83 percent of Social Reader users are 35 years or younger. This is good news to news organizations as they are appealing to a wider range of people.

Last, while no one seems to know Facebook's tricky algorithm for deciding which stories appear in one's News Feed, one thing is for certain: the open graph apps appear heavily within the News Feed, meaning that your friend's reading habits are consistently available.

Despite some criticism and leeriness over the inclusion of news reading on Facebook, I think that this is a great thing for news organizations as it is pulling in a wide variety of people to their website. Whether they read just one article or are drawn to the entire website, people that were getting no news before are receiving news via their social media habits.

We gain opinions and reccommendations from those in our sphere of influence and this is another way to help us decide what to read or what we may find interesting.

Or, you could just judge your friends on their own reading habits. As they (don't) say, you are what you read!

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Keeping the Old and Ignoring the New?

News websites have been making an interesting discovery when it comes to their website's news. They are seeing that there is remarkable strong traffic towards older stories than their newer stories...this is bringing up the question: Is it really important for News to be new News?

What appears to be happening is that one person would read a weird story and it would automatically link the story that they had read to his or her facebook wall. This could lead to his or her friend's reading it and then it would be automatically linked to their facebook wall as well. Leading in an unending cycle of sharing this media. It is very unlikely that the readers know that this story is an older one, or perhaps they really don't care. After all some people tend to generally look at it this way,a good story is a good story as long as it's new to you.

I believe that this is an interesting story and it does show some of the things that I agree with. I don't mind if a story is perhaps even a few years old when I read it. As long as I haven't read it before and it perks up my attention, I have no issue with reading it. Its more for amusement and the 'Wow' factor really.

works sited: creativecommons.org ; poynter.org

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Online Buzz for TV Shows

A study by Optimedia US concludes that a television show's advance buzz doesn't predict its rating performance.

This study focused on five new shows: X-Factor, Playboy Club, New Girl, Whitney, and Charlie's Angels. The study measured Tweets, Facebook likes, Google searches, and Klout scores before the show premiered.

An increase in social media buzz reflects the network's marketing efforts and doesn't reflect how many people will actually tune in to watch.

Ad executives conclude that online buzz isn't a good predictor of which shows will be popular but measures how engaged people will be when watching shows.

Every show on television has a Twitter and Facebook. Many shows actually post their hashtag in the lower right hand corner of the television screen while the show is on so as to increase the online buzz.

The most affective way to promote a TV show with social media cites is to get viewers to Tweet or post a status on Facebook about the show while it is on. This will get more people to tune in if they see people they know and are following commenting on the show.

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Spreading the Cause

Occupy Wall Street is a demonstration that has been going on in New York City now for a number of weeks. The movement has now grown in numbers in New York and has also been spreading across the nation. In an article by CBS it is said that the number one thing keeping this movement alive and spreading it across the nation is the use of social media.

A lot of planning for Occupy Wall Street happens on their Facebook group page, which has up to 150,000 members. Another social media tool that has been used for Occupy Wall Street is Meetup. Meetup is a network based on forming groups for organizations. According to the Boston Herald thanks to meet up Occupy Wall Street has organized over 1,019 cities.

Occupy Wall Street has also been all over Twitter using the hashtag #OccupyWallStreet. Along with Facebook, Twitter, and Meetup the movement has been using other social media sites. Youtube and Tumblr are becoming helpful sights as well showing photos and video of the Occupy Wall Street.

Social media has become one of the best ways to share information with other people across the globe. Thanks to social media Occupy Wall Street has expanded beyond New York and to the world.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons

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Facebook's New Layout Important to Newspapers

A month ago I would have scoffed at the idea. There was no way that Facebook would have any importance to a newspaper, apart from their need to have a Facebook page for fans to follow. With the new changes to Facebook, newspapers should start paying attention.

Facebook has over 800 million users and has posted a day with over 500 million members logging in. It is safe to say that a lot of people's opinions are able to be expressed via Facebook. This is why the reaction to the new layout should be alarming to newspapers everywhere.

According to this article, Facebook claims it is trying to become "your own personal newspaper". Their news feed section is something taken directly from many newspaper websites. There is also a real-time ticker off to the side that keeps you up-to-date on who is doing what all the time.

And the overall consensus seems to be dislike.

If the Facebook members have such a strong reaction against the new format, what does that mean for the newspapers? It means that there is a possibility that a large number of potential readers would not like navigating their website. It means that they might be losing readers because of their layout.

Or maybe there is no correlation at all. What are your thoughts? Does the initial reaction over Facebook mean that newspapers should look into revamping their format? If so, how could they do it better?

Photo via Creative Commons.

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Social Networks Boost Customer Service

Many businesses are using social media to boost their customer service these days.

Often times consumers give feedback about a company or its product on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network.

For example, if I bought the new iPad I would most likely tell all my friends on Facebook about it and hashtag it on Twitter. Whether the experience was a good one or bad one. Apple Inc. could then directly respond to me about my comment.

If Apple Inc. decided to engage in a conversation with me I would become more loyal to the brand and most likely speak highly of the company.

The same can also go with celebrities and their fans, but that's a different story.

Also, if the social network pages for Apple Inc. would change statuses and tweets to get consumer feedback the customer would feel that he/she had a say in the next product being designed.

For example, the first iPad didn't have a front or rear facing camera. This was a big complaint about the product. When the iPad 2 came out the designer made sure to include both cameras.

Many people think social networks are harmful to businesses because there isn't face to face interaction. In reality it can help a business drastically with customer service because the company can reach many more individuals and receive a greater amount of feedback.

Photo Credit: George Nantwi via Creative Commons

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Journalist Arriving on Facebook

On April 5th, Facebook announced a new Facebook page called "Journalist on Facebook" that is designed and dedicated to helping journalist use Facebook as a reporting tool.

Last fall Facebook announced a similar page called Facebook and Media. So, you think "Well, it's the same thing right?" Not exactly. Just as the title says the page Facebook for Media is geared towards just media.

On the other hand, Journalist on Facebook is all for and about the individual journalist. It's main existence is to help journalist use the power of Facebook for journalism.

It does this with Facebook-provided best practices and peer collaboration from a big community of journalism professionals.

It seems that Facebook took the time to make this page a worthwhile experience. They have polling and discussion options that will grow in activity, video interviews with top journalist, and even a registration tab to be notified of journalist meetups in local areas. They even give you a nice "Get Started" guide to help new journalist.

Now, it may be easy to assume journalist know how to use social media and if they're using Twitter they probably do, but this new way of using Facebook goes beyond Twitter and offers more opportunities for journalist in general.

This is just a great chance to learn from other journalist giving more innovation and great content to use. Journalist can promote their content, become even more independent, and accumulate their fan base.

In my opinion, this is just a win-win situation for everyone and especially for journalist. Some people believe that this is just Facebook finding a way to compete more with Twitter, but is that really a bad thing if they are?

What do you think? Is Facebook just doing this for competition? Can Facebook be a good resource for Journalist?

Photo Credit: iloubnan.info via Creative Commons

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Manage Your Social Media

Social Media plays a vital role in our lives today along with e-commerce businesses. Managing one social media account can be a full-time job let alone managing multiple social media pages.

However, there are services that can help you manage all of your social media on one site.

HootSuite is a site that lets you update Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress. It allows you to schedule posts, and it keeps track of your visitors. HootSuite is perfect for larger companies.

TweetDeck is an app that allows you to update Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google Buzz and Foursquare. It makes all of your contacts available from each social network. Scheduling posts is another benefit of TweetDeck.

One great site for small businesses with social networks is Ping.fm. It's a site that can run 30 social networks including: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and Foursquare. You are able to schedule posts and update your social media accounts.

Scheduling posts is one thing that is common among these three sites. People seem to enjoy that benefit of these sites. With how busy people are these days it comes in handy to be able to schedule your updates.

Photo Credit: CrunchBase via Creative Commons

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Come One, Come All!

Have you ever wanted to connect with other journalists? Have you ever wondered why social media has not yet embraced this idea? Worry no more.

According to a report from Mashable, the use of Facebook in the newsroom is no longer obsolete. The page, Facebook for Journalists, allows media-driven people to connect with others in a way which no other site as done before. Although the number of journalists on Facebook isn't monumentally dominant, this page allows those who want to connect with other writers and broadcasters do just that.

The growth of the world's leading social network in the world of journalism was only a matter of time. Everything in media has to adapt nowadays in order to stay successful. The advantages Facebook presents in the news world are great. It can be a landmine of sources, it can help you share your story, fill a reporter's toolbox with new opportunities, and can be distributed in newer ways in which the original forms could not.

Using this new venture can help us all as media students tremendously. The power of networking, to me, is very undersold to college kids like us. If all of us "like" the Journalists on Facebook page, it may open brand new doors that we may never have imagined. I ask that you do go like the page and explore it, because if you love journalism as much as I do, then you'll appreciate what this newbie can do for your vocation as well.

Photo Credit: Alter-Eco via Creative Commons

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Online Feedback Aggregator

A recent article at Technology Review discussed a new business called Livefyre. It is an online service dedicated to making interaction with Facebook, Twitter, and other discussion-based sites all possible on the website where the actual content is at.

It essentially aggregates all comments made regarding the article from any source and adds them to a "comment section" underneath it. This comment section is much more like a discussion section, however, as it constantly updates without refreshing the page. The user will also be able to see all others who are currently browsing the article and know how popular it is.

The developers of this service see connectivity of these services as the next important step in social networking and hope "the publisher will get more page views and advertising dollars," because of the technology. This might be key if online journalism is to flourish, especially if pay-to-view methods start to consistently fail and online advertising must be relied on.

This system is supposed to make people more likely to comment on something as there is a visible audience of people looking over that same article, and they want their comments to be seen by that audience, hopefully resulting in discussions.

I personally hope something like this would result in fewer of the typical comments you could find on CNN's online articles, where a lot of the "comments" are just hate-filled ignorance fests. We'll have to see if this method is successful.

Photo Credit Jordan Kretchmer

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Facebook Creating Privacy Issues?

Facebook has decided to give third-party developers and external websites authorization to access users' home addresses and cellphone numbers despite criticism from privacy experts, Facebook users, and even congressmen Edward Markey and Joe Barton.

"Mobile phone numbers and personal addresses, particularly those that can identify teenagers using Facebook, require special protection," said Rep. Edward Markey. "We must ensure that this sensitive information is safeguarded, with clear, distinct permissions so that users know precisely what's in store when they opt to share this data with third parties.

After the congressmen sent a letter to Facebook expressing their concerns over the new functionality, Facebook responded and ultimately reaffirmed it's decision to still allow third parties to request access to users' addresses and phone numbers.

Facebook's plan to open up users' addresses and phone numbers to third-party sites and services is the latest frontier in Facebook's often controversy-filled efforts to encourage users' to be looser in sharing their information.

Privacy experts have warned that even if this new feature included improved notifications and protection for minors, it could still endanger users' personal information and increase their risk of being targeted by scams, spam, and identity thieves.

"People never thought when they were posting this data that it would be accessible to anyone but friends. There's a real mismatch of expectations around that," said Mary Hodder, chairman of the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium.

Facebook is once again walking the thin line of breaking users' privacy. So, what's your take on Facebook's latest move? Are they officially crossing the line of privacy? Or are they still in the right since Facebook is, in fact, a public site?

I can't help but feel bad for Facebook users because it seems that Facebook's approach really is "Everything on here is public, therefore, you give us anything and it's completely fair game." I am at least happy about Facebook saying they will make an effort to keep users aware of when they could be giving information away and asking for permission.

Photo Credit: digitaltrends.com via Creative Commons

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Twitter Phone in the making?

Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO, went to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday to address how he believes the Twitter brand works best: when it's invisible and everywhere.

He didn't come to reveal his finances, despite saying Twitter is "making money", he coolly denied rumors that Google was going to buy Twitter for $10 billion, and he didn't come to launch a new product.

An analyst still responded by asking about if he could ever see a Twitter-branded smartphone after referencing the "Facebook phone." Costolo gave a quick and simple answer of "No."

"Twitter already works on every device you're going to hear about this week," said Costolo. "Tweets flow seamlessly across platforms; that's what we're trying to accomplish."

During the explanation, he ended up comparing Twitter to water -- a utility so useful and copious, we almost forget it's there. We don't need to learn new ways to use it in different contexts.

Amid the country-wide of Egypt, Twitter was lost as part of a wider Internet blackout. "People in the desert will always find a way to water." said Costolo. Google and Twitter did indeed provide a voice-to-tweet service that kept the protesters in touch.

So under the leadership of Costolo, there will be no such thing as a "Twitter phone." Water doesn't need branding because it's simply water. Everybody needs it everyday.

I think Costolo gave a fair explanation of the brand Twitter. The way Twitter has developed over the years it has become not only similar to water, but in my opinion like an addictive sugary drink with it's sweet, satisfying taste. Some of us just can't get enough of Twitter and use it everyday without much of a thought.

Photo Credit: nexus404.com via Creative Commons

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10 Privacy Settings for Facebook Users

Everyone has heard those stories about people getting fired, secrets coming out and ultimately people finding out things that others don't want them to know. This can be considered news on various levels; a great deal of these stories happen because of Facebook. If you want to protect yourself from becoming unwanted news, here are some privacy tips to take into consideration.

Step 1: Understand Your Friend Lists

You are now able to group your friends and control their individual privacy settings. It's also possible to group a friend in more than one group like family, friends, co-workers and more. This is handy for controlling who sees what on your profile. For those whom are placed in two different groups, the one with the most restrictive privacy settings will be enforced for that person.

Step 2: Remove Yourself from Search

This is handy for professionals and teachers who don't want students and collegues in their personal lives but is not limited to just them. If you do not want to be found in a search, simply visit the FB privacy settings page, click on "edit settings", enter your password and next to "Facebook Search Results" select the "only friends" setting.

Step 3: Remove Yourself from Google

Some users like the attention of being more public about their things, if you aren't then I would advise removing yourself from Google index and search engines. This can be done by visiting the search privacy settings page and simple uncheck the box next to "Public Search Results" which says "allow indexing".

Step 4: Avoid the Infamous Photo Tag Mistake

Head back to privacy page, go to the section "Photos and Videos of Me", click on the drop down selector, click on the "custom" option and then select "only me". This will prevent any pictures from mistakenly ruining your rep.

Step 5: Protect Your Albums

If you want to limit access on your personal albums you are able to change the settings to "only friends". Unless you are pursuing a career in professional photography then, of course, you'd want to do the opposite.

Step 6: Avoid the Post-Breakup FB Effect
If you're one of those people who don't want attention when changing your relationship status, not everyone is, then I would suggest going to the settings page and changing the "Family and Relationship" setting to "only me".

Step 7: Control What Information Applications Can Access

When you visit some of the applications on FB you may be asked if they may access your informations; this includes name, gender, birthday, profile picture and others. The more restrictive you make your settings the less information those applications can use. You're able to control those settings here.

Step 8: Make Contact Information Private

Have you ever gotten mysterious calls or texts from people you are certain you didn't give your number to? Well it turns out that you might have without actually thinking of it. It makes sense if you're going to put that kind of information on your page that you may want to restrict it to whom you trust with it. There are two ways to do this. First you can visit the privacy page and customize it to your liking; secondly, you can do it straight from your profile by clicking edit, clicking on the locks and customizing it from there.

Step 9: Avoid Embarassing Wall Posts

As much fun as you had at that party last weekend, you may not want the entire world to know. Your friends may not be using Facebook for professional use and may not think twice about posting things you don't necessarily want shared about it on your wall. Of course most people don't want to uncheck the "Friends may post to my wall", but you go to your privacy options, scroll down the page and click the drop selector by the "can see wall posts by friends" and customize those settings.

Step 10: Understand the Privacy Settings

Everyone - literally means everyone (internet, companies, friends...)

Friends and Networks - Friends and the networks you are in (universities or professional organization, cities...)

Friends of Friends - I'm not sure why you would want this option but it basically just restricts in some of your networks

Friends Only - this is pretty straight forward.

Custom - manually selecting individual friends for different settings.

Be smart with your social networking. Stay out of the negative news.

Photo Credit: CreativeCommons, User:ZyMOS.

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Freedom of Speech Gone too Far?

After posting rude, unprofessional comments on Facebook about his teacher, a California high school student was suspended by his high school.

Donny Tobolski is the student from Mesa Verde High School that vented his frustration on Facebook saying Mr. Cimino, his biology teacher, was a "fat ass who should stop eating fast food, and is a douche bag."

Harsh words there, kid, but not too threatening.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has already said the student's free speech rights were violated and the school broke federal and state laws.

We've come to another case where the battle for freedom of speech is debated. Just what exactly is saying too much and how much is going too far when posting something on the Web?

Now, a federal agency last November already declared that Facebook updates were protected speech. In a similar case, an employee named Dawnmarie Souza was fired for making belittling comments about a supervisor in a Facebook status update.

Again, the comments were very rude and malicious, but it wasn't anything horribly threatening.

So, just what is the general feeling on this sort of thing? I think we can all agree it's a bit immature and disrespectful, but it is freedom of speech, isn't it?

Tell me what you think. Do you think Mesa Verde high school should have the right to discipline students for any opinions they put on the Internet?

Personally, I know I've expressed my mind through Facebook on rare occasion. Not to that extent, but I do believe freedom of speech is something that can never be taken away. At the same time, there's a certain professionalism we should hold when using the social network called the Internet.

Photo credit: sodahead.com from Creative Commons

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Online- Useful or Deadly?

Social networks are a great way to find old friends and make new ones. Launched in February 2004, Facebook became a popular site for students to keep in contacts with relatives, classmates, and co-workers. However, recently the question arises: Just what exactly are we using social networks for today?

Fortunately, social networks can be used positively by communicating with others and promoting business. Many journalists have created MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter pages to build readers, receive feedback from others on their work, and find good top stories from posts of other readers.

One major problem people face with social networking is cyber bullying. The reason cyber bullying is so much easier and harmful is because people are more willing to say something behind the screen of a computer than they would to a person's face. There have been stories reported in the news about teens taking their own life because of cruel posts found online.

The second, possibly most serious problem we are facing is unwanted people finding us online. Many people in this world known as "creepers" or "predators" use online as a tool to hunt down victims for sexual or abusive purposes. Many of us think of these people as being old men that live alone searching for young girls, but just exactly how young are these people that are using online as a way to harm others?

The most recent story in the news that caught my eye involves a 14 year old boy who used online to successfully kill a 13 year old girl. The two had been using Facebook as a way to get to know each other and eventually decided to meet up for a date. Later, the boy brought the girl to his home, attempted rape and failed. However, the girl was found later that weekend naked near a bus stop, strangled to death. Many times we say situations like this could never occur in our own life. However, we need to understand the world today has turned brutal, scary, and unsafe.

It's a shame to think there are people using online as a tool for criminal purposes. However, not all users are bad. Many journalists have found with the switch of mass media converting from newspaper to reading material online that using social network is an essential tool in the success of promoting journalism.

What can we do to protect ourselves from something like this happening to us? There are several steps that can be taken to protecting online life of yourself and those around you. Start now by spreading the news to family, friends, and classmates so you know you are doing the best you can to protect others. Keeping online clean will help journalists today be able to expand the growth of their business, both behind and away from the computer.

Photo Credit: Safe in YourSpace

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The Issues Behind Printed Issues

As newspapers become less popular, news readers are going to other sources to find out information.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Times of London, was one of the first people to enforce paywalls for his newspaper. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful. Originally The Times had 150,000 registrations online. After applying the paywall over 120,000 people were unwilling to pay the paywall fee.

People aren't willing to pay for news that they can find elsewhere for free. With social media taking over people go to Twitter and Facebook to get their news fix. Tablets are also becoming more popular and with these tablets are applications that provide free news.

Also, because newspapers are printed at the same time on a regular basis, other news sources are able to get the news out quicker. Twitter is able to post breaking news immediately along with Facebook and iPad apps.

Let's face it, newspapers are going to become extinct in the next ten years. IPad apps, Facebook, and Twitter are taking over the news industry with their free information.

Photo Credit: Dorothy Parker, Loon Pond

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PostPost Facebook Newspaper

PostPost is a recent launch by a company called Tiger Logic. It is through Facebook. The article I readcalls it a real-time " social newspaper." What does it consist of?

The PostPost consists of videos, photos, and links that you create on Facebook and share with your friends. Which becomes a news source when talking about social media.

PostPost takes your news feed and makes it look like an actual news paper site. There is different videos to click on and displays the different events people are participating in. It does not look like your news feed on Facebook. I would say it looks more professional.

It also, shows the recent pages you have liked towards the top of PostPost.
This site makes it easier for users to switch from different sections like from photos to videos. Whatever they are wanting to view at the time.

PostPost is said to be along the same lines as Pulse which is a mobile app and Flipboard which is used on the iPad. The difference between these is that PostPost is accessed on the web browser.


This video below introduces PostPost.




No this is not an "actual newspaper" with the news of politics and the articles you commonly read in a daily newspaper. Unless these are the types of videos and links you and your friends are talking about.

I see it more as the links and videos you view as news and want to s hare with your friends. Such as the fight at the NBA game or what the new style is for the week. These may be in news papers, but not as likely main topics.

This is like a newspaper that can relate to what you like to read and hear about while sharing with your friends.

I don't know everything about the new application to Facebook so I may be taking it the wrong way, but it is the understanding I have received from the article and the YouTube video.

Overall I feel it is a great addition to Facebook and will be a fun and different way of sharing social media throughout you and your friends.

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Wikileaks will remain on Facebook

As Wikileaks abides by the rules, Facebook continues to allow theWikileaks fan page to exist onthe dominant social media site.

Major sites like Amazon and PayPal denying access to the Wikileaks organization bring up the question, who's next?

Facebook will not be one of the companies following suit. "The Wikileaks Facebook fan page does not violate our content standards nor have we encountered any material posted on the page that violates our policies," which was used after in depth research by Marshall Kirkpatrick with ReadWriteWeb's.

While Facebook is keeping Wikileak's Facebook fan page intact, Twitter is not speaking about the removing or keeping Wikileaks on there social media platform. Twitter did say that they are not removing the "trending topics" from their site.

So while the criticism continues to flare about the Wikileaks controversy, the Facebook fan page continues to grow and is close to one million followers.

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Facebook to Make More Changes

On Sunday, Facebook released their new design for profile pages. The new pages are designed to let users share more details, with the ability to link them to other users. These changes came about shortly after the release of Facebook's version of e-mail, in an attempt to keep up with the ever-changing social media world.

Stated in an article by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook profile pages will now include everything from where you are from to what classes you took in school to your political affiliations. By doing this, users will be able to find more people to connect with.

Users will still be able to control who sees what on their page, but it may take more tweaking. Pictures will now appear on your profile page, including your top five recent tags. People who are not allowed to see certain pictures won't be able to, and instead will see other pictures.

Starting today, anyone that wants can upgrade to the new profile pages can, and everyone will be changed early next year.

Facebook is trying to keep up with the times, and for the most part people accept the changes. Personally, I do not like these constant changes, and would like the option to stay with my current page view. It seems like by the time I get one thing figured out, they switch it again, and I have to re-learn everything.

I use Facebook for staying in touch with friends, so personally this new feature of connecting with people who have similar interests will not be of great use to me. To connect with people that way, I use Twitter and blogging.

What do you think of the new Facebook features? Will you use them, or do you prefer to keep things as they are?

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Social-media trends with a cause

If you've been on Facebook lately, you've probably noticed some of your friends have turned into cartoon characters, by the looks of their profile pictures.

A recent Facebook trend is bringing awareness to child abuse. Facebook users are changing their profile pictures to their favorite childhood cartoons and updating their statuses to:

"Change your FB profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on FB til Monday, Dec. 6. Join the fight against child abuse & copy & paste to your status to invite your friends to do the same"

Many other awareness trends that Facebook has facilitated include breast cancer awareness and self-harm awareness.

I think these are refreshing and important ways in which social-media can and should be used.

Social-media is designed to connect people across the world and I think it's important that these devices are being used for good causes.

Although the help these trends are actually bringing to the problems they outline is unknown, the point is that Facebook and other social-media tools are getting the word out to the masses in the best way they know how.

A trend is designed to help people find out what issues are currently being talked about.

Other trends that social-media promote are trends in discussion. Twitter is especially popular in this respect and even has a "Trends" column that can include worldwide, national or local trends.

These Twitter trends change daily in accordance to what people are talking about most.

This article by Mashable outlines which Twitter trends were most popular for any particular week.

Social-media trends have a much more important purpose than to just give people something to talk about.

Trends inform people about breaking news, connect people across the world on the basis of a single subject and break down the bureaucracy of news coverage by giving everyone a voice on important issues.

Whether trends are bringing public awareness to an important issue or informing people about something new, they are always connecting people in ways that were never thought possible just a few, short years ago.

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