Get Buzzed

In a contemplative moment recently, I tried to remember back to a year ago. A year ago, I really had no idea what I would be doing after I completed my master of mass communication. One of the Barclay interns, Lauren, asked me how I found Barclay. I was befuddled for only a moment before answering, “I didn’t, they found me.”

How does a job find you? Well, I think that is probably one of those unanswerable mysteries of the universe. I tried tracing it back once and did find some tenuous links and causalities, but then gave up on the project in favor of making cookies.

I can say this though, a combination of project planning gained through a bachelor of science, a computer in my house since I was 10 and a love of writing all coalesced into an awesome job when I walked through the doors of Barclay in May of 2009. As the online media manager I am constantly pinging back and forth between social media and public relations. While I distinguish between these two functions on my timesheet, in all reality they meld together into one effort.

Social media extends the length of a singular public relations action. In the past, a TV segment had life for the brief moment it aired; now we can extend that life by hours and days by posting a link to the video via Facebook and Twitter. Although social media can seem at times transitory with a tweet or Facebook status update flying by, one click by one person can multiply the life of that TV segment. One click can lead to one person sending the link to a few friends, those friends post it via social media or pass it on via e-mail and suddenly it has gone viral.

Ahh, the word viral has such a sweet ring to it these days. I have now witnessed history several times through Twitter as news items “go viral.” For example, Michael Jackson’s death or the 2009 Iran Presidential Election, both of which were spread via Twitter. The 2009 Iran Presidential Election relied on social media to spread the word. I still remember watching some of the YouTube videos from that social upheaval and crying.

As I see it, social media will change over the coming months, weeks and minutes. But, what does that change really amount to? Is it a fundamental shift in the way business is done? Or Is it simply an evolution of human communication? Humans after all are social by nature, why else would it be called social media?

So, here I am in a position that didn’t exist five years ago. An odd conglomeration of science, communications and technology, and I am loving it. I wonder what the next five years will bring…

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