Girl Power Explodes on Social Media

Inspiring messages and videos are always fun to watch and pass around social media.

But this week there has been a trend in some of the most shared and most like videos... and I'm telling you, sister, it has girl power written all over it!

That's right, girl power!

And I mean thought-provoking, culture-changing girl power.  Brands have identified this socially impactful trend around empowering women through how we as a culture treat young girls.  Two of my favorite videos from this week focus on exactly that.  I have to share them with you.  Get ready to get chills!

P&G/Always: #LikeAGirl

Verizon: #PrettyBrilliantToo

If these inspire you, pass them on!  I've listed the most popular hashtag above for each of the video.  Have you seen any others we should add to this list?

Reddit Rewards Seattle's Hero

I really like stories of strangers banning together through social media to empower goodness in the world.  This story made the start of my week a little less gloomy.

Last week, the horrifying news of the shooting at Seattle Pacific University hit the air.  The shooting, which killed one and wounded two others, was stopped by 22-year old Jon Meis.  Meis tackled the shooter and used pepper spray to stop him, putting himself in danger but, as police say, heroically stopping the shooting and saving lives.  

He is definitely a hero, and thanks to the social media site, Reddit, he's getting a bit of a "thank you".  Meis was planning a wedding later this month and a post on Seattle's Reddit page prompted users to help him out with this message:

 "This is the wedding registry for the man who subdued the SPU gunman. You know what to do."

Within a few short hours, EVERYTHING on the registry was purchased and a separate campaign (for those who missed out on the gifts) was started virtually and raised $37,000 for a honeymoon for Meis and his bride!

It's awesome to see social media bring people together to celebrate heroes.  Still, as much as I love seeing these type of acts, I can't help but think of the innocent person who lost his life in this tragedy.  It is important to keep a balance between celebrating the fact that the shooting was stopped but also respecting the fact that an individual lost his life, and that person's family and friends are still grieving. 

But a little light in the bad times is always a nice thing.  What do you think?  Is this support positive or ignoring those hurt by the shooting?

The End of The @EveryWord Era?!

Who would believe that a Twitter handle could get almost 100k followers by posting one word tweets!

But that is exactly what @everyword did!  If you aren't one of its followers, I'll give you the low down on this historic Twitter handle.  

@Everyword was created by NYU professor Adam Parrish, who was actually mocking Twitter a bit when he created the account seven years ago.  The handle is a Twitter-bot and it tweets a word in the dictionary every 30 minutes since its conception on November 30, 2007.  That's it.  Just the word in alphabetical order!  

Somehow, this simple concept has fascinated people and @EveryWord has 98k followers.  And now that the end of the dictionary is coming near, people are scared, sad and curious what will come of @everyword when it gets through the Z's! 

They should have seen it coming, its a moment that has been seven years in the making!! But what is pretty interesting to me about this whole story is the shift in attitude that the @everyword founder has had since the beginning of this experiment.  He told The Guardian in a recent interview: 

"I was a Twitter skeptic.  The way I saw it, people were posting meaningless things, totally out of context.  I wanted to satirize the brevity of Twitter messages would be to make a bot that would post individual words.  But now I see Twitter differently.  It's kind of a magical writing experiment, and it's amazing that so many people participate."

I like that he's come around to appreciating the "magical writing experiment" that is Twitter!! But as for now, we only have a few short days (hours??) until the seven year saga of @everyword ends!!  We are already on "ZY" words!  Have you ever followed this handle?  What do you think it will tweet after the last word??