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??

The 3 Most "Muteable" Tweeters

The newest Twitter feature might be long overdue, but allows us a little peace and quiet!  In our Twitter feed, that is! 

Yesterday Twitter announced the addition of a "mute" button, allowing anyone to hide the tweets and retweets of someone they follow while still allowing that person to comment, retweet or favorite their own tweets. Mute button will roll out to all users in the next few weeks. 

So, when will you need this?  Here's three of the most muteable moments, when the new feature will surely help you out!

1) The spoiler alert: If you aren't caught up on your fave reality show, by all means, mute your friends or the bloggers who follow who chat about the show!! That way you won't have spoilers waiting for you in your news feed, and you can catch up with the show's happenings at your own leisure!

2)  The respectful follow: Those you mute can't tell that you have muted them.  So you can follow that co-worker or business partner that you know wants you to follow them, but you really have no interest in reading their tweets.  After all, it's the nice thing to do!

3) The limited mute:  Maybe you don't want to mute someone forever, but you can mute and unmute as needed!  Let's say your bestie is going to a concert you aren't really excited about or your coworker is over tweeting their outlandish political opinions during election time. Just mute them for a few weeks until the time passes and unmute when you think it's safe!  No more clogging of your feed!

Now if we could only get a "mute" button for real life!!

Has your Twitter profile received the "mute" button rollout yet?  Have you muted anyone?

Death By Twitter: PayPal Edition

The editions of "Death By Twitter" never cease to amaze me. In this edition, we highlight Rakesh "Rocky" Agrawal, a Silicon Valley big-wig and (former) PayPal executive.

His issues played out over the weekend and Monday as he basically insulted half his co-workers over Twitter. It seems from his "slurred typing" that alcohol was involved in these tweets, not to mention that he was at Jazz Fest in New Orleans!

With the lines between our personal lives and our work lives becoming ever more blurred, it has almost become run-of-the-mill to see these Twitter Fails come back to bite workers out of their jobs!

But they do always have twists and turns! As usual, most of the offending tweets have been removed from Agrawal's Twitter page (@rakeshlobster), but he continues to mention the debacle and his tweets since then have played out like a weird cryptic play that just keeps going downhill. First, there is the issue that he claims he quit while PayPal claims they fired him. Here is the tweet describing that:

"Oh. I quit pay a tonight because of self at son and aortic and ah our and hill e a s th"

Yeah, those typos are not my doing! That is literally what the tweet says. Like I mentioned, the man was having some fun at Jazz Fest. But the minute that happens is when he should put away the phone!! Things have drawn out to some quite serious claims like:

"Friends are worrying about me committing suicide. My colleagues have deserted me. Friends are flying in from across country."

I hope he is okay. But I also hope that we can get past this junior-high mentality of venting to our Twitter feeds and keep the site for more value-adding information! Still, kudos to PayPal for their brief tweet, at least referencing the issue and the company's stance on it: Rakesh Agrawal is no longer with the company. Treat everyone with respect. No excuses. PayPal has zero tolerance.

This leads me to think about Twitter and if I've ever posted something I wish I hadn't. Nothing is coming to mind, but I bet it happens to many. Have you ever wanted to take back a tweet??

Do we really need #AmazonCart?

• Peanut Butter + Chocolate
• Wine + Cheese
• Coffee + Baileys

Usually when two of my favorite things come together, I love the output even more.

That's why I was a bit perplexed by my reaction to the news this morning that equates to "Amazon + Twitter".

Yes, there is a new feature on Twitter, after its latest partnership with Amazon.  This is called Amazon Cart, or in Twitter language, #AmazonCart. Basically, you can reply to any tweet with the hashtag and any item that the tweet was promoting will automatically be added to your Amazon cart.  

At first, I guess it sounds cool.  But watching the video teaser for the concept left me feeling confused.

Highlight line from the video: "No more switching apps, typing passwords or trying to remember items you saw on Twitter."

Okay, cutesy voiceover on the well edited pitch video.  Here's the thing.  None of those are real issues for me.  Is this partnership solving an actual problem?  I mean, I switch apps all day, every day.  All my passwords are saved in my phone already.  And, honestly, I never really see items for sale on Twitter.  Am I missing something?  Are people using Twitter to sell products a lot?  It seems like for most, Twitter is a way to share information.  Not the digital marketplace that this partnership would support.

A poll on Mashable is almost split down the middle as to whether people will use this or not, but the majority ends up leaning toward "No way".  

And I agree, at least for now.  Could this Amazon/Twitter partnership be foreshadowing the future of Twitter.  We know the company has been under pressure to find a profitable business model, so maybe monetization will come from this Amazon partnership?

Have you ever purchased something after seeing it on Twitter?  Will you use the new #AmazonCart feature?

Death By Twitter: #USAirways OMG!

It has been awhile, guys. We haven't had a "Death By Twitter" entry in a few months.

Well, we sure do today. And warning, the content of this, or googling it further, will be NSFW! (For those acronym illiterate that is NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!)

We're gonna keep it PG on this site, though- don't worry!

Okay, so if you haven't seen online, what I am alluding to is the recent US Airways tweet in which a customer service rep was responding to a customer complaint and instead of posting a link to a survey, posted a link to a lewd image. And I'm not talking any lewd image. I'm talking nudity, explicit and dealing with airplanes. I am gonna leave it at that.

This, my friends, is so over the top. It is worse than the average "Death By Twitter" in which someone makes a comment that is borderline offensive or just not well thought out. The image was posted next to the tweet for all to see. Obviously it was a mistake but not the kind of mistake that you can fix by "take an extra breath before you tweet!!"

WHY was this image even anywhere near this customer service reps' computer!? There are currently not even speculations about how this might have happened, and US Airways has launched an internal investigation to find out what the HECK happened.

Of course, they've removed the tweet and responded with a PC apology:

"We apologize for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses. We've removed the tweet and are investigating,"
I don't even know what else to say about this one, guys. Just that I think this is certainly the most graphic Death By Twitter that I've seen all year!  Maybe the one who posted was one of the 40% of people who hate the jobs? Or more likely one of the 10% or so who want to hurt the company they work for?  What do you think?