Twitter spreading the swine flu?

Okay, maybe that’s misleading. A post in the Atlantic suggests Twitter might have fueled some of the mass hysteria that was swine flu.

Being able to blog breaking events is a nice way to get the news first, but is there a point at which we say, “look, we could probably do without all the updates every time we’re afraid”? Citizen journalism undoubtedly has its place, but a gatekeeper like an editor would hopefully weed out some of the unnecessary noise.

Is that whole H1N1/swine flu/overblown chicken pox thing still going on anyway? Call me young and reckless but I just don’t have the time or desire to follow it. How would we live if we didn’t constantly have something to fear?

Social networking and its uses for someone with hazy job prospects

A friend on Twitter, Alex de Carvalho, pointed out this story about a photojournalist who left his newspaper job and now uses social media to get his work out to what he believes is an even wider audience.

It brings up an important point for people like me who are trying to figure out how to get a job when nobody seems to be actively looking for potential employees, and fewer still are actually hiring. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m facing an identity crisis with a year left until I’m shoved out the door of this university without a place to live or a consistent paycheck (I love my job at Equinox Fitness Club but part-time front desk money isn’t even enough to afford a decent box to live in under I-95.)

I’ve always viewed social media with a good measure of distrust. It’s self-serving, breaks down communication and is handicapping our generation by making us incapable of picking up the phone and calling someone, or, heaven forbid, speaking to them in person. But I am slowly realizing that, like so many other things, how you use it makes all the difference.

I guess it’s like any other medium: If you put out good content, no matter what form it takes, it can be worth people’s time. But if you put out bad stuff, you’re just contributing to the noise.

It’s weird to see your boss on Twitter, but it’s a good lesson in how to post. Yes, he updates followers on personal stuff. But he also gets his listeners’ opinions on hard decisions about the magazine, posts links to new merchandise and magazine updates, spreads awareness about charities, and generally talks about the behind-the-scenes of the music industry and the magazine. It’s weird to feel like I know my boss for the summer before I even meet him in person, but his presence on Twitter seems like it adds a personal feel to the magazine that readers wouldn’t get elsewhere.

So hopefully I can take all these lessons and put some good stuff out there. If a potential employer stumbles upon it and is impressed, I will have used social media to my advantage. I guess that means, though, that I have to have a network big enough (or at least with the right contacts) that my content gets seen by somebody who matters. Or who knows somebody who matters. Point is, I got a year left to build that network.