Social media is changing the way we do…everything!
Love it or hate it, social media is altering our lives. From how we wake up, through how we live our days, to even how we sleep. Social media is a 24/7/365 appendage to our lives. Here are six examples that even this social media junkie hadn’t expected to see:
The lazy vacation
The modern holiday is often about accommodation with WiFi and the availability of 3G to enable smartphone and tablet usage. That can prove a bit stressful and you are on holiday after all, so one Israeli holiday resort and digital ad agency have linked up to make sharing on social more relaxing during your stay. Guests at Fattal Hotels resort U Coral Bach Club Eilat are given an RFID bracelet at check-in which is then linked to the guests’ personal Facebook account. The bracelet is then used to interact with one of 16 camera kiosks across the site including an underwater one in the pool and one by a trapeze that can record up to 15 seconds of your fun to share on Facebook. Plans for integration with Instagram and Twitter are already in hand at the resort claiming to be the world’s first social hotel.
Organising rubbish collection
Bin-night in any household is something of a chore. Combine that with ever changing collection dates and it can get confusing and lead to mountains of uncollected refuse. So the City of Vancouver decided to enter the social era. Rather than relying on your own calendar or memory, sign up to the Vancouver notification system with your Twitter credentials and the night before the collection you can get a Tweet from the city council reminding you of your pending bin day. Simple but effective.
Reuniting lost pets and owners
Pinterest isn’t just all about photos of cakes and pretty craft things. Following the 2013 tornadoes in Oklahoma, USA, some 13,000 homes were destroyed and around 33,000 people were left homeless as were 1,000s of canine and feline friends, many separated from their owners. Step forward Pinterest as a lost and found board. Local distressed owners were invited to post images of their lost pets – Tornado Cats and Tornado Dogs – as were others who maybe had found and taken in homeless pets. Different boards for lost, others for found and some boards even separating colour and breed. Plus of course a big smiley one of pets reunited with their owners.
Attending fewer school and work reunions
The 10 years after meet and greets are becoming a thing of the past. It’s not the cost of going out, nor the demise of the local pub as a place to assemble but the fact is every day you can see, hear and snoop on what those old school friends or work colleagues have been up to. You know who turned out to be the gawky looking ones and who seems to have beautified with age thanks to their profile photographs. You are unlikely to ever become best friends with these people if you’ve grown apart now, so the actual social element of reunions is pretty much attended to completely by Facebook, LinkedIn, et al. High School reunions being bigger in the US, even MIT has covered the fact that Facebook has killed the school reunion.
Helping create a music video
User generated content is nothing new but The Vaccines took it to a whole new level of social interaction when they asked their Instagram followers to tag photos they had taken at music festivals with #VACCINESVIDEO. The response was amazing. Over 2,000 tagged photographs that were then collated together to create the music video for their new single Wetsuit with unique imagery. The real genius behind it was they then also had thousands of ‘interested parties’ very excited to social share the video and their contribution. Three years on and over 2.4 million views on YouTube suggest it worked quite well.
Making us feel more special
That post, that photo, that witty comment. If it attracted a like, a share, a comment, that all helps to make us feel better about ourselves and raise our self-esteem, which in turn makes us more productive too. Social affirmation makes sense and it makes us happy. In fact, according to scientists there is substantiated fact that the part of the brain these responses affect is the same part that is associated with the need, crave and enjoyment of things like sex, food and money. It’s addictive and like a shot of adrenaline for our egos. Happier people all round surely makes for a happier world, which in turn affects everything we do and how we do it.
