The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – But It Will Probably Be on Twitter

By Sylvia Ogilvie, Intern (@sylviaillini)

As I come to the halfway point of my internship at Fusion PR, I can’t believe how fast the time is going. I feel like it was yesterday that I came in here, feeling over-dressed and under-prepared, and now I feel like I’m finally getting the hang of things. As I continue to work on the familiar award and trade show lists, as well as phone calls and emails to publications, I’m also beginning to learn how to do new things. I’ve been introduced to concepts that I either didn’t understand before, or didn’t understand the importance of before. For example, recently I’ve been working on a social media blogs list, which identifies the top industry blogs that we should be reading and keeping track of.

Through doing this, I’ve learned about how important things like blogs, Twitter and Facebook can be when my previous impression was that it had been mainly used for casual social networking through updates. These applications are changing what we see as necessary media outlets – not only can we get the news from the newspaper or TV, we can get it from reporters blogging about new technology or reviewing a new product. The way we think of news and information is quickly evolving, and there’s no better place to be than working in a PR firm that works in the fast-paced world of technology and social media, both which are constantly evolving.

For example, the recent wave of celebrity deaths in the past week has sent shockwaves throughout the Twitter and Facebook community. As opposed to learning about these tragedies through traditional news outlets, the majority of the population found out through tweets and Facebook status updates. In fact, news of Michael Jackson’s death was such a hot topic that it almost took down several major online news outlets due to the surge of Internet users trying to get updates on the incident.

Additionally, the broadcasting of the death of Iranian citizen Neda Soltan took Twitter and YouTube by storm- showing full clips of the young woman’s death uploaded from a cell phone. Traditional outlets such as CNN and NBC showed a shorter, censored version of the clip. In this case especially, we are seeing the power that Twitter and other online social networking services can have on the dissemination of the news.