I always find the statistics surrounding social media really compelling. Every time I see an article relating to the growth of social media I bookmark the article or presentation. I always want to be ready to state the facts surrounding the trends in technology to my peers in education – as many seem to be unaware of what’s happening and understand the full impact on our society. I’ve found a widget from Gary Hayes’s Blog the provides a pretty powerful visualization of the growth of social media, mobile technology, and gaming. I’m not sure how these figures are calculated but I find it pretty amazing.
This poor girl from Texas has her photo uploaded to Flickr, like millions of other teens and Virgin Mobile uses the image in their advertisements in Australia. You have to be kidding me! A billion dollar company can’t hire a model, sign a release, and go through the proper channels to create an ad the ethical way? I would have loved to been in that marketing meeting - (marketing executive one): We’ll get a picture of a girl and under her picture we’ll put the tag line “Dump your (pen pal) free text virgin to virgin” (marketing executive two): Great idea! Which modeling agency should I call? (marketing executive one): Don’t bother…I’ve got some time on my hands. I’ll search through the millions of pictures of teenagers on Flickr and find the perfect girl for our campaign.
Drats! There are dozens of cute images of my daughter on Flickr. Why couldn’t those guys from Virgin found her? Then we could be embroiled in a nasty legal battle over privacy and copyright laws.
This brings a whole new dimension to educating our kids about privacy and the internet.
