So what catapulted Rebecca to stardom? Well friends, it is all of us. When we see something we like we share it with each other, and social media has made this easier than ever. Send a tweet and it reaches countless numbers of people, all of whom send it to another countless number of people. This pattern continues over and over and over. . . until a normal Joe Schmo is all of a sudden known around the world. Whether or not we share videos because the performer is incredibly talented, extremely funny, or painfully entertaining, videos get passed and a star is born. Four times as many people have "disliked" Friday compared to "liked" the video, yet Rebecca Black is known by thousands of people because of the song.

In decades before it was up to the media to decide who's who and who's not. In order to be famous you had to have that "special something" that others did not. Now not having that "special something" is what can make you a celebrity. Quirkiness and flaws sell. Instead of being simply the audience, social media has made us common folk both the audience and the medium. We now are able to choose who we hear about and how often. In the words of Miss Black, "we we we so excited" to see who will be the next viral star.

A recent study from a joint team of researchers out of Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology found that the average twitter user thinks ¼ of the tweets in their twitter stream aren’t worth reading.

The official study took place over 19 days and had almost 1,500 twitter users rating just fewer than 44,000 tweets of users who they were following. Participants were able to not only judge the tweets of those they follow but also submit their own tweets for judgment. 

Three rating options were available:


Notably tweets that were well-liked included information sharing, questions/soliciting feedback and conversation, and tweets that had an element of self-promotion. Disliked tweets included updates on one’s current mode and activities as well as tweets that tied into conversations with others. 

Clearly the study shows that twitter users quickly moved from the original slogan of “What are you doing?” and have fully embraced the more all encompassing slogan of “What’s happening?” Whether the newly minted “Yours to Discover” slogan will continue this trend remains to be seen.

While it’s easy on a personal level to simply unfollow certain users, for business and client work it’s important to take into account what current followers find informative and interesting. Many businesses focus too much on increasing followers and forget the importance of providing thought-provoking content to the ones they already have.

@ashkhaug