Past is future: tweet me something I didn’t know.

Upon first glance, Twitter appears to be only a record of mundane – yet oddly fascinating – reports of daily minutiae. But over the course of the past two years, Twitter’s evolved as a witness to and enabler of the spread of revolution and social advances.

While Malcolm Gladwell may disagree on the functional aspect of Twitter and social activism, when it comes to reporting news as it unfolds and advancing social and political agendas (one need only look at China’s banning of both Twitter and Facebook, Iran’s digital filtering and the Occupy Wall Street movement), there is no denying the strength and force of Twitter in reporting and disseminating both news and popular culture.  

News: For the Masses, By the Masses?

As social media gets more integrated into people’s live, they’re demanding more control over the content they interact with. This behavior is happening organically in the digital space. In response, newspapers are changing the way they create content to include consumer participation – and consumers are changing how they interact with the news.

Why Influence Doesn’t Work Without Relevance

Klout, Kred, PeerIndex, PostRank — it seems that everyone is obsessed with measuring online influence in the form of followers, clicks and shares. But as popular technology develops, we see that it’s not just a numbers game anymore. While Whole Foods and Oreo boast millions of social network followers, their reach isn’t so great if they’re tweeting about something irrelevant. And that’s what should matter most for brands: not just the ability to reach, but also the ability to provoke action.