College athlete recruiting and Twitter

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigeast/post/_/id/31280/twitter-poses-fine-line-for-players

As a competitive college team, you want to recruit the best high school athletes to be on your team. The NCAA has a ton of rules of what you can and cannot say to prospects during certain times. One thing that there really isn't a rule for is social media. There is no rule set in place that if a current player tweets or writes on a prospects wall on facebook so that makes it fair game. Since there is no rule about social media from the NCAA, then college coaches tend to not have rules because they are not "up-to-date" with the times. So basically the college athletes can do their own recuiting of high school players that they want on their teams. In my opinion, I think it's fine for athletes to try and recruit prospective college athletes using social media. There is no such rule forbidding it and social media is continuely growing. The NCAA is not going to be able to look over everyone's twitter or facebook that plays college sports. In my mind, it isn't breaking any rules and it's going to be difficult to try and stop since it is continuely growing.

Twitter vs. Facebook

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-is-growing-faster-than-facebook-in-the-us-stats_b19200

I found this article very interesting. We all know that Facebook is the social media giant, but if you compare the growth of both of these in the United States, Twitter is actually growing faster. At the end of 2011, Twitter was growing at a rate 31.9% while Facebook was growing at a rate of 13.4%. At the same time you have to keep in mind that Facebook is much larger with 133 million US users while Twitter had 24 million at the end of 2011. The article also goes on to state that at some point both networks are going to plateau but Twitter will grow four times higher than Facebook going into 2014. I have both Facebook and Twitter and at first I didn't really like Twitter but it has deffinitely grown on me. It's more of a site that you use if you have a smart phone because you can constantly tweet and follow what other people are doing such as athletes and celebrities. I do feel that Twitter will continue to get popular as time goes on because people are always willing to try something new out. What does everyone else think? Do you like Facebook or Twitter more or does it not even matter to you?

Social Media: Challenges and Opportunities

http://www.indystar.com/article/20120304/OPINION06/203040374/Social-media-offer-new-challenges-opportunities?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CIndyStar.com%7Cs

I found this article interesting because it talks about how we should be careful about what we say while using social media because what we say or do can be interpreted differently then what we were expecting. The article is really talking about how journalist and reporters need to be careful about what they say while using Twitter when talking about events that they are following because everything is black and white in their world. They need to make sure that what they are saying isn't going to rub anyone the wrong way. At the same time, this could be related to how society uses social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. Social media is so open these days that it is pretty easy for someone to find something out about you. Also, I feel that social media could be hurtful to our society. It is pretty much forced upon us to have some sort of social media site because that is the only way you are going to be able to contact others. And with that, information about yourself is going to be easier to get or acquire. I'm not saying that we shouldn't use some form of social media, we just need to be careful about what information we are giving out and how we are expressing ourselves to others.