If you know what Snapchat is, you are probably between the ages of 15-29, or the millennial/gen z generation. If you don't know what it is, then you, my friend, are not hip (gosh do people even say that anymore? I feel old). Snapchat is one of those apps, that came up along with Vine (RIP), which was a short video capturing app that also captured items in the moment. The one thing that set Snapchat apart from the rest of the social media competition, was their use of these "in the moment" videos, pictures, and how the content users put up was available for only 24 hours to friends or even private message.

"How you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?" Senator Orrin Hatch asks. Facebook creator and founder, Mark Zuckerberg, responds with a slight smile "Senator, we have ads". This moment was by far the strangest and funniest moment in the congressional hearing in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. There were others, like Senator Roy Blunt, who didn't ask a question but made the comment about his son being an Instagram star and wanted him to mention that on the panel. While most find this funny (which I do), I also find this extremely disturbing. These members of Congress do not know how social media (or the internet, really) works, and in order for laws to be passed, they need to learn.

In this day and age of constant tweeting, posting and snapping what you are doing at any moment in time. One has to wonder, exactly how safe are you on the internet? Like, I've explained in my last blog, our information is already out there on the internet, and yes you do need to be okay with it, but there is such a thing as oversharing. Although it's being on social media has become near necessity these days, if you don't know what you should share or post, you will become vulnerable and you can be a perfect victim for hackers.

Our privacy has been invaded! Does Facebook have no shame? OMG we are all going to delete Facebook right now! Those are the things you may have heard people say on Facebook recently when the social giant was slammed with a plethora of lawsuits last week. In case you have been under a rock, you probably heard of the recent, data breach that caused a series of lawsuits. While, it's tempting to go with the crowd and #deletefacebook, (even though most people won't) you might want to take a look at other instances of data mining breaches from years past.

Malls have been around since the mid 1950's, with the first mall, the Southdale Center, opening in 1956 in Minnesota. The original idea was to have a community center that has shops, gyms, arcades, and food in all one area. The idea was well conceived for a time when people used to walk home from school and ride their bikes to the mall where any teenager could buy the latest cassette tape, or outfit that they saved up all their money for. However times have changed. No one buys cassette tapes anymore nor does anyone see that one outfit in a department store they want to buy.

Did you know that email as been around for the last 40 YEARS? It's only gotten popular in 1995 when AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe became popular and email services like Hotmail came up around 1996 and 1997. Most would be surprised to know that the first email that was ever sent was from an engineer named Ray Tomlinson on June 8th, 1971. While email has been very useful in communicating with co-workers, family members, and friends in the last forty years, it has slowly started to become less of a necessity in the past ten. Why? The answer lies in the rise of social media.

Being an entrepreneur was a lifelong dream of mine. I've always wanted to be my own boss and run my own company ever since I could remember. While I am not quite there yet, it's encouraging to know that in 2016 there were "9 million women-owned businesses in the U.S." according to Entrepreneur and that women owned businesses have increased at 1.5 times the rate since 2001. These are amazing numbers to hear for any woman entrepreneur, however with our current social atmosphere and the US being one of the only countries with no paid maternal leave, it seems like we still have a long way to go.

Over the last ten years we have seen many brands do well on social media, McDonald's, Wendy's, and Dennys being a few major companies whose posts have gone viral. Whether some posts were planned to go viral or not, these companies still had their brand on everyone's social media feed. As they say in PR, any publicity is good publicity. This statement is especially true in social media, it's all about the spin and these companies know how to do it well. What can we learn about these major label brands on their social media savviness? A lot, it turns out.

While social media can be a fantastic tool for many businesses and for people looking to connect with like minded people or even old friends, it can also cause a lot of harm. In the past few years a lot of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and SnapChat have gotten many people into trouble. This past election was a prime example of how much harm social media can it really do to people. Just to be clear, this post won't be talking about other people's voting preferences, but it will dive into the digital media tsunami that came afterwards.

Ever since Twitter debuted, it's been the center of the social media world. Getting your message across in 140 characters was all the rage in the status updating, picture uploading and private message sending world that Twitter was in back in the mid to late 2000's. Expressing your thoughts in short little messages across the internet was all the rage as a bunch of important information was being spread throughout the internet. As we have seen in our most recent president, who seems to use Twitter a lot and our last president who made history by being the very first president to use social media. However with Twitter's latest numbers, they began to show profit in for the first time in years, however the user rate has stagnated.

Since the days of 2001: A Space Odyssey, people have been astonished about what artificial intelligence could potentially do. AI has been in the forefront of a lot of technological advances that our society has made in the last 40 years. With the rise of virtual assistance in mobile devices, such as Siri and Alexa, the "robots taking over the world" might have a lot more weight in it than we possibly think. Before we even think about robots crushing cars in a dystopian society, we should think about how artificial intelligence could help us with social media.

This doesn't answer the question of why are we so obsessed with what other people are doing. The truth is, haven't we always been? It's true Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media completely revolutionized the way people communicated to each other, making the world a smaller place.

Paul has since released a video on suicide prevention and it now seems like he is back on the YouTube trending list. Like a child that stole someone's candy on Halloween, the parents told them apologize and give only a portion of the candy back. This has a lot of people questioning whether or not YouTube will actually give consequences to those who are financially beneficial (like profitable YouTube sensations) to the company when they do wrong. It begs the question where is the line? What kind of content is being created to make us question about the line?

Getting live footage of our everyday lives has been a huge part of social media over the past three years. Live video allows users to capture spur of the moment part of the user's day to day and it is most likely stuff that they would never post as part of their normal feed. SnapChat, Instagram Stories, and Facebook have features which documents day to day lives into a "live feed" and it's all gone within 24 hours. While some would argue that it feeds into a culture of people who can't get off of their phones and constantly post on social media, others will argue that it plays into any major corporate brand's favor in getting exclusive with their audience on their services or products.

Diversity is Important, but What Does it Have to do with Stock Photos?

Whether you are using your them for your website or just a regular social media graphic, if you want to brand your business, it's important to have good stock photos in hand. It is also important for you to keep your message consistent with your branding. For example, if your business sells products or services that would only market to minorities, then the stock photos on your website would have to be consistent with that. In fact, a recent survey done by Shutterstock says that "34 percent are using more images with racial diversity and 24 percent with more females". The survey also notes that there is a trend for marketing professionals that prefer stock photos with non professional models, as they will make a photo much more relatable to audiences.

Internet trolls have been around ever since the first website went live and even then, trolls weren't as mean as they are today. Hiding behind a username to say horrible things to another person that you don't know is a very dark part of the internet that started on forum boards and comment sections on blogs like these. It has now transcended to social media sites and unfortunately the troll game has gotten a lot bigger and smarter. Most people will create new accounts if they have been banned from a forum or a social media site and the cycle of harassment will continue with little to no admin or moderator intervention.

Facebook is now targeting emotions and feelings, with relatable content like putting familiar songs in their ads. While ad targeting on Facebook is not new, putting familiar music from the likes of Adele, and Taylor Swift is a game changer for users that want to put music in their videos. Now, anyone who wants create a Facebook ad out of videos can target people who listen to the songs that are put in them.

As a small business owner, the most important thing to note in 2018 is the fact that social media is getting personal. The algorithm is noticing how people interact with others on their specific platform and will most likely adjust. Remember, Facebook also owns Instagram so they too are looking into making a separate messenger entity just like Facebook. This is also important to note since private messaging has surpassed social media apps, as you can see in the graph below, more people spend more time private messaging than on the actual social media app.

When the control is put in the internet provider's hands, it's open season for all websites. While Facebook, Google and Apple will hardly face any issues with their websites slowing down, smaller named companies might have a different fate. This will affect companies Google rankings greatly, as website speed is a huge factor in ranking highly in Google.

By diffusing a negative experience by a customer, you are making the brand a go to on social media. Fast response is key with most social media platforms, and many use Twitter and Facebook. Facebook now has a feature where it shows how fast a business page responds to customers messages. However, you don't have to respond to negativity all the time. If you create engagement with your customers they are more likely to say positive things. Customers can add a lot of value to your business via social media, whether it's a poll, advice on what they would like to see in your next product/service/brand or just getting feedback in general. It is a great way for you to grow as a business.