The other day a post came from my uncle saying that he was quitting his job after so many days and he had found a way to make hundreds of dollars a day. I'm sure you've seen these kind of comments before, "I found a way to make $700/day and you can too. Check out my website." Strangely enough, I've never met anyone that makes $700 a day but I have seen a bunch of these comments from "normal" looking people.
Sometimes the hardest part of being on social networking is wading through all the fake people. I am guilty of taking for granted that just because a profile has a "real" picture, doesn't mean that a real person is behind it. Fakes on Social Media are more common than you might think. Earlier this year, the Army was caught creating and running mass propaganda accounts. These accounts were created to seem as though "grassroot" campaigns were being created. However, these accounts were mere puppet accounts, run by one person with the ability to post to multiple accounts.
One thing that is not fake is Beyonce Knowles Instagram account. Much to her fan's surprise, late last week the superstar singer/actress dropped her new album via iTunes. What made this release different then every other release in history, was the fact that it was a "surprise" album. There was no promotion. None. Beyonce simply wrote "Surprise" to her eight million Instagram followers. What followed was sales records being shattered by an album that nobody knew was coming. According to iTunes, Beyonce Knowles managed to sell nearly a million albums over a weekend.
Forget the old model, where the album comes out on a Tuesday (akward!), but not before you've heard the "big" single 1 million times on the radio, the pop star has performed it on every talk show, and a Pepsi commercial has been shot. That day is seemingly dead. What happened to it? Social Media has killed it. I, for one, am kind of excited that the industry has decided to adapt to the times. What would happen if the music industry had kept ignoring Social Media? I can speculate that it would get a whole lot worse that where it is presently, believe it or not. But there is no number's to back up where the industry might be going, only numbers on where the industry is now. And in today's music landscape, social media is the biggest promotion you can have. Just ask Beyonce.
And what happened with my Uncles new job? He didn't get a new job but I'll tell you what he did get.. He got a couple of my friends posting the same comment on Facebook a few hours later. Thanks, Uncle Mark.
