In his book “Here Comes Everybody” Clay Shirky describes the how the new digital age has changed society. With everyone using smart phones, people now have the ability to film, take pictures, and quickly upload things to the internet before any government or media outlet has the opportunity to catch the story.
In his book Shirky gives real life examples about how using the power of the internet, the everyday person can create a revolution that hardly anyone can stop. He shows how with everyone having the capability to become their own media outlet, they can quickly gather followers and slowly build a reputation on the web to achieve a large amount of attention.
In IMC it is critical for us to understand the web as a powerful tool. A negative statement by a client could make its way around the world in no time via the internet and social networking sites. Now and in the future it will be more and more important for people in the IMC field to constantly manage the web to learn what the public is saying about their clients. As the internet continues to grow and be more accessible to everyone, the importance of good IMC will continue to grow as well.
– Chad Graves, Ryan Kelley, Katlyn Truss, Maxann Keller, Eric Holtzman
IMC Hawks Blog 
This post makes a very important and relevant point that we as college students especially, need to take note of. I feel lucky to be a part of a generation that is witnessing this technological revolution and I feel that it is important to be able to recognize how revolutionary it is. Growing up I did not play with digital devices such as ipads and ipods, but by the time I have children myself, my kids will most likely remember these devices as staples of their childhood. The aspect of immediacy and access when it comes to technology today raises many questions for the future of news gathering, the journalism industry, and journalism ethics and responsibility. These issues are only the beginning right now and will continue to be controversial until people feel like they have control over different forms of technology…which could be a while.
I think its amazing how fast things on the internet can go “viral”. There is truly no limit on anything because of the internet. Unfortunatley for businesses, they are no longer in charge of creating the brand for their business. It no longer matters what the executives say, if the internet users talk about this company, that is all customers will remember.
I agree totally. While the internet is great, it is now weighed so heavily in the business world that people’s opinion of a product can spread like wildfire and can make or break a company 10x faster than ever before!
That’s a really interesting point of view from Shirky. I hadn’t thought of myself being capable of performing a revolutionary act via the internet, but it’s definitely possible. If people catch on to the point Shirky is trying to make, then we could potentially encounter crazy people starting an internet riots that shouldn’t have access to. I was just writing my blog for IMC and we discussed a Twitter mistake that turned into a positive marketing move for both organizations. I was thinking how technology moves at lightning speeds and we as humans can’t always keep up. But interestingly enough, I now realize that those who can keep up could utilize the internet in enormous ways that I’d never thought of before. People seem to use and abuse the internet all the time, particularly YouTube users who become famous overnight…it’s all just kind of hard to absorb!
Clay Shirkley is absolutely right, everyone has a voice now, whether they choose to use or not is up to them. But the government has a hard time being able to control this type of instant voice communication, especially when it comes to athletes who post on their twitter accounts what they truly feel about a subject. Not that the government is focused on what they have to say, mostly athletes are being watched by the company that pays them. Thats why the instant they send a tweet even though it may be taken down with in the next few minutes there is someone somewhere who saw that tweet and may have already retweeted it to their account then another person does the same. An instant tweet can go around in the world in seconds so it is always there whether that company wanted the tweet to be sent or not.