Molly Wakley

I loved this case study, it poses a very interesting question. What is the difference between a post simply being popular and a post being viral. Ellen's tweet was full of famous people, each of which has a large fan base, so naturally the post was re-twitted a tremendous amount. If you think about all of Ellen's followers alone it makes sense why the tweet would see so much traction. The Wendy's tweet however displays a much different picture. The young man who twitted the comment to Wendy's started out with only 150 or so followers, within two weeks however his following had increased to around 60,000. His tweet was shared by his small following and then those followers following shared it and on and on until it was tweeted 3 million plus times. Ellen was popular, Wendy's boy went viral. The difference all stems from the following base. Since Ellen and all of the actors already possessed a large following the tweet was re-twitted by the following they

I found this case incredibly interesting, it displayed just how much power social media possesses. McDonalds thought they had this brilliant idea and if it had gone the way they had intended I’m sure it would have been great. What this case displays however is just how quickly things can spiral out of control when the internet gets ahold of them. Lee Odden went into detail about just how careful businesses need to be when it comes to hashtags in his article 10 Brutal Trend & Campaign Hashtag Fails by Big Brands. http://keyhole.co/blog/10-trend-campaign-hashtag-fails-by-big-brands-lessons/ . In regards to the #McDstories he expressed the lesson to be learned was to avoid open ended calls to action. While some people may love a product the world of social media is harsh and unforgiving. Businesses should never rely on the loyalty of customers in a setting like this one. I’m sure a lot of the people tweeting derogatory things with their #Mcdstories frequented the establishment often.

              Social media has changed how we look at communication is many different ways. In obvious ways it has enabled people to communicate with individuals they never would have otherwise, and stay in touch with people from all around the world. However social media has also changed the way people communicate with each other and how we interact not only online but also within face to face interactions. Many of these changes have both positive and negative effects on society as a whole. In Audrey Willis’ article “6 ways social media has changed the way we communicate” some of positive and negative effects of social media being to take shape.   http://circaedu.com/hemj/how-social-media-changed-the-way-we-communicate/ .                 Willis looks into changes such as the sense of urgency, inside perspective of foreign places, the increase of millennial new consumption, the ability to broadcast live. There are very clear benefits and many major downfalls embedded in each of th