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What’s Trending in Social Networking TOP MEMES of 2012 By Rita Skarbek
What’s Trending in Social
Networking
TOP MEMES of 2012
By Rita Skarbek
Social Networking…What is it?
Static Website Social Networking Site
• Information • Information
• Interactive
Social Networking…defined as:
• The use of a dedicated dynamic Web site
– To communicate informally with the site and/or
other members of the site
– By posting messages, photographs, links, audio,
video etc.
– Connection based on
• Shared interests
• Political views
• Activities
• SN share similar characteristics:
– Profiles
– Friends (Pages, Followers, Subscribers)
– Comments
– Private messaging
• SNSs vary greatly in their features and user base
– Some have photo-sharing or video-sharing capabilities;
others have built-in blogging and instant messaging
technology, etc.
Social Networking Characteristics
What’s Trending Today?
• Memes
– Simply something that goes “viral”
1. An element of a culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.
2. An image, video, etc. that is passed electronically from one Internet user to another.
• Top Memes of the Year:
Top Memes
• Grumpy the Cat
• Gangnam Style
• Advanced Style
• Buzzfeed’s 45 most powerful images of 2012
Most Popular memes of 2012
• Most famous was Grumpy Cat – Which took off after an Arizona resident posted a picture
of his sister’s cat on social site Reddit on September 23rd, 2012 (500,000 hits in one week)
• From there it went to – Facebook
– Tumblr
– And other SN sites
http://www.quickmeme.com/Grumpy-Cat/
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-
US#q=%22grumpy+cat%22
http://www.kvue.com/entertainment/more/Grump
y-Cat-will-appear-at-SXSW-195601001.html
IN AUSTIN TX
http://www.digtriad.com/video/2212710524001/1/Grumpy-Cat-Stars-in-Friskies-Commercial
All this from 1 post by 1 person on 1 SN Site
http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/01/18/many-meanings-gangnam
Gangnam Style (we know it as a video, song, dance craze)
by PSY Korean Rapper
• As of 2/27/2013--music video viewed over 1,357 billion times on YouTube
• September 2012, recognized by Guiness Book of World Records as the most "liked" video on YouTube.
• Refers to an upscale fashion/lavish lifestyle associated Seoul’s Gangnam district – it is most affluent part of the metropolitan area.
• Comparable to the English slang terms “swag” or being unreservedly materialistic, utterly consumerist
• The music video is a scathing critique of the irrational materialism of a wealthy, capitalistic society and mocks the prevailing lifestyle in Seoul´s Gangnam District but sky rocketted into a dance craze and lost it’s political bent
• Advanced style started with a blog by 20+ Ari Seth Cohen – http://advanced style.blogspot.com/
• Features photographs he takes of decked -out older women. – The blog developed into video documentaries, a book project
and a soon-to-be movie
– In late 2012, the London-based art-and-fashion mag Dazed & Confused ran a cover story featuring 91-year-old style icon Iris Apfel further fueling the blog, the term, the meme
– Morphed into a new term to define a rapidly growing collections of images of women and men “past their prime” who refuse to be invisible.
http://pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=advanced+style
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/advanced%20style
Advanced Style “aging does not mean declining”
Buzzfeed
• http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/most-powerful-
images-of-2012
• Scroll the 45 most powerful images of 2012
– Recap of the year’s big news stories through pictures
• The homepage consists of a time-sequential list of
posts from users and staff members.
– The content is usually either a video, image, or link.
– These posts are the site's attempt to capture the
essence of viral media currently resonating on the web.
