Real Life in Real Time

As the world becomes more and more digital and we become more and more connected through this digital world, our human need for instant gratification grows more and more.  As we want to get our knowledge quicker and faster, we also want our voices to be heard more and more.  We want a celebrity to retweet our tweet.  We want someone famous to like our Facebook page.  We want more interactions on social media.  This is how we now live in the 21'st.  We live in a connected world where we want to grow with each other, even if that growing is behind a screen.  We want this growing to happen immediately and in real-time.  We want real life in real time.

David Scott says, "In todays real-time world, anyone can share their thoughts with the world as news is unfolding."  This is not only true about news, but all aspects of our lives.  If I want to document me washing my cat on instagram, I can.  If someone wants to make a "snap-story" of them cooking dinner, they can.  If I want to live tweet my experience at Chipotle, I can do that too.  We can give real-time updates of what is going on in our real lives.  We do not need to go to a source to see what is going on in the world, because we are the source.

The thing that is so intriguing to me about social media, especially twitter, is that it seems that we have a limited audience, but we essentially have an infinite audience.  This can be seen even more when we tweet in real time.  One time last year my roommate tweeted a tweet reacting to something that happened in a Denver Broncos football game.  A news station from Denver twitter account retweeted his tweet.  Than all of a sudden his phone was buzzing for two hours straight because his tweet was being constantly retweeted and favorited by people he did not know.  That tweet was intended for his followers to see how he felt about the football game, but his following grew exponentially, even though this was not intentional.  All tweets have this potential, but very few live up to that potential.

I think that this can connect with my strive to better the basketball social media.  One thing I want to do this year is have live tweets of the games.  I think if we can have a unifying hashtag and have students tweet their thoughts on the game to the account as well.  People want to be connected, that is why we use social media.  If the people in the stands feel connected to those on the court during the game, they will have a more enjoyable experience.  This is something I am going to try to do this season.

Our lives develop every second and sometimes we want people to see that development.  In our hyperconnected world, this can be done now better than ever before.  Social media is a great tool for this and can help us learn more and more about ourselves and the world around us.