General: Breaking Social Media

Nowadays the most important thing in a business, in a job or in studies one of the most important tools for success is to get noticed.
The work to get noticed has become much less exhausting by the internet, you've got Facebook and other social networking tools that make it much easier to get noticed, but still there is a difference between getting noticed and getting really noticed, the internet gives you a level playing field but you still have to do your part.
The best way to learn is to learn for the best, one of the best is Alexis Ohanian, one of the co-founders of Redit.com, a social news website where the community votes new, posts, comments and that makes a main page, dynamic and gets millions of views per day and a major influence on the internet.
In one of his speeches Alexis managed to sum up the basic knowledge and concepts you need to "Make a Splash in social media".
The main topics were Humpback wales, Greenpeace and the Greenpeace's campaign to stop walling.
The base is the pole to choose the name for the mascot, between a vast number of candidates there was a rather funny name, "Mr. Splashy pants", the reddit community really responded to this name when it came up on the site, they were excited about that name and convinced to make the name of the campaign, reddit actually changed it's logo form the alien to a wale to motivate the community, and by the end of the pole Mr splashy had come a long way from the initial 5% to an astonishing 70%.
Greenpeace wanted one of their more thoughtful names so they extended the pole for another week. After that the community really took a stand, there were Facebook groups being created, posts, status, there were actually signs in the real world, by the end of the extended pole Mr. Splashy took home 78% of the votes, the second most voted name came up with 3%, it was an amazing win for splashy. From one day to the other a campaign with splashy t-shirts, pins, even e-card was created, and the objective was achieved, the walling in Japan stopped, it was a smash hit.
There is a lesson here, the internet, despite the useless links in the internet there is room to make something good and really cool, that's how the internet works, it's moved by cool content and everybody gets a level playing field, there is no link better than the other.
So if you are going to pass a message you might as well go ahead and if you do be genuine, like Greenpeace learned it's ok to lose control because after a certain point you can no longer control the message, the internet is a much too dynamic platform for that, but it's ok to loose control because if you let the community polish you message you'll come up with a more relatable message even though completely out of control and it's ok, some of the best messages were created out of control, just remember splashy.
The video of Alexis ohanian's presentation on TED