Social media and upcoming class disucssions

Heard an interesting article today on NPR's Marketplace Tech Report about President Obama's election campaign and its use not merely of social media but of their use of social media aggregate sites, sort of the social media of social media. The article claims that previous campaigns have been characterized by increased social media presence (Twitter feeds and FaceBook pages abound...), but that the Obama campaign's use of media aggregate sites - specifically Tumblr - is a new development in political strategy.

So, what these aggregate sites do is allow users to post links to inforrmation they find interesting. You read something out on the interwebs somewhere; you grab the URL and head over to your favorite aggregate site and post the link up, in the hopes that other people out in the real world will also find it interesting. Look at you; you're a journalist?

Actually, the really interesting thing (to me, at least) is that these aggregate sites are a pretty big part of the idea of "going viral," a phrase we now throw around haphazardly like we say, "I 'googled' it" or "Eh, that's been 'photoshopped'." These aggregate engines give a MUCH wider range of users access to information they might not otherwise have found, and THAT'S the real trick in something going viral: superbroad, superfast exposure.

Here's the Marketplace article - including a button to listen, in case you don't want to read, slacker - and here are some links to some of the more popular aggregate sites like Digg, Tumblr, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Delicious. These are really just a tiny handful of the aggregate sites out there, mind you.