WWR: Social Media for Events, Emergencies and Grown Men.

Ashley: It has become a requirement to have an official social media presence with every big event your brand hosts. Not only do your attendees expect it, they want it to be interesting, engaging and forward thinking. From Tweets being turned into an actual printed newspaper during an event to choirs singing Tweets aloud, there are endless innovative ideas that can elevate your event engagement. Before you launch your next big event, follow these six guidelines on how to use social media to bring your event to life.

Rebecca: More than 66% of adult online users are now connected to one or more social media platforms. As social media continues to play a pervasive role in the way people think, act and react to the world, it’s also changing one of the most crucial ways of actually helping the world: how people respond to emergencies and disaster. Many companies like The Red Cross and NOAA, are experimenting with using social media in a crisis. Warnings through Facebook and Twitter could be tornado sirens of the 21st century.

Sally:Okay, so I didn’t “read” this video on Gawker, but nonetheless, it is hilarious and will supply anyone who sees it with some comedic relief, courtesy of John Hamm. Who knew that Don Draper could be so hilarious and sarcastic, because the actor is both of these things. My personal favorite line: “Go read everybody poops. It’s the same thing,” but “You’re probably all too young to watch Mad Men, so I don’t know, enjoy the Hunger Games,” comes in a close second.

Burke: The Pros and Cons of HTML5 for Business. HTML5 is the newest version of HTML.  It has a lot of bells and whistles that previous versions did not have. For example, before, when you wanted to add a video to a web page you had to insert complicated <embed> or <object> code with all sorts of parameters.  now, both video and audio will be native to the browser so that all you have to do is write


<video width="320" height="240" controls="controls">
<source src="yourvideoURL.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
</video>

HTML5 is going to make multimedia websites much easier and lighter in terms of code, which will make video and audio marketing on mobile devices much faster and user-friendly.