SearchInfluence

If you haven’t heard of Kony 2012, chances are that you’ve been living under a rock – a rock without Wi-Fi – for the last month. Created by the non-profit organization Invisible Children, the 30-minute documentary about Joseph Kony, an African warlord, became an almost-instant viral video after its debut in March.

In under a week, it garnered 100 million views, outpacing Susan Boyle’s audition on Britain’s Got Talent and even “David After Dentist.” The difference between this viral video and others is that it has compelled watchers to act in a way that involves more than just forwarding a link.

Maybe I’m a little late since Pinterest rolled out its redesigned profile pages two weeks ago, but being fashionably late is kind of my ‘thing.’ Users and businesses using Pinterest for marketing can now enjoy the benefit of more beautiful profile pages and an easier-to-use Recent Activity feature.

The redesign of Pinterest Profiles is more social, displaying influencers and a description. The profile page and its boards are more aesthetically pleasing and image-focused.

Before passing judgment on the latest updates, I wanted to take some time to actually use them first. While the profile page redesign was what dominated the news a couple weeks ago, I honestly think this change is of the least consequence to Pinterest users.

It’s always up for debate on what’s “newsworthy.” In the time before computers, newspaper and newscasts were the ones that dictated what was important in the world.  What they considered “news” and a “must-know” became what was published and what we did know.

But now things are different — very different.  With social media sites like Facebook, and Twitter, we are seeing more and more that the applications of social media as news source are quickly growing. 

The next blockbuster young adult film is just about to explode onto the silver screen: The Hunger Games, based on Suzanne Collins’ bestselling trilogy of the same name. Aimed at the Twilight set of YA readers, it tells the story of a courageous tomboy named Katniss Everdeen who lives in a dystopian world that’s split into twelve districts and ruled over by an iron-fisted government called The Capitol. Each year, members of the community are selected to participate in The Hunger Games, where they are sent into an arena to kill one another until only one is left standing.

[SI Social is a monthly series from Search Influence that looks at what's going on in the social media world.]

It’s true that most of us may have had a MySpace profile some year ago, but if you’re anything like me, you probably only maintain one major social media profile at a time. So when Facebook got big enough, I pretty much forgot MySpace existed. Then they tried to rebrand and made that ridiculous new logo and you couldn’t help but feel a bit bad for the days when they were king of the social media space. After all, it’s gotta be weird to look back and wonder what changed, right?