Did you just say 107 TRILLION E-mails ?

This week Prof Boone assigned us an article titled Communicative Informatics: An Active and Creative Audience Framework of Social Media written by Professor Boone herself and Professor Gallant from Emerson. The topic of this weeks class discussion was the role of social media in PR. We compared the new rules of PR to the old rules of PR.
It is most important to note that Social Media gives PR professionals the ability to directly communicate with their audience. So long are the days where PR agents must rely on the media to get the attention of their potential clients and current stakeholders. It is vital to practice a two way form of communication, where  not only do you give out information, but you also take some in. You listen to your customer and pay attention to any feedback they are offering.
While Social Media is paving a new path for those practicing Public Relations it is also opening the door for us to access more information than we could ever conceive. One line in the article listed above, Professor Boone specifically pointed out to us states; " Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003... pictures, instant messages, and tweets all add to this."
Do you have any idea how much information that is ??? Lets have a look at some of the numbers posted by pindom blog

in 2010:
107 Trillion - emails were sent on the Internet
255 Million - number of websites as of December 2010
1.97 Billion - internet users worldwide ( this is a 14% growth since last year)
152 Million - number of blogs on the Internet
25 Billion - number of tweets sent in 2010
600 Million - number of people on facebook at the end of 2010
30 Billion - pieces of content ( links,  notes, photos etc) shared just on Facebook along per month in 2010
2 Billion - the number of videos watched per day on YouTube
35 - hours of video uploaded to YouTube every hour.
5 Billion - photos hosted by Flickr

Those are amazing, astonishing and scary numbers !
Now what is important is to find a way to differentiate your information and your story from the trillions of other posts added to the web each day. How will you make sure your company does not get lost in the shuffle ? You must get creative. One proposition listed in the Communicative Informatics article is that the Audience is Creative.
Each day new photos, videos, releases and articles are being published on line. We live in a creative world with the most imaginative, inventive and inspirational people.

The Internet has truly revolutionized our way of life and social media is right there as well. Social media has provided us with ways to reconnect, ways to  tell our story and share our ideas. It has introduced us to a new form of communication and with this ability to freely communicate you have endless opportunities at your finger tips.... now we just have figure out how to best apply these opportunities.