Tonight I visited the CNN.com homepage to see if there was anything new for the blog. One headline really stuck out to me right on the front page. It was an article about the oldest Twitter user passing away. Her name was Ivy Bean. She lived in Northern England and tweeted almost every day about everything in her life. Her thoughtful tweets attracted over 57,000 followers on Twitter. She also had a Facebook, but she maxed out her friend capacity with 25,000 pending friend requests.
I think elderly people using new technology is fantastic. I’m always impressed when I see how far spread technology is and when I see unexpected internet users making use of new media. Ivy was a great example of this and had a great outlook on social media. According to CNN, Bean liked the internet because of its usefulness in connecting with other people. New media can be a great tool for the elderly with many social networking websites geared at reconnecting old friends and family. The best thing about the internet, in my opinion, is that it is so vast that there is literally something for everyone. It’s all about niches and finding what interests you and sharing that with people across the world.
The article was very interesting, though sad to report the loss of such a friendly and intelligent woman, but it brought to mind another point. I realized that news media companies such as CNN not only need to utilize new media for their own personal use, but they must also report on it. It’s the responsibility of the news to be a watchdog and to keep the community informed of the on goings in today’s society. New media is certainly an important aspect of this.
I was curious what other new media CNN had been reporting on. I found a few different ways that CNN reports on new media. For one, there is a Tech section of the website that contains news stories on all of the newest tech products. The most popular stories now include news about the new iPhone 4, reports on Kindle sales, and of course, Ivy’s story.
Among the article on Ivy Bean, there is a link to related topics including Twitter, Inc., which allows users to search through all CNN articles relating to Twitter. There’s also a link that says the article was filed under “Social Media”. Upon clicking this link, site visitors can find every article that relates to social media on CNN.com. There’s also an option to follow the topic so readers can stay up to date on social media news if it interests them.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/07/28/obit.ivy.bean/index.html?hpt=Sbin#fbid=p5WW54XQ-nd
Here’s a link to Ivy’s Twitter if anyone is interested. It really is fun to read. She will be missed.
http://twitter.com/ivybean104
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