With great design and implementation you can break all the rules and still be successful. This, by any other means, shouldn't have worked. It shouldn't have reached the ridiculous number of 3,338 diggs after being posted just 4 days ago. It was Flash animation. It was an advertisement for a product. It was selling you something. But as the submitter 'ad-hater' #1 stated : If all advertisements were done like this, I might actually start reading them. What happened?

The web is competitive. You need an edge. Social media marketing is becoming an essential tool to optimizing an online presence and creating strong connections with your audience. It is undeniable. With billions being spent online each year, social media is gaining in popularity as a valuable resource. 4 out of 5 Americans read blogs and 57% of adults online watch or download videos. The stats keep going on.

In the olden days a sociologist had to find people and recruit them to fill out long arduous forms. Today there is Facebook, and these sociologists are finding out that people generally love to talk about themselves. It is fun to talk about my interests, social networks and life! Check out the New York Times article 'On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data'. I would imagine this is being used in many other ways and will be being used more frequently in the future.

I remember when I first experienced the power of the Internet. I was in middle school hanging out with a friend. We decided to use the computer in my father's office and got online to chat. Of course that led to starting trouble within the chat room and getting kicked out, but the feeling of connecting )even if it was very juvenile and idiotic( was lasting. Well both myself and the internet have evolved since then )thankfully(. We are in the midst of Web 2.0. I mean,