When I first read the article, I had a lot of thoughts and opinions. Most of them were covered in the response articles, but I'll repeat some. To put it plainly, this girl was mistaken. She generalizes too much about the two age groups (above 25 and under 25) to even have a basis for her argument.
She believes that everyone under 25 would be a good social media member because she assumes every one has grown up using it. Not true. I didn't get a twitter until last year. I just found out how to view when some one tweets at you last week, which was super embarrassing because I've missed a lot of tweets, including one which informed me I won a sweepstakes I'd entered. If I was running a twitter for a business more than I week ago, I might've missed important feedback. Granted, I would've found how out to look for it sooner if I was running as something as sensitive as a business twitter, but you get the point. A friend of mine didn't get a Facebook until the end of his Senior year of high school. I hardly call that growing up with social media. If anything, the older generation knows more about running a Facebook professionally because that's what they've always been using it for. They were part of the professional world when Facebook started, so they've been using it for that while we were just using it for tagging pictures and updating people about our lives. Cathryn Sloane argues that our social use makes us more knowledgable about social media, how does social translate to professional? We are constantly told to be aware of the difference between professionally and socially emailing, talking in an interview, and connecting with customers in business school, the same distinction is important to be made for social media. Social media is a marketing tool that's just as important to be experienced in as print, radio, television, etc. Practicing with someone there to correct your mistakes is the only way to learn to properly use this tool.
This being said, I don't agree with all the responses so aggressively attacking her. They immediately jump to defending their generation, claiming that experience is always better and 23-25 year-olds don't know how to run a business without messing it up. I don't think this is always true either. The managing director of the theatre I interned for over the summer was 26. She was one of the most competent, organized, and effective business owners I've ever had the pleasure of working for/knowing. She didn't need ten years of experience. She learned how to do her job better than her predecessors quickly and seamlessly. She wasn't in charge of the social media, but based on her press releases and other professional communications, she probably would've done an equally great job.
My major thought about this article, then, is that is perfectly demonstrates the power and necessity of social media. Cathryn's article is an example of the type of response that a social media post written by an author under 25 years old could cause. Many of the responses also point out her lack of professionalism for not apologizing or responding. Whether or not this is due to her age and/or lack of experience isn't for me to say, but it is possible. If she were in charge of a business' social media accounts and refused to respond or post a retraction, she could destroy the business. The article displays social media's ability to inspire and provoke conversation. The article and the subsequent backlash reminds us that everything is sharable and so it is important to be careful what you share as a business.
