I worked hard for my money...Why should I give it to you?!

Time and time again we are asked to give. To donate our time, our money, our resources, our knowledge, all to help someone else. Just walk down the street in Times Square and you'll see what I mean. You have the beggar on the corner asking for a few cents for the train, the hippie asking for some food for him and his dog, the activist asking for money for those infected with AIDS and the occasional teenager asking you to buy a snickers bar to support his or her basketball team. Take a look at the video below and tell me if you'd give up your hard earned money to any of these people in "need"...

Once you are done watching this, my question to you is, it really worth it to help these people out? Where does your money truly go to? Do they use it for what they say? I doubt we will ever get the answer to any of those questions, but does that mean that as a society we should stop giving to those less fortunate then us? Take a look at the video below. This man turns the tables on train-goers and instead of begging, he does something completely shocking...he gives.

Funny huh? Most people would not even accept his generosity. Would you? What do you think sparked him to do this? What does he gain from this? Follow me across the jump and see what I think.

Do you know your social media?!

Take a look at the image to the right. How many of these social media buttons can you name?

At best I can say that I know 13 of the 30. That's definitely terrible for a someone looking to go specifically into managing social media as a public relations function, but honestly not that bad seeing as though social media has recently gained mainstream popularity within businesses.


So what social networks do these buttons belong to? Looking at them from the top left-to-right, we have:

• Blogger
• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• RSS
• Flickr
• Friend Feed
• Friendster
• (I actually couldn't even find the name of this one, so if you know the social media network please comment below.)
• Google
• Last.fm
• Linkedin
• Livejournal
• Ma.gnolia
• Mixx
• Myspace
• Netvibes
• Newsvine
• Picasa
• (Please comment if you know this one too!)
• Reddit
• Stumble Upon
• Technorati
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• (I know this girl, but of course I'm drawing a blank. Please comment if you know her name.)
• Wordpress
• Yahoo!
• Yelp!
• Youtube

So why is this important? Hop in and come for a ride with me across the break and I'll be sure to give you the details of why this applies to us all...