This year Foursquare is offering a badge for Macy’s 83rd Thanksgiving Day Parade. By checking in to the different celebrations you eventually unlock the “Macy’s Parade 2010” badge and it will say “You’ve checked into the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! Enjoy this week’s excitement featuring great bands, musical acts, mischievous clown & inspiring floats! 5-4-3-2-1…Let’s have a Parade!” Social Media is no longer considered an aspect of life that is used for fun, it’s becoming a way to publicize an event and encourage people to attend something by offering them an incentive.
But ‘Thanksgiving’ hasn’t stopped there, its now apart of Twitter with @butterball and a fan page on Facebook with about 43,000 fans. People are taking social media to a whole new level and involving holidays in it. It’s become a way to share favorite dishes, ways of cooking, favorite parts of Thanksgiving, funny stories and just a way to talk with other people about the holiday.
There’s even an article on the Socialnomics website that gives the top 10 ways that Thanksgiving and Social Media are a lot a like. A few of them are: “In SM we share Content; Thanksgiving we share Contentment,” “You’ll get sick if you consume too much,” and “Your aunt pinches your cheeks in photos and then tags you in them.”
Social Media influences everything we do, and it now includes holidays. It helps promote events, help with the cooking and it is also an easy way to share the holidays with the family that wasn’t able to be there. New aspects and advantages to Social Media are growing and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping. It’s become a complex thing that we are all becoming apart of and there’s no way of stopping it, all we can do is jump on and enjoy the ride.
-Aleisa Miller
