The app twitter has become one of the, if not the biggest source of media for most teenagers today and represents the way that the definition of "cool" is always changing. There are many popular accounts such as "World Star" (as well as a lot of fake World Star accounts) that are constantly posting pictures, video clips, and viral tweets that represent popular attitudes on things and popular trends. This never ending stream of media that we are exposed to influences teen society and the idea of what is "cool" in a huge way. As I have observed so many times on twitter some viral song, dance move, vine, etc will become popular for a while, until it becomes too widespread or "mainstream" and something else replaces it immediately. This makes twitter a good place for companies to "cool hunt" and advertise to specific audiences. I suspect that the same "cool hunting" that companies were doing in the "Merchants of Cool" video in the early 2000's, is still happening today with social media and specifically twitter. Companies could be assigning social media experts to try to create a "cool" image for them from what is trending/popular on twitter. Although, this strategy is a very difficult one to succeed with because of the rapid changing of "cool", and how by using something cool in advertising you quickly make it not cool anymore, because it has become "mainstream" or "overused". In conclusion, you can easily observe the constant changing of what is perceived as "cool" through the twitter app with the many trends that come and go over time.
It is most defiantly true that it is still going on today through Twitter as most companies take things that everyone finds on the app and makes it into a huge marketing campaign. One of the most recent ones was the "Damn Daniel" videos that annoyed the hell out of everybody. This little video turned into a media gold mine as he was put onto TV shows, commercials, and of course advertisements for vans. Although it became sort of a gag (Mr.Wong saying it to me in class because I was wearing white vans) that everyone knew and couldn't stop saying. It seemed like everywhere you went people were saying it. Although its been nine months at the time of this post, people had really almost forgotten about that video by summer. It just goes to show how fast media can change but yet how quick it can be picked up on at the same time.
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