Guest Speaker: Dan Sawyer on Social Media. Dan gave us an overview on the fascinating subject of Social Media and Social Networking.  The business and professional network of over 160 million people. It goes on the concept of “how many degrees of separation are you away from people?” This is where Dan explained that most of us will benefit from exploring and getting to know what it is about. You can connect to friends and work colleagues, clients and industry contacts – and see who their contacts are. Rotary International has several ‘Groups’ where Rotarians can discuss ideas and club business. Surprisingly there are only 62 members of the group ‘Australian members of Rotary International’, so please ‘join’ this group and interact with other Rotarians. Dan proposed that our club have a “Closed Group” for us to discuss ideas and maintain fellowship in the online space. Creating a free Twitter account allows you to ‘follow’ people who you choose. Twitter is small bursts of information and the recent Olympic Games allowed athletes to share their thoughts and results instantly with followers. Twitter has revolutionised the news and reporting. Several years ago we waited for the morning newspaper to read about the news. Then television delivered our news at 6pm, so we waited until then. Now with Twitter on your phone or computer, you get instant news and information the second something happens. You don’t have to tweet at all, but there are over 500 million people you can follow, like Rotary International, various clubs and individuals. Try it out.  Some to follow include @ABCNews, @bordermail, @3AW693, @Prime7Albury and @Collingwood_FC . We all know facebook. With over 900 million users, it allows people to connect on a social level to share photos, videos and information about what they like and are doing. Companies actually pay facebook to promote being ‘liked’ which gives them a chance to market to those individuals. Albury Hume Rotary Club has a facebook page, so please ‘Like’ it!!  Google+ is Google’s attempt at knowing everything. There are 250 million people signed up.  One of the original Social Media sites. Bought by News Corp for $580M in 2005, Justin Timberlake bought it last year for just $35M. Facebook more or less replaced it.  Urbanspoon is a peer review site for restaurants.  Tripadvisor is a peer review site for travel and hotels.  There are literally hundreds of other social media and networking websites, so the topic is very deep. Please feel free to contact Dan further if you need advice or guidance. He tweets as @mppersonnelAUS and is on Linked In. So get connected!