2011 – a partial and incomplete review

End of year reviews are many and range from the heavyweight and the slightly less high brow. This post is definitely closer to the latter.

Rather than present a well-researched roundup of 2011′s top trends in social media and technology news, I’ve collected a handful of the year’s features that stood out for me.

(You could even see it as a stitched-together list of blog posts from the past 12 months that I didn’t get around to finishing …)

Is your Twitter account really your own?

Twitter Follower Mosaic by Joe Lazarus (joelaz)

The blurred lines between ‘work’ and ‘home’ social media use once again hit the news this week after a US company sued an ex-employee for keeping the Twitter followers he attracted while working for it.

Having set up my own social media accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+) while working for my previous employer, I have more than an academic interest in cases of this kind.

Granted, only the Twitter account was actually set up in work time, and then – initially at least – only to familiarise myself with technology while running a company Twitter account. Nevertheless, I’ve used – and continue to use – each of those channels to promote my work, source stories, make contacts and follow a variety of interests.