Social Media

Social Media Week is fast approaching--Sept. 24-28--and Chicago is taking center stage with more than 90 events around the city as part of the global celebration of social media nerdery. RedEye's been on the social media game for years and years--we just celebrated our 4th Twitter birthday!--so we had to get involved. Just in a slightly different way.  Join us for RedEye's The Social , a web- and social media-focused talk show that both celebrates and laments all things social media.

Instead of searching every social media platform, residents now can go to one place to find and track Chicago's mayor. The mayor's office on Sunday launched Chicago Digital at digital.cityofchicago.org . The site is designed to make it easier to find information and quicker for Chicago to learn about projects and apps, said Kevin Hauswirth, director of social media for the mayor's office. “It should be easy to find the information that people need from us and you shouldn't have to dig through a website to learn about digital innovation happening in city of Chicago,” Hauswirth said.

It's silly to me that whenever sports are represented in a novel or movie set in a dystopian future, it's always about how people will be forced to murder each other as part of a grotesque professional sport/reality show. If anything, recent rules changes have rendered most sports less violent, making anything in "The Hunger Games" or "Rollerball" pretty unlikely. A more realistic piece of science fiction involving sports would be something like this: In 2020, the New York Jeremy Lins (Linsanity, indeed!

Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas' awared-winning restaurant Alinea has officially switched from traditional reservations to the online ticketing system used by its sibling restaurant Next. Achatz and Kokonas announced a release of August tickets via Facebook and Twitter on Thursday afternoon around 4:30 p.m. A small number of tickets still appeared to be available at 5:30 p.m., according to alinearestaurant.com, the site where tickets are sold. Ticket releases for September through November will be announced via the same social media outlets, according to an announcement on Alinea's Facebook page .

In case you were wondering, it really is Sammy Sosa, the real Sammy Sosa, on social media. Rebecca Polihronis, marketing manager for Injex 21, a company that makes needle-free technology for drugs that are injected, confirmed Thursday that the former Cubs star has joined the image-sharing site Pinterest . Sosa is the CEO of Injex 21. “We're learning social media, we're not pros at it yet, but we're working on it,” she said, also confirming...

Ald. William Burns (4th), 39 Three city issues that should be on our radar : social services, poverty, and economic development. Is being young on the City Council an advantage or disadvantage? I think that being young is an advantage. I approach challenges and people with a fresh perspective. The job also requires a tremendous amount of energy -- as a freshman alderman, I don't have as many staffers at my disposal as committee chairmen do, so I end up writing letters to constituents and working along side my staff.

As a guy whose job it is to make sure the White Sox brand remains strong, the Manti Te'o fake girlfriend hoax represents one of chief marketing officer Brooks Boyer's worst nightmares. "When you think of how big the Manti Te'o brand was during the season, that brand has been knocked down," Boyer said at SoxFest. "That can happen to the White Sox, it can happen to Pepsi, it can happen to anybody. " Lennay Kekua might not be a real person, but Boyer said Te'o's fake girlfriend does serve as a real-life cautionary tale for all pro athletes, especially given the fact that social media has completely changed how they interact with the public.

Popular classes > > How to be a DJ, Silver Room, 4-5 PM > > Beekeeping and urban chicken farming, Jackson Junge Gallery, 4-5 p.m. > > Meditation for the Urban Warrior, Jackson Junge Gallery, 1-2 p.m.    Practical classes > > Planning your 401k or understanding taxes, North Avenue Day Nursery, 11:30 AM-12:30 p.m. > > Social media strategies, 826 Chi/The Boring Store, 1-2 p.m. ...

This isn't going to help Cubs fans shed the stereotype of disinterested followers who only come to Wrigley Field for the scene or the party or the opposite sex. Facebook has compiled the most social landmarks around the world, and Wrigley Field ranks first in Chicago. The social media giant used check-ins on Facebook and apps that use Facebook's API to arrive at their list.  Here is the Top 5 in Chicago. 1. Wrigley Field 2. United Center 3. Navy Pier 4. Soldier Field 5. Millennium Park (Transportation hubs--airports, train stations, bus stations, etc.--were excluded in the study.

Chicago just got pounded with a monster blizzard, and all of your friends are wearing sandals and prancing around in the Texas sunshine at SXSW for the next week. Awesome, right? Nah, it kind of blows. Confession: I'm one of those a-holes who will be soaking up the warmth at the music and tech festival for the next week, and, well ... sorry I'm not sorry about that. But here's the thing: I am kind of sorry you have to deal with a barrage of tweets, Facebook posts and Instagram photos reminding you how much fun you're missing out on while you're buried under a foot of snow and someone's armpit on the Red Line.