Meet Linwright Design’s new mascot! This is Buckshot Vegas….but we call him Buck for short. (We’re big fans of Vegas, and figured that because he’s a herding/farm dog he should have a farm name, hence ‘Buckshot’) He is a Queensland Heeler – Catahoula mix. Check out his new site over at http://www.BuckshotVegas.com today!

Ever heard of a gentleman by the name of Matt Hindman? Well, he’s a professor of political science at Arizona State University, my alma mater, who wrote a book earlier this year called “The Myth of Digital Democracy.” While I haven’t had a chance yet to pick this interesting point-of-view up, I have been following his blogs.

ASU Hindman takes some interesting views on social media and its impact on society and democracy. Basically, take everything that you’ve heard about social media opening up doors for community involvement on the internet, and toss it out the window. ASU Hindman says that social media has hurt democracy.

For example, here is one of his latest blog entries:

Most online news remains the product of print or TV or radio outlets, and new outlets like the Huffington Post and Politico and The Daily Beast have required millions in venture capital. Even political blogging, which is something of a special case, has become highly professionalized, with few new bloggers rising to prominence over the 2008 election cycle.

Moreover, just gaining “entry” doesn’t mean very much, if a broader class of entrants don’t really expand the pool of winners.  Any golfer able to win a regional qualifying tournament can gain entry into the U.S. Open, while other events (such as the Masters) are strictly invitational.  But cheesy Kevin Costner movies aside, the folks who win the U.S. Open are full-time pros, not guys who play a few rounds on the weekends.

One of his latest blogs is entitled “Social Media, So What?” So what….it hurts my heart, especially coming from a professor at Arizona State University. But, it doesn’t surprise me. Back when I went to ASU, social media was never a topic discussed in any journalism or mass communication courses. I’m probably aging myself with that comment.

ASU Hindman fails to see how social media brings people together, creates diversity and interaction, and nurtures creative ideas and conversation. The point isn’t being on top of the blogger pool, or garnering 5,000 followers on Twitter. The point is creating relationships. Any social media marketer will tell you that Twitter and Facebook is completely useless without developing relationships. Any business man will tell you that building his online presence takes complete adherence to customer needs and interactions. It’s all about bringing people together.

While ASU Hindman focuses more on political social media, political bloggers and campaign tactics online, he still doesn’t seem to understand that without social media Obama probably never would have been able to reach the younger crowd in the way that he did. It’s no different than Clinton using MTV to reach the kids when he was running, and it will be no different than the next president using the next big thing to reach our kids.

Call it what you want, but social media has produced relationships of all kinds, helped businesses survive during these rough economic times, helped a black man become president, and allowed millions to find a sense of community where they might not have been able to find it before.