Happy New Year one and all! Niamh here, resident Account Exec and brand new Jammer.

As the newest recruit of JAM towers, I thought it might be sensible to scope out the “ones to watch” in the social media world. One of my new year’s resolutions is to be much more active in the Twittersphere, but how embarrassing would it be if I’m firing/ tweeting on all canons as the rest of the world has vacated to the next big thing?

So here goes…

Ello
Branding itself the ‘anti-Facebook’, this is basically Facebook without all the ads, run by some hipsters that know how to make a website look pretty cool. Apart from feeling like a bit of a grandma that’s stumbled in to ‘yoof’ territory on the homepage (‘Simple, beautiful and ad-free’ – modest bunch aren’t they?), I have to hold my hands up and say ads aren’t really holding me back from enjoying my daily browse of the old FB newsfeed. More troubling are the tragic status updates posted by people I have actually friended. Reckon they’ll invent a platform that filters that drivel for me?

Slack
Throwback to ten years ago when your mum wouldn’t let you ‘surf the web’ for fear of you stumbling in to the dreaded CHATROOM. Well, it seems that said chatroom is making a bit of a comeback, except this time it’s to help us with our productivity at work rather than to connect us with traffickers and pond life worldwide. Slack wants to revolutionise internal communications for companies by letting you share files, comments and instant messages in one big online space. From the co-founder of Flickr, sounds like it could be worth a look.

Fitocracy
As a self-confessed gym-phobic, I’ll try my best to stay objective on this one. It’s social media for fitness fanatics and aims to transform getting fit into an online game. So we’re talking, beating challenges, reaching next levels and sharing this information with everyone in your fitness circle as you go. Hey, if it means my Facebook is no longer populated by gym mirror selfies and ‘check dem gainz’ posts, I’m all for it.

So that’s a little round up. Fingers crossed Twitter is still relevant enough for me to find my feet and start belting out some hilarious hashtags this year. Another resolution is to curb my incessant use of exclamation marks. Feel free to call me out on it:
@NiamhMcKenna2

Ciao for now! (Sorry).