Social Media... a fad? or something more?

I personally believe that social media is definitely not a fad, but rather a means that has already started and will continue, to revolutionize many aspects of social connections. Weather it be connecting and sharing with friends and family, or companies (big and small) that use social media to project their products to the masses.

            To understand how social media is and will continue to be a tool used to revolutionize modern society we must understand what social media is. It is hard to label social media with a concrete definition, however it typically represents media that users can easily participate and contribute to (Christie, 2010) - (Karjaluoto, 2008). It is not the tools, such as facebook, twitter, and wikipedia, but the interactions and conversations that are happening on these operating sites that define social media.

            From a social perspective, the conversations have evolved from one person communicating with many, to many people communicating with many others. In other words many people can now contribute to one blog, forum topic, post or wiki, each adding his or her own information. The end result can be viewed by anyone who can then comment on the topic making their own opinions clear. Social media has also been the foundation on which many online communities such as facebook, msn live chat and myspace have built upon.

            From a business perspective, social media has been a complete breakthrough. Now companies can post their products online, for little or no monetary cost, and can have users comment on whether or not they liked the product and can then give their own opinions on it. This sparks a mutualistic relationship between consumer and company. Whereas the company gets free advertising and marketing and the consumer gets truthful, either positive or negative, feedback on an item so they can make an informed choice on whether or not to purchase the product.  A recent study showed that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14 % trust advertisements. (Kutsko, 2010).

            Out of all the positive remarks about social media and how it lets us get connected with friends and family no matter how far away they might live and how it enables us to make informed decisions on purchases. We must also understand some of the negative effects of social media. Facebook alone beats Google for weekly traffic in the United States, and it added over 200 million users in less then a year (Kutsko, 2010). Over 250 million people use facebook on a daily basis and the site logs in more than 700 billion hours per month of usage ("Facebook|statistics,”). These staggering numbers show that one social networking site such as Facebook consumes a drastic amount of people’s daily lives. Spending so much time on these sites has had a dramatically negative impact on our own communication skills, physical activity and attention span. Also employers have been known to use social sites such as Facebook to check out the personal lives of applicants before hiring them and an increasing amount of people are not getting hired because of incriminating pictures on Facebook. One final remark is that many companies will post their product online and then sign on at various times as various people to help promote their product. They do this to increase sales because the customer buying has no idea who is actually posting the comments but will trust it because they think it is a peer to peer review.

            I think that social media has proven that it has the potential to be a great asset to humanity. It allows us to get world wide news almost instantaneously, to be able to talk to people who are hundreds of miles away from your current location, and to get truthful (most of the time) reviews on products we may purchase. I also think that there are many problems associated with social media and the amount of time we as people spend on them on a daily basis. Whether for good or for bad social media is not a fad, it is here to stay.

         

References:

Facebook|statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Christie, Jordanne. (2010, September). Introduction to social media module. Retrieved from https://connect.mycampus.ca/webct/urw/lc4130011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

Kutsko, E. (Producer). (2010). Social media revolution 2 (refresh). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng