What is Social Media?
Social media is more than posting a picture of your breakfast or sharing inspirational quotes. It's not just (the) Facebook, (the) Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram. Let's take a deeper look at social media and it's profound impact.
Traditional Media to Mass Media
The early days of the Internet were static. Someone would create a webpage with hypertext linking to other pages. We could visit those pages and read the text and click over to other text. There were content creators, and there were the content consumers.Social media is the broad term to define the new paradigm, or layer, with the internet. We are no longer interacting singularly with a web page, but with each other instead, and we all now have the ability to be content creators. Without you and me and everyone else adding content to sites like Wikipedia, they would just be blank with a logo on top.For most of us, at any given time, we are happy to just be consumers. We don't have anything important to say most of the time. However, think about when you need to reach your family or work network. If you are a parent, how would you get in touch with the school, or how would they get in touch with you. Social media has made it possible to share relevant content, instantly, to your networks through the internet.
Television Shows to YouTube Channels
Social media is disrupting traditional media for better and worse. We've recently gone from watching television with a few channels, to television with hundreds of channels to the internet with millions of "channels." The basis of the net neutrality argument is that the big media giants are losing control of the revenue which is now being spread across thousands of content creators.Ask a young member of your family what their favorite shows are, or what they currently like to watch. You might be surprised to find out the answer. The 'show' could just be a guy streaming a video game he likes to play while talking to his audience. You also might be surprised that he is making a nice living that way.
New News
The impact of social media can also be seen through current events in the news. From people recording public interactions with the police, to streaming through disasters we are now able to see news through many different filters and points of view. The good news of this is that the narrative becomes harder to control, however with so many viewpoints it's possible to seek out the narrative that confirms your thoughts rather than challenging your assumptions.Whether or not you’re in participating in Facebook or Snapchat, the social layer of the internet is shaping the world around us and it will continue to have a profound impact.
Further Reading
TED Talk, The game layer on top of the worldBusiness Insider, China might use data to create a score for each citizen based on how trustworthy they areEdwin, The Value of LinkedInEdwin, 3 Wonderfully Useful Ways to Use Twitter