Week Three: Blog Posting #5 Social Media

Social Media according to Wikipedia is media designed to be disseminated through social interactions, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/social_media)

The explosion of web 2.0 tools has created the opportunity to communicate in ways that are instant and far reaching with the capacity to use the power of many to influence behaviors and outcomes. Shirkey (2008) in “Here They Come,” begins the book with a scenario involving a lost cellphone that unfolds into a viral sensation that ends up in the arrest of the cellphone thief. The depiction of the events reveals a series of decisions and interactions that 5 years ago could not have happened to the degree or within the timeframe that the author retells. The ability to react, communicate, share, interact, mobilize, vent, buy, sell, learn, teach and grow, are carried out through networks and connections that are changing our society at a rapid pace.

The statistics are staggering with exposure and use of web 2.0 tools that are the norm for how todays youth, the digital natives, interact. The YouTube video, Social Media Revolution, provides examples of the impact of social media. They cite that Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web, 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media, if Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia and 1 in 6 higher education students is enrolled in online curriculum. In one years time, 2008 to 2009, Hulu grew from 63 million total streams to 373 million. These few samples from the video reveal staggering numbers of people involved in social media contexts that certainly demonstrate that there is indeed a revolution going on in the way we now communicate.

Shirky, C. (2008.) Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Press HC