Social Media News

Reflected within a new-age globally interconnected society, the complexity of online social media; its infinite traditional ideas were met with profound transformations during 2009’s technologically innovative movement. Far more than just a trend, social media has been statistically monitored to show the largest globalized up-turn since the Industrial Revolution — a historical reference, between the eighteenth and nineteenth century that improved humanity with the introduction of reliance machine production; ending most of the prominent need for manual labor. Significant in history books, the Industrial Revolution not only marked a major turning point worldwide but changed almost every aspect of the daily life in its time period — highly equitable to the modern adaption of computers, this preceding insurgency lead to the current technological era.

Leading scientific research concludes a rapid increase in wide-spread Internet usage inestimable in reasoning; hypothetical attributions to this climb include an introduction of lightening fast  Internet connections as opposed to snail-paced dial up, the introduction of wireless internet divergent to a single fixed area, the introductive of wireless net cards for a connection anywhere, an increase in free Wi-Fi locations, mobile technological devices for personal and business use, and a substantial retail drop in prices of personal computing systems. In accordance with this up draft, technology has played a generous part in changing our daily life; ridding humanity from an atrocious basic bland lifestyle. Technology has impacted human functionality as well as educational means, data acceptance, business growth, and the flow sustainable global net-based socializations. An unpredicted yield in growth and influence, occurred in 2009; focusing on the share of use-generated content — this abrupt surge known today as the modern-age social media revolution.

This well defined revolution of 2009, brought copious attention from local and mass media outlets, coaxing the curious mind, from all corners world-wide; as new social networking sites, like Twitter, flourished in new-growth means were provided for a single user to become personalized unique media — hundreds of sites followed suit bequeathing a differing ability per medium to create, modify, censor, share, and/or remove inimitable information. Intoxicated by something new, Internet loyalists plunged into an extreme amount of social site memberships, while inquisitive minds created first-time social media memberships; almost everyone deluged themselves in Twitter  by creating their own distinctive username within the newly popularized three-year-old social realm — while advanced users took exclusive measures to encapsulate a larger audience unlimited to that of personal blogs, websites, videocasts, podcasts, image share, freelance writing, paid journalism, and anything else triumphant as an online social media content source.

-Overview-

Modernized social media, according to anthropologist Stefana Broadbent, promotes a greater intimacy between people; established social media relationships often expand the globe, brought together by the existence of an Internet connection — limitless possibilities in communication, between North America and India take place within seconds, and often span a large diverse international group. Unexpected in its growth or global impression scientific data holds the overwhelming truth regarding social media’s momentous new-age impact on wide-spread humanity. Social media is largely accepted by Generation Y, referred to the ‘multitasking generation’ or the “children of the informational age”; this rising millennial generation includes those born at the tail end of the 1970s expands forward into the earliest part of 1990; by 2010 this generation will outnumber the popular baby boom post-war generation of the late 1950s – 96% of Generation Y are current account holders of at least one social media web site [1], many having membership of an average of 5 while many of Generation Y hold accounts with more than the average. Social networking leader Facebook, crowned with the titles “world’s largest social network” and “world’s most popular social network” reached 100 million users in a span of nine months; in the same duration Apple’s improved I-pod innovation struck 1 billion users — it took broadcasting television 13 years, radio 38 years, and the Internet, itself, 4 years to reach out to jut 50 million individual users [2]. Social media is growing at a historic rate that is countless to research and erratic to science; it’s growth persistently shocks even those who are active in both personal and business social involvement, from Harvard professors to current presidents — and current graphing predicts unprecedented levels prior to its speculated peak.

-News-

Online social media has took the place of newspaper print publications, users to the popular Twitter have reported within polls that they have obtained breaking news 1 to 3 days prior to print or broadcasting means; used excessively for news, social media can be blamed for the displacement of 24 out of 25 large newspaper publications as they exist on social media websites [3] — anticipated news filters its way into the lives of members, decreasing the need to seek out the news individually. Recorded in August of 2009, more than 200,000,000 personal blogs existed on the internet both personal and business [4], a number that climbs almost hourly as user-generated content is on the rise; these blogs often contain current events and op-editorials about the news itself — other user blogs function as personal online diaries of life update life events, and splurging in the limelight, widely accepted businesses have created blogs to go behind their quality product(s) in attempts to brand market. Serving as the Internet’s web-based collaborative user effort, Wikipedia stands as the leading web-based encyclopedia; with more than 14 million subjective articles. Factual research show that if paid a mere $1 per article, on Wikipedia, profit would calculate to an hourly wage of $156.26 [5]— all information go through a strict editing process and updates to that information is reflected to the next user.  Changing within moments, Wikipedia first launched in 2001 but did not receive its flood in user-generated content sharing until the technological revolution hit; an increase which started to become foreseen in research at the tail end of 2008, extending to a great number of user-based updates within 2009 — quickly Wikipedia became both a place for news and education for Internet loyalists, also offering dictionary services, university type material, quotation databases, a free content library, and more.

-Employment and Education-

Newly revolutionized social media assists in both employment and education; creating a objective principal of giving something to everyone. Within a global economic crisis, of 2009, most feared another dark depression as the top term uttered was that of unpleasant “recession” — one in which massive layoffs occurred and the unemployment rate soared. Yet social media had an outstanding influence on the link between the employer/recruiter and the laid off searching employer job listing; yielding research findings that 80% of employees use LinkedIn, in some way, to find their employees [6] and to communicate with job recruiters — in late 2009 Linked in made technology news with their full Twitter based integration, giving their professional members another option in socialization. Impacting education, The US Department of Education ran an extensive research project on the effects of the current time social media influence; their shocking findings came to reveal that on average students who pursued their education via the Internet preformed better than those students who had total face-to-face educational interactions in universities [7]; giving the result that online education is as good, if not better, then traditional facilities of learning. One in six students were enrolled in August 2009 in a type of online education; be it college classes, distant learning, high school tutoring, foreign language knowledge, and other types of educational choices — these students, when tested, preformed better also than those distracted by the classes in traditional schooling.

-Business-

Within thousands of studies, all results reflect the changes to life that is gave forth by the growing existence of social media; swallowing our lives positively. Businesses of the current era, realize that social media is an open door for free marketing and customer interactions — at a rate of 54% growth in mid-2009 businesses are slowly filtering into social mediums to broadcast their unique brands [8], these brands include Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Apple, Dell, and hundreds more. In changing, these businesses are relying less on their help based call-centers and are providing full tech-based support and assistance to customers online; maintaining the customer/store relationship. Comcast Cable, Windstream, and Best Buy have been large support providers on social mediums —the top preferred, Twitter due to its global net base of millions and short 140 character notations. Best Buy has received the highest praise for short response time and detailed accuracy.  Mostly, all computer giants have opted to support their customers in real-time chat via website; also this type of service assists in maintaining a close relationship with cliental while bypassing any anger for the call center choice.

-Closing-

With more than 1.5 million individual pieces of content shared on Facebook alone [9], the amount of user-generated content is highly incalculable but within billions; including web links, blog posts, notes, photos, posts, threads, music, podcasts, videos, and more. Backed by extensive research of modern science and technological research, information proves that social media isn’t a trend but it’s a new-age way of life — facilitating communication, far from superfluous social media is fundamental shift in the way global socialization occurs. Constituting a newly defined life, social media includes but by far isn’t limited to; blogs, micro-blogs, online chat, RSS feeds, widgets, social networks, social bookmarking, Usenet, podcasting, videocasts, forums, video sharing, real-time web-cam chats, virtual worlds, wikis, message boards, etc — social media has created something for everyone.

Fun Facts: Social Media 2009

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