Tuesday 10 January 2012

Social Media, A Fad Or The Biggest Shift Since The Industrial Revolution?

I would honestly say that social media is not just a fad but really is the biggest shift since the industrial revolution. My reason for this conclusion is social media has completely changed the way society operates by changing the way people communicate and share information.  For example people can communicate with other people in a very causal and informal manner. This also allows people that are far away from each other to develop and maintain high level relationships. Before the invention of social media doing these things would be much more difficult and perhaps not possible at all. An example of this would be having a friend in Egypt and only being able to talk to him through conventional means such as phone, mail etc. The problem is calling someone long distance costs a lot of money and with mail you don’t really get a true sense of how the person is truly living. You don’t get to learn how they are feeling from an hour to hour basis. You also don’t get to see as many pictures of the things they are doing. Not to mention you and your other friends cannot communicate with that person as easily and receive all the same benefits mentioned above. In conclusion social media has changed the way people communicate which puts it on the same level as the industrial revolution for changing the way people communicate as well because the telephone was invented and was made available to the general population during the industrial revolution.

Just like the industrial revolution which changed the way people work, social media has done the same thing. Social media has vastly expanded the e-commerce industry by allowing marketing personnel to market their products much more effectively online due to the increased amount of social media users. Companies can now open up their own social media accounts and better communicate special sales and discounts to people. Essentially social media has changed the marketing industry which puts in on the same level as the industrial revolution for changing the manufacturing industry. 

I'm not the only one who agrees how important and life changing social media has become, check out this article by the CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/airplay/episodes/2011/06/20/vancouver-riots-signal-new-era-for-social-media/


8 comments:

  1. Things such as skype and facebook are such great tools for meeting a relative that you may never see in real life. It helps you find out things about yourself and the history of your family that you never could if these things didn't excist.

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  3. I agree, most people do go for the unity of freinds and family. It is something everyone around the world have in common and withouth social media, communications is not that easy. Compared to flight ticket fares, social media is much convenience and worth.

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  4. i agree,the fact some social media sites are easy to navigate and assible as long as you have a internet connection probably has an apeal to alot of people. The fact that facebook and skype for exampe are being used by a wide variety of people from young to old makes it widly usable. if it was a fad usually when another generation gets involved like our grandparents for example, it becomes "uncool" and goes away fairly quickly

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  5. I agree it isnt just a fad but the biggest shift since the industrial revolution. Although, with all of the social media, it is causing people to not be able to talk to other face to face because they are too used to social media.

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  6. I agree that social media is not a fad but it will change and it will people will get bored with it. When that happens there will be a new social networking site then. The reason why I think this is because I get bored with facebook and I'm not on it as much as I use to. But keep in mind that I have moved on to tumblr. And probably soon there will be another site that I go on because I got bored of tumblr (which I highly doubt).

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    1. I agree that social media is not a fad because the way people joining these sites are increasing day by day. These social media is bringing new technology to their sites so that they can get more users like facebook has added a video call feature with the help of skype. People have also started saying that treat your facebook page like a resume. According to the Newsweek article, only 17% of users change their privacy settings to limit who can view their pages.
      So I think social media is not only limited for personal use but is also used by professionals to market their company and to know more about you before meeting in person.

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  7. I kind of disagree that its not a fad but I also agree with your argument. I personally think it is a fad cause the media is showing us that its something that everyone is using and that we need to use it. Remember the world is starting to turn into a technological world and social media will turn into biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.

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