The Social Web and Media

The Social Web and Media

The social web and media is for everyone to use. There are many different sites out there for communicating, advertising, and even dating websites to help people meet your soul mate. Even though the social web is great for all of us to keep contact and do whatever it is that we need to do, have you ever thought about what effects it has on society? What does our future hold for us?

Let’s go back to the year 2000 - six years before idea of Twitter became a reality, four years before Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his college dormitory, three years before Myspace was converted to support the idea of social networking. The thought that people might someday spend over 700 billion minutes per month on a single website such as Facebook was unthinkable. These social networking sites along with hundreds more were just a spark in designers’ minds.

Flash forward to the present. 96% of 18-35 year olds are on a social network. Facebook has over 901 million users in over 100 countries. 1 in 5 Americans age 18-35 use Twitter. 50% of You-tubes 300 million usesers visit at least once per week.

3

College students in the year 2010 can’t wait to update their status. It is urgent for them to let their three-hundred and twenty Facebook friends know about the assignment they have due in two days. While paging through their live feed they realize, from a status update, they have an unknown assignment due the following day. In the news feed, they recognize their favorite sports team has won. They can see what their friends had to say about the game. If a college class is moved or a high school day is canceled, students are often more likely to find it out on Facebook rather than through communication with their school or university.

Facebook first went online for social networking in February 2004, from a college dormitory at Harvard. It was initially restricted to Harvard students until expanding first to area colleges, then all colleges,...