Social media; a fad or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

           Social. Media. Broken into its’ individual components, social media has two distinct and classically established concepts. To be social is to be relating to society and it’s organization, in essence to connect with other people. Humans have a primal need to socialize, which is attributed to the survival of the species and has emerged in our evolution over thousands of years. Media is derived from the word medium, which is a means to convey something through to either someone or something. Media in the modern age has been associated with “mass” media through which outlets such as newspapers, televisions, and the Internet are able to reach a wider audience. Separately these two words have recognized classifications and are associated with established concepts. Put these two concepts together and they are able to create something extraordinary, revolutionary and something with powerful, undiscovered potential. I am among the school of though that believes that social media isn’t just a fad or a trend but the biggest shift since the industrial revolution and the beginning glimpses into the world of tomorrow

There are various perspectives as to the potential of social media in various categories from business to education to lifestyle. Imagine a world where marketers are able to directly target consumer market segments with specifically designated products by utilizing data collected over a social network from user’s online activities. Data collected by what content you browse, what groups or organizations you are apart of online, and by what networks of people you associate with, this has endless possibilities for application. For the education sector, social media can be applied to create a virtual classroom where your classmates are grouped into networks by different courses. Integrated access to class materials, auto-generated applicable real-time content from other sources and a focus on collaboration will be factors of success in the classroom of the future. Furthermore, lifestyle changes will also be inevitable. Aspects such as creating a career path may be entirely done in an online medium as employers innovate the hiring process to taking advantage of the scope of access granted by social networks (with sites such as LinkedIn having a network of 135 million members making it the largest professional network in the world).

I believe the potential and the benefits of the eventual evolution of social media has the potential to cause a major shift in our society, hopefully for the better.