How do you think social media will change in the future? What other trends would you add to the mix? Are they any specific technologies that you think will gain popularity or emerge?

I think social media is about to change in a major way and we’re only seeing hints of the revolution to come. With cloud computing becoming more intuitive every year, I believe the biggest change in social media will come from organizations utilizing social media networks with cloud computing to be able to collaborate on complex projects real-time, all over the world, in one convenient package.

I personally would add the file-sharing trend in today’s world with social media, currently the file-sharing system is way too basic. Like Kontakt in Russia, companies should incorporate a massive file server to accommodate users who want to send and receive large volumes of data. This has implications across the board, from legal implications to copyright laws there will definitely be hurdles to cross.

I believe the main new technologies being developed for social media is integration of it into our daily lives. Samsung is developing a window-paned monitor, that can be installed into a mirror and also display various widgets and feeds. If this technology comes to head, people will be in touch from the moment they brush their teeth to the moment they fall asleep, creating a truly “social” media.

Real Change: Social Media

According to Malcom Gladwell, a well-known author in the area of social media, social media are built around weak ties and real social change can never come from loose networks of people that do not know each other. Do you think that social media has the potential to bring about real social change?

I disagree with Mr. Gladwell, I think the main potential and ability of social media is communication, the ability to communicate ideas across to a variety of people. In this facet, social media is irreplaceable for social reform, especially to the average user who has an idea and a passion to share it and raise awareness. Let me be clear, social media can bring about social change by allowing someone or an organization to instantly reach an audience of millions who, if they so choose to, can carry on the message through their networks of contacts. Therefore social media is able to achieve it's purpose and potential by allowing awareness to be created for social problems.

The foremost example to illustrate my point would be the "KONY2012" campaign which aims to spread it's message of grassroots lobbying to capture a known and wanted war criminal in the Uganda/Sudan area. Clearly this demonstrates the far-reaching abilities of social media to affect and spread ideas, with the video reaching 17 million views within a week and getting support from celebrities and politicians who were carefully targeted by the organization to allow for their message to reach bigger audiences. In conclusion social media is able to bring about social change by putting into effect the spreading of ideas which then can contribute to real world change.

Social Media and it's effect on Journalism.

 Social media has allowed everyday citizens to become authors, editors, and publishers of news and information. Do you believe that social media has increased the quality of news and information or decreased it?

            News outlets in our day and age are on the cusp of tumultuous change and upheaval. More like a scene out of Titanic, this is attributed to changes in technology and lifestyle that have put trusted business models of the past out of the playbooks of the world’s largest news agencies.

            Traditionally, news outlets have always exclusively chosen what they want to report, produced it, and presented it to consumers who have always accepted this structure. Current day, we have technologies that have altered how we gather and interact with content creating a more user based model for acquiring news. We pick what news we would like to know, we also want to be able to provide feedback on content, and to also contribute content we create. Social media is in part to blame for this shift in lifestyle, allowing news to become more user oriented and in part more transparent, honest, and to a higher degree of accuracy than ever before.

            I believe social media has increased the quality of news and information as it allows information to be more subjectively examined and disseminated by a large audience of people. This audience can further expand on news topics with information that they have and to allow a more open and wide presentation of the information at hand. In my honest opinion, social media and technological advances have allowed people to more thoroughly check the information and validate the sources of a news story than ever before. With any average Googler being able to backwards search topics to separate the facts from the false, we live in an age where accountability and trust are not only earned but entrusted to the privileged. Also with the connection of news sources to social media outlets, important issues are better able to reach audiences and there can be real time feedback and a gauging of the “social thermometer” on hot-button issues of the day. This connectivity has allowed more first hand accounts of news stories generated by users across their networks and we are no longer reading the news but living these stories through our extended contacts on our social feeds.

            We are better able to connect to important issues and news stories thanks to social media. It has never been easier to choose the news we are interested in, search it, read it, watch it, share it, comment on it, and to create news content ourselves.

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.