The Social Revolution

Social media has progressed from an extra curricula activity which was mostly supported by teens and others content in sharing their lives over the World Wide Web as a form of communication into what many would a call a necessity of life. Facebook is undoubtedly the most dominant form of social media currently and it looks like it is set to be here for many years to come. How many times has a conversation you've recently had start with "Did you see on Facebook...." Clearly, our appetite for social media has grown into this beast that seems to be consuming its many users. Yes, the largest population in the world, China, has periodically banned Facebook within its borders but, something is telling me that when in only 7 years almost 600 million of the Earth's 7 billion are Facebook users we have become a society that cannot and will not live without social media.

 

So, is this going to change in the future? Will we one day just get bored with it all? No, I don’t believe we will. How can someone go from sharing so much of their life with their on average 130 ‘friends’(this may be a statistic, however, we all know people around us who are close or beyond the 500 mark) to, well, seemingly no outlet at all? From checking their phones (how convenient!) every ten minutes just in case someone has commented on that photo of them from that party they went to the night before to ‘liking’ some friends witty status update; OMG what would users do with their spare time? Facebook, though, hasn’t just been restricted to spare time now has it? There’s that colleague in the cubicle next to yours updating their status for the fourth time today, the glow of that movie goers’ iphone screen a couple of seats across from yours, and the shopper in front of you who hasn’t realised the line has moved because they have buried their heads into their phone to check the ‘top news’.

 Social media has awoken this beast inside of its users that is plain and simple addicted to attention. Oh, they may tell you it’s a useful tool to keep in touch with overseas relatives and a way to put out into the universe their point of view of current issues, but when they are status updating what they are going to eat for dinner, it begs the question- who cares and what is the point? Are we really that hungry for volumes of people to ‘see’ us? Evidently so.  Facebook will continue to grow and morph into this mega social network monster that will feed off this need people have. Facebook has also become and will continue to be a critical platform for groups to have their voice heard and in turn will revolutionise major political and cultural risings in our society. Who knows, if Facebook didn’t exist, Mubarak may still be president of Egypt. Team this with crafty marketing from partnered websites that have been specially adapted to the Facebook community, for instance, users can ‘like’ advertisements; since when do people like ads?, there isn’t much chance of people just simply ‘getting over’ this social podium.

Social media is constantly evolving. Facebook is at the forefront- regularly developing to make things more user friendly, visually pleasing and with the addition of cross media such as games and advertising; it is ticking all the boxes of what a social network user requires to continually keep them interested. And with the increase of Facebook groups gaining momentum and power, causing shifts to our social landscape, the future of social media is a permanent one and will continue to revolutionise the way we communicate.  

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